About “The Second Coming”
Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this:
Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation in the mode of Eliot, but later critics have pointed out that it expresses Yeats’s apocalyptic mystical theories, and is thus the expression of a mind shaped by the 1890s.
Well, poems are written in a certain time and place by a certain person, but posterity can find additional meaning to add to the original. If a poem is good enough—and “The Second Coming” is most definitely good enough—it can continue to speak profoundly long after it was first written.
Yeats had “a life-long interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology” that was reflected in his work, and “The Second Coming” is no exception. The gyre, for example (“turning and turning in a widening gyre”) was his word for a historical cycle:
Yeats incorporates his ideas on the gyre – a historical cycle of about 2000 years. He first published this idea in his writing ‘a vision’ which predicted the expected anarchy that would be released around 2000 years after the birth of Christ. The gyre suggests the image of a world spinning outwardly such that it cannot recall its own origin.
I don’t share Yeats’ belief system; I doubt anyone does at this point. But I do think he may have been onto something nevertheless, in some intuitive way. By post-WWI 1919, the year “The Second Coming” was written, the modern age had begun, and I think something really did shift around the time of the new millennium in 2000, leading to increasing chaos throughout the world.
[NOTE: More about Yeats here.]
I wonder if Walker Percy named his novel “The Second Coming” after Yeats’ poem. I read the novel in college and the only thing I remember is that the main character thought the world would only end when he could understand the words to every rock ‘n’ roll song. I think about that every time I manage to catch a word in a song that I never could understand before.
Sorry for going off on a tangent. Just ignore me.
There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who, if not specifically, do share somewhat similar beliefs to Yeats. As with he, we sense something much deeper at play.
Many of us believe that there is a ‘larger purpose’ to events than simply human drives randomly manifesting. And there is so much ‘coincidence’ throughout history that it beggars credulity to imagine that there is not a larger purpose at work.
If the battles at Thermopylae and Salamis do not happen exactly as they did, democracy is stillborn. At Tours, the Gates of Vienna and at Lepanto, Europe faced forced conversion to Islam. Had the Spanish Armada arrived safely, Elizabeth’s England would have fell. Washington’s daring raid on Trenton revitalizes a flagging revolution. Hitler’s refusal to release Rommel’s panzer tanks in the invasion at Normandy gives the allies the foothold it must have… at any of these, had they gone the other way, history would have been profoundly and irrevocably different.
Talk of specifics, such as Yeats 2000 yr cycle, quickly bogs down into the confusion endemic to ignorance (“For now we see through a glass, darkly”) but where there’s that much smoke (hinge events), there must be fire.
snopercod:
Well, with the advent of the internet, we can now get the lyrics to everything.
I hope that’s not an ominous sign.
Yeat’s poem passes the test of time because we are always the drop of a dime away from a murderous conflagration.
“”any of these, had they gone the other way, history would have been profoundly and irrevocably different.””
Geoffrey Britain
Theres also plenty of events that didn’t go the right way. The civil rights events of the 1960s being a major one. I think without all the handouts and feeling sorry for black folks and calling it compassion, we would be light years ahead in their journey to real freedom.
We all here agree Steve that the civil rights movement took a hard turn to the Left after its breakthrough and in doing so became the pawn of the Left. Given that this country has been on the wrong track since at least the 1930s and arguably since well before that, I’m not sure that it was avoidable. Some things can only be learned the hard way. And one of those things is that freedom permits bad decisions as well as good ones. Pres. Adams put his finger upon it, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Personally, I don’t think that Adams meant ‘religious’ per se, I think he meant ‘God fearing’ in the sense that we hold ourselves accountable to an entity that transcends mankind’s fallibility. I.E. the creator of those self-evident truths.
Yeats’ MBTI is INFP.
I would point you to Yeats’ poem “The Statues”. It is perhaps the most succinct poetic articulation of his views of man and civilization. I highly recommend it.
(Oh, and of course Adams meant “religious”–he could hardly have been more precise. Someone seems to have a neurotic aversion to the word “religion” while at the same time does not seem to understand the meaning of the term.)
I actually read Yeats’s lengthy prose exposition of his philosophical-mystical ideas, A Vision. I think it contained a very high proportion of nonsense, but I don’t remember a single word of it. He would have been better off to stick with an existing religion.
You don’t have to, or need to, precisely believe as another might to see some things in a common way. If I were colorblind, and you not, while I may not see what color the item that draws it, I certainly see the bull, the flash, and the daring.
Secular and faithful both know something is coming. The secular believe it is, as the unfaithful often do, are to blame. So they are scrambling to do what they have always done in times past. Abortion can easily be compared with human sacrifice, the eradication of the middle class can easily be a seen as a financial scourging. Government over-involvement can be seen as an attempt to take control of events, through people… directly and not. Pagan, atheist, and most unsettled faiths can be included in the court of the unfaithful, mind you.
I don’t think the population, pollution, or other such are the problem. It is simply a lack of faith. That has lead to a system where faith is pushed further away, creating the perfect environment for an acceleration of the decline. At this point, I don’t think there is a way out. Humility, for some, can only come through utter defeat. Even then, suicide seems, often, a better option.
