Beyond the Verse - 'The Second Coming': Yeats and the Apocalypse

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In this week’s episode of "Beyond the Verse", brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Joe and Maiya take a deep dive into William Butler Yeats’ apocalyptic poem 'The Second Coming'. They explore Yeats’ use of biblical allusions, the recurring themes of societal collapse, and his cyclical view of history, which reflects the chaos and uncertainty of the post-World War I era.Join the discussion as Joe and Maiya dissect Yeats’ background, his views on revolution and change, and how The Second Coming captures a world on the brink of a new, ominous era. They explore the poem’s opening lines, the metaphor of the falcon and the falconer, and the chilling imagery of the “rough beast” slouching towards Bethlehem.Get exclusive PDFs on 'The Second Coming' available to Poetry+ users:Full PDF GuidePoetry Snapshot PDFPoem Printable PDFwith Rhyme Schemewith Meter Syllableswith both Rhyme and MeterSome other useful PDFs as part of Poetry+:William Butler Yeats PDF GuideFirst World War Poets PDF GuideIrish Literary Revival PDF GuideFor more in-depth analysis of Yeats and his works, visit PoemAnalysis.com, where you can access a wide range of analyzed poems and resources in our extensive PDF Learning Library.Tune in and Discover:Yeats’ apocalyptic vision in 'The Second Coming'The biblical and classical allusions in the poemHow Yeats’ personal life and the political landscape shaped his workThe unsettling relevance of 'The Second Coming'  in today’s worldSend us a textSupport the showAs always, for the ultimate poetry experience, join Poetry+ and explore all things poetry at PoemAnalysis.com.

Turning and turning in the widening jire, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by Poemanalysis.com and Poetry Plus. Now, today we're talking about the poem, The Second Coming, by William Butler Yates, otherwise known as W.B. Yates. Now, we're going to be covering some really interesting talking points today. We'll look at the biblical allusions in the poem. We'll look at societal collapse and the sense of apocalypse that Yates creates, as well as the cycles of history. So, Joe, can you tell us a little bit about Yates's background as a poet? So William Butler Yeats was born in the outskirts of Dublin in 1865, and for listeners who aren't to wear, Ireland was under British rule in this period. Now, Yates' family is of Anglo-Irish descent, and he was Protestant, a Protestant minority in Ireland at the time. And by the time that this poem is written in 1990 and published in 1920, Yates had established himself as Ireland's premier writer. He was a huge figure in the Irish literary revival, which sought to promote themes and ideas that were Ireland.

Irish as distinct from British. And just three or four years after this poem, he went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature. And I mean, his legacy since speaks for itself. He is among the premier poet of all time. But certainly with regard to the 20th century, he is often held up as being one of the greatest poets of that century. Now, I think to zoom in on the moment at which this poem was written, I think is vital if we're to understand the poem itself. So obviously Maya and I are speaking just over 100 years after this poem was written. And 1919 is really significant for a few reasons. Firstly, it marks the end of the First World War. So the most brutal conflict that mankind had ever experienced had to just finished. 1919 also marks the beginning of the

Irish War of Independence. So within a couple of years of this poem being written, Ireland had achieved independence and the Irish Free State was founded and Yates went on to serve as a senator in the Irish Free State. It's also the year of the Spanish influenza, this disease that swept through the world. And just for a sense of scale here, just after the First World War, which had already claimed the lives of millions of people, one percent of the global population was wiped out by the Spanish influenza. Now, as a comparison point, and obviously these things are not just measured in numbers, but the numbers can be an interesting way of illustrating these things. COVID, I believe, wiped out less than a tenth of that, less than 0.1% to the global

population. So imagine something 10 times deadlier and off the back of the First World War. So this is a period of immense soul searching. I mean, all of the rules that people thought had governed the world they were living in had been torn up. And many of our listeners will be listening to this after last week's episode on Richard Kipling's poem, If. And I think Kipling and Yates are actually born in the same year, 1865. And Yates' poem could not be more different to Kipling's in so far as the sense of complacency, the sense of entitlement, the sense of confidence in the world that is evoked in if is completely gone here. This poem is a poem is a poem. of absolute uncertainty. But Maya, I mean, let's just dive straight into the poem. I read those

first four lines earlier on. Where would you like to look at? I mean, let's look at that first, first line. And thank you so much for your reading at the start. I think this poem really illustrates from the first moment at which you launch into it, how absolutely devastatingly impactful the context of history has been on the creation of this work. Yates opens this poem with not one, not two, but three references in one line, turning, turning and gai, about this fundamental sense of change. And I'd really like to dive in and explore that specific first line because I think it really sets the scene for a poem that I personally find so incredibly impactful, but one that sets a very, very different tone to other poems that were being

produced at the time. Obviously, this poem at its core is apocalyptic. And this first line couldn't do a better job of setting the scenes. So what do you think about it? Well, I think you're absolutely right. And I think what that first line does is it establishes one of the key themes that are going to run through this poem, but also run through Yates' career more broadly. He had a very specific view of history, which we're going to go on to talk about just a moment, but that sense of revolution.

