Oh well done! Although I can’t really wrap my head around him truly believing these sorts of violent moments in mythology should lead to peace, I cannot quote chapter and verse concerning his sometimes roundabout irony. It might be good to add that it was Zeus who took Leda while he was in the form of a swan. Male swans can be extremely aggressive, and are larger than most people think. In addition, Helen was the child of Leda and Zeus from that assault. In all this piece is an excellent piece of teaching!
Nice analysis. Sleep in these cases is all postcoital, is it not? That is, once the men have achieved the object of their desires, and spent their rage, they now rest. Sex leads to matrimony and children, and destruction then leads to civilization, once lust and chaos gives way to domestic routine and order.
As kids, when we suffered any painful rejection, sometimes again and again, my Mom liked to remind us of the Superman episode where he kept failing the vision test. Because with his superhuman, X-ray vision he was reading the eye chart not on the wall of that room, but the chart on the wall four rooms beyond!
Think about that metaphor. And if the shoe fits, wear it. I think you must. With pride.
We live in a mediocre world that is unable to appreciate true greatness. Sure, everyone pays lip service to greatness. But so very often they don't recognize it even when it is staring them square in the face.
So much for literary agents. It is not your failing, but theirs.
Take heart. You *will* realize your dream. I feel convinced of that. But it might take some time. (And it might not happen exactly the way you imagined.)
I have read most of Yeats, yet somehow I have missed this poem. Thank you for an interesting introduction and analysis. There are a few points I would like to mention as well, first reactions really, since I have not previously encountered this poem.
Certainly all three slumbers are post-coital; that much is obvious. Also, it is the male sleeping in each case. This gives a bit of dissonance for me, since the person addressed in the poem is presumably either a lover or a child, and it seems to me that a child would not understand, having had no experience of, this kind of sleep, and a lover (Yeats was by all evidence quite heterosexual) would seem to be female and would experience this male post-coital sleep at one remove. This leads me to speculate that there is another layer to this poem: Yeats is writing the poem, but Yeats is not the speaker. The speaker is a woman addressing her lover in language she might also use to a child. In fact, she may be fondly watching her lover sleep exactly the kind of sleep she is describing. (Yes, that's all very speculative, but this feels right to me.)
I don't read the myths as being quite so violent as you do, although I know there are different versions of each story. My understanding of Paris and Helen is that Paris was granted by Aphrodite the power to seduce Helen. She goes with him willingly, but as always with these myths, her will is not entirely her own, since she is being manipulated by the gods. So yes, her will is being coerced, but by Aphrodite, not by Paris. (Not defending Paris especially; he is quite dislikeable in the Iliad.) Although the Trojan war won't start for a couple of years after that first night in Helen's arms, Paris knows it will come. Those "world's alarms" are in the future, Paris is too content in the present moment to care very much, and so he can have sweet sleep.
Similarly, in the version of Tristan and Isolde that I am most familiar with (from Mallory), Tristan and Isolde both take the potion unknowingly while he is taking her to King Mark, and only afterwards (and after much anguish) does he kill Mark. In this version, both are in the position of Helen, ensorceled, their wills not entirely their own. I particularly like the last three lines of this second stanza, for two reasons. The sudden shift from the two human beings to the roe and doe signals to me that the effect of the love potion is to return them both to a state of animal innocence, free from the restraints of human compunction and social commitments; they rut as innocently as the deer. Also, the reversal of roe and doe in the last line makes a nice balance: neither one of them is the dominant partner and there is a nice equality (almost interchangeability) in their roles. This symmetry matches that of the potion: this is not a case of one person insidiously giving the potion to the other like a magical date rape drug. They are both equally and unpremeditatedly under its influence.
On the other hand, the Zeus and Leda story is every bit as violent as it is possible for it to be; it is a direct, physical sexual assault involving the most extreme power inequality imaginable, and it is VERY hard for me to see it as anything else. That makes the final stanza very challenging for me. Yeats is trying very hard to make this one work. We know it is a swan, but he says "bird." We know it is Zeus, but he says "holy." Why? And why "predestined will?" It seems to me that in refusing to name things by their names, Yeats is opening the myth up to a parallel reading. The bird might also be a dove, and the holy dove might be the holy spirit of God, and the predestined will might be the incarnation of Christ. Now, nothing at all forces this interpretation, but it would have the effect of subliminally softening the story to one of love and acceptance and would go a long way toward explaining the "protective care" which resonates with the image of the Madonna better than with Leda. I know this is quite a stretch, and the only evidence I have for it is the very effort Yeats went to, to leave the door open for it. He is too good a poet to take the trouble to structure the stanza in this way without a reason. Although he does say "Leda" at the end, which perhaps shoots this whole interpretation down.
Anyway, thank you for a very engaging article (see how engaged I got -- perhaps too much so, several paragraphs worth at least).
