“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and included in his 1921 collection of verses “Michael Robartes and the Dancer”.[1] The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to describe allegorically the atmosphere of post-war Europe.[2] It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.[3]
| The Second Coming | |
|---|---|
| by W. B. Yeats | |
| Written | 1919 |
| First published in | The Dial |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Form | Lyric poetry |
| Publication date | 1920 |
| Media type | |
| Lines | 22 |
| Full text | |
 The Second Coming (Yeats) at Wikisource | |
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
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.
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?
Historical context
editThe poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War[4] and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, and before the British government had decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.[5]
To understand Yeats′s cosmology it is essential to read his book A Vision, where he explained his views on history and how it informed his poetry. Yeats saw human history as a series of epochs, what he called "gyres." He saw the age of classical antiquity as beginning with the Trojan War and then that thousand year cycle was overtaken by the Christian era, which is coming to a close. And that is the basis of the final line of the poem: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats′s writing of the poem, his pregnant wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, caught the virus and was very close to death, but she survived. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women, who in some areas had a death rate of up to 70%. Yeats wrote the poem while his wife was convalescing.[6][1]
Critical engagement
editIn 2009, David A. Ross identified "The Second Coming" as "one of the most famous poems in the English language,"[7] echoing Harold Bloom who, in 1986, cited the piece as "one of the most universally admired poems of our century."[8]
Critics agree that the poetry of Percy Shelley had a strong influence on the drafting of "The Second Coming." The first stanza matches the tone, diction, and syntax of Prometheus Unbound.[9][10][11] Both Harold Bloom and Jon Stallworthy speculate that the poem's sphinx draws off the imagery of Shelley's Ozymandias.[8][9]
Critics have also argued that "The Second Coming" describes what Yeats elsewhere called an "antithetical dispensation" to the age ushered in by the birth of Jesus Christ.[12] Richard Ellmann understood the "rough beast" of the final lines as a creature to be born itself in Bethlehem, marking the cyclical (and violent) overturning of an age.[13] Giorgio Melchiori identified this same idea in Yeats' other writings, noting that
"(1) by 1896 Yeats had already some inkling of the cyclical theory of history which he was later to develop and expound in A Vision; (2) The Trojan war, the birth of Christ, and an indefinite event due to happen in our century were already considered by him as three fundamental crises in world history, each of which reverse the established order and ushered in a new cycle of civilization . . ."[14]
Cultural influences
editTitles
editPhrases in the poem have been adopted as the title in a variety of media. The words "things fall apart" in the third line are alluded to by Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart (1958),[1] The Roots in their album Things Fall Apart (1999),[15] and Jon Ronson in his podcast series Things Fell Apart (2021).[16]
Similarly, the words "the centre cannot hold" in the same line are used in the title of Elyn Saks' book about her experience with schizophrenia while obtaining her PhD at Oxford, and later her JD at Yale, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2008),[17] Jonathan Alter's book on U.S. President Barack Obama's first term, The Center Holds (2013),[18] the Netflix biographical documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017), Sleater-Kinney's album The Center Won't Hold (2019),[19] and Junkie XL's song "The Center Will Not Hold, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep" in the film Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021).[20]
Additionally, the phrase "slouches towards Bethlehem" in the last line is referenced in the title of Joan Didion's collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968),[1] Joni Mitchell's musical adaptation of the poem "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1991),[21] Robert Bork's non-fiction work Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996), Daniel Ravipinto and Star Foster’s interactive fiction game Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003)[22], and Brad DeLong's economic history Slouching Towards Utopia (2022).[23]
Other works whose titles come from lines in the poem includes Walker Percy’s novel The Second Coming (1980),[1] Robert B. Parker's novel The Widening Gyre (1983), and multiple songs in Moby's album Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt (2018).[24]
Quotes
editThe poem is quoted extensively in a number of books, including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s political manifesto The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949),[25] and Stephen King's novel The Stand (1978).[1]
It is also quoted extensively in numerous films and TV shows, including the episode "Revelations" (1994) of Babylon 5,[26] the director's cut of Nixon (1995),[27] multiple episodes including "The Second Coming" (2007) of The Sopranos,[28] the last episode of Devs (2020),[29] and the episode "The Queen's Speech" (2021) of See.[30]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f Lynskey, Dorian (30 May 2020). "'Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
- ^ Albright, Daniel (1997), Quantum Poetics: Yeats's figures as reflections in Water (PDF), Cambridge University Press, p. 35.
