“The Second Coming”

by William Butler Yeats

As far as I have understood this poem, I think it talks about the coming to an end of an era and the start of a new one, caused specially by the atrocities Yeats witnessed during World War I. Anyway, I think that here W. B. Yeats does not only take the point of view of the classical western Christian belief, but blends many cultures and religious beliefs into one only view of the future of mankind and of the new era about to come he envisages, and perhaps to highlight his Pagan beliefs, out of his Irish (Celtic) background.

World War I, also known as the First World War, led to the collapse of the empires and made a radical change in the map of Europe (Wikipedia.org), and the poetry that came out of this conflict was kind of refused by Yeats as he states “I have a distaste for certain poems written in the midst of the great war;… passive suffering is not a theme for poetry" (wwnorton.com).

On the one hand, and taking his words into consideration, this is what leads me to think that he was not writing about the war but because of the war. And, on the other hand, he had not adopted a particular religious view, as I said above, and more if we take into consideration his tendencies toward religion as “he was separated from both historical traditions available to him in Ireland -from the Roman Catholics… and from the Protestants. Yeats' best hope was to cultivate a tradition […] of a hidden Ireland that existed largely in the anthropological evidence of its surviving customs, beliefs, and holy places, more pagan than Christian” (Encyclopaedia Britannica), that we could see later on in this work through the use of several symbols.

With the title, Yeats already states that a new era is about to start and it is going to happen through an (or “The”) apocalypse as The Second Coming is a synonym of the Apocalypse, or of The Day of Armageddon (theperiscope.blogs.com). But at the same time “this prophecy of a Second Coming… span across many religions and cultures”, and although “most notable is the Christian belief in the return of Jesus” (en.wikipedia.org) it has links with other beliefs such as the Islam, the Hinduism, Judaism and even the Rastafari faith, with which Yeats advances the idea that this is going to have an influence for all human race.

In the first 8 lines Yeats introduces the scenery he sees, after WWI, a scenery where we can see that the human race is out of control as he describes how “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”, understanding those words as the lack of understanding between mind and heart or between human beings and God, while “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” understanding anarchy here as a situation full of chaos and more if this anarchy becomes later on a “blood-dimmed tide” which is also “loosed”, a negative view reinforced by the last lines of the first stanza where the intellectually formed have no motivation: “the best lack all conviction…”, and those who are not cultivated feel capable of everything: “…while the worst are full of passionate intensity”.

In the second part of the poem Yeats is introducing an epiphany moment that “…troubles my sight…” when he states “surely some revelation is at hand” and although he refers to the Christian conception of the Second Coming, he receives this image “…out of Spiritus Mundi…” which in Latin means spirit or soul of the world, and the phrase refers to the spirit or soul of the universe, with which all individual souls are connected through the Great Memory which Yeats held to be a universal subconscious in which the human race preserves its past memories” (McRey Moyer), that is regardless of Christian beliefs.

In the last ten lines Yeats portrays a very negative view of the final days of the world/era with a being that is half human and half animal, which possibly refers to a Sphinx, and with not very friendly manners while at the same time it’s surrounded by “indignant desert birds” which might refer to vultures or ravens expecting to be able to feast in the slaughter about to happen. Yeats then refers again to the end of the era that for him occurs every 2.000 years or so, which is organised in gyres and this last one is “an historical movement or trend that started at the birth of Christ, is figured as a falcon’s towering” (Neil Mann, Second Notes), and which is another non-Christian belief. Here, the author thinks that it is Jesus Christ himself (or the beliefs related to him) who is responsible for these 20 centuries of nightmare when he states that “[…] were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle”, the cradle where he was born. Moreover, at the end of the poem Yeats ends his vision wondering what other beast is about to be born in Bethlehem as Jesus did, leaving in the air the answer to the question of what we can expect of this Second Coming.

Finally, I shall mention the use of images and symbols Yeats uses to prove that they all come from different beliefs and also to reinforce the idea that the poem is pervaded with a negative view. First of all, Yeats uses the gyre which symbolizes “the mind” and “whether expressed in history or in the individual life, it has a precise movement, which can be quickened

or slackened but cannot be fundamentally altered, and this movement can be expressed by a mathematical form (there’s no use of a religious symbol) and this form is the gyre (Neil Mann), and these gyres have the inevitability of the tides, and like them are connected to the Moon and its phases. In the symbol of the falcon, the falconer represents control but stands at the lowest point of the gyre’s apex, so that, as the falcon towers higher, it can no longer hear the controlling centre (Neil Mann). At the same time he uses a falcon because “the falcon was a bird that had protective powers, and was frequently linked with royalty…, it’s the sacred bird of the falcon-headed solar god Horus,… and the bird of prey was sometimes associated with Hathor, The House of Horus” (touregypt.net), and they are symbols that belong to ancient Egypt beliefs and might be linked to the Pagan Celtic beliefs in the influence of the cult to the sun and the moon. There’s also another ancient Egypt symbol like the Sphinx (“…lion body and the head of a man…”) and it is seen as the embodiment of royalty (Garreth Long). There’s also the Spiritus Mundi that I commented above, but also some other which I’ve to say that belong to the Christian beliefs like The Second Coming itself or even the city of Bethlehem. I shall also mention the use of some language to reinforce both this negative vision and the cyclical view Yeats had of the world. First, there are many words that belong to a negative semantic field like “blank, reel shadows, indignant birds, darkness, rough or the verb to slouch”. Second, how Yeats uses repetition to offer this idea of spiralling movement of the gyres with the use of “turning and turning”, using “loosed” twice, saying “The Second Coming” also twice, or with using “again” and shortly after “come round”.

For me all this negative view pervades the whole poem to the point that it ends with a question that expresses uncertainty about the future of mankind, and regardless of everyone’s beliefs he’s trying to warn all of us, as human beings.

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SOURCES:

- “WWI”. www.en.wikipedia.org. March 2006. Wikipedia. 20th March 2006 < www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWI>

- “20^th Century Topics. Representing the Great War: Texts and Contexts”. www.wwnorton.com. 2003-2006. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 2003-2006. W. B. Yeats, Preface to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1936. March 2006 <www.wwnorton.com/nael/20century/topic_1_05/wbyeats_oxford.htm>

- “Yeats, William Butler.” www. search.eb.com.au. 1997. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 20th March 2006. <http://search.eb.com.au/nobel/micro/648_91.html>

- www.theperiscope.blogs.com <www.theperiscope.blogs.com/skipping_ towards_armagedd/myths_and_narratives> 28 March 2006.

- “Second Coming”. www.en.wikipedia.org. 28 March 2006. Wikipedia. 28 March 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming>

- McRey Moyer. “The Poem and the Beast: Artistic and Topical Readings of Yeats.” www.yeatsvisions.com. March 2006. Dark Spiral Copyright, White Wolf Web Ring. 28 March 2006. <www.secretdoors.com/weavermoon/secondcoming.html#spirit>

- Neil Mann. “Second Notes”. www.yeatsvision.com. 27 May 2004. Creative Commons License. 28th March 2006. <www.yeatsvision.com/SecondNotes.html>

- Neil Mann. “Geometry”, www.yeatsvision.com. 27 May 2004. Creative Commons License. 28th March 2006. <www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html>

- Caroline Seawright. “Animals and the Gods of Ancient Egypt.” www.touregypt.net. 1999-2005. InterCity Oz, Inc. 28th March 2006. <www.touregypt.net/featurestories/animalgods.htm>

- Garreth Long. 1997. <http://webhome.idirect.com/~donlong/monsters/Html/Sphinx.htm> 28th March 2006