The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Critically examine close reading of W.B. Yeats’s postmodern poetry The Second Coming.

(Black and white image of an older white man seated at a table with books)

Twentieth-century heroically humanist W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming is a symbolic incarnation” of the imagination of resurrection allegorically satirizing the pathogenic cycle of the historical First World War nationalistic spirit of the Irish independence movement and coterminous flu pandemic enmeshed within Christian imageries.

The Messianic Saviour of humanity’s salvation, Jesus Christ, although redeems as a prolific resurrectionist transfiguration of crucified atonement within Biblical tradition, nonetheless, which Yeats majestically inverts as mental apparitions of the eschatological apocalypse. This is starkly evident in the poetic lines by the allegorical personification of the beast’s rebirth in the dismal gloom of dystopian anarchic Jerusalem “And what rough beat, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Yeats’s envisioning of poetic voice and pictorial shroud heralds dramatic, visionary, aesthetic, elegiac, lyric and philosophic language in accord to macabre of ending the ceremony of innocence, the end of Christian dispensation and the desecration of the divine destination heritage site of Bethlehem. 

Lion’s body and humans’ head Urizenic mythical beast is that ultimate sinisterish gothicism of “That twenty years of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” as foreshadowed by revival of the sphinx’s second coming. Furthermore, the penchant of this demoniac spirited cherubim reincarnation illustrates the failure of the French Revolution and the failure of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The moral satire of the aristocratic elitist upper class sophistication with fascism implicates the death of spiritualism despite the advent of Christ’s resurrection in view of the redemptive quest for salvation.  

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world./ The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”  After all the heroic return of Jesus’s reincarnation of the resurrectionist spirit is replaced by the poet laureate with the advent of a grotesque beast, the Egyptian Sphinx. And this gossamery of the Christian revelation has drowned the ceremony of innocence by a bloody trench war over a community of civilization. Modernity has divided into the world with the sunken titanic and widespread disenchantment, violence and extremism, bloodshed of massacred lives have been mystically visualized by The Second Coming.

The quagmire of Second Coming is an apocalypse collapse of civilization into anarchy furthermore is heralded by the verbosity of “That twenty centuries of stony sleep /Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” enmeshed by devastation of things falling apart and the center cannot hold. Twenty centuries had elapsed since the crucifixion and promised return of Jesus Christ. However, the sphinxlike creature in its stony sleep has been poised in the desert, awaiting the time when it will be unleashed upon the earth. 

The Beast of Apocalypse is a slough of despond for these derailed and directionless everyman Christians personified falcons from their Christ figure in the personified abstraction of the Falconer. Thus the massacre of innocents by Herod and possibly the ceremony of baptism is evoked by the drowning of innocent provincial lives with the sea of a blood bath by the surreal demonic Anti Christ. Falcon is a manifestation of symbolic allegorical colonial Ireland harbouring the Irish nationalist rebels, reactionaries and revolutionaries as implied by the worst full of conviction.

On the contrary Falconer is a manifestation of symbolic allegorical British Isles and Britannic kingdom whilst their productivity and efficacy diminishes as implied in the poetic diction the best lack all conviction. Furthermore The Great World War I, The Russian Revolution, Ester Rising 1916 underscore the politico socioeconomic allegorical inferences permeated throughout the poem.   

Further Reading

Kremen. R Kathryn, Yeats’s Secularization of Christian Events pp. 272-74, The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Continuity of Religious Motif in Donne, Blake and Yeats

Kremen. R Kathryn, Yeats’s Subjectification of Religious Language: Three Poetic Examples, pp. 281, 283, The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Continuity of Religious Motif in Donne, Blake and Yeats

Tabor College Library Hillsboro Kansas, Internet Archive, Yeats Harold Bloom, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Second Coming, pp. 317-325

Selected Poems W.B. Yeats, York Notes Advanced, A Norman Jeffares, pp. 43-44

A Kiss Through the Darkness

When I discovered I suffered from depression and anxiety, I decided to make peace with them. They became my companions, teaching me to avoid people, though not strangers. I often found myself in bars, drinking recklessly. I kept telling myself that each night would be the last. But night after night, I met different women. I drank without care, to the point of forgetting my own name, but never could I forget my depression and anxiety.

Sometimes, as I undressed women who wanted to be with me—drawn to my humor, I suppose—my eyes would fill with tears. They would kiss them away, offering me comfort that felt foreign. I was lonely, and my parents didn’t understand my struggles. When I told my mother I felt guilty, her response was, “Maybe you hurt a friend.” But I had no friends, just the bullies who tormented me. I longed for someone to hear the silent screams of my heart.

In those bars, some women pulled me into their world of lust. I became a slave to their desires, some of them married. I had to stop drinking, but I found myself offering something else—my body—to appease my sadness. I remember one woman dancing, and when she turned around, she kissed me as I headed for the washroom. Seconds later, she apologized as her husband, sitting in a wheelchair, laughed tearfully, saying, “You chose him over me, after all these years.”