And I don't just mean revolution in terms of armed uprising, which of course is in itself an allusion to the Irish War of Independence. But I mean revolution as in the sense of the movement of a wheel, the idea of something that monotonously and unstoppably moves forward. And that's a really important way of understanding what Yates is trying to do in this poem. That word, Jaya, at the end of the first line, is a really important word because it's going to come up a lot in a book that Yate went on to write called A Vision, which I believe was published in 1925, where he basically laid out his view of the way that history has worked. And he sees history very differently to perhaps the way that modern listeners might conceive of it. We tend to think of history as being the story of incremental gain.

whether that's with regard to medicine, technology, with regard to women's rights, with regard to racial equality. Yates sees history as something that hivots on one or two or three big moments. He talks about the Trojan War, that semi-mythical event. And any listeners who are interested can go and check out our episode on Sappho's, the Anactoria Purim, where we talk more about the Trojan War. But he identifies the Trojan War as being one such moment in history. He also talks about the birth of Christ some 2,000 years prior to his lifetime as being one of those moments in which history turns. And that's why I really stressed the context a few minutes ago, because if you were living in 1990, especially in Ireland, let's say, the context of the First World War, the Spanish

influenza, the War of Independence, you could see why people were beginning to think this is one of those moments on which history pivots. And I think, as you said, Meyer, that evocation of cycles, of turning, of revolution in the first line really establishes that. And it's not just the establishment of this wheel, really, that's being created, this constant sense of turning. But let's laser focus in on that word, widening. This is written in the wake of some of these horrendously world-shattering events. And yet the poem is looking to the future and almost suggesting that it's only going to get worse. The widening of this space is allowing for more room, for more devastation.

and that sits so heavily in this poem as something that really spirals out of control. And I definitely find that the voice in this poem as strong as it is, you really feel that uncertainty and that lack of control as we move through. And to move on to the second line, really, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Now, I have things I want to say about this line because it's so, so rich in context. So, one, the falcon is a bird of prey. And generally, in the relationship between the falcon and the falconer, you're looking at a human animal relationship in which the power and the duty and the sense of control very much sits with the human. This line completely blows that out the water.

It says the falcon cannot hear the falconer. There is a total loss and lack of control here. And it adds to that sense of worsening because not only is the human in this poem in the second line, able to control something they have for so long been able to have dominion over. It's almost another world. The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer. It's not that they're choosing to disobey. It's that something so incredibly large is looming that the senses have been completely destroyed. I love that and I just want to add to that even further because I mentioned earlier on the comparison point and because it's fresh in our mind having done

that episode last week on If, that confident voice that Kipling has, that sense that he understands the world he'd living in, I think, really sounds in opposition to a line like this, because as you said, we as a species, we take for granted the idea that we are the masters of nature, that we are in control of our own destinies. And the thing I think I'm really reminded in this line is that the falconer takes its title from the animal. And actually, it's not an expression of dominion over nature. It's a reminder of how actually we only define ourselves in opposition to nature. And we are not the masters. I mean, again, in the context of the Spanish, flu. This is a natural occurrence beyond our ability to control and that sense of apprehension

at what happens when the world changes and we can't keep up with that change. I think is a really strong point that Yates makes early in this poem. An opposition is definitely something that threads through this poem, but if you compare those two lines, you're also looking at a contrast of action and actioner. The person who enacts the action is actually set towards the latter half of the line. When you open, turning is the action. It's happening without someone controlling that, without someone setting that into motion. The falcon is placed far closer to the reader than the falcon it is. There is a sense of distance that is played upon almost instantly in the poem. Okay, moving forward to line three and so simple, but it might be my favorite line

in the whole poem and it's that line, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. And the simplicity of those first three words I find so affecting because it speaks to something we all know. It speaks to the impermanence of our civilization, of our own mortal lives. We like to kid ourselves that we will never grow old and that the things we build will never fall down and every civilization has told themselves this for thousands of years. Now, listeners might recognize those first three words because those firstly words went on to be the title of Chimara Chebe's novel, Things Full Apart, which in my view is one of the finest novels ever written. And I think what a Chebe takes on this poem is that sense of the inevitability of decline. And in a Chebe's context, Chebe was a Nigeria novelist,

and that novel is all about the collapse of traditional life in Africa after the arrival of colonial figures. And again, what it speaks to is that sense of apprehension we all have, that the things we hold dear are fleeting and ephemeral and temporary. And just on that second half of the line, the centre kind of hold, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, given that Yates is placing this poem at the dividing line between two eras in a way, I think he's very much portraying this moment in 1919 as one of those inflection points, one of those gyres that I mentioned earlier on,

