Yeats Repudiates the Sensual World in Favor of Lasting Art in His Poem Leda and the Swan

Whatever your stance on Yeats� poetry,
you would not deny that the man has written a verse form
the charms of which no devotee of art can possibly resist:
the unparalleled �Leda and the swan� which sounds equally follows:

LEDA AND THE SWAN

A sudden blow: the great wings beating withal
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How tin can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
Simply feel the strange centre chirapsia where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and belfry
And Agamemnon expressionless.
Being so caught upwards,

Then mastered by the brute blood of the air
Did she put on his noesis with his power
Earlier the indifferent nib could let her drib?

THE TECHNICAL BEAUTY
of this poem just catches the eye.

To begin with, there is the structuring of the whole episode. The poem may exist divided in ii halves. The first comprises the violent come across of Zeus and Leda ending in �a shudder in the loins�, whereas in the second both spatial and temporal perspectives widen into infinity.

This segmentation matches the division of the sonnet into octave and sestet. Which is marked through the similarity of the two bold phrasings summarising the issue in its constituent elements: �A sudden blow� initiates the octave and �a shudder in the loins� the sestet. It also coincides with a shift in the temporal perspective. The octave is in the present tense; the offset half of the sestet at one time projects us in the far future �(Agamemnon dead�); from this vantage betoken we await dorsum on the trigger-happy come across (�did she put on his noesis�?�) that now is irrevocably referred to the past. And this binary structure is echoed in the grammatical construction: each half comprises two sentences, each encompassing a single strophe, the first and the 3rd of which are affirmative, the second and fourth interrogative. The alternation of affirmation and interrogation goes hand in mitt with a modify in the commitment of the reader, who seems to identify himself with the swan in the affirmative sentences, whereas in the interrogative ones he seems to inquire himself how Leda might experience her cruel overpowering.

Over this apparent articulation in 2 halves is superposed a second, this time disproportionate, binary construction. Information technology is marked by the typography: �being caught upward� is referred to the 2d half of the sestet. In the showtime one-half of this partition the unstoppable unfolding of the proceedings is depicted into its furthest consequences: everything is rendered in the present tense. In the second shorter half, written in the past tense, the deeper meaning of the event is fathomed.

A further counterpoint to the key sectionalisation is the shift in spatial perspective. No swan is staged, but �great wings�, �dark webs�, �his neb� �his breast�, �the foreign middle� �the fauna blood of the air� �the indifferent beak�. And also from Leda we merely catch a glimpse of �her thighs�, �her nape�, �her helpless chest�, �those terrified vague fingers�, � her loosening thighs� and �the strange center�. In short: a perspective familiar to all those who happen to be cast past the spell of the flesh. But with �body�, but foremost with �the feathered glory� and its the counterpart: the �staggering daughter�, does the camera seem to zoom out. Only it is only when we are faced with the consequences of such promiscuous entangling of body parts that nosotros are allowed a panoramic view on the whole: �The broken wall, the burning roof and tower and Agamemnon dead�. Thus, the temporal partitioning in present and by tense is joined by a spatial division between the more involved shut upwardly and a rather contemplative panoramic view.

As far as meter is concerned, information technology is apparent that the diction but unwillingly complies with the train of the iambic pentameter. We have to first witness the forceful resistance of the �bang-up wings beating still�, the �dark webs� and her �nape caught� � an aggregating of stressed syllables wonderfully echoing the �sudden blow� of the swan�due south wings. Only even when the metrical social club seems to exist restored, the asymmetry of the grammatical structure continues to oppose the regular flow on a more abstract level. Most conspicuously in that masterly - unforgettable - offset half of the sestet:

A shudder in the loins engenders at that place
The cleaved wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

The rhythm adamant by the alternation of adjective and noun as it is initiated in �broken wall� and �burning roof�, is non carried on in �tower�, which has to manage without describing word. But the latter surfaces once again in the consequent �Agamemnon dead�, admitting this fourth dimension later on the noun. Over the repetition in the word rhythm a 2d blueprint determined by the alternation of adjective and noun is superposed: a rotation from initial position to end position. To the unparalleled rhetorical issue that the whole procedure of begetting life is turned into its very opposite. To which we shall render beneath.

