William Butler Yeats’ Four Poems

★ Yeats’ Background

★ “Adam’s Curse”

★ “No Second Troy”

★ “Leda and the Swan”

★ “The Second Coming”

Background1.   Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in

Dublin.

2. His father, J. B. Yeats, a lawyer, later turned Pre- Raphaelite painter. In 1867 the family followed him to London and settled in Bedford Park.

3. In 1881 they returned to Dublin, where Yeats studied at the Metropolitan School of Art.

4. Reincarnation, communication with the dead, mediums, supernatural systems and Oriental mysticism fascinated Yeats through his life.

Background4. As a writer Yeats made his debut in 1885, when he published his first poems in The Dublin University Review.5. In 1887 the family returned to Bedford Park, and Yeats devoted himself to writing. 6. In London, in the 1891s, he was one of the founders of Rhymer’s club.

Background7.   In 1897, Yeats met Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, with whom he founded the Irish Literature Theater.8. In 1899, Yeats met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), an actress and Irish revolutionary who becomes a major landmark in his life and imagination. However, she married in 1903 with Major John MacBride, and this episode inspired Yeats's poem “No Second Troy”.

Background9.      In early 1917, Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a derelict Norman Stone tower. He married Georgie Hyde Lee. During their honeymoon, Georgie demonstrated her gift for automatic writing. Their collaborative notebooks formed the basis of A Vision (1925), a book of marriage therapy spiced with occultism.

10.      The 1920s and 1930s is Yeats’ greatest period. Winding stairs, spinning top, “gyres”, spirals of all kinds are important symbols. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Background

11. In 1932 Yeats founded the Irish Academy of Letters and in 1933 he was briefly involved with the fascist Blueshirts in Dublin. In his final years Yeats worked on the last version of A Vision, which attempted to present a theory of the variation of human personality, and published The Oxford Book of Verse (1936) and New Poems (1938).

12.  Yeats died in January 1939. The burial place of the Irish

poet, Yeats.

“Adam’s Curse”Background--• Yeats and Maud Gonne • 1865 Yeats was born. • 1889 Yeats met Maud Gonne.---Age 24• 1891 Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne.---Age 26• 1900 Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne.---Age 35• 1901 Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne.---Age 36• 1902 Yeats wrote “Adam’s Curse”. ---Age 37

“Adam’s Curse”

Role• I, the speaker---Yeats

• You—Maud Gonne

• Your close friend, the beautiful mild woman

---Maud Gonne’s friend

“Adam’s Curse” outline

Stanza 1- I said: advocacy

Stanza 2- your close friend said: women should

be beautiful

Stanza 3- I said: Adam’s curse

Stanza 4- visual images

Stanza 5- I love you

Adam’s Curse

Definition

“The martyrs call the world” (line 11)

“That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love” (5)

Adam’s Curse I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught,

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.”

Adam’s Curse I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing Sine Adam’s fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be So much compounded of high courtesy That they would sigh and quote with learned looks Precedents out of beautiful old books; Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.” (Stanza 3)------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a thought for no one’s but your ears: That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the old high way of love; That it had seemed happy, and yet we’d grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon. (Stanza 5)

Adam’s Curse Conclusion• Success• Maud Gonne (1) Why “your close friend” there?

(2) Why “you” never talked to “I”?

(3) Why “I” dare not to say “ I love

you” to you?

Helen

Adam’s CurseWho is this person when Yeats addressed with the word “her”?

Maud Gonne

No Second Troy

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? 5

What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? 10 Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

http://www.searcs-web.com/gonne3.jpg

Maud Gonne

• Feelings toward Maud Gonne

• Asking four rhetorical questions

• Maud Gonne’s Character

Summery

No Second Troy

• He compared her followers’ intelligence with Maud Gonne’s.

• He praised Maud Gonne for her intelligence.• He criticized her with a negative word : “violent”• The final rhetorical question "Was there another

Troy for her to burn?" • Yeats wondered if her attraction for men was

responsible for a revolution against Great Britain In Dublin.

• The statement here ( Lines 3~4) contains both praise and criticism of Maud Gonne and her Irish Nationalists.

Analysis:

No Second Troy

• described her character and compared with Helen • warlike metaphors and similes :

“That nobleness made simple as a fire,” (Line 7)

- an image of burning passion and aggression for nationalism

“With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind ” (Line 8)

- her skin stretched her cheekbones

- her beauty could arouse the wars

“Why, what could she have done, being what she is?” (Line 11)

- her solitary and haughty manner

- character she had resulted in her action, which resulted in misery for Yeats

Analysis: Maud Gonne’s character

No Second Troy

Rhyme Scheme:The Rhyme Scheme of This Sonnet : ABAB CDCD EFEF

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days A With misery, or that she would of late BHave taught to ignorant men most violent ways, AOr hurled the little streets upon the great, BHad they but courage equal to desire? C 5 What could have made her peaceful with a mind DThat nobleness made simple as a fire, CWith beauty like a tightened bow, a kind DThat is not natural in an age like this, EBeing high and solitary and most stern? F 10 Why, what could she have done, being what she is? EWas there another Troy for her to burn? F

• Brown, H. and J. Milstead. What the Poem Means: Summaries of 1300 Poems. Taipei: Bookman, 1970.

