Comparing W. B. Yeats Leda And The Swan

Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan' - Psycho-Sexual Therapy in Action

This essay originally appeared in the Notes on Modern Irish Literature.

W.B. Yeats's heavily anthologized poem, "Leda and the Swan," can be read in

endless ways: as a political poem, a poem influenced by Nietzsche's idea of "Will to

Power," a poem of knowledge ultimately achieved through violence. Is the poem simply

referring to a myth? Is it addressing historical determinism? Critical methodologies

attempt to address these issues and more in their treatments of "Leda and the Swan."

However, to understand fully the poem and its implications, a formal close reading of th

e text must be combined with supplementary biographical information to inform a final

psychoanalytic reading of the poem. An understanding of the events surrounding Yeats's

life, then, will contribute to a textual analysis to show that the poem can be re ad as

Yeats's own particular rape fantasy, in which Maud Gonne is Leda and Yeats himself the

swan; and in displacing his frustrations into the poem, Yeats turns destructive impulses

into a constructive thing of beauty.

"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet, one of the most precise forms of literature

known. An interesting paradox emerges, however, at first glance. The poem is written

in a traditional form (sonnet), using a traditional rhyme scheme, yet the subject matter

i s extremely non-traditional (violent rape as opposed to the usual love sonnets). This

paradox is representative of the many oppositional elements which abound in the text and

which help form the basis for understanding the oppositions which influence bot h Yeats

and the poem.

The rhyme scheme is traditional (ABAB CDCD EFG EFG) yet interestingly imperfect

in that four of the rhymes are not perfect: "push" and "rush," "up" and "drop"

(Hargrove 244). This again is another oppositional element, typical of Yeats, and could

be seen to symbolize the opposition between Yeats, the last Romantic, and Yeats, the

Modernist.

A transition exists in the poem's language, from an aggressive intensity to a

vague passive distance. The language in the beginning of the poem sets the tone of an

aggressive sense of urgency. Priscilla Washburn Shaw makes an excellent point when she

states,

The action interrupts upon the scene at the beginning with 'a sudden blow,' and

again, in the third stanza, with 'a shudder in the loins.' It may seem inaccurate to say

that a poem begins by an interruption when nothing precedes, but the effect of t he

opening is just that (36).

The effect of this device is that it draws the spectator/narrator, and subsequently the

reader, into the action and into the poem.

The action continues for the first three lines of the first quatrain. Yeats

doesn't bother with a full syntax until the final line of the quatrain, at which point,

the urgency relaxes (Hargrove 240). The language in the first full quatrain is

represent ative of the opposition inherent in the poem; in this case, between intensity

and distance (Hargrove 240).

The imagery, and wording in general, in "Leda" is also representative, in an

initial reading, of oppositional elements within the text. A first reading shows Leda

described in concrete terms and the swan in abstract terms. Leda is "the staggering

girl" and the poem refers to "Her thighs," "her nape," "her helpless breast," and "her

loosening thighs." The swan is never actually called Zeus or even the Swan (in fact,

Agamemnon is the only name mentioned in the body of the poem). The swan is described as

"great wings," "dark webs," "that white rush," "blood," "indifferent beak," and

"feathered glory."

A second reading of the poem, however, shows that ambiguities do exist. The

concrete and abstract merge. Generalized terms are used for Leda ("terrified vague

fingers") and concrete terms for the swan (wings, bill, beak). The purpose of this

ambiguity could be, as Nancy Hargrove explains, "to stress that the god is, after all, a

real, physical swan engaged in a physical act" (241). Regardless, this ambiguity is,

again, representative of the conflict within the poem.