Next to the word rhythm and the alternation of adjective and noun too the sonorous torso of linguistic communication is summoned upwardly to evoke the encounter. Think only of the fashion in which �he holds her helpless breast� unabashedly renders Zeus� heaving. Not to mention the �broken wall, the burning roof and belfry and Agamemnon dead�, the infernal sonority of which only joins the solemn pace of the meter to a veritable funeral march reminding of Wagner�southward �Siegfrieds Tod�.

THE THEME

But let united states of america kickoff introduce the theme. The story of Leda stems from Greek mythology. Leda is the Spartan rex Tyndareus� wife. When she saw her chances, she did not hesitate to exchange her royal husband for a god: Zeus, even when he approached her in the shape of a swan. Which yielded her four eggs. Out of which not just hatched Brush and Polydeukes as well as Clytemnestra, simply first and foremost the Helen of the Trojan war.

From way back, the theme has been very pop in the plastic arts. It volition plow out to be very fruitful to first examine how it has been handled at that place.

The representation of loving couples has always been a trouble in the plastic arts. For the obvious reason that of a couple intertwining � Brancusi�s animate being with the 2 backs � the most enticing fronts are hidden from view. Literature knows non such problem. When reading Ovid�south poesy � Leda is lying between the swan�due south wings� (Metamorphoses VI, 109), not only do we see earlier our listen�s centre the pair of wings embracing Leda, but the body covered past these wings as well, not to mention the experience of the nearly diverse bodily sensations. In painting or sculpture, on the other hand, we are non faced with malleable representations for diverse senses, but with a concrete visual image. The painter that from the run across of Leda and the swan would only show u.s.a. the sight of spread out wings would not show at all: he rather would hide from view precisely what we and so dearly wanted to run across.

The classical solution consists in staging the bodies immediately before their entwining. But such is non a becoming solution in the case of Leda and the swan: we precisely wanted to witness the proceedings after the encounter! And to brand a moving-picture show thereof raises a lot of problems.

To brainstorm with, there is the tension between the impressive effigy of Zeus and the rather humble shape of the swan wherein he is transformed. Especially since the piffling bird besides has to mount the huge female trunk. Before the heed�s eye we inconspicuously accommodate the shape of the swan, as with the already cited verses of Ovid. Merely when the scene is graphically depicted there earlier our very eyes, the discrepancy between the mighty Zeus and the rather humble shape of the swan catches the eye. It must exist granted, though, that the very aforementioned humble shape as well yields an unexpected proceeds: the creature with two backs has on 1 side exchanged a broad back with a slender neck, to the consequence that nothing any longer prevents the total exposure of Leda�south enticing front end (run across Corregio�s Leda, 1530, Berlin Dahlem).

But whoever might reconcile himself therefore with the humble elongated shape of the swan, cannot possibly let it pass for the mighty Zeus. Unless he focuses on Zeus' mighty member: just of this true Adam can the swan be the becoming metamorphosis � the long neck so stays for the stem of the penis, the head for its glans, the winged trunk for the scrotum. And such life-sized organ cannot fail to head straightforward towards its goal: also in the real world the stretched out cervix of a swan reaches to the genitals of a adult female continuing. Although the beak of a real swan, equally opposed to that of reckless goose, happens to rather modestly bend downwards*.

LA FIGURA SERPENTINA

Of course, the painter might proceed to adapt the shape of the swan to Leda�s body. Merely he so faces new problems. To begin with, also the wings abound accordingly - and they come up to stand higher at that. Would we let them play the role of the lover�s artillery embracing his beloved, her beauty were hidden from view past a pair of wings again. Far more than interesting, then, to let them flap and express the superior forcefulness of the swan. The chore of subduing Leda�s body is then relegated to the nib which has to catch Leda in her nape. This solution has been called in the Hellenistic relief to a higher place. The swan�due south torso, running out in the slender cervix, no longer embodies the cock member, but the unabridged body of Zeus. To the effect that the penis is relegated to the lower regions where it is reduced to its erstwhile proportions. But there once more it comes to face yet other problems. Although of all the winged beings the swan has possibly the biggest penis � rather: something that can be called a penis � it does not end up in a vagina, but in an arse � and that was not precisely what Zeus was after. In the Hellenistic relief the dorsal approach unsaid by the communicable in the nape is replaced with a frontal one, as is more becoming to men � permit alone gods! But the swan seems not to be able to cope with the frontal arroyo: Leda has to adjust something or other with her hand! The frontal twist in the lower regions finds its counterpart in a dorsal twist in the higher spheres, were the slender neck graciously bends downwards to take hold of Leda�south nape from the back. To the effect that the swans� webs are no longer stamping on a feathered swan�s back, but on Leda�s white thighs. Too on the Roman representation beneath, where the artist has every bit chosen for blowing up the swan, the focus is on the proceedings in the genital zone. And also here things seem not to piece of work properly: Leda has to pull the swan's legs to get things straight. So, only after some considerable twisting, turning and adjusting can they observe each other, Zeus and Leda.