we can almost view that literally, if we think about one era and another and there was a bridge between them, That notion of the centre cannot hold, it's almost as if the point between those two eras is going to collapse as though a bridge between two ridges were about to collapse. And the thing I love about that is there is no going back. And that's one of the things I think is really important here. Yates identifying this as a moment of change, but a moment of permanent change. I'd love to get your thoughts on that. Absolutely. We can't forget the context here that Yates is writing in conversation with these events that directly preceded. publication of this poem. World War I, the Spanish influenza, I think, are great examples to

use when you're talking about this poem because they have such a huge impact on human confidence in their ability to continue life in the same way that it was before. The center that Yates refers to here, I personally have always read as if this was the shaken core of the Western world in a way. I think from where Yates is writing, when the West went to war and suffered, you know, immense casualty and had been so used to being a colonial powerhouse, really, to suffer at such, such extremes. That, I think, is what Yates is referring to there with the centre being what the West considered to be the centre of that world at that time, which was themselves. I don't know how you feel about it. I think that's a fascinating reading, and I hadn't really thought about it, but you're absolutely right. I mean, obviously, Yates has a slightly complicated relationship with the notion of empire being an Irish poet rather than an English poet. But if we view the First World War as calamity that took place in Europe, given Europe's dominance alongside the United States in this period of time, it perhaps would be more understandable if things were being wounded at their extremities, right, in the British Empire or, you know, the colonies that other countries continue to have. but the fact that the First World War and the Spanish Influenza had taken hold on the continent of Europe,

I think you're absolutely right. I think it speaks to that sense that these dominant powers could be harmed and were vulnerable at their core. So I love that comparison you've made between the centre and that sense of these countries and these people being shaken to their very core. Because, of course, you know, if you were somebody who was invested in the idea of colonial rule or empire, you might be able to account for things happening somewhere far away from Europe. and you might be able to acknowledge those things without them shaking your core belief that Europe was the centre of the world.

The fact that it was Europeans, not exclusively, of course, but largely who were dying in the war and of the Spanish influenza, is a reminder of the fact that this worldview that perhaps Kipling and other poets prior to the First World War held had been permanently changed. I think what's particularly interesting even about what you were saying just now is that there is an image that's evoked of there being a centre and spokes that come out. I really truly have the image every time I read this poem of the creation of a wheel, you know, the turning and turning, the centre cannot hold. I think the West, or at least Yeats has conception of it in this poem,

is that the West is the centre of that wheel and the spokes that go out relate to the rest of the world as a whole. If one of those breaks, then there is. it's a pressure put on, but it's not just one of those spokes breaking. It's the whole wheel changing shape, changing dimension, shattering to pieces. There is an absolute sense of the apocalypse just occurring right in front of his eyes. Even with the lines that follow these first four, I certainly feel like the speaker is staring into the abyss. Truly, there is a sense of relentless pressure and almost a tunnel vision, really.

Definitely, and I'm really glad you mentioned that word apocalypse, because it's a word we're going to return to again and again as this episode goes on. I think the lines that follow this one, we get that first hint at the kind of biblical apocalypse that Yates is alluding to in the title, the second coming, which again we're going to talk about later on. The mention of water, it's the listeners who don't have the poem in front of them, we get a mention of the blood dimmed tide is loosed, and the following line reads, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. I don't think we can engage with a poem that is talking about apocalypse and a poem that is talking about drowning and tides without going to Noah and Noah's Ark, which again, if you subscribe to Yates's view of history, could be one of those moments at which history pivots, the idea that God sends the flood to kind of cleanse the earth.

What I think is really interesting about this is it can be read in several ways. Obviously, the ceremony of innocence that is drowned, I think it's hard to read that without thinking about the context of the First World War and the Spanish influenza, I've already mentioned. Largely speaking, we agree that looking back, the vast, vast, vast majority of people who died in those events were innocent people, people who were just trying to go about their lives and were killed for no reason. Again, that stands in opposition to Noah's flood. The story of Noah in theory is God sends a flood because mankind has become wicked and greedy and selfish. So again, we have this

sense of, is this a post-biblical flood? Is this the kind of cleansing, but without the moral figure to decide who gets cleansed. And I think that also evoked in the blood-dimmed tides, because if we think of the way we conceive of water in a poetic sense, we often think of it as something it cleanses, something that washes away the pain and the misery, or the sin, of course. In this poem, the tides that come are dimmed with blood, there is no sense of clency. You cannot be cleaned by water that is unclean. And we're going to talk about this later on, but this, to my mind, is Yates, subverting the idea of divine intervention. He is saying, yes, this is an inflection point, but this is not God coming to protect

humanity or save them or cleanse them. This is something different and altogether more sinister. Slightly in contrast to that, Joe, and I'd actually love to hear how you think this would interplay, but Yates evokes Egypt in a lot of ways in this poem. Every time I read that line about the blood dim tide, I cannot help but think, I think it came from Exodus when Moses turns the river. vinyl red with blood. And that to me, where in Exodus it serves as a warning. But in this poem, the warning is too late. I'd be so interested to know whether you think, and this is potentially

how I interpret this poem, is that Yates is manifesting these biblical allusions in a way that doesn't signal that savior complex or that there might be a way out. He signals them at a point that it's far too late to ever recover from. I think that's a fabulous point, and I think there's no coincidence of both the stories in the Bible we just mentioned from the Old Testament. And we're going to talk a little bit more

in the second half of the poem about when Yate draws upon New Testament stories. But the theme that runs all the way through is that you're absolutely right. We get the horror of these biblical stories. We get the misery. We get the suffering. We don't get the salvation. And that's the bit that's really troubling.

