Swans are usually associated with a graceful, gentle, angelic, elegant image, and are not considered as virile and violent animals. In the poem, however, the swan is described as being big, with “great wings” (line 1), and unnaturally strong, as “he holds her helpless breast” (line 4). Zeus, in the form of a swan, does not allow Leda to react or escape from “his power” (line13): "How can those terrified vague fingers push / The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?" (lines 5 and 6).
Leda is completely defenseless in the presence of the celestial swan and, eventually, becomes pregnant, as "A shudder in the loins engenders there" (line 9). Besides some variations of the legend, Leda lays some eggs after some months and Helen hatches from one of these eggs. Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, becomes very charming and was regarded as the most beautiful woman in Greece. Helen married Menelaus, but her beauty still attracted other men. One of these men was Paris, a Trojan who received Helen as a reward for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess. This fact caused the Trojan War, in which the Greeks attacked and defeated the Trojans to rescue Helen from Paris. The destruction of Troy by the Greek fighters is alluded in the tenth line of the poem: “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower”. After returning from the war, Menelaus’s brother and one of Greece’s greatest fighters, Agamemnon, was murdered by his own wife, Clytemnestra, who was Helen’s sister. This murder is also alluded in the eleventh line of the poem: “And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up”.
In only three lines (“A shudder in the loins, engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up” – lines 9, 10, 12 respectively) Yeats was able to refer to an extensive sequence of facts and to summarize all the happenings that begins with Leda’s pregnancy and goes on until the consequences of this pregnancy, such as the destruction of Troy and the post-Trojan war incidents (Agamemnon’s death). Yeats’s ability to bring up an extremely long sequence of incidents in a concise and succinct way confirms his talent to select the right words and condense his ideas in order to convey a vast variety of information in just a few lines.
As far as form is concerned, “Leda and the Swan” is organized in a sonnet in which an omniscient narrator exposes this mythological story about Leda’s rape in a gradual progress. The structure of this sonnet is divided in four stanzas and consists of the first two quatrains followed by the two tercets. The first quatrain creates an expectation (“A sudden blow” – line 1) and presents the first contact between Leda and the swan (“her thighs caressed” – line 2), Leda’s state of mind (“staggering girl” – line 2), as well as the dominant way the swan conducts the scene (“her nape caught in his bill” – line 3). The second quatrain reflects the gradual increase of the dramatic tension between them (“How can those terrified vague fingers push” – line 5) and exposes the sexual intercourse itself (“The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?” – line 6). The parallelistic construction based on the repetition of the interrogative structure “How can... ?” in the second quatrain calls the readers’ attention and connects them to this dramatic tension, causing an efficient sense of involvement. The first tercet depicts the ecstatic climax of the poem through the ejaculation scene (“A shudder in the loins” – line 9) and also its consequences (allusion to the Trojan War and Agamemnon’s death). Finally in the second tercet, like after any conceived intercourse, there is a time for meditation. The narrator ponders whether Leda is aware of the consequences of the rape or not (“Did she put on his knowledge with his power / Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” – lines 13 and 14).
The words chosen by Yeats also help to establish this gradual intensification of excitement along the lines. The present tense predominates in the two quartets while participles and the past tense prevail in the two tercets. The present tense implies an immediate approach and contact between Leda and the swan in the two quartets (beating, holds, push, feel), the use of participles in the first tercet insinuates the decrease in excitement after the climax (broken, dead, caught up) and the past tense in the last tercet indicates the ending of the event (mastered, did she put on, could). The selection of adjectives also reinforces this idea of progressive tension. The adjectives in the first quartet set the beginning of the commotion (sudden, great, staggering, helpless), the adjectives in the second quartet reproduce the growing tense atmosphere (terrified, vague, loosening, strange), and the adjective “indifferent” in the last tercet discloses the post-climax vagueness.