In the ancient representations, the focus is on the problematic nature of the come across of beast and man. We have to await the heathen Renaissance to witness a deepening of the approach and the corollary invention of more disarming solutions.

DA VINCI�South LEDA

It is da Vinci (1452-1519) who sets the tone for the new approach. In his first drafts of the theme he tries to solve the trouble of the shape past letting Leda bend, as parents do when trying to adapt to the pocket-size stature of their children � or Mary when kneeling before her holy son. Just on the eventual painting (only known through its copies), Leda is standing again, and she is approached by the rather impressive swan on her side.

The interesting matter is that, in both versions, the bill no longer reaches to the navel, but to Leda�s very lips. Information technology is no longer out at penetrating the vagina, let alone to catch Leda in her nape: its declared aim is frankly Leda�s oral fissure. One of the formerly flapping wings now gently embraces Leda�south hip. And such entwining does hide nothing from view. On the contrary: since the encounter has shifted upwards, Leda can be taken under the arm from behind, to the effect that her magnificent front remains visible in all its splendour. Information technology appears that the oral approach meets some resistance: although Leda willingly coils herself in the swan�s wings and turns her breasts toward the swan, she teasingly withdraws the lips in her face. And the same goes for the hesitating hips and her hanging leg.

MICHELANGELO�S LEDA

In his painting of 1530 for Alfonso d�Este, which unfortunately enough has but come to us through the copies by Rosso Fiorentino, Rubens and Bos, Michelangelo (1475-1564) opted for a totally different approach. In sharp contrast with the Ancients and da Vinci, Michelangelo has his Leda lying supine. Therein she is a further evolution of the �Night� from the Medici chapel � where some other bird is paying his respects nether the knees before the entrance of the gate: the owl Athena. Only Michelangelo as pushes alee with da Vinci's innovation. While da Vinci�s Leda rather modestly opposes the indecent proposals of the swan, Michelangelo�s willingly abandons herself. No longer needs she to be forced by a bit of a beak in her nape: she is laying in that location for the kissing. To the effect that Zeus has a free neck: his neb no longer has to grab Leda in her nape, his is about to osculation the lips � or to penetrate the mouth? And the complicity of the half-sleeping Leda is farther emphasized by the wriggling of her fingers, betraying a nearly concealed enjoyment. Simply the right arm of the swan seems to refrain the endeavours of the swan � or does information technology rather printing the warm, feathered body against her womb?

And that reminds united states of the fact that Michelangelo�s swan is granted its natural proportions once more. Which induces it not merely to penetrate the oral cavity with its beak, but also the vagina with its penis: it suffices to get a glimpse on the position of the tail, which is spread like a fan over the vagina and the blackness web bluntly plopped down on the soft inner side of Leda�southward white thighs. Although the night tone of the tail may be motivated through its position in a shadow zone, information technology outset of all seems to be the emanation of what it conceals: the black penis of the swan � vicariously made visible in that equally blackness web. Likewise another color has shifted to the periphery: the carmine of the every bit concealed vagina. The red draperies whereon Leda is spread are the nearly curtained representation of a vagina (run across also the impress of Bos). Not only Michelangelo is addicted of making rather obscene representations shimmer through seemingly neutral draperies...

Thus, da Vinci�s swan equally well as Michelangelo�s is resolutely turning perverse. But both masters immediately proceed information technology on the straight and narrow. With this disharmonize corresponds the clashing filling in of the body of the swan. Although da Vinci�s swan takes the shape of a full-fledged man body, Leda but has to disappointedly turn away from a void, while at the aforementioned time the swan�southward greedy bill is deliberately out at her lips. And even when Michelangelo�s swan remains a small bird, non merely does its agitated body stubbornly try to penetrate the vagina, fifty-fifty more than eagerly does the greedy cervix edge its way betwixt the breasts toward the oral fissure.