• “William Butler Yeats.” The Leaving Cert English Page. 6 Oct. 2005

<http://homepage.tinet.ie/~splash/NST.html>

Work Cited

No Second Troy

Birth of Helen

No Second Troy

source

Leda and the Swan

• Poetic Form

• Summary• Greek mythology

in this poem

• Analysis

source

Leda and the Swan

Poetic Form ★A traditional fourteen-line poem in iambic pentam

eter

★ Petrarchan sonnet with a clear separation between the first eight lines (the "octave") and the final six (the "sestet")

★ The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFGEFG.

★ the subject matter is extremely non-traditional (violent rape as opposed to the usual love sonnets)

Leda and the Swan

• Greek mythology

★ Leda is raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, she laid eggs, which hatched into Clytemnestra and Helen and the war-gods Castor and Polydeuces--brought about the Trojan War

★ The Trojan War : the Greek Helen was abducted by the Trojans, so the Greeks besieged the city of Troy; after the war, Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek leader Agamemnon, had her husband murdered.

Leda and the Swan• Summary The speaker

retells a story from Greek mythology, the rape of the girl Leda by the god Zeus, who had assumed the form of a swan.

source

Correggio, c.1531-1532.

source

Leda and the Swan• Analysis(1) ★The key to the reality Yeats is atte

mpting to address is Maud Gonne . ★ oppositions inherent within the p

oem, combined with an understanding of the Yeats's spiritual marriage to Maud Gonne shows the poem to be a manifestation of the conflict between reality and ideal, human and divine that Yeats spent years trying to reconcile.

Leda and the Swan

• Analysis(2) ★ As an aesthetic experience, the sonnet is remarkable

★ Yeats combines words indicating powerful action (sudden blow, beating, staggering, beating, shudder, mastered, burning, mastered)

★ With adjectives and descriptive words that indicate Leda's weakness and helplessness (caressed, helpless, terrified, vague, loosening), thus increasing the sensory impact of the poem.

Leda and the Swan• Analysis(3) ★ By implication, the poem asks if Zeus thereby unwitti

ngly passed on to mankind qualities and knowledge he originally did not wish mortals to have.

★ Like "The Second Coming," "Leda and the Swan" describes a moment that represented a change of era in Yeats's historical model of gyres, his mystical theory of the universe. But where "The Second Coming" represents the end of modern history, "Leda and the Swan" represents something like its beginning.

The Second Coming ~W.B.Yeats~Jan,1919

earth.leeds.ac.uk/ people/krom/kromm.htm

World War I (1914~1918)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asguru/english/01genre/05waysofreading/index.shtml

The Second Coming

With extreme fatigue and disappointment from the wars, Yeats revealed a pessimistic view towards the second messiah

www.wordpower.ws/ poetry/poetry-wbyeats.html

The Second Coming The Gyres

http://aliscot.com/ensenanza/4033/victorian/yeats_sys.htm

The Second Coming

Human race was believed by Yeats to be the offspring of Leda and the swan

http://keptar.demasz.hu/arthp/art/c/correggi/mytholog/leda.jpg

The Second ComingTwo thousands years later it was Jesus who, as the first messiah, brought new civilization and prosperity to human race.

http://wonderful1.com/

The Second Coming“The Second Coming” reve

aled Yeats’s belief that the second messiah, two thousand years after Jesus, was about to be born at Bethlehem, which presumably will have the shape of a sphinx and will be heartless.

http://www.nmia.com/~sphinx/greek_sphinx.html

The Second ComingThe first part describes the chaotic conditions presented in the world:

• The Falcon cannot hear the falconer (line 2)• Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; (line 3)• Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, (line 4)• The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, (line 5)• The ceremony of innocence is drowned; (line 6)• the best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. (lines 7-8)

The Second ComingThe second part surmises from the above conditions with Yeats’s theory of the new cycle of two thousands years that a monstrous second messiah, like a rough beast is coming to the world. The description of the beast as follows:

• A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving it’s slow thighs, while all about itReels shadows of the indignant desert birds (lines 14-17)

• slouches towards Bethlehem to be born (line 22)

The Second Coming Study Question

How does “The Second Coming” reveal the speaker’s pessimistic view towards the second messiah?

Work CitedFoll, Scott. “Yeats’s System.” 2000. 5 Oct, 2005

<http://aliscot.com/ensenanza/4033/victorian/yeats_sys.htm>

Thanks for your attention!

Damon, Mandy, Cindy, Lanny, Jay