Of course, whether or not you're thinking about the story of Moses or the story of Noah. In both those stories, the righteous, the innocent, are saved. They are spared the worst. Moses managed to lead the oppressed out of Egypt. Noah and his family and the animals survive. There is no sense of that in these lines. In these lines, these disasters are completely indiscriminate. Innocent, bad, good, young, old, people in this poem suffer the consequences of those biblical illusions. And let's not forget that these two characters, Noah, Moses, that have these huge, huge stories within the Bible were both positioned at various points in the

water. Obviously, there is the very famous story of Moses being sailed down the river as a child in a basket. You have Noah's Ark. The depiction that Yates is offering here is what if both of those stories ended in the drowning? What if there was no futurity for these two characters? And also, So what does that then say about the future that we have in front of us? What is the future that he is beholding? I completely agree. And we're going to talk about this more in the second half of the podcast about the way in which Yates conflates the figure of the divine saviour with the figure of titanic damnation.

And I think it's a fascinating way that Yates portrays this moment in time as being a time of biblical intervention without biblical salvation. And it's that contrast, I think, with those biblical stories. that gives the poem its edge and its enduring power to shock. I mean, it's an absolutely awe-inspiring read. And I don't use those words lightly. You almost feel like you're reading something biblical in some of the descriptions. I mean, it's so affecting.

Absolutely. That first stanza is one that every time I read it has the same impact. It shakes me to my core, never mind someone who is actively considering what is effectively the demise of humanity, the huge monumental change that is about to fall upon Yates's consideration of a generation, of an era. Yeah, I don't think we can stress enough the importance of that moment in time. And it's very easy to look back 100 years later and say, well, civilization didn't end. But that's hardly consolation to the people who were living in it.

Yates' wife was actually pregnant at the time Yates was writing this poem and pregnant women who caught Spanish influenza 70% mortality. and she caught Spanish influenza and she was recovering. But Yates was looking at this on an individual level with regard to his wife and on a societal level with regard to the war and the influenza and War of Independence we've mentioned. And nobody could tell him he was wrong if he concluded that the world was collapsing. So speaking of that collapse, I think it is high time we move to the first and second

lines of that second stanza. Surely some revelation is at hand. surely the second coming is at hand. That repetition is one that's always struck me is incredibly important as in many ways the lines echo each other. I think they serve very different purposes. Revelation and the second coming

are almost put at odds with one another when in theory they should be relating to the same thing. I think you're absolutely right and I mean this is Yate at his very, very best and perhaps we should have started with this. The title of the poem, The Second Coming, is an allusion to the second coming of Christ. Now, many listeners who are familiar with the Bible might think, well, didn't Christ already come a second time when he was resurrected? Yes, but that's not what's being referred to here. The second coming of Christ is a very, very contested thing amongst biblical scholars, basically this idea that Christ will one day come back. And it is tied to this notion of apocalypse. Now, the reason this is significant with regard to that word revelation is because the book of revelations in the Bible is where these things play out, effectively. It's the final book of the New Testament. And it looks

forward into the future. Now, effectively, the Book of Revelation begins with the collapse of civilization, the apocalypse, the rise of the devil and his armies and the appearance of the beast. We'll talk more about the beast later on in this poem. These forces are then defeated by the Second Coming of Christ, who leads the armies of heaven down to earth, defeats Satan casts him out for a thousand years and resurrects the saints. And it's ultimately a happy ending. But I really agree with you, Myro, about the relationship between those two line, because on the one hand, they seem to flow from one to the other very naturally. Just like in the Bible, you have revelation, you have the apocalypse, and then you have the arrival of Christ.