LEDA�S EGGS

The perverse move away from the genitalia to the cervix and the pecker finds its analogue in the equally perverse motion abroad from fertilisation and birth. No longer exercise penises or vaginas come to spoil the fun of begetting. And with birds likewise birth is no longer a question of repugnant slime, only a clean affair of white shells: the immaculate formulation of the white egg (meet: �La Pikestaff et son omelette', forthcoming�).

And that holds especially for our story. The 4 children springing from the encounter of Zeus with Leda were not precisely born, they rather hatched out of eggs. Already in his drafts does da Vinci throw Leda her offspring in the face. With Michelangelo, where the swan is however rather busy down there, no eggs are to exist seen, at least on the copies of Rosso Fiorentino and Rubens. On the print of Bos already one egg has hatched and some other one on the foreground is on the verge of doing and so.

Fifty-fifty when the emphasis on the consequences of the deed is in line with the genital-fertile defence against the perverse proceedings of the swan�s neck, the fact that birds have to exercise without a penis and a vagina perverts their reproductive efforts from within.

And that equally holds of West.B. Yeats. Even when no eggs are mentioned in his sonnet, in �Among school children� the poet stages a �Ledaean body� wherewith he feels united equally �the yolk and white of the one shell�. And that reminds usa that we are dealing here with Yeats� Leda. But only now are we set up to tackle the sonnet properly.

YEATS' COMPLETION OF THE Epitome

Co-ordinate to Charles Madge** the to a higher place mentioned Hellenistic relief would have inspired W.B. Yeats. Which is evidenced by the flapping of the wings, the emphasis on the web on Leda�south thighs, but foremost by the way in which the swan catches Leda�southward neck and presses her face against its breast.

But equally right are all those who traditionally maintain that the poem is inspired by Michelangelo�south Leda. To begin with, Yeats� Leda does non stand up upright, every bit she does on the Hellenistic relief. She is lying supine, equally with Michelangelo. And fifty-fifty when the webs on Leda�s thighs may too appear on the relief, marble has no colour, and it is precisely the resonance of that colour blackness that is more than echoed in that splendid �her thighs caressed by the nighttime webs�. But foremost those �terrified vague fingers� beguile that also the painting of Michelangelo lies at the roots of Yeats� sonnet. Even when they ward off, rather than wriggle out of pleasure. The mere fact that Yeats� Leda uses frail fingers rather than full arms to ward off the fell swan, at in one case reminds us of the fact that also on the Hellenistic relief Leda does non ward off. With her total arm she rather eagerly extends a helping hand � her wriggling fingers beingness hidden from view through the thighs.

It is apparent, and so, that W.B. Yeats must have been strongly impressed with the greediness of Michelangelo�s swan and the complicity of his Leda, but foremost with the eagerness wherewith the Hellenistic Leda helps the swan accomplish its goal. Which does non prevent that this erotic fervour equally unleashed a potent counter-current in West.B. Yeats. Which departs not so much from the proceedings under Michelangelo�due south fanning out of the tail, as rather from the more than convincing proceedings between Leda�south thighs on the Hellenistic relief. Through such regression from the �Renaissance� to �Antiquity�, the pushy beak that effortlessly reaches its goal, is whistled dorsum to the place where it belongs: between the thighs. And to seal the genital metamorphosis West.B. Yeats also borrows the most striking gesture of the Hellenistic relief: the compelling force wherewith the swan catches Leda in the nape, which neutralises the organ of lust into a mere musical instrument. And the crowning glory of this work are those �terrified vague fingers�, wherein Westward.B. Yeats utterly negates the seemingly denied complicity of da Vinci�s Leda and the virtually concealed complicity of Michelangelo�south Leda.

It seems as though West.B. Yeats reduces the ambivalence between perverse and fertile strivings to the sole genital proceedings. The scale seems to resolutely tip in the direction of the pole of negation. In line with this negation West.B. Yeats stresses the reproductive consequences of Leda�s encounter: the �shudder in the loins� �engenders� � an echo of da Vinci�southward emphasis on Leda�s eggs.

THE Beloved OF GENERATION

Simply that very �engenders there� following the �shudder in the loins� puts a heavy damper on the triumph of the member foolhardy. What is begotten at that place is not precisely suited to welcome the human activity of procreation: whoever would similar to exist the father of �the broken wall, the burning roof and tower and Agamemnon dead�? Which of class is a reference to the Trojan state of war waged on occasion of the unfaithfulness of Helen, one of Leda�s chicks. The fratricide is represented through another pair of chicks: Brush and Polydeukes. Also on da Vinci�s painting the hardly hatched mortals are already attacking each other. And the part of the fourth chick is played by Agamemnon, who was murdered by Helen�southward (twin) sister Clytemnestra (in Aeschyles� version).

