Joanne Klados
I believe that William Butler Yeats shows while desire is a destructive force, human experience will never be reached without it. This memorable idea has been influenced by the principles of Romanticism and is most evident in the poetic techniques used in "The Wild Swans at Coole", "The Second Coming" and "Leda and the Swan".
or (worded differently)
William Butler Yeats was deeply troubled by the Anglo-Irish conflict and influenced by the principles of Romanticism, and I believe that it is these concerns shape the memorable idea that while desire is a destructive force, human experience will never be reached with it. "The Wild Swans at Coole", "The Second Coming" and "Leda and the Swan", all explore Modern anxieties about the state of the contemporary world through the use of poetic techniques.
"The Wild Swans at Coole" adheres to the highly structured and rhyming nature of the Victorian style which Yeats commonly employs, rejecting the modernistic styles of his time. Referring to Yeats' Book A Vision, Yeats' refers to desire as ' the image of what we wish to become.' In this poem Yeats' reflects upon his romantic conquests and dreams from the viewpoint of an ageing man, about the desire for things that he wanted, but, in most cases, they were things he could never have.
Yeats begins his poem with images of nature that are clearly inspired by earlier Romantic poets. He uses symbolism in choosing Autumn, the season of change as the context for his vision of the swans, 'the tress are in their autumn beauty,' to highlight that he too is in the 'autumn' of his life. The transformation that the swans inspire however, is spiritual rather than physical one.Yeats uses the technique of the active verb 'mirrors' in, 'the water mirrors the still sky,' to highlight a sense of interconnectedness between the earth and the sky. In particular through the verb, he emphasises that nature has the capacity to facilitate a union between that which is physical and that which is other worldly, a viewed shared by the Romantic poets Blake and Shelley in whom Yeats was well versed.
In the poem Yeats' persona occupies the earthly realm, while the swans have the capacity to exist in both the physical and celestial spheres. James Lovic Allen in the Unity of Archetype and Religious Imagery sees this as representing 'the union of man and God, the human and the divine. Nature, in the symbolic form of the swan, a key technique in Yeats' poetry, becomes the means by which man can find some purpose in his life, namely a connection with Lovic's 'divine', '…upon the brimming water/Are nine and fifty swans.../All suddenly mount…'
I think that Yeats' swans in his early poetry certainly symbolised Maud and his relationship with her, as many critics assert, reflects Yeats’ sexual desire to live and his rejection of the death instinct, as the rings can symbolise an immortality we cannot achieve.
"The Second Coming", reflects a prevailing view in twentieth century Europe that the world was descending into a state of anarchy and destruction. Yeats reveals his own concerns, stemming from the unremitting violence of World War 1, revolution and unrest in Europe and civil war within his own country.
This transition from one era to another, according to Yeats is to prove destructive as evident in the poem's subsequent images. Yeats uses the symbol of a falconer to emphasise that the modern world is spinning out of control in, 'The falcon cannot hear the falconer'. The falcon symbolically represents civil control,exerted over the falcon which is civilisation itself. the effect of this is to heighten the sense that the twentieth century world, with its widespread political unrest is collapsing inwardly. In these images we can clearly see Modernist fears about the self destructive state of the world.