Now, the thing I find interesting here is two things. First of all, the lack of capitalization of revelation and the word some. There is some revelation. Doesn't mean it's the revelation. That stands in contrast to the capitalization of second coming, which again implies that that is the official second coming. And what is the relationship between the unofficial revelation and the official coming of Christ, if indeed that's what Yates is referring to. There's a bit of a disconnect there. And the second thing I find in singing is that word, surely. Because again, I think that is a nod and a hint to misunderstood biblical scholars at the less generous end, false prophets who have claims to know when Christ is coming back over the centuries. But it's also

an expression of longing. If all these bad things are happening as they were in the context in which Yates wrote the poem, surely Christ must be next. And there's that real sense of desperation with the repetition of that word. And it's followed critically by an almost immediate dismissal of that second coming. The moment at which Yates proclaims or the speaker proclaims, the second coming, exclamation mark. There are then seven consecutive lines with no punctuation completely enjombed that discuss the troubles that plague the mind of the speaker. All of the worries, all of the concerns.

this really dark image starts to loom over the poem, and not just the poem, but also this hope for the second coming. I think that repetition is incredibly important. Surely the second coming is at hand. The second coming. Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundy troubles my sight. There is an absolute dismissal and a real refusal, actually, to fall in step with those who do believe the second coming is due or present.

or hoping for it at least, because the speaker has been so disenchanted with all of the horrible things that they've experienced that the moment they are offered a moment of solace or a moment of peace, their mind becomes incredibly troubled. Lots more to discuss after the break. Now, regular listeners to Beyond the Verse will know that I love what I call the rabbit hole experience, that ability to find a poem or a poet and then go. go fully in depth, working out everything about them and all their inspirations and their influences. Well, if any of our listeners are enjoying this podcast episode about WB8's The Second Coming, they can subscribe to Poetry Plus at Permanalysis.com. They can read the PDF on WB8, but not just that. If that doesn't satisfy their curiosity, they can then go and read a PDF on the Irish literary revival that was a huge part of Yates' career. They can go and

read about the different forms that he engaged with. They can go and read about modernism that he influenced. That rabbit hole experience is available to poetry plus subscribers in our PDF learning library. So Joe, obviously before the break, we were discussing the troubling visions that plague deates in this poem. Now, I'd really love to hear your thoughts on the spirit of the desert that's evoked in these visions. Thanks, Maya. The first place to start, I think, is the contrast, right? And the first answer, we had water, we had far too much water, water that was enough to drown thousands of people, it seems. And now we have a desert. And that contrast between drowning and

being in a plate without water completely is again, I think an apocalyptic image, the idea that there is no balance. This world that we live in is a world of extremes. You're either drowning or you're dying of heat stroke. But I think more than that with the evocation of the desert, we have to go back to one of Yates' key poetic influences, which is Percy Shelley. Now, about a hundred years before Yates is writing this poem, Percy Shelley is writing some of his finest works, including, of course, the poem, Ossimandias, which I'm sure you and I are going to cover in an episode eventually, because it's a very, very famous poem, and that poem is really a vote strongly here. And for listeners who want to do a quick explainer, Ozimandias is a poem that

is all about this collapsed statue of an Egyptian pharaoh than is found in the desert by a traveller thousands of years after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire. Now, when we're talking about societal collapse and we get an evocation of a poem 100 years earlier that is itself concerned with a society that has collapsed in a desert, we can't ignore that correlation. But what do you take from that? I think Ozymandias is a great poem to bring up in relation to this. Definitely a poem that we will have to cover in the very near future, I hope. But I think the desert in itself is something that is worth talking about. Obviously, there are huge biblical illusions that come with that, the 40 days and 40 nights that Jesus spent in the desert and the battle with the devil

that occurred. The desert in this poem becomes a setting for the beastly, for the demonic, for the darker side of this apocalypse that we've been talking about throughout this poem. And now one of the things that really strikes me is the use of the statue. Obviously, in Ozymandias, you have this statue that's crumbling and very directly relating itself to the fall of civilization. Here we have a very active and very structured beast. Yates describes in perfect detail how it moves what it looks like, the slow and laboring steps that it takes. That to me is so much more terrifying than stumbling across something that is already decaying. this poem is angry, I want to say.

I mean, Joe, how do you feel about the creation of the beast in the desert here? Well, I think it's really important to mention that we know what beast this is. And it stands in contrast to the beast of Revelation, which is this kind of strange, almost otherworldly figure. This is a statue of the Sphinx. And, of course, anybody who was either visited Egypt or seen pictures of the Pyramids of Giza will know that the Sphinx is a statue that stands alongside those things. Now, this is a fascinating symbol. and this is a real rabbit hole moment, because let me do a deep dive on the significance of that creature. So the Sphinx is a creature from Greek and Egyptian myth, which has the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a human, features very prominently in stories around Oedipus as a kind of trickster figure, a figure that tells riddles and people can't solve their riddles, they eat them, basically.