In that �Agamemnon dead� resounds yet some other reproach to the deed of begetting. In �Among schoolchildren� W.B. Yeats complains the �youthful female parent� �honey of generation had betrayed�:

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap (...)
that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape (...)
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With lx or more than winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

What the beloved-sweet �shudder in the loins� engenders, is not and so much life, rather death. Not to mention all those minor burdens that the poor mortals lift on their shoulders for the lust of one moment�s sake. In the short term the �pang of birth�. In the somewhat longer term: the care for their progeny �that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape (�)�. And at long concluding the growing realisation that all these offers accept been in vain: nosotros only afford to doom to death. For the sole gustation of honey�south sake!

No wonder that dear recoils in the face of such dreadful perspective! W.B. Yeats, though, never speaks out this truth. He rather prefers to state without any further caption that honey is merely an transient transport � or to phrase it with Schopenhauer: a cunning of nature that is merely out at eternal reproduction. Time and over again W.B. Yeats stresses the transience of love. In �Never give all the eye� he holds that:

it fades from kiss to kiss;
for everything that�s lovely is,
simply a brief, dreamy, kind delight

That is precisely why he warns usa �Never give all the heart�. With as an encore:

�He that made this knows all the toll,
for he gave all his heart and lost�

Which of course causes the soul to leave her limbs, as in �The lady�s 2d vocal�:

Soul must learn a love that is
Proper to my chest,
Limbs a love in mutual
With every noble beast.

Which again sheds a new light to the swan as �the noble animal�

Likewise in �the Mother of God� a woman is impregnated past a bird, as �wings beating about the room�. Although this fourth dimension it is a dove, and although this time non a daughter is hatched, but a son. Destined to expiry by his very father

What is this mankind I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart�s blood stop
Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

Herein W.B. Yeats joins a tradition that we swept under the carpet to let ourselves a rapid transition from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Simply just equally but as a metamorphosis of Mary Venus is reborn on Botticelli�s painting, just and then the genuflection of da Vinci�s Leda before her eggs is a nearly concealed echo of Mary falling on her knees before her son Jesus. Who was brought to the globe to redeem the states of the sins of precisely the fratricidal twins that hatched from the swan�s eggs�

Indulging in the kind of love he has in common with �every noble animate being� leads to man�due south autumn. The endeavour to pause the fall unleashes the perverse move. The tempestuousness wherewith the unruly procreative violence, embodied in the flapping of the wings of dove and swan alike, is enforcing itself, unleashes an even stronger unwillingness to give up. For simply at first sight does Due west.B. Yeats negate Renaissance�s perverse strivings. In fact Due west.B. Yeats faces u.s.a. with the central disharmonize that sets debark the perverse burn down, while at the aforementioned time assuasive the perverse counter-move to expand in ever wider circles.

To begin with, Leda is overpowered by a �noble beast� and non by a mere man or god. The metamorphosis of human being into bird releases the male of precisely the source of all evil. And fifty-fifty when West.B. Yeats neutralised Michelangelo�due south greedy swan neck to a compelling beak, the perversion literally returns through the back door: the catch in the nape implies an approach from behind. In �Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop� (Words for Music Perhaps, Half-dozen) Westward.B. Yeats himself betrays what is performed there in the lower regions every bit the counterpart of the �nape defenseless in his bill� and under the guise of a �shudder in the loins�:

Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement.
The obliteration of the penis is completed past the vagina�s metamorphosis into a cloaca.

But the repressed returns not only through anal channels. The process of desexualising strides further along a path that also here has been paved past painters. Michelangelo�s Leda is completely naked. The impression of nakedness is only enhanced in that Leda�due south hair is covered with a skin-coloured headgear. And neither is there left whatsoever trace of the pubic hair: it is covered past the fan of the swan�s tail. Which only enhances the contrast between the white-feathered torso of the swan and the utterly naked body of Leda. But the very sharpening of the contrast unravels a clandestine affinity. Precisely because Michelangelo smoothes away the deviation between naked skin and hair, it all the more than comes to take hold of the eye that Leda�s body ends up in a horny headgear � a nearly concealed echo of the mode in which the feathered swan�s body changes in the horn of the bill. Such surreptitious assimilation of the �Ledaean body� is farther enhanced through Michelangelo�s emphasis on those wriggling fingers and those remarkably agile limbs. As well da Vinci�s Leda seems eager to become a swan: he lets her whole torso � la figura serpentina � balance in opposite directions alongside diverse axes. An echo of the above described convolutions that had to be performed to make Leda�s and the swan�s torso friction match?

