Leda and the Swan by W. B. Yeats
Critically examine the postmodern reading of Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats.
(Black and white pencil drawing of a naked human entwined with a winged bird and her egg)
Leda’s virgin femininity is at stake by the perilous encroachment of anthropomorphic Zeus. The masculinized possession upon the staggering girl by caressing her frail thighs symbolizes helplessness. This helplessness manifests emblematic relinquishment of virginity to the amorous conquest of Zeus. Love and war are supposedly antithetical paradoxes and fruits in reproduction of offsprings and therefore vindictive of the polarization between supernatural immortality and mortal beings or bonded and free..
Seduction and rape of Leda the Queen of Sparta, by the God of Heavens and King of the Olympics, in disguise of Swan in Greek, mythologizes the fantastical narration of Helen of Troy and the cloned brothers Castor and Pollux. Orgasm and ejaculation implicates shudder in the loins with impregnation of Leda by Swan while engendering the broken wall, burning roof and tower alike architectural landmarks and milestones. Later this climatic Homeric allusion pontificates toward Agamemnon’s bereavement. Historical cycle of Helen’s and Clytemnestra’s seeds are planted and fertilized by Leda. Rhetorical questions become justifiable with the explanatory statements: “The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?/ But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” Herein, succumbent of Leda’s virginity to the supremacy of the mightier and loftiest God has been decreed as consummation of sexual gratification. Allegorically colonial hegemonic culture of England reigning with superpower supremacy over colonized Ireland has been satirically implicated.
William Butler Yeats examines the consequences of the rape intimating the eventual defeat of Troy and triumph of Greece and the restoration of Western history. These mythic puns and sublime images are a testament to the legacy of Celtic Anglo Irish poetic cult amidst the traumatic outbreak of World War I, inviting readers toward imaginary resistance to oppression. “He holds her helpless breasts upon his breasts” furthermore implicates the political turmoil of historical Irish landscapes as implied metaphorically in Leda’s succumbing to the temptation of Zeus’s busty demeanor. The invasion of Ireland by Britain is allegorically manifested by this dialectic. Yeats revisits mythological fiction through fragmentation of Leda and this case spotlights metaphorical fragmentation of a country, nation, tribe and culture.
The act of Leda and the Swan is a bright marbled sculpture of apopsiopesis that is constantly resurrected from the microcosmic everyday acts, released from the ravages of delusory time. “Did she put on his knowledge with his power /Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” These lines succinctly projects the rebellious spirit of the nationalistic freedom movement and the aftereffects of post revolution in accord with the domain of England’s imperial regime. Ireland’s defeminization and emasculation afterthoughts foreshadowed by the rhetorical questions indeed.
Further Reading
Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”, William Johnsen, Yeats and Postmodernism, Leonard Orr, Sycrause University Press. 