She didn’t care. She grabbed my hand, led me to her sports car, and drove us to her house. We continued drinking, undressing each other. She saw my tears, smiled, and passed me a cigarette. We sat there, naked, smoking in silence. She stared at me as I coughed, struggling with the cigarette.

“Is this your first time smoking?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “But drinking? I’m fine with that.”

“Are you trying to drink yourself to death, young man?” she pressed.

“Maybe. I’m always suffering alone, and no one at school wants to sit with me. My parents are too busy with their lottery winnings to notice.”

“Is that why you cry, like an orphan who learned the war was over only to discover his parents are gone?”

“I think I was adopted just so they could have someone to raise, a cover for their wealth.”

“Money doesn’t buy happiness, and you’re spending their fortune on your own slow death.”

“I feel like I was born with a lifetime of grief. Drinking numbs my sensitivity, my inner peace, and most of all, the masks I wear to hide the pain in my mind and heart.”

“Do your friends care about the person you are in these bars?” she asked.

“I think they’d prefer I sober up so I can decide whether to pull the trigger or keep cutting myself.”

“Are your friends alive?”

“I’m alone. Depression and anxiety gave me a second chance at life.”

“Are you happy to be alive now?”

“I’m not sure. I feel like I’ve been alive for too long.”

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

“I don’t think I’m capable. I’ve always felt unworthy of love, even from my family. The only person who loves me, though she doesn’t understand me, is my mother.”

“Can I help guide you toward healing? Toward confidence?”

“Thank you, but life has been wearing me down, slowly, like a candle melting its own wax.”

“Will you let me adopt you before I die?” she asked, tears welling up in her eyes. “I want to heal you because you’re young and deserve a better life.”

I was confused by her mention of death. As I dressed to leave, she screamed, “I love you! Please, let my remaining days be filled with the happiness of helping you become a better man.”

I turned back and hugged her. We both cried.

Because of her, I became sober and successful. She healed me in ways no one else could, and in return, I tried to help heal her. She overcame her illness, and we became the best of friends, forever grateful for that accidental kiss.

Now, I am happily married to a strong woman who chases away the shadows of depression and anxiety from my dreams. Together, we’ve built a life filled with love and understanding. I’ve learned that we must talk about our weaknesses and embrace the help offered by those we trust.

Read the first chapters here.

3

After the New Year, we have a new neighbor, Baba Katya. She was a short, plump woman with glasses, rather intelligent-looking, always wrapped in several layers of clothing. When she stopped by, a few creepy-looking men probably dragged all sorts of things for two hours: chests, parcels, some furniture into her room, which was as big as a hall.

The check-in process attracted Alexey and me’s attention, and we sat in the hallway and silently watched what was happening. At some point, one of these thuggish-looking workers barked at my brother and me, and we, frightened, retreated to our room. Here, to fill up the feeling of confidence, we began to sprinkle these two and our neighbor with curses and all sorts of nicknames.

– These two are savages! – I said, waving my arms.

– And the neighbor? She’s no better! Bourgeois! – my brother answered.

One day after school, when my brother and I were walking down the hallway, the door to the new neighbor’s room was open. It has been several weeks since she moved in. Torn by curiosity, we decided to carefully look in to see the treasures she was hiding.

Through the slightly open door we could see several antique cabinets, statues, tapestries, paintings. Meanwhile, the hostess of the room came up to us along the corridor. My brother and I took a step back, expecting reproaches or threats, but something completely unexpected happened. Seeing our undisguised interest in the contents of the room, Baba Katya smiled slightly.

• Come on in, guys, – she invited my brother and me.

Her brother was more talkative, as always, and asked her a lot of questions. He had a talent for talking to people, so later he became a famous journalist and traveled a lot around the country and the world.

So, we managed to find out that baba Katya, as the whole apartment called her, is actually Ekaterina Vasilyeva, a well-known restorer with experience. For several years now, she has been engaged in restorations for the state museums of Leningrad, and what struck me most of all, she even worked at home, in conditions when museums were closed or even mothballed. And all these “treasures” are her works that have been restored or are just waiting in the wings.

– Why did you move in with us? Has your house been bombed?  Alexey continued his inquiries.

– No, it’s worse…  This is not a childish story…” she tried to get away from this topic.

– We are already adults, please tell us! – my brother and I did not let up.

Baba Katya stopped talking, looked at the window, then back at us. She went to the stove in the corner of the room, put a scorcher in it, put the kettle on and slowly began her creepy story.

– About a month ago, a story happened that changed my life and disappointed people forever. I used to live in the central district, also in a communal apartment. I had two rooms there – one bedroom, the second, a larger one, a workshop for restoration. Our apartment has always been friendly, we all knew each other for many years and were almost like family. Only one neighbor was weird, I don’t even want to call her by her first name. After her divorce from her husband, something broke inside her… But even then she had not yet poisoned our way of life. With the onset of the blockade, our apartment began to change, many left. The corridors began to empty.