Just the metamorphosis of Leda in a swan does non halt with the smoothing out of her hair and the voluptuous posture of her body: Leda also lays eggs. That seems to become for itself. But on a closer look nosotros would rather wait eggs when a human male person impregnates a female bird. When, conversely, a bird impregnates a woman, information technology would be more obvious that she would cuddle lilliputian swans in her womb, until at last niggling swan beaks would protrude from the vagina rather than children�s heads � in a variant of the story it is Nemesis that lays the scorned eggs� later her previous transformation in a goose. Non just in her alluring demeanour and her voluptuous gestures has Leda become a swan, her metamorphosis comprises her organs besides: she lays eggs and has get a bird. The metamorphosis from vagina to cloaca was just a prelude to the metamorphosis from mammal to winged bird, the sequel to Zeus� becoming a swan.

HERMAPHRODITE

Also W.B. Yeats seems to be ridden by the desire to polish away every departure between the swan and Leda. The metamorphosis of the loving couple into a couple of birds is an old dream of W.B. Yeats�. Does he not sing in 'The white birds':

�For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering cream: I and you!�

With Westward.B. Yeats, the smoothing away of the difference between man and animal seems to encompass the smoothing away of the difference between human and woman. An obvious solution is their metamorphosis into a swan. Information technology is rather impossible to tell a male swan from a female person: both share a virginal front. And that sheds a new light on the fact that information technology is Zeus that presses Leda�due south breast against his: �he holds her helpless breast upon his breast�. On the Hellenistic relief Zeus does non printing Leda�s breast against his breast but Leda�due south face. And this is also the case in a former version of the first quatrain:

A rush, a sudden wheel, and hovering still
The bird descends, and her frail thighs are pressed
Past the webbed toes, and that all-powerful bill
Has laid her helpless FACE upon his breast.

Leda�s face up upon Zeus� breast: this immediately reminds us of a mother chest-feeding her child. But it is non Leda who breast-feeds Zeus as on Bacchiaca's painting above. It seems equally if through his metamorphosis into a swan Zeus is at the aforementioned time turned into a female parent. As if the want of the mouth, that the bill had to give up to catch Leda in the nape for copulation�south sake, surfaces again in the shape of the nipples growing out of the chest of the swan � which, otherwise than with mammals, shows no sexual deviation betwixt male and female.

Simply West.B. Yeats must take been every bit disturbed by the difference between mother and kid as past the difference between man and woman. That is why in the 2nd version is restored the reciprocity that previously existed between neb and lips: Zeus no longer presses Leda�s head against his breast, only her breast against his. To be more than precise: his chest without breasts against Leda�south chest with two breasts. And to likewise polish away this last asymmetry, they both feel the same in that region: if not each others bosom, than at least each other heart beating!

And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange eye beating where it lies?

Which immediately reminds us of the already quoted verses from �The lady�s 2nd song�:

�Soul must learn a love that is
proper to my breast,
limbs a love in common
with every noble beast�

Whereas on the level of the limbs protrusion and pigsty oppose one some other, on the level of the soul two hearts feel one another'due south chirapsia. From beast to breast, the journey goes through three stations: from sperm, through milk, to blood. From the feeding breast to the beating - pumping - middle: such shift is indicated in the already cited verses from �The mother of God� where Mary complains about her godly son:

This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart�s blood stop

A similar shift is at work in Luca della Robbia�due south Leda, where the swan is non out at Leda�s chest, but rather at the place beneath it where Christ shows his wound:

And that is how Leda turns into something of a Jesus Christ. Who in his plow is often represented as a pelican feeding his young with the blood flooding from his heart � the very reversal of the image of Mary with the divine child on her chest. It seems as if we are landed upwardly in a veritable whirl of the sexes and the generations.