Yeats used many stylistic resources and technical devices in “Leda and the Swan” to convey the anxiety of the dramatic event portrayed in the poem. Among these devices are some figurative language, such as synecdoche to refer to both the swan (“great wings” – line 1; “dark webs” – line 3; “white rush” – line 7; “the strange heart” – line 8; “indifferent beak” – line 14) and Leda (“terrified vague fingers” – line 5; “loosening thighs” – line 6), metonymy to indicate the swan (“the feathered glory” – line 6; “the brute blood” – line 12), personification (“he holds her helpless breast” – line 4), and synaesthesia/imagery (sense of touching: “thighs caressed”, “He holds her helpless breast”; sense of feeling: “terrified vague fingers push”, “feel the strange heart beating”). These figures of speech in “Leda and the Swan” constitute a formal diction and elevate its poetic form.
Factors that enhance the musicality and the sonorous effect are also present in the poem, such as rhythm and rhymes. “Leda and the Swan” has a rhythmic regular pattern as it was written in iambic pentameter (“A su/dden blow:/ the great / wings bea/ting still”). The iambic metric could have been chosen by Yeats as a way to reproduce the breathing rhythm or the body movements during the copulation. The poem has masculine rhymes and the rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFG EFG, mixing perfect and imperfect rhymes (push – rush, up – drop). This musical effect of the poem acts like a powerful agent of expressiveness and commotion.
Another technical device that helps to make expression more striking and effective in this poem is the figurative language. There are some figures of speech in the poem, such as assonance (“wings beating still” – line 1; “staggering girl, her thighs caressed” – line 2; “caught in his bill” – line 3; “But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” – line 8; Did she put on his knowledge with his power” – line 13; Before the indifferent beak” – line 14), consonance (“By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill” – line 3; “He holds her helpless breast upon his breast” – line 4; “loins, engenders” – line 9; “And Agamemnon dead ), and alliteration (“He holds her helpless breast upon his breast” – line 4; “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still” – line 1; “The broken wall, the burning roof” – line 10; “So mastered by the brute blood of the air” – line 12; “Before the indifferent beak” – line 14 brute blood). This repetition of the vowel “i”, the plosive consonant “b” and the fricative/sibilant consonant “s” throughout the poem, in association with other stylistic resources mentioned above, reinforce the intensity as well as the sonority of “Leda and the Swan”.
Although “Leda and the Swan” chronologically belongs to Modernism, which praised imagination, originality and freedom of creation, this poem has elements and characteristics from different periods, such as emotionality from Romanticism as well as supernaturalism and musicality from Symbolism. Furthermore, in spite of following the modern writing style with free and blank verses, Yeats wrote the poem in a traditional form (sonnet), using a traditional metric and rhyme scheme. Yet Yeats still innovates when he depicts an extremely non-traditional subject (inflamed rape) opposed to the usual sonnets about gracious and platonic love. This proves that a genius can leave his mark in literary history without belonging or following any tendency, but building up his personal poetic style to express his own intrinsic sentiments.
Therefore, William Butler Yeats mastered the skills of portraying, in a magnificent and splendid way, the stunning impact and tension of a myth without restricting his poem to describe the typical banal traces of a disgusting sexual abuse episode. Although dealing with a radically repugnant topic (the rape), Yeats achieves such a high level of poeticity, which raises the poem to a canonical stage, focusing more on the beautiful use of language and musicality, on the mythological allusions and on the process of elaborately approaching a shocking event instead of merely narrating an atrocious scandal.
“Leda and the Swan” is a dense, allusive poem that belongs to the artful, canonical part of poetic history. Despite its controversial theme, its dramatic, beautiful forms of expression surprisingly and efficiently impress, affect and dazzle the readers, evincing Yeat’s talent as a major poet.
Bibliography:
- 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.
- MACNEICE, Louis. “The Poetry of W. B. Yeats”. Faber and Faber, 1967.
- STOCK, A. G. “W. B. Yeats – His Poetry and Thought”. Cambridge University Press, 1964.
- UNTERECKER, John. “A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats”. Thames and Hudson, 1973.
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