That's the image of the Sphinx. Now, gradually, like a lot of these classical images and classical creatures, the creature takes on different significance as time goes on. One of the things the Sphinx represents in ancient Greece is an ancient Egypt as well, is the figure of the guardian. So that's why, for example, the Sphinx was built, they think next to the pyramids, the idea that it would sort of guard the tombs of pharaohs. Now, having that figure, the figure of a guardian in the desert, in a poem that is about societal collapse, about the inflection point between one civilization and another, raises fascinating questions. The first one, of course, being, what is this thing protecting? There's nothing there. There is nothing left. You are protecting nothing more than the memory of a civilization that has been and gone. Now, that would be enough in it itself for Yates to include the Sphinx as an image. But my goodness, the Sinks has an afterlife like few creatures ever. By the time of the 19th century, so just a little bit before Yates was really of age, the Sphinx had become to mean several different things. Now, there is a slightly misogynistic reading here, which is that the Sinks is often cast as female. And for certain poets in the decadent, movement of the 19th century, the Sphinx had become associated with this kind of femme

fatal figure, this lustful presence that is the reason that, you know, quote unquote, good men make bad decisions. They are lured into doing bad things for that readership. The Sphinx becomes this kind of symbol of societal excess and therefore societal decline. You know, the evocation of Oscar Wilde's poem, The Sphinx, for example, in which that figure represents the kind of tantalizing, luring presence that draws individual men, but also societies, more broadly, into their own decline. And to have that figure in this poem is absolutely fascinating to me. One of the things I'd really like to touch on in what you just said is that sense of being

lured or being drawn into something. Now, I've always felt that the speaker in this poem begins, obviously, in the blood dim tide, the innocence drowned. You have this real sense of location where there is an abundance of water. Now, when this vision troubles him, somewhere in the sands of the desert, there is, again, this sense of distance and this sense of separation. However, it feels as if it's encroaching on the speaker or feels as if it's encroaching on that society. Now, that's what I personally find the most threatening thing in this poem is that this sphinx figure is not just approaching a society that is doomed, at least, for Yates to collapse, but... almost walking towards something that Yates holds dear, which is the speaker's sense of self and the

speaker's outlook on life. They're not just devastating cities, societies, but very much plaguing in the biblical sense, plaguing the speaker with these doomed visions and these looming feelings of absolute disrepair. I think one of the things that this poem does is it kind of place tricks on you. In a similar way to why I mentioned earlier on, you brought it up, the relationship between surely some revelation is at hand and surely the second coming is at hand. Yates leads you along the path of thinking you know what's coming, Revelation, the apocalypse, the second coming of Christ.

But those words surely, the lack of capitalisation instilled doubt into those reading. So I've just given a long explanation about, oh, what the Sinks represents and the femme fatale figure. In this poem, the Sphinx has the head of a man, not a woman. And so again, Yates is almost tempting the reader to think they know what's going on and then removing the certainty from under them. And Yates is incredibly careful in this poem,

and I think it absolutely speaks to his level of craftsmanship, really. In that every time a small bit of hope might be introduced in the poem, he's very careful to undercut it again. Obviously, the Sphinx in this poem is described with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. And the sun, in many ways, is a very hopeful motif. It's used consistently to provide light in a very literal sense. It warms. It provides growth.

But Yates makes absolute certain that any reader will understand that this is a fleeting moment. The darkness drops again. And I really enjoy, in many ways, as horribly depressing as this poem is in its content. I love the way that this poem is just relentlessly pushing towards this darkness and ensuring that the reader is very much trapped within that world. and it makes it very hard to escape from. I don't know if you read it in the same way. No, I definitely agree.

And I think one of the ways in which Yates traps the reader in this poem is by offering them the glimpse of escape, the glimpse of salvation. And as we've said, the salvation, spoiler alert for the listeners, never really arrives. And again, that's going back to the second coming of this, the hope the salvation is always deferred. I'd like to get your thoughts on something just a little bit later in the poem,

if I could jump ahead slightly, which is that the real shadows of the indignant desert birds. So again, we have that mention of the desert again. And we don't get the species of bird here, but again, the thing that comes to my mind is that image of the vulture figure, the scavenger bird. And again, in a poem that's about an inflection point in Yates' mind between one civilization in the past, a point of no return,

the idea of a scavenger, for my mind, really speaks to that willingness that we have, that innate desire we have to pick the carcass of whatever came before, us, whether that artistically, whether that's in terms of learning lessons from the past, we have this obsession with picking the bones clean of history. It's an incredibly loaded point. I think, again, very important to note this is not the first bird we've seen. We have the falcon.

We have the bird of prey. We have this image of the vulture that is brought about, at least by Yates' description of this desert bird that is circling the shadows. It always brings to my mind something that I think is partially intentional in the poem at least, is that, obviously, we've spoken about the biblical allusions in the poem, but we've also touched on the classical illusions. And the ancient Greek harpy is an image that I'd really, really like to explore throughout this poem. Now, in ancient Greek mythology, harpies are half human, half bird hybrids. Obviously, this plays into the beast element as well.

We're already looking at something that is a sort of creature, human hybrid and not quite tangible by the human condition, let's say. And they are associated with horror and terror and storms and have this really unsettling nature. They hunt and stalk men that arrive in the locations that they live in. It's a really fascinating that, obviously, as you say, the sphinx in this, is described as male. However, you have this interplay of birds who I think could be construed as female. And in that sense, you're not looking at a poem that is truly gendered. It's looking at humanity as a whole.