But there is more than. The start version sheds a new light on some oddities in the 2nd version, that otherwise might have inadvertently escaped our attention. With the epitome of a swan descending from heavens in mind, we are ready to read the �in� in �laid in that white rush� as a �by�. But that very same �in� cannot fail to suggest that it is not the swan, simply Leda who descends from heavens �in that white rush�. And that lends only its total weight to the wording in the second quatrain of the first version where Leda is frankly laid �on� that white rush:

How tin those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs!
All the stretched body's laid on the white rush
And feels the strange eye beating where it lies.

In line with such increasing osmosis of the sexes lies a second shift. In the first version �trunk� refers to Leda�s face pressed on Zeus� chest . Just in the 2nd version �torso� refers to the embracing bodies every bit such - Leda�southward body also as the trunk of her swan:

And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But experience the strange eye beating where it lies?

The incipient metamorphosis of Leda turns out to exist the mere prelude to a farther metamorphosis: Zeus� transformation in a woman/mother and Leda�due south concomitant transformation in a human being. Or to be more precise: both come to partake of the hermaphrodite past incorporating each other. And hence can eternally entwine, similar Aristofanes spherical beings, hinted at in the verses:

�For nothing can exist sole or whole
that has not been rent�

which � significantly enough � immediately follow the already cited �Beloved�due south mansion in the identify of excrement� (Crazy Jane and the Bishop). Besides in �Among Schoolhouse Children� the reunification in the egg is described:

and it seemed that our 2 natures blent,
into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to modify Plato�s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell

The hermaphrodite is but a effigy of the denegation of multiplicity every bit such. Its completion is the cocky-sufficient solitary � the one and only God � hinted at in �A prayer for my girl� where �the soul� learns at last

that information technology is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, cocky-affrighting,
and that its own sweet will is Heaven�southward will;

And so we have laid blank all the roots and ramifications of Yeats� magnificent image. It appears that West.B. Yeats has with unparalleled mastery condensed the key conflict of human existence, far more concisely - since brought to a caput - than da Vinci and Michelangelo.

With this reading in mind, many an accepted interpretation rather evaporates. Foremost Yeats� own interpretation. He believed that the age of democracy was going to its end and that a government �from to a higher place� would be installed to subdue the anarchic masses, as in Russia. Only W.B. Yeats himself betrays how, when working on his Leda, he was so caught by the epitome of the bird and the girl, that �all politics went out of it� (Cullingford). And nosotros readily believe him. Did he not write himself (in �Politics�):

How tin I, that daughter standing there,
My attending fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?

And the same holds of other interpretations: from the Platonic, through the Nietzschean, the� , to the feministic (Cullingford). Idem for the interpretations of Michelangelo�s Leda. Whatever might take been the meaning intended inside the context of Alfonse d�Este�s diplomacy (Wallace), every attempt to reduce the meaning of this work to mere diplomatic symbolism would overlook that already da Vinci had introduced the new theme within a totally different context. Here we stumble on the �immanent� lecture of genuine art, which is out at throwing off the yoke of symbolism laid upon its shoulders (encounter: 'Are Rubens and Beuys colleagues?').

Which did not preclude West.B. Yeats from giving a transcendental twist to the very image he then brilliantly knew to bring to a caput and at the same time to dilate. Did he non permit it end on the question: �Did she put on his knowledge with his power?� Whereby he caused his creation to go vulnerable: after all no homo cosmos is perfect. We already described how a second disproportionate partition overlapped a first symmetric 1. Were information technology not for the overall rhythm of the sonnet to ask for its further unrolling, the jiff of Yeats� epitome has irrevocably breathed its terminal when as well Agamemnon has given upwards the ghost. Perhaps a vague consciousness of such a rupture induced W.B. Yeats to typographically divide the 2nd half of the terminal poesy of the get-go half of the sestet and to refer it to the last � �added� half.

I would like to spare myself the effort of answering Yeats� question in terms of his worldview � which is utterly alien to mine. And I exercise and so all the more eagerly, since also this addition is susceptible to a lecture that is perhaps rather non-Yeatsean, merely even so not less imposed by the logic of his own paradigm. On its wings the swan is carried into the skies, but with its webs information technology paddles in the waters - where the cold-blooded fishes reign. The skies and the waters wherein the amphibious swan is at home are thus opposed to the earth. And even though besides a swan can waggle on its webs: it is man that naturally walks on the earth�s surface. Only from the surrounding waters and skies � the outer-human world � does the �beast claret of the air � come to invade man�s globe and brand him � Leda � stagger, if not fall every bit if (s)he were a second Eve.