Verbs play a major role in understanding "Leda and the Swan." They are present

tense through the octave and the first part of the sestet ("holds," "push," "feel,"

"engenders"). They then shift to past tense in the last part of the sestet ("caught,"

"ma stered," "Did") (Hargrove 241). The verbs in the present tense imply an intense

immediacy while those in the past tense distance the reader (and perhaps the aggressor

as well) from what has just occurred. Additionally, as Nancy Hargrove points out, ther

e is a juxtaposition between active and passive verbs so that the active verb forms

("holds," "engenders") belong to the swan while passive verb forms ("caressed,"

"caught," "mastered") belong to Leda (241). The verb forms, then, play an active role

in c ontributing to a close textual reading.

Yeats continuously makes use of various devices to further heighten ambiguous,

oppositional, and dramatic elements within his poetry. "In his minimal use of the

possessive adjective, and the consequently greater use of somewhat unusual alternative

for ms, Yeats achieves effects which are curiously suspended between the concrete and

the general" (Shaw 37), thus highlighting the ambiguities in the text. Further still,

"the linguistic suggestiveness of the absence of any qualifiers for 'body' is consider

able" (Shaw 37). It is considerable in that it makes us even more aware of the

ambiguities (whose body?). It linguistically suggests the lack of an identity; it is

essentially a dehumanizing element.

While the subject matter of the poem is violent and disturbing, the structure of

"Leda" conveys feelings of safety and beauty. Hargrove submits that the intensity of

the rape is controlled by the narrow confines of the sonnet, an aesthetically pleasing

and heavily structured art form (242). Douglas Archibald asserts, "The sonnet form

achieves for 'Leda'" this: "violence and historical sweep held in one of the most

tightly controlled of poetic forms" (196). The violence of the rape is then controlled

within the constraints of the sonnet. Additionally, the sonnet itself is brief, thus

ensuring the rape will be brief as well.

While the rape is controlled through the structure of the poem, the organization

of the poem "reflects in an orderly manner the progress of the rape" (Hargrove 243).

The first quatrain presents the assault. The second quatrain reflects Leda's emotions.

The first half of the sestet presents the ejaculation scene. The cut line represents a

dramatic moment in time: a death-like silence. The final part of the sestet shows the

act receding into memory while posing the question of meaning (Hargrove 243).

Yeats makes use of several technical devices to convey the intensity of what is

being portrayed in the poem. Among these devices are alliteration ("brute blood"),

iambic pentameter, and the meter in general. Bernard Levine notes that "no regular

metric al pattern" exists but "there is a pervading rhythmic base in which verbal stress

displaces the accent-guided line" (116). Nancy Hargrove elaborates by showing that the

meter

imitates the gasping and throbbing pulsations of the rape by its irregularity,

its sudden sharp caesuras, its sentences spilling over from line to line, its

dramatic broken lines in the sestet, its piling of stressed syllables (243).

The ambiguities in "Leda" imply a confrontation both real and imagined, physical

and intellectual. Bernard Levine addresses the ambiguity surrounding "the staggering

girl" in line three. "Staggering" as intransitive participle means that the girl is li

terally physically staggering, but the transitive verb form shows that she "staggers"

the mind (of the swan), so to speak (115). Levine addresses another ambiguity in the

connotation of the word "still" in line one. The bird is described (we assume) a s

having just dropped down on Leda, yet the word "still" implies a timeless continuity

(117).

The text, then, presents the rape scene, painting a vivid and terrifying picture

of its aggressive violence and its subsequent transition to passivity. The text also

shows a pattern of oppositions and ambiguities which are manifestations of a series of

conflicts between the material world and the spiritual world: the physical and the

intellectual. Nancy Hargrove remarks that the apparent opposition between abstract and

concrete is representative of that between "human and divine" (235). Shaw views it in a

more personal light: as the opposition "between self and world" (35).

The oppositions inherent within the text, and the subsequent series of conflicts

which they represent, are important in that they are manifestations of and parallels to

oppositional conflicts occurring in Yeats's own life. The violent textual rape is th e

result of his inability to reconcile these personal conflicts and the poem, then, is an

example of Yeats displacing his frustration, and doing so in a positive and safe manner.