Oh well done! Although I can’t really wrap my head around him truly believing these sorts of violent moments in mythology should lead to peace, I cannot quote chapter and verse concerning his sometimes roundabout irony. It might be good to add that it was Zeus who took Leda while he was in the form of a swan. Male swans can be extremely aggressive, and are larger than most people think. In addition, Helen was the child of Leda and Zeus from that assault. In all this piece is an excellent piece of teaching!
Very insightful. On an unrelated note I came across this article and immediately thought of you and your essay Leave Literature Alone:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/we-asked-for-it
Haha yes, so many people have sent me that article. They are RIGHT.
Well done!
Nice analysis. Sleep in these cases is all postcoital, is it not? That is, once the men have achieved the object of their desires, and spent their rage, they now rest. Sex leads to matrimony and children, and destruction then leads to civilization, once lust and chaos gives way to domestic routine and order.
Liza L. -
As kids, when we suffered any painful rejection, sometimes again and again, my Mom liked to remind us of the Superman episode where he kept failing the vision test. Because with his superhuman, X-ray vision he was reading the eye chart not on the wall of that room, but the chart on the wall four rooms beyond!
Think about that metaphor. And if the shoe fits, wear it. I think you must. With pride.
We live in a mediocre world that is unable to appreciate true greatness. Sure, everyone pays lip service to greatness. But so very often they don't recognize it even when it is staring them square in the face.
So much for literary agents. It is not your failing, but theirs.
Take heart. You *will* realize your dream. I feel convinced of that. But it might take some time. (And it might not happen exactly the way you imagined.)
I have read most of Yeats, yet somehow I have missed this poem. Thank you for an interesting introduction and analysis. There are a few points I would like to mention as well, first reactions really, since I have not previously encountered this poem.
Certainly all three slumbers are post-coital; that much is obvious. Also, it is the male sleeping in each case. This gives a bit of dissonance for me, since the person addressed in the poem is presumably either a lover or a child, and it seems to me that a child would not understand, having had no experience of, this kind of sleep, and a lover (Yeats was by all evidence quite heterosexual) would seem to be female and would experience this male post-coital sleep at one remove. This leads me to speculate that there is another layer to this poem: Yeats is writing the poem, but Yeats is not the speaker. The speaker is a woman addressing her lover in language she might also use to a child. In fact, she may be fondly watching her lover sleep exactly the kind of sleep she is describing. (Yes, that's all very speculative, but this feels right to me.)
I don't read the myths as being quite so violent as you do, although I know there are different versions of each story. My understanding of Paris and Helen is that Paris was granted by Aphrodite the power to seduce Helen. She goes with him willingly, but as always with these myths, her will is not entirely her own, since she is being manipulated by the gods. So yes, her will is being coerced, but by Aphrodite, not by Paris. (Not defending Paris especially; he is quite dislikeable in the Iliad.) Although the Trojan war won't start for a couple of years after that first night in Helen's arms, Paris knows it will come. Those "world's alarms" are in the future, Paris is too content in the present moment to care very much, and so he can have sweet sleep.
Similarly, in the version of Tristan and Isolde that I am most familiar with (from Mallory), Tristan and Isolde both take the potion unknowingly while he is taking her to King Mark, and only afterwards (and after much anguish) does he kill Mark. In this version, both are in the position of Helen, ensorceled, their wills not entirely their own. I particularly like the last three lines of this second stanza, for two reasons. The sudden shift from the two human beings to the roe and doe signals to me that the effect of the love potion is to return them both to a state of animal innocence, free from the restraints of human compunction and social commitments; they rut as innocently as the deer. Also, the reversal of roe and doe in the last line makes a nice balance: neither one of them is the dominant partner and there is a nice equality (almost interchangeability) in their roles. This symmetry matches that of the potion: this is not a case of one person insidiously giving the potion to the other like a magical date rape drug. They are both equally and unpremeditatedly under its influence.
On the other hand, the Zeus and Leda story is every bit as violent as it is possible for it to be; it is a direct, physical sexual assault involving the most extreme power inequality imaginable, and it is VERY hard for me to see it as anything else. That makes the final stanza very challenging for me. Yeats is trying very hard to make this one work. We know it is a swan, but he says "bird." We know it is Zeus, but he says "holy." Why? And why "predestined will?" It seems to me that in refusing to name things by their names, Yeats is opening the myth up to a parallel reading. The bird might also be a dove, and the holy dove might be the holy spirit of God, and the predestined will might be the incarnation of Christ. Now, nothing at all forces this interpretation, but it would have the effect of subliminally softening the story to one of love and acceptance and would go a long way toward explaining the "protective care" which resonates with the image of the Madonna better than with Leda. I know this is quite a stretch, and the only evidence I have for it is the very effort Yeats went to, to leave the door open for it. He is too good a poet to take the trouble to structure the stanza in this way without a reason. Although he does say "Leda" at the end, which perhaps shoots this whole interpretation down.
Anyway, thank you for a very engaging article (see how engaged I got -- perhaps too much so, several paragraphs worth at least).
No country for old men.