Oh, right… the poetry of some truths is no more, no less, rational than any other means of expressing it. I have up on the classics, never quite caught poetry, so… I’ll trust you on the rest of it. Actually, it isn’t so much that I didn’t catch poetry, but that I discarded it. The reason China and India will never be great, as an example of why, is because their languages are based in the poetic.
Just… trying to respond as best I can.
I feel an inexorable slouching toward Bethlehem as much as everyone who has commented here, and have felt that way for most of my adult life, and have felt that it has spiraled outward for all of that time, year on year.
However, I have always been reluctant to ascribe my intuition to anything real, or prophetic or historical.
I wonder what the world must have seemed like to my old man; raised in 1950s America (he graduated High School in 1955), sporting his flat top in his High School yearbook. What did he think as he saw Civil War nearly break out over segregation in the South? What did he think when he saw violent protests over the Vietnam War? What did he think when Kennedy, King and Kennedy were assassinated? And the advent of rampant drug use among American’s youth, and the worsening of culture and his kids being taught “new math” and Nixon and Watergate and Carter and the hostage crises and gas lines and the Munich Olympics and on and on and on…
And what did my father-in-law think as he witnessed Europe engulfed in flames and carpet bombs during its second great war in less than a quarter century?
And what did their fathers think as the first world war raged around them, and flu pandemics killed millions (as neo-neocon has so profoundly written about) and a global economic collapse threw the world into a depression and the farmland in the midwest dried up and produced only dust and famine?
It honestly does feel like we are on an inexorable slide downward (and, as I have written about here, I believe the U.S. government has already passed a tipping point), but then sometimes I wonder if this isn’t simply human existence, and it always appears thus as any generation matures and becomes aware of current events?
And, even if that is true, and we are all simply at that age in our own lives when our sensitivity to the imperfection of humanity makes it feel like an “outward spiral,” that doesn’t, necessarily, mean it can’t be true.
Maybe each generation is a mini “gyre;” epicycles upon cycles, as entropy sucks civilization into the drain.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I think you’re right that each generation has its own feeling that things are going down the drain, at least to a certain extent. I have long felt pleased that I wasn’t around for the Depression and WWII, because for a while it must have looked as though things were really terrible.
But people who were alive then and also post 9/11 (my mother, for example, who is no longer alive but who was already an adult during the Depression) can put both in perspective better. My mother remarked that 9/11 seemed worse than Pearl Harbor. That means something to me.
Likewise, I’ve been around for a long time now, and I can say that never has there been a time that frightened me so, with the single exception of the nuclear war threat during the 50s, during which however I was a very small child and really unable to evaluate and compare, because it was a very primal fear.
However, I think that beginning around the time that Yeats wrote “The Second Coming”—that is, the end of WWI—there was a sea-change of major proportions that has lasted till today. Call it the decline of the west, call it what you will, but I think it is real. I discussed it in depth in this post, and I offer as proof one of the most eloquent witnesses to the times, Henry James. He saw it as a break with the optimism that had gone before [emphasis mine]:
neo-neocon,
Thank you for providing your personal insight. I will read the prior post you referenced.
I think it’s a lack of confidence in my own knowledge that makes me hesitate to put too much credence in my own perceptions, but, like the story you related from your mother, I was very surprised by a conversation I had with my father-in-law.
His life was full of tragedy; father killed when he was very young, taken from home at a very young age, witnessing WWII firsthand in Europe. Then, spending his teen years amid the post war rubble. Then coming to America just as the chaos and riots of the 60s exploded. I told him about my pessimism for the future and expected him to laugh at me, based on all he had lived through.
To my surprise, like your mother, he told me this seemed different, and worse. I have discussed this with several folks who have lived longer than I, and they all agree that even when bad things happened in the past they always knew things would get better, but they do not feel that way now.
My wife and I are not cynics or pessimists, but years ago, as we talked about the lives of our children, we both matter of factly stated that we did not believe it was likely they would grow up in an America that is better (economically at least) than the one we had come of age in. I don’t know of a single parent who is confident his or her children will leap forward economically. From what I understand that was the de-facto opinion of most all Americans for well over 100 years.
As Ace wrote today at Ace of Spades HQ:
“Well, the American Project is drawing to a close. Result: Failure.”
Without England or America leading the West (and neither country is) mankind seems rudderless.
It’s an interesting poem. The first stanza is as quotable as any English poem ever written. The second is just weird. It even loses its rhythm. The third is brief, mystical like the second, but more structured like the first.
The first stanza would have been nothing on its own. It’s gnawing, but not apocalyptic. It needed a resolution, even as ambiguous a resolution as what follows.
Rufus – As neo notes about Yeats in the linked article, optimism is always easier for the young.
Rufus T. Firefly:
That is the pessimism I also feel.
However, I believe we must guard against it. A lot of the right is giving up, throwing up their hands in despair, abandoning the fight. This is exactly and precisely what the left wants. If we do this, we are cowards and weaklings. I mean that; that’s what I see all around me—people who think of themselves as so brave and principled that they are throwing up their hands and giving up at the first really serious trouble. That needs to stop.
