the second coming.docx

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Andrei Bianca Andreea3

rdYear, English- Romanian

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The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

And I saw, and I heard an eagle, flying in mid heaven, saying with a great voice: Woe,

woe, woe, for them that dwell on the earth.And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun and the

moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she, being with child,

cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having

seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part ofthe stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman

who was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.(Holy Bible)1

Pure fiction, some may say. Is it a cartoon scenario? There are no such things as birds

warning the humanity of the events which are to come, or creepy dragons pursuing unbornchildren, covering the surface of the earth with stars drawn by their tail!

However- believe it or not- John of Patmos experienced these things and wrote them

down in the book of Revelation, while he was exiled in the Aegean archipelago, almost 1900

years ago. He was talking in his book about a dream he had: John of Patmos claimed he

imaginarily witnessed the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth and the events

preceding it- events which were quite frightening and terrible. Since then, the Christianity has

used the symbols, the images, the visions in the book of Revelation in order to prophesy and to

describe the end of our times, and the foundation of a new heaven and earth, a brand new

divine world to come- the instauration of the Kingdom of God.

But let us come back to reality. Almost 100 years ago, William Butler Yeats had a sort

of retrovision. In his poem, The Second Coming, the author seems to be reliving those

apocalyptic experiences in the distant past, identifying at once their image with the dreadful,

fearsome and horrendous reality of the world around him, after the First World War. Although

the poet is inspired by the Biblical idea regarding the end of times (as the title of the poem

proves it), he transfigures the vision according to the circumstances of the existence in that

period of time.

The episode of the war in history shocked the entire humanity. The horrific events made

the world pray for the end of the war, as people were aware that otherwise the war would end

1Holy Bible, King James Authorized Version, The Book of Revelation, chapter 12
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-1/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-1/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-2/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-2/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-3/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-3/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-4/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-3/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-3/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-2/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-2/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-1/http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-12-1/


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them all. For each spectator and beholder of the human drama, the common world they knew

was coming to an end, the end of times.

William Butler Yeats gathers all their fear, all their wonder, their confusion and their

chaotic feelings into a vortex, a universal one. In that state of disorder, the human beings were

just turning and turning in the widening gyre. Many others went through this before- it was

not the first war, but the First World War. The history repeating itself on a larger scale seems to

be prefiguring the end of the actual world, and its transfiguration into a new, obscure one. As

well as Christians perceived (and still perceive) it, the end was nothing else but a beginning in

Butlers vision- a dangerous one though. The poet used the image of the gyre (two conical

spirals, one situated inside the other) in order to define the succession of two distinct periods in

history, delimited by an unprecedented,unparalleled event- the war.The European warlike symbol, the falcon, is invoked from the very beginning of the

poem. Hallucinated, the bird (the only being that seems to possess some sort of control in the

whole chaotic tableau) rises above an unrecognizable world, in full process of destruction and

disintegration: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Everything is dissipating. The

distance is increasing, the falcon cannot hear the falconer anymore; the soar reveals the inside

desire of each war participant to escape from the continuous whirl that keep them captives on

the ground of a murderous, cruel history.

The war equals the reversal of the moral values. The iniquity and the evildoing are

released all over the world: Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / the blood-dimmed tide is

loosed. The red color of the blood stains every pure thing: Everywhere the ceremony of

innocence is drowned. In these catastrophic times, the power lies within the wrongdoing, the

worst are full of passionate intensity while the best lack all conviction. During a conflict on

such a large scale, the crisis is a physical one, as well as it is a spiritual, a psychological one.

Under the supremacy of death and hate, the human being cannot be the same anymore. It is

permanently turned upside down.

And there comes the only possible explanation the poet can give to the world: Surely

some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The cause of all these

twisted and uncontrollable happenings seems to be located on a higher level, superior to the


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human, palpable and touchable experience. Incomprehensible forces are at work in de-creating

and re-creating worlds.

Suddenly, the trembling voice starts to draw a potential image of the future world,

which is on the verge of being brought into existence: a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi/

Troubles my sight. It is not a pleasant panorama, but each individual mind can grasp the

gravity of the moment, because of the Spiritus Mundi- that single vast intelligence to which

everyone in linked. Thus, making use of universal symbols, the poet succeeds in imaginarily

representing a mystical picture, which might also be shaped in the mind of the reader.

The image of the Egyptian sphinx captures the attention in the second stanza, being

rather described than named: a waste of desert sand; / A shape with lion body and the head of

a man,/ A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,/ Is moving its slow thighs. The ancientmonumental figure, lacking human, compassionate and kindly features, can be seen on its way

to Bethlehem, after twenty centuries of stony sleep. Again, making use of the biblical

symbols, William Butler Yeats unveils his vision regarding the confusing and mixed-up events

the world around him is actually facing.

2000 years- a stony sleep- passed as a dream. A creature is about to be born again,

after all this time, in Bethlehem, but not in the same magic, divine atmosphere. Its birth is not

announced by a choir of angels, but by the shadows of the indignant desert birds. It is notsought by the Wiseman, in order to receive the gifts a prince must receive. It is a Second

Coming, but not the one of Jesus Christ, as some may expect. The child is not the Son of God,

but a rough beast, materialized through the image of the Egyptian sphinx. The nightmare has

begun; caused by the rocking cradle. It is the end of times, the beginning of another world.

The gyre is still whirling, the new age has come, and the question that rises in the heart of the

world remains unanswered: what happens next? The indefiniteness defines the future. The

uncertainty is the key word of the new era.

Apart of being a musical poem, because of the incantatory repetitions and echoes, The

Second Comingis also a symbolical poem, embodying the dramatic image of a world in a

tumultuous process of destructiveness, under the supremacy of war.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow. (Martin Luther King, Jr. )
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incomprehensiblehttp://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&biw=1366&bih=643&sa=X&ei=6uT9TpOLO8LQsgbuvLDfDw&ved=0CBUQBSgA&q=egyptian+sphinx&spell=1http://thinkexist.com/quotation/war_is_a_poor_chisel_to_carve_out_tomorrow/264332.htmlhttp://thinkexist.com/quotation/war_is_a_poor_chisel_to_carve_out_tomorrow/264332.htmlhttp://thinkexist.com/quotes/martin_luther_king,_jr./http://thinkexist.com/quotes/martin_luther_king,_jr./http://thinkexist.com/quotation/war_is_a_poor_chisel_to_carve_out_tomorrow/264332.htmlhttp://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&biw=1366&bih=643&sa=X&ei=6uT9TpOLO8LQsgbuvLDfDw&ved=0CBUQBSgA&q=egyptian+sphinx&spell=1http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incomprehensible


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