Literature - Mrs MEHDAOUI Amaria: The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Introduction

-Students are introduced to William Butler Yeats’ biography with an emphasis on his pursuit for spiritualism. Further details about his life will be found on https://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Yeats-William-Butler.html.

-Students are asked to discuss religious views and differences, most notably the rise of religious crisis and existentialism versus recall for spiritualism. Then, they are required to identify spiritualism in the The Second Coming poem.

The Second Coming is written in a Free Verse. This implies that it is consistent in terms of meter but has free rhyme. It consists of 22 lines divided into two stanzas (For an explanation of the poetry terms (students should check the poetry terms explained sheet attached in Moodle).

Questions for discussion:

- What is spiritualism?

- How does the poem convey a pessimistic picture of the post WWI world?

The Second Coming in Form

The Second Coming (1919) the title is an allusion of Jesus Christ coming. The second coming is a religious belief shared between Jews, Muslims, and Christians about the return of Jesus Christ after his ascension to heaven. The same belief is know in our Islamic religion as we are told of the return of Isa عيسى (PBUH) to earth as the redeemer of Islam against Masih Addajal.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre Alliteration

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, Assonance

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Alliteration refers to repetition of consonant sound. The poem consists of a number of alliteration detected in red. The purpose is to give a strong image of the world’s collapse after WWI. Assonance, from the other hand, is an aspect of rhyme which makes use of vowel repetition like in world-worse, shape-gaze, out-about-now…etc they are detected in green colour in the poem.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The underlined verb turning and turning, and the noun desert and desert repeated twice in the poem are chosen to reflect the disorder and chaos of the post-World War I era. The adjectives the best and the worst, full off and vast, pitiless and indignant, rough and passionate and action verbs drowned, drops, fall, loosed with state verbs to be, know, vexed, and lack are all lexical items which reflect the pessimistic and negative tone the poet transmits.

The Second Coming in Content

The Second Coming was written few years after the end of the First World War. People at the time were still under shock for losing their relatives, homes, and jobs. This loss became the governing theme of the time. Yeats as an Irish poet had political interests particularly in what his home country was experiencing and generally in what the world was going through. Readers not only can sense his nationalist feelings but also his interest in world politics as well.

Yeats, hence, developed his own mystic view of history, politics, and religion. The “gyre” pictured at the beginning of his poem represents his views: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre”. A gyre is a two-con spiral that turns over and over bringing destruction and chaos just like the WWI did. As a political injected poetry, there was a need for special techniques such as symbolism, imagery, and allusion to represent the hidden messages Yeats wanted to transmit.

The poem is divided into two stanzas, each holding a specific vision. The first stanza describes the destructed world ruined in chaos and violence where “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”. This metaphoric negated expression may represent people’s inability to respond to their government or to their creator. The fall in “Things fall apart” expresses the fall of human morals and values in which “the centre cannot hold” their wrong doings. As the reader can notice, no specific perpetrator is announced as the line of “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” suggests. Avoidance of declaring the perpetrator opens the door to various interpretations (maybe imperialism, capitalism...etc). The negation in “cannot hold” assures the impossibility of avoiding the predestined chaos and its aftermaths on the world. In the four coming lines, the poet blames the best for their silence where the worst engage desperately in their quest for demolition of innocent lives where the tide became red with the blood of innocence.

The anaphora in “surely” and “surely” suggests a mere faith in the coming of Jesus Christ for salvation. Yet; the exclamation in “The Second Coming!” offers a sceptical perception. By questioning the second coming Yeats confirms his modernist break with traditional view of truth and his rejection of historical continuity (no truth is definite). The second stanza prophesises the coming of a beast which will bring an end to the world as a new era will gradually appear. The poem holds many themes including alienation, loss, death, and lack of communication represented in a pessimistic tone and diction.

Conclusion

One of the prominent figures of Modern poetry was William Butler Yeats. His experimental techniques next to his radical spiritual philosophy revolutionised modern poetry.

Introduction

The Second Coming in Form

The Second Coming in Content

Conclusion

Further Readings