It seems to be the way of the world, the older generation laments to the younger generation how the world is going to Hell, while the younger generation nods – even agrees there is much genuinely bad about the present state – but also finds something exaggerated about the alarm, and goes on. And the world goes on.
There seems to be a largely shared psychological need with whatever the current older generation be for the world to “die” with it, for it to have had the best and the last of it. But even many among them, when caught in the right mood, end up saying that the best kept secret about the world is that the world is perfectly fine, to the extent to which it ever was. That there is nothing essentially new under the sun, same old contrasts and tensions wrapped up a bit differently, and the fallen humanity playing the game of creating, destroying, creating from the rubbles anew. Various old pessimists have told me things to that effect at some point or the other. Not optimism – maybe nobody is capable of it after a lifetime of… life? – but a more balanced view in any case.
We who have not lived enough are ultimately optimists. Genuine cynicism is a rarity in my generation, I believe, and more of a fashionable posture than a thought-out, lived-out philosophical position. We are probably naive as hell – in fact we MUST be from your point of view – but the world is not all that uniquely bad, really. There is much good in it, and if the present epoch truly is one of the exceptionally dark ones, maybe it is because it is right before a new dawn. I ramble too much.
Anna,
You have an impressive ability to state your mind. I think you are mostly right, but I also think you will agree that many older people you know have positive attitudes. I generally do. If you ask me specifics about current events, or what I see for the future, my responses may not outline positive events, but that does not mean I do not know that wonderful people will always do beautiful things. There was human love even in the Nazi death camps. There are always exceptional people who can suffer and remain forgiving and loving. My guess is you are one of them. I hope the majority of your life is spent among others of your generation who share your strength and maturity.
“people who think of themselves as so brave and principled that they are throwing up their hands and giving up at the first really serious trouble”
The best lack all conviction…
neo-neocon,
I agree. Absolutely. If you have read my comments in the past few weeks you have read some pessimism, but I hope I have not been misunderstood. I believe I am realistic about the future of the GOP and the short term future of our Republic (more Progressivism, a more expansive Federal government, less liberty). There is no sense in being a Pollyanna when the facts are in front of one’s face.
However, you are absolutely correct that this is no time for good people to give up fighting. We all must fight. Everyday. Even when we are tired. Even when we seem to be outnumbered. Even when no one wants us to win.
After the last Presidential election I stopped watching television. I didn’t watch much prior, but my wife and I would spend about an hour before bed each evening catching up on current events and news. My wife was a little mad at me when I stopped watching. “You can’t just give up,” she stressed. “I’m not giving up,” I told her, “but I see now I had fallen into a trap. I was obsessed with Washington politics and the Presidential race and DC scandals. And I thought it was my duty to know about them and have an opinion on them and to be informed. Yet, everyday, right around me there were co-workers who needed help, neighbors who were struggling, my children who needed my time…”
Yes, we must never hide our lanterns under a bushel. We must always try to shine our inner light upon the world, no matter how dark or unwelcoming that world may seem. But I am concerned that I can be tempted to shift my focus away from the sphere of my influence to seemingly greater, more prestigious battles.
Everyone wants to change the world. Very few want to change their brother-in-law with a drinking problem. Why? We’ve all tried to help our brother-in-law (or spouse, or child, or parent or sibling) and we all know firsthand how difficult that is. Yet, we want confirmation that our ideas and methods are correct and that we are right. So, with hubris, we shift our focus from our struggling family members to DC and the world.
I’m sure you all remember the story of George Obama, President Barack Obama’s half-brother who lived in squalor in Africa while Barack was campaigning for his first term as President. I thought it was a great insight into Barack Obama’s ego that he seemed so sure he knew what was needed to better our nation and the world, yet he seemed unable to guide his own flesh and blood. Surely if you look up “hubris” in your Funk & Wagnall’s, Barack Hussein Obama’s photograph will stare back at you.
There is a dangerous attraction in spending all one’s waking hours tilting at the windmills of global politics while ignoring the needs at our own backdoor. Thanks to radio and television and the Internet global politics are now, literally inside our homes. I will love my neighbor and my enemies, and I will try to avoid the temptation of battling the windmills concocted by the media, who want me to forget the work at hand in order to sell me more soap and potato chips.
Now, for the first time in my life, it no longer seems they are happy to tempt me through a screen. They’re now coming into the pizza parlor you own to demand not just your consent, but your participation. How is this different from a neighbor squealing to the STASI that a neighbor is reading the Bible?
Yes, you are absolutely right, neo-neocon. We must not be weak. We must never forget the power of human love.
Oh, and neo-neocon, the above is not an admonition aimed at you. You are a rare talent and extremely good at what you do.
This blog gives comfort, support and information to thousands. There isn’t a bushel made that can diminish your lantern!
Rufus T. Firefly:
Not to worry; I didn’t think it was.
And admonitions aimed at me are allowed, anyway 🙂 .
“And admonitions aimed at me are allowed, anyway.”
As are alliterative aphorisms, apparently.