tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16659850.post5655365608522983755..comments2024-03-17T03:42:21.277-05:00Comments on LEARNING CURVE ON THE ECLIPTIC: Arty Farty Friday ~ Wm. Butler Yeats ~ The Second ComingTwilighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14138621610593773784noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16659850.post-70334176291021243082014-06-14T18:31:47.719-05:002014-06-14T18:31:47.719-05:00ex-Chomp ~ Yes - food for thought. :-)
(for some...ex-Chomp ~ Yes - food for thought. :-)<br /><br />(for some reason spam ate your comment - now rescued.)Twilighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14138621610593773784noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16659850.post-81102477799285574822014-06-14T06:58:50.097-05:002014-06-14T06:58:50.097-05:00Really interesting and fascinating, full of mystic...Really interesting and fascinating, full of mysticism indeed. <br />ex-Chompnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16659850.post-5568351720550343182014-06-13T20:24:31.997-05:002014-06-13T20:24:31.997-05:00mike ~ Yes, bearing all that in mind, he must have...mike ~ Yes, bearing all that in mind, he must have had all manner of emotions churning in him at around the time he wrote this poem. The poem is something like a dream, I guess, where one's hidden anxieties, fears, hopes are portrayed in strange ways.<br /><br />I thought of words from the poem "widening gyre" "the centre cannot hold" as we were listening to NPR in the car yesterday and someone talking about political opinion in the USA said that the the extremes of left and right seem to be getting further and further apart these days...<br /><br />Twilighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14138621610593773784noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16659850.post-42625011653861847712014-06-13T09:10:21.604-05:002014-06-13T09:10:21.604-05:00Yeats was a brilliant poet and artist, but like mo...Yeats was a brilliant poet and artist, but like most, had an emotionally painful life...perhaps a prerequisite for creativity.<br /><br />It's understandable that Yeats would envision apocalypse associated with that period and how a new day must be near. That might be the exact purpose of his verse, if we could know from him directly.<br /><br />He was well-versed in mysticism, so I'm inclined to believe that his intent was to express entrainment of perpetual destiny, while we anticipate a savior or future grace out of our self-enslavement.<br /><br />Another possibility is his relationship with Maud Gonne. In all to many ways, "Second Coming" could be a metaphor for this tumultuous, emotional bondage he had with this woman. He proposed to her four times over ten years, then proposed a fifth time in 1916. As I stated in my previous paragraph, he had a self-enslavement with this woman who constantly rebuked him, and I think he anticipated a future with her, which only deteriorated further over time.<br /><br />"His final proposal to Maud Gonne took place in mid-1916. Gonne's history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride made her a potentially unsuitable wife and biographer R.F. Foster has observed that Yeats's last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her.<br /><br />Yeats proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down. According to Foster 'when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter.' Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. A few months after the poet's approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.<br /><br />That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends: 'George ... you can't. He must be dead'—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October."<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeatsmikenoreply@blogger.com