If this assertion is indeed accurate, "Leda and the Swan" would be consiste nt with

Yeats's later poems. Edmund Wilson writes, "The development of Yeats's later style

seems to coincide with a disillusionment" (17). Cleanth Brooks argues that Yeats

"proposed to substitute a concrete, meaningful system, substituting symbol" as a way of

combating harsh, technical reality (69). "Leda" is consistent with the assertions.

And, the key to the reality Yeats is attempting to address is Maud Gonne.

Maud Gonne was a militant Irish nationalist with whom Yeats was very much in

love, and who appeared as a tortured image in much of his poetry. She gave herself

completely to her country and expected the same type of nationalistic dedication from

Yeats. They loved one another deeply but were never able to reconcile the differences

in their feelings. Maud Gonne loved Yeats in a platonic sense; Yeats desired a more

all-encompassing love.

Both Yeats and Maud Gonne considered themselves mystics. They belonged to the

Heretic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society in which they attended seances. Maud

desired a "pure" spiritual life and felt that type of life precluded physical contact

(sex) w ith Yeats. Yeats aspired to a like belief system, but was unable to live up to

these idealized standards. Under these conditions, Yeats and Maud Gonne entered into a

"spiritual" marriage. Bernard Levine explains that "The marriage was based on a commun

ication through dream correspondence and astral vision (controlled release of spiritual

tension)" (127). Levine suggests this spiritual marriage was "the background and

psychological excuse for the writing of 'Leda and the Swan'" (125). Well before the

poem was written, Maud Gonne had become an identifiable entity in Yeats's poetry. In

fact, Geoffrey Thurley refers to the poem as another "Maud/Helen" poem (165). Levine

also states that Maud had become identified with Helen (the mythological daughter of

Leda) as early as 1908 (125) and goes on to identify Maud with Leda as well (126).

Consistent with his penchant for myth-as-metaphor, and mythology in general,

Yeats declared sexual desire to be a myth. Yet, at the same time, he wrote that he

"used to puzzle Maud Gonne by always avowing ultimate defeat as a test" and he believed

that his "spiritual love for Maud could never be consummated except through sexual

union," supporting the idea that the "'mystic way and sexual love' are inextricably

related" (Levine 125, 127). This conflict serves as an example of the type of

opposition Yea ts could never reconcile and which would later manifest itself in "Leda

and the Swan."

Yeats viewed Maud Gonne as having achieved purity and felt as though he too

should be above sexual longing. Levine argues that, unable to overcome his sexual

needs, Yeats had little alternative but to interpret his continual sexual longing as a

betrayal of Maud (128). Interestingly enough, Yeats "kept" a woman in London for a

time. Perhaps Yeats provides a good example for us of a man suffering from the

Virgin/Whore syndrome. The "pure" women in his life are untouchable and are

romanticized in his po etry while those who succumb to his needs are referred to as

"harlots" ("Presences") (Levine 128).

Yeats's sense of betrayal, coupled with his failed attempts to suppress

unacceptable desires, conceivably led to an enormous amount of guilt. In reference to

sexuality and guilt, Francis Oppel suggests that Yeats understood the psychology of

tragedy, in that orgasm (which engenders life and also equals death of sexual desire)

enables one to overcome pain and, by extension, guilt and death (122). This

overwhelming sense of guilt resulted in a disillusioned and angst-ridden Yeats, and the

resultant frust ration led to, as Joseph Hassett terms it, an "overwhelming

preoccupation with hate" (Introduction viii) and a sense of self hatred. This (self)

hatred led a despondent Yeats to contemplate suicide. Levine quotes Virginia Moore as

stating, "Yeats dreame d that, walking along a path by a broken wall a precipice, he

felt dizzy and longed to throw himself over" (130).

