Leda And The Swan

Leda And The Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Poem: Leda and the Swan.

Extracted from: http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/ledaswan.html

Author: William Butler Yeats.

Leda and the Swan: Analysis and Comentary.

The poem that we are going to analyse is Leda and the Swan, written by William Butler Yeats, published in the radical newspaper To-morrow in 1923 and rewritten and published in 1928 in The Tower[1]. The poem structured in three stanzas, the first and the second stanza have four verses each, and the third stanza has seven verses.

In this poem, Yeats speaks about the Greek myth of Leda and Zeus. Zeus wanted Leda, married with Tindarus, king of Sparta. To possess her, Zeus became a swan, and Leda had two pairs of twins: Castor and Pollux, and Helena and Clitemnestra[2]. Different versions of the myth make us doubt about the disposition of Leda towards Zeus, and Yeats plays with this situation, with the behaviour of Leda[3].

In the first stanza, the author, who is not implicated, is just an observer, describes how the swan, Zeus, is prepared to attack: he opens his wings, gets closer to a hesitant Leda and touches her (A sudden blow: the great wings beating still /Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed, verses 1 and 2). Yeats describes a doubtful and helpless girl who has nothing to do with the almighty swan (He holds her helpless breast upon his breast, verse 4).

Yeats persists in describing the helpless situation of Leda in the second stanza. She cannot do anything (How can those terrified vague fingers push /The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?,verses 5 and 6). The situation of Leda turns into sumission: she has nothing to do, Yeats tells us, so she feels what the swan makes her feel(And how can body, laid in that white rush,/But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?, verses 7 and 8).

In the third stanza the author exposes the surrender of Leda and the consummation, i. e., the victory of Zeus the swan, as we can see in the wall and the roof (The broken wall, the burning roof and tower, verse 10).

When William B. Yeats wrote this poem, it was, in his own words a meditation about “Ireland and international politics”[4]. Ireland and the whole world had suffered a war, an invasion, the war in Ireland and the First World War were recent, and Leda and the Swan speaks about the invasion of Zeus to conquer Leda. Zeus makes strategies, he transforms into a swan to make Leda surrender. He is like a captain with his army, trying to find the weak points of the enemy (in the poem is the chastity and faithfulness of Leda) and attack. And that is what Zeus does.

We could connect this poem with one of the most important parts in the life of Yeats: his relationship with Maude Gonne. Yeats met Maude Gonne, a young heiress in 1889[5]. She admired his poetry and he was obsessed with her, but she never accepted to marry him. This fact has a special importance in the Poetry of Yeats, and we can see that influence in this poem. Here Yeats wants to be the swan, he wants to transform into anybody else to conquer Maud. He is the swan and Maud is Leda. He wants to make a strategy to invade Maud and conquer her. We must remember, too, that this poem was written in the last years of Yeats’ life. Maybe he is regreting for not doing everything to be with Maude.

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Bibliography.

ü Uv.es/fores/poesia

http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/ledaswan.html 05.04.2006

Editor: Vicente Forés

ü Gustavo Negrín. Leda y el cisne, traducción y prólogo. http://www.saltana.org/1/docar/0237.html 05.04.2006

ü Cristina Arnau. 2^nd of Bachillerato’s Greek Lessons. 2002-2003

ü Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats 06.04.2006

Wikipedia ®

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats