Leda And The Swan Essays - Poetic Form, Greek Mythology, Iconography

Leda And The Swan Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan': Psycho-Sexual Therapy in Action W.B. Yeats's heavily anthologized poem, Leda and the Swan, can be read in endless ways: as a political poem, a poem influenced by Nietzsche's idea of Will to Power, a poem of knowledge ultimately achieved through violence. Is the poem simply referr ing to a myth? Is it addressing historical determinism? Critical methodologies attempt to address these issues and more in their treatments of Leda and the Swan. However, to understand fully the poem and its implications, a formal close reading of th e text must be combined with supplementary biographical information to inform a final psychoanalytic reading of the poem. An understanding of the events surrounding Yeats's life, then, will contribute to a textual analysis to show that the poem can be re ad as Yeats's own particular rape fantasy, in which Maud Gonne is Leda and Yeats himself the swan; and in displacing his frustrations into the poem, Yeats turns destructive impulses into a constructive thing of beauty. Leda and the Swan is a sonnet, one of the most precise forms of literature known. An interesting paradox emerges, however, at first glance. The poem is written in a traditional form (sonnet), using a traditional rhyme scheme, yet the subject matter i s extremely non-traditional (violent rape as opposed to the usual love sonnets). This paradox is representative of the many oppositional elements which abound in the text and which help form the basis for understanding the oppositions which influence bot h Yeats and the poem. The rhyme scheme is traditional (ABAB CDCD EFG EFG) yet interestingly imperfect in that four of the rhymes are not perfect: push and rush, up and drop (Hargrove 244). This again is another oppositional element, typical of Yeats, and could be seen to symbolize the opposition between Yeats, the last Romantic, and Yeats, the Modernist. A transition exists in the poem's language, from an aggressive intensity to a vague passive distance. The language in the beginning of the poem sets the tone of an aggressive sense of urgency. Priscilla Washburn Shaw makes an excellent point when she states, The action interrupts upon the scene at the beginning with 'a sudden blow,' and again, in the third stanza, with 'a shudder in the loins.' It may seem inaccurate to say that a poem begins by an interruption when nothing precedes, but the effect of t he opening is just that (36). The effect of this device is that it draws the spectator/narrator, and subsequently the reader, into the action and into the poem. The action continues for the first three lines of the first quatrain. Yeats doesn't bother with a full syntax until the final line of the quatrain, at which point, the urgency relaxes (Hargrove 240). The language in the first full quatrain is represent ative of the opposition inherent in the poem; in this case, between intensity and distance (Hargrove 240). The imagery, and wording in general, in Leda is also representative, in an initial reading, of oppositional elements within the text. A first reading shows Leda described in concrete terms and the swan in abstract terms. Leda is the staggering girl and the poem refers to Her thighs, her nape, her helpless breast, and her loosening thighs. The swan is never actually called Zeus or even the Swan (in fact, Agamemnon is the only name mentioned in the body of the poem). The swan is described as great wings, dark webs, that white rush, blood, indifferent beak, and feathered glory. A second reading of the poem, however, shows that ambiguities do exist. The concrete and abstract merge. Generalized terms are used for Leda (terrified vague fingers) and concrete terms for the swan (wings, bill, beak). The purpose of this ambiguity could be, as Nancy Hargrove explains, to stress that the god is, after all, a real, physical swan engaged in a physical act (241). Regardless, this ambiguity is, again, representative of the conflict within the poem. Verbs play a major role in understanding Leda and the Swan. They are present tense through the octave and the first part of the sestet (holds, push, feel, engenders). They then shift to past tense in the last part of the sestet (caught, ma stered, Did) (Hargrove 241). The verbs in the present tense imply an intense immediacy while those in the past tense distance the reader (and perhaps the aggressor as well) from what has just occurred. Additionally, as Nancy Hargrove points out, ther e