In the autumn, the famine began, then it became even worse, our neighbors began to disappear. The authorities came to us a couple of times, and then our neighbor began to show incredible diligence in finding and assisting the authorities. She told all sorts of stories, saying that they had gone to their relatives in the village, and those had died in the raid. Strangely enough, everyone believed her.

Then she stopped talking. I saw a tear creeping down the wrinkled cheek of an elderly woman. After a moment of silence, gathering her strength, she continued:

– One day, I worked late and, as it seemed to me, I was not sleeping alone in the apartment. Then a disheveled and scared neighbor flew into my workshop, saying that some strange man of terrible appearance was walking in our hallway. I calmed her down by suggesting that we look at this stranger together. She agreed, on the condition that we take a poker for protection. So we left my room, I went ahead and carried a lamp, and she followed me with a poker.

We walked along the dark corridor for a while until I felt a blow on the back of my head and lost consciousness. I came to my senses, probably after a quarter of an hour, I was lying on the floor in my neighbor’s room, next to her bed. The first thing that caught my eye was the partially butchered body of the girl, which was hidden under the bed. It hit me like an electric shock, I immediately understood everything and hid, the neighbor was standing with her back to me in the other corner and, leaning over the table, sorting knives. I got up quietly, and the poker was lying on the bed.

Grabbing her, I slapped my neighbor on the back without looking at her and ran out of the apartment and onto the street with the last of my strength. My head hurt terribly, and my heart was pounding so hard that it seemed like it was going to pop out of my chest. So I ran through several streets until I bumped into two young soldiers who turned out to be NKVD officers. Through tears, I told them everything. After taking me to some kind of duty station, they hurried to our apartment…

She paused again, sighed, and finished her story with confidence in her voice.

– The remains of five people were found in her room, as the investigation established, for several months she had not only killed and eaten acquaintances, but also sold or changed the meat of victims in markets in different areas. As far as I know, she was shot on the same day, and I could no longer stay in that apartment and moved in with you.

The kettle whistled, Baba Katya covered her face with her hands. There was horror and shame on my brother’s face, and we both regretted our persistence, curiosity and prejudice about this brave woman. I went up to her and hugged her a little, she calmed down, poured tea for us and gave us one candy, it was an incredible rarity, my brother and I had not seen any sweets anywhere for more than six months.

• Go to your room in peace, – Baba Katya said to us at parting, – And be careful on the street, and in general with strangers.

Roman Holiday                                                                                

I dreamed and found you young again somehow transported across the Atlantic, past Gibraltar then Corsica, over the waves of the Mediterranean. I arrived quite dashing in a light linen suit and polished Italian shoes, in a little white sportscar, over ancient brick streets and through Di Chirico piazzas and skewed Zeffirelli perspectives at your flat in Rome set curiously in the forum at the edge of the Palatine Hill. I took you in my arms, circled your waist, and my palm found the small of your back.

You twirled for me, flipping the hem of your dress, a black and white print in tiny cubist abstractions. We danced spinning through your bright rooms with the high ceilings like a chiesa expecting Raphael above our heads – an Assumption or an Ascension. You’d arranged vases of flowers, and the tables and chairs were strewn with opened books, chipped china, and the remains of bread and the dregs of wine from the night before. The windows were tall and opened wide, curtains drifting in the breeze, and allowed the shouts and cheers of scruffy boys kicking a soccer ball outside. And there was a jumpy, comedic Italian tune playing from the phonograph – the kind of music that makes you want to whirl around the kitchen with your mother or gambol with your little sister balanced on your shoes.

So pretty and poised, you were Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday after she got her hair cut short, raced Gregory Peck on a Vespa, and stuck her hand in the Mouth of Truth. Giddy, we laughed and ached and wept, immediately in love again. Your bedroom walls and the quaint watercolors you bought of the Pantheon, Colosseum, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and that little temple of Portunus near the Tiber – the very ruins around us seemed to laugh too, happy for us. But when I leaned in to kiss you, our lips refused to touch, to meet as willing participants in a prelude to desire. I heard, “Remember, you’re married.” Instantly I returned flying back across the ocean in my little white convertible to that other bliss I’d live after waking. And that was all. That was enough.

Progress Toward Victory

I wrote a lot of poems in my 20s.

They were all bad.

Everyone said they were bad.

The keyboard stank like sweat and rotten fruit.

There was a great outcry among the editors.

So I gave up

And then 20 years later I tried again.

And my poems were better!

Everyone said they were better.

Among the editors there was a great sigh of ambivalence.

I will quit for another 20 years.

When I come back my poems will be truly great.

The keyboard will smell of roses and triumph.

The editors will scuttle around my feet like beetles.

I will go to my grave like an apotheosis of Pulitzers.

And on my headstone I will write with my luminous hand,

“That’ll show ‘em.”