You're looking at this really dense mythology that pushes the boundaries of what it is to be human and what it is to exist in a world that is on the brink of collapse. I know that there are many more classical illusions we could talk about. But let's not move away from birds too quickly. I know you had a point that you wanted to bring up, so please do tell us a little bit more. Well, as you said, this is one of the things that really sets Yates apart, the ability to blend different mythologies, blend different literary, historical and mythical traditions together. So you've just been talking about the classical illusion of Parpe. I'm going to

bring it back to the Bible with the story of Noah again. So we mentioned earlier on how the flood in the Bible is a cleansing flood. It is sent by God to reward the innocent and to punish the evil. At the end of that story, of course, when Noah is on the ark safely, he sends out birds to come back to the boat so they can work out when the waters have fallen to a level where they can then get off the ark. The bird that comes back with a branch in its claws is a dove. Now the significance of that bird being the one to bring the branch back to Noah, that symbolism of hope and peace and the promise of new life that comes with it could not be further away from the birds that we get here. The idea that host flood in this desert landscape,

the bird that we get as a vulture, which is an animal associated with the death of something else, Obviously, vultures are best known as being scavengers of things that are already dead. So there is no salvation. There is no moment beyond the apocalypse in this poem. We only get the horror. We don't get the divine intervention. You know, my second rabbit hole experience of our preparation was looking at the figure of Prometheus. Now, this might seem like an odd link, but let me explain how we got there.

So the first stanza of this poem is often associated with Percy Shelley's drama, Prometheus, Unbound. For listeners who aren't to wear, the figure of Prometheus is a character of Greek mythology who was punished by Zeus for basically giving fire to humanity. And again, in this Yatesian view of the past, we can almost view that mythical moment as one of these inflection points, the moment that man discovered fire and its ability to transform their lives. That fire is not just literal. It's not just something it gives mankind the ability to cook and forge metal and all those things. That fire also represents divine spark, divine inspiration. In many ways, the act of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind

is the moment in which mankind was set out on a journey that would lead them to no longer need gods. Now, why is that significant for this poem? Well, Prometheus occupies a really strange position in Shelley's poem, which, as I said, is evoked by Yates in the first stanza of this. Prometheus, on the one hand, is a devil figure. If we think of what Satan represents in the Bible, Satan is a rebel against God, just like Prometheus is a rebel against Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. however he's also a saviour he's also a kind of jesus christ figure the one who brings something to humanity in the case of prometheus it's fire in the case of jesus christ it's divine salvation and they suffer the consequences and they can bear those consequences because of their love for humanity so what prometheus

represents in this poem is this interesting composite between a devil figure and a salvation figure like jesus christ of course there are other allusions to prometheus i mean it's not just percy shelley but percy shelley's wife Mary, who readers will know, wrote the novel Frankenstein, the subtitle of Frankenstein being the modern Prometheus. This evocation of the classical figure who occupies this middle ground between, on the one hand resembling the devil and the other hand resembling the son of God, that feels incongruous. You cannot be both salvation and beast. What do you think about that, Maya? I think we are exploring a poem that is written in the liminal space on the brink of collapse, but not quite there yet.

The question that is asked at the end of the poem, what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? There is a real sense that the worst is yet to come. And truly, I think Prometheus and the allusions to him throughout this poem really have an impact on the human understanding of what it means to be saved or to be in a situation in which you could be saved. And hope is something that is decimated in this poem. There is a real lack of hope for that Promethean figure or that godlike figure to step in and to make those changes and to save humanity and create this whole new world.

The new world that is created in this poem is one that is dark and terrifying and full of horror. There is obviously a huge abundance of horrible things that happen in this poem. And yet the speaker still seems so unsure of what else is left to come. I definitely get the feeling that through all of these classical and biblical allusions, what Yates is actually doing is telling a brand new story. I feel like a lot of these stories and Prometheus is a perfect example, the parallels between Prometheus and Lucifer or Prometheus and the Jesus figure. You are looking at this really rich history of repeated stories or echoes or mimics.

And this is a story that Yates is creating. This is a poem that is, I think, quite groundbreakingly new, despite its time period, despite its context. I don't doubt for a second that people reading this poem at the time it was published were shaken by it. However, even as a modern reader, I think this applies and you can read it anew every single time. Does it have that effects on you as well? I think definitely. And I think one of the things that we can say for almost every civilization throughout history is everybody thinks, that the apocalypse is about to happen. That sense of immediacy is one of the things that gives

the permit power. I think that regardless of the circumstance that you're reading it in, we can all find evidence that the world is getting worse or the world is about to collapse. I mean, we don't need to go into too many contemporary examples because I'm sure listeners will know their own, but I think that flexibility is one of the things that really gives the permit to power. I'd just like to come back to those last two lines that you talked about. And I think I agree with everything he's said. I love that point you make about this being a new story, but a new story made out of old ones. And I think that's very much in keeping with the modernist sort of ethos of make it new, that notion of fragmenting previous stories and making something new, a new composite, if you will, out of

