An Unravelling and a Revelation

It’s blog time once more, and our class is once again delving into mysterious poetry. The Second Coming is to some degree a very mysterious poem. Perhaps that is what is so intriguing about it. My favorite part of the poem, and the part that I understood the most, was the first stanza. I believe most of the class would agree with me. There are some important cues to look at while reading the first stanza. It may not be as straightforward as we think. One dynamic of the poem that stands out is an overall unwinding of old and a prophecy of something new.

In class we talked about the gyre. It is a cone-like spiraling motion-- a ‘widening “ gyre. The part of the gyre to focus on is the part that is not compact and because it is widening it is getting weaker and weaker and further and further away from it’s starting point. In the next line the falcon is also getting further and further away from his starting point, the falconer. Once again we see a circling motion, and a widening as the falcon’s circles become so large he cannot hear the falconer. Later in the poem the word “loosed” is used twice. Over all in the first stanza, there is something that is being loosed. Things are beginning to unwind. The clockwork is over and things as they were before are quickly unraveling.

Something is indeed happening as told by the next three lines. The first line says, “Surely some revelation is at hand.” Don’t let the word revelation confuse you. Some revelation does not necessarily mean The Revelation we are familiar with found in the book of Revelation in the Bible. What if it is a different kind of revelation? What if Yeats is playing off the biblical references we know to symbolize a revelation he is introducing? Next the poem leads into the part about the sphinx. I do not fully understand what the sphinx means, but whatever it is, it represents the “revelation” at hand. Once again don’t get caught up in the use of the word beast. What if Yeats means a different kind of beast? After focusing on the sphinx it says, “while all about it / Reel shadows of the indignant birds.” Here again we can notice imagery of a circling motion.

Next there is a shift in the poem. “Twenty centuries of stony sleep,” and “Bethlehem” are found in the same three lines. This is no coincidence. Yeats wrote the poem in the twentieth century. There had been twenty centuries since Jesus’ birth. Since Jesus’ birth there had been twenty centuries of nightmares, (19-20) or at least in Yeats eyes there was. Now finally those nightmares were coming to an end.

I don’t understand exactly what Yeats is prophesying, but it has to be something along the lines of a change occurring in his times. Perhaps he is saying something about Postmodernism. There is definitely a strong indication of a progression and an unraveling. The gyre’s starting point was at Jesus’ birth and now, with it’s widening it’s power is lost. Now, to Yeats, a new birth is at hand.

P.S. I was unable to comment because of a glitch on Blogspot I think. I'll type comment.