By "Leda and the Swan," Yeats was preoccupied with death, both consciously and

unconsciously. Bernard Levine states simply that "Because his relationship with Maud

Gonne remained unconsummated," Yeats's "imagination fastened quite decidedly in his

later years on the themes of sex and death" (126). A bridge that Levine doesn't seem to

wish to cross, however, is the idea that Yeats's later themes do focus on sex and death

out of this sense of self hatred engendered by the guilt over his inability to live up

to Maud's standards and, initially, by the frustration he felt over Maud's unwillingness

to comply with his desires.

Some critics even contend that hate is Yeats's generative principle. Joseph M.

Hassett contends that Yeats "used his hate to penetrate the uncharted depths of his own

mind" (Introduction viii). Ashok Bhargava (156) reaffirms this love-hate antithesis f

ound in later Yeats. Quite simply, Yeats consciously attempted to suppress his physical

desire and failed. This failure led to an unconscious resentment of the figure (Maud)

perceived as responsible for this resulting guilt/self hatred. This (repressed )

resentment resulted in violent tendencies and the rape scene in "Leda" is, finally, the

sublimation of sexual impulse.

Several instances exist to support the correlation between aspects of the

spiritual marriage and elements within the poem. Levine, again, cites Moore in noting

these instances. During the summer of 1908, Yeats saw a vision of Maud and himself

"joined b y a 'sort of phantom ecstasy,'" which was accompanied by an impression of a

swan floating in water. This was followed by a dream in which "Maud reproached Yeats

because she could not break down some barrier" (127). Another time Maud wrote that she

and Y eats had "become one with ecstasy" and Yeats had appeared to her triumphantly in a

dream, after which she woke to a gust of wind blowing in her room and a voice of "an

archangel who announced that from her union a 'great beauty may be born,' once she had

been 'purified by suffering'" (127, 128). There is evidence of other such examples.

Yeats, the idealistic Romantic, could not let go of the hope that Maud would one

day become a willing participant, physically. Yeats must have hoped that his persistent

passion and intensity would eventually persuade her to give in. Elements from the j

ust-noted example would support this hope and are found in the text of the poem: the

swan image, barrier image, the idea of unity through sexual union. At this point, could

Yeats's unconscious have been softening the tone (and implications) of the rape in the

poem? These examples suggest that is indeed the case. Additionally, as previously

mentioned, the tone of the poem moves from aggressive to passive. Furthermore, a clue

which supports the idea of a hope Yeats harbored lies in the revision process . Richard

Ellman informs us that the poem went through several stages of revision. In earlier

versions, Yeats portrayed the scene as an inarguable rape in which Leda is mounted

(177). In the later, anthologized version of 1928, Leda has been given "loo sening

thighs," suggesting a type of acquiescence on Leda's part. The implication for this

shift, then, in language and tone in the final version of "Leda and the Swan" is that

the change is an example of Yeats displacing his fantasy that Maud Gonne woul d

eventually be swayed to engage him sexually and would become a willing, if passive,

participant. In the earlier versions, Yeats was displacing his aggression. In the

final revised version, Maud Gonne as Leda takes an active response role.

Finally, "Leda and the Swan" is a violent poem and can be seen as Yeats's own

particular rape fantasy; however, it remains an object of beauty. A close reading of

the text focusing on the oppositions inherent within the poem, combined with an

understand ing of the circumstances surrounding Yeats's spiritual marriage to Maud Gonne

shows the poem to be a manifestation of the conflict between reality and ideal, human

and divine that Yeats spent years trying to reconcile. The poem allows Yeats to

displace h is violent fantasies concerning Maud, yet it does so in a structured,

controlled manner (ensuring safety), and it allows Yeats to, finally, retain a certain

amount of romantic hope. "Leda and the Swan" was Yeats's only realistic alternative to

the conflict in his life, and as a form of self therapy, it remains a nearly perfect

work of art.

Works Cited

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This piece originally appeared in the Notes on Modern Irish Literature.