Confronting this background the question �Did she put on his knowledge with his power?� acquires a new pregnant. At first sight its seems to fit the classic opposition between man as spirit versus adult female equally body, which without doubt governed the (also political) conceptions of W.B. Yeats, as is evidenced past �on Woman�, where information technology is written:

May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind�

But in the calorie-free of that damned �dearest of generation�, an unexpected overtone comes to back-trail those ominous words. God in the shape of a swan - that is no less than the reproductive drive, that willy-nilly pursues its own goals without bothering virtually the poor, blind mortals abused equally mere instruments. Merciless does information technology load a heavy brunt on the shoulders of the very men and women that think to dedicate themselves to love and as merciless does it deliver them to war, disuse and death. Alongside the entire way of the Cantankerous, poor overpowered Leda � in this lecture as well as in the aboriginal one: mankind � lets herself deceive through ever new bubble�southward, whispering into her ears that human can pursue his own - human - goals: if not the divine �shape on the lap�, then at least the merger via the �loosening thighs�, or if need be �the feel of the heart beating� � and since this is doomed to remain utterly �strange� � at last: 'self-please�. In this 2nd lecture of �Leda and the swan� no longer the sexes are opposed: the divine and beastly rape the human being. Before existence the metamorphosis of Mary and her dove, Leda (da Vinci�due south �figura serpentina�) and the swan (�the creature blood of the air�) are the metamorphosis of Eve and the serpent (�the cold blood of the waters�). The feathered swan in the skies as the analogue of the slimy serpent in the waters. Or the cold-blooded fish: after all, but like the swan has to waggle on man�due south earth, so the serpent tin can just snake on it.

And herein is to be found the very power of this verse form and the merit of its poet. For according to the good old romantic tradition the poet, non otherwise than Leda for the swan, is but the vehicle of a wisdom that manages to edge its way through the musings of the poet. And � as is already implicit in the structure of this essay � W.B. Yeats did not succeed on his own. He is just the last - admitting the supreme - link in a long concatenation of forebears, that one subsequently some other laid bare always new coordinates wherein the constituent forces of the epitome come up to nestle. Until they are condensed in a dynamic whole of strongly opposing forces. Which is a elevation that cannot be surpassed anymore. Like highlights are the Don Giovanni of Mozart and da Ponte. Or meliorate still: the Salome of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. For the latter has in common with Westward.B. Yeats� Leda that information technology were equally painters who paved the mode.

It suffices to bandage a glance on the countless Ledas painted since Michelangelo to convince oneself of that truth. Just in Yeats� sonnet did Michelangelo�southward Leda find its accomplishment. And no poet will probably ever surpass it.

� Stefan Beyst, October 2002

* Enzo Michelangeli was so kind to send me the following comment: 'One might also note that the Italian vulgar name for penis, "cazzo", is idea to exist derived from "ocazzo", pejorative grade of "oco", which is an obsolete class for "gander", i.e. the masculine of "oca" (goose). See also its milder proper noun "uccello" (bird) and of form the English language "erect".'

**cited from Cullingford.

CONSULTED TEXTS:

BEGHELLI, Chiara: 'Leonardo and the myth of Leda. Models, memories and metamorphosis of an invention', Telematic Bulletin of Fine art, September 1th 2001, n. 281.
CULLINGFORD, Elizabeth Butler: "Pornography and Canonicity: The Example of Yeats' `Leda and the Swan,'" in Representing Women: Constabulary, Literature, and Feminism, ed. Susan Sage Heinzelman and Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman (Durham: Duke Univ. Printing, 1994), 165-87.
FINNERAN, Richard J. (Editor): 'The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The poems' Revised Second Edition (Paperback)
HARGROVE, Nancy D. "Esthetic Distance in Yeats'due south 'Leda and the Swan'.", The Arizona Quarterly 39 (1983): 235-45.
HOLSTAD, Scott C.: 'Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan': Psycho-Sexual Therapy in Action, Notes on Modern Irish Literature.
WALLACE, Westward.E.: 'Michelangelo's Leda: the diplomatic context' in: Renaissance Studies Volume 15, Issue iv, Dec 2001: pp. 473-499.

referrers:

The Yeats Society
Khandro
Becky Villarreal
Michael Lahanas
Jeff Cleff

larkinscaughts.blogspot.com

Source: http://d-sites.net/english/yeats.html

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