- ^ Childs, Peter (2007). Modernism. The New Critical Idiom (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-41541546-0.
- ^ Haughey, Jim (2002). The First World War in Irish Poetry. Bucknell University Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-61148151-8.
- ^ Deane, Seamus (1998). "Boredom and Apocalypse". Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790. Clarendon lectures in English literature. Clarendon Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-19818490-4.
- ^ Onion, Rebecca (3 May 2020). "The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?". Slate. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^ Ross, David A. (2009). Critical companion to William Butler Yeats: a literary reference to his life and work. New York: Facts On File. p. 219. ISBN 9780816058952.
- ^ a b Bloom, Harold, ed. (1986). "Introduction". William Butler Yeats. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. p. 9-11. ISBN 0877547009.
- ^ a b Stallworthy, Jon (1963). Between the Lines: Yeats's Poetry in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 22-23. ISBN 0198116012.
- ^ Bornstein, George (1970). Yeats and Shelley. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. p. 201. ISBN 0226066452.
- ^ Henn, T. R. (1965). The Lonely Tower: Studies in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats (Second ed.). Fakenham: Cox and Wyman Ltd. p. 131, 151-153. ISBN 0415500605.
- ^ Yeats, W. B.; Harper, George Mills; Hood, Walter Kelly (1978). A critical edition of Yeats's A vision (1925). London: Macmillan. p. 262-263. ISBN 0333212991.
- ^ Ellmann, Richard (1964). The Identity of Yeats (Reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 260. ISBN 0195007123.
- ^ Melchiori, Giorgio (1979). The whole mystery of art. Pattern into poetry of the work of W. B. Yeats (Reprinted ed.). Westport: Greenwood P. p. 85. ISBN 0837167191.
- ^ Banerji, Atreyi (7 February 2021). "The story behind The Roots' 'Things Fall Apart' album cover". Far Out.
- ^ Sawyer, Miranda (13 November 2021). "The week in audio: Things Fell Apart; Doomsday Watch; 5 live Breakfast". The Guardian.
- ^ Saks, Elyn R. (2007). The center cannot hold: my journey through madness. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0138-5. OCLC 148726600.
- ^ Diedrick, James (26 September 2015). "The Center Cannot Hold VS The Center Holds". Jamesdiedrick.agnesscott.org.
- ^ Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (15 August 2019). "Sleater-Kinney: The Centre Won't Hold review – fighting death with sex". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
- ^ Mamo, Heran (12 March 2021). "'Zack Snyder's Justice League' Soundtrack Is the 'Mount Everest of Scores': See Release Date & Track List". Billboard.
- ^ Whitesell, Lloyd (2008). The Music of Joni Mitchell. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-530757-3.
- ^ Chetcuti, Clara (3 May 2020). "Electronic Literature, or Whatever It's Called Now: the Archive and the Field". Electronic Book Review.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (7 September 2022). "Humanity was stagnant for millennia — then something big changed 150 years ago". Vox. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
- ^ Brown, Eric Renner (27 February 2018). "Moby says new album explores 'who we are as a species'". Yahoo Entertainment. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
- ^ Spark, Clare L. "Arthur Schlesinger's Missing Vital Center". History News Network. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
- ^ Guffey, Ensley F.; Dale Koontz, K. (19 September 2017). A Dream Given Form: The Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5. ECW Press. ISBN 9781773050508.
- ^ Williams, Tony (2 September 2014). "Nixon – Oliver Stone's Rough Beast Slouching". Film International.
- ^ Lavery, David; Howard, Douglas L.; Levinson, Paul, eds. (2011). The Essential Sopranos Reader. University Press of Kentucky. p. 75.
- ^ Lynskey, Dorian (30 May 2020). "'Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 1 February 2024.
- ^ Wilson, Jonathon (8 October 2021). "See season 2, episode 7 recap – "The Queen's Speech"". Ready Steady Cut. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
External links
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