those previous stories. You spoke about the uncertainty and you're absolutely right when you say we remain uncertain. In many ways, we grow less certain as this poem goes on. If we think about that opening couple of lines, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. There is an absolute confidence in those lines. As we get to the beginning of the second stanza, we have sure surely, surely, a suggestion that confidence is wavering. And the poem itself ends with a question, rather than any sense that the poem ends with new certainty or new clarity, and actually ends with even less certainty than it began with. But I'd just like to talk about, finally, the beast itself. So Yates mentions the beast, and this is another callback to Revelation.

The Beast is this bizarre figure in Revelation, and it's represented as having seven heads and ten horns, but it's also described as the Antichrist. Now, when I said that the figure of Prometheus important for this poem, here is why it's so important. Just as the figure of Prometheus is a composite figure in many ways between the devil and Jesus Christ. What this poem seems to end with is a composite figure between the Antichrist and Christ itself. We have the beast going to Bethlehem to be born. And again, what Yates seems to be suggesting, therefore, is that this is an apocalypse like there have been apocalypses before, but this one is happening almost in a post-biblical age. And I think especially given how Yates seem to view these defining eras across thousands of years

of humanity as opposed to these, as you were mentioning earlier, much smaller communities or much smaller civilizations, it really gives a sense that what began in the Bible with the birth of this Antichrist, the birth of this beast, is going to signal a brand new age. Just as much as you look at the Bible and the emphasis that it places on that as a defined. moment, this poem and especially the questioning at the end, that uncertainty leaves you really rattled from leaving this poem and not knowing what's ahead, but knowing that whatever is ahead is going to be a once in a generation, once in a civilization moment, is one of the most impactful, poetic ideas, I think of, to be honest, this generation of writers.

I completely agree. You know, one of the things I think is interesting here is the evocation of Frederick Nietzsche and Nietzsche in his 1882 essay basically pronounced God is dead and we don't need to go into exactly what he meant by that but when a professor at my university was asked how to explain modernism in relation to postmodernism the answer he gave was exceptionally simple he said modernism means god is dead postmodernism means man is dead again that's for another time but I think what we have here is yate playing on those ideas first of all there's a very personal sense of amidst these horrors what role does faith play how How can you believe in salvation when the innocent is slaughtered?

But also in a broader sense of the modernist literary movement as kind of a movement influenced more by classical mythology and more by an increasingly secular tradition, what does it mean that Yates seems to suggest that this poem ends rather than with the rebirth of Christ, but with the birth of this other more frightening and obscure figure altogether? Is he signalling the end of the Christian era? I mean, it's a huge question, and I actually have one that has kind of just come to me as you were, as you were talking about these much larger scale events.

I think it's very easy to forget that throughout all of this, Yates is obviously contending with things that are happening in his own personal life. And one of the things you mentioned was that at this time, his wife was pregnant and suffering and recovering. We talk about birth in this poem as if it is the birth of this great thing. And I almost wonder, Joe, do you think that this final line is actually really asking, what world am I bringing this child into? This child that is born into this new generation, into this new era, what will they become? And how will they deal with it?

It's something I'd actually never thought of before. That relationship between the fact that his own wife was pregnant, and of course, we mentioned earlier on, the high mortality rate among pregnant women. I think you're absolutely right, this kind of preoccupation with birth and the uncertainty at the end could in many ways be a manifestation of Yates' doubt about his own wife's sort of likelihood of survival and his child as well. On the one hand, this could be the birth of something special and precious

and the evocation of Bethlehem would represent that. On the other hand, this could be the worst thing it ever happened to Yates and could result in the death of his wife and his unborn child. So that uncertainty, that composite nature of, on the one hand, salvation, on the other hand, damnation could in many ways be an elevated way of exploring that sense of fear that he was going through when his wife was so unwell. Though I hate to close off a fascinating discussion on this poem, we are unfortunately running out of time, Joe. So can you tell us a little bit more about what we're talking about next episode? I'd love to. So next episode will be our 10th. We hope you're enjoying Beyond the Verse so far. And we would love you to share with friends. We'd love you to rate us

on wherever you get your podcasts and keep up the good work as listeners. We're really enjoying having your questions and next time we're going to be doing a special Q&A episode with me, Maya and Will, the founder of poetry plus and permanence.com. So if you have questions that you would like answered in that episode, please email them to Beyond theverse at Permanalysis.com. And don't forget that if you want to guarantee your question gets answered in that episode, sign up for a membership at PoetriPlus at Permanalysis.com. But for now, it's goodbye from me. And goodbye from me and the team at Poetry Plus and Poemanalysis.com. See you next time.