1. The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

2. Biography Born in Dublin, Anglo-Irish family
Fascinated by Irish mythology and the occult
Spiritual by nature, but couldn’t accept Christian dogma
Caught up in the rise of the “Fenians”, 1890’s nationalism and the demand for Irish home rule
1889 met Maud Gonne
heiress and nationalist/Became infatuated with her
Proposed several times, but was refused/She married another revolutionary /1908 began an affair with her

3. Bio - continued 1916 finally marries at age 51
Met wife in his occult clubs
She was an “spirit” or “automatic” writer
Marriage was successful
2 children
a senator in the Irish Free State

4. Adopts many “masks” and approaches
radical nationalist/classical liberal
reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist
The gyre:
Two opposing wheels set in motion
Governing creation - Cyclical theory of existence: All this has happened before, all this will happen again
Post-colonial writer/effects of British empire/ colonisation / Nationalism, anti-nationalism, the creation of a national identity/ Rebellion, revolution, resistance to colonization/vacillating and ambivalent attitudes towards the coloniser

5. Introductory Notes
Poem suggests that the Second Coming of Christ instead of bringing about good will bring about a state of anarchy on earth
Title is derived from Bible – Matthew 24 and St John’s description of the Beast of the Apocalypse in Revelation
STANZA 1: conditions present in the world, anarchy, things falling apart
STANZA 2: surmise that these conditions foretell of a monstrous Second Coming

6. Written after World War I, at a time of change
The Second Coming
Context:
Written after World War I, at a time of change
Themes:
Gyres/CYCLES
Death
TIME

8. Death

9. Themes:
One historical epoch is ending:—in chaos
while another epoch—unknown and potentially frightening—is being born.
Key Passages:
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” lines 2-3;
“A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs,” lines 14-16
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” lines

10. presents an explosive vision of the coming era.
historical birth
catastrophic proportions
the speaker yields to his own fevered imaginings
What is this beast?
Why does it appear after “twenty centuries of stony sleep”?
Why is the new era imagined as half man, half beast?

11. turns Christian rhetoric against itself
In Christian terms:
the Second Coming is the end of the world when all are judged and sent to their respective fates.
Yeats’s scenario:
the Christian era is not the entire or most significant aspect of history;
it is dismissed as merely “twenty centuries of stony sleep” (line 19)
about to be replaced by another historical epoch
disturbing, coarse, and fragmented, but perhaps just as long-lived as the former.

12. “falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart
the falcon and the falconer - relationship to the disintegrating center :
“falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart
the centre cannot hold” [lines 2-3]).
What do the “falcon” and “falconer” represent?
Christ and the modern era?
A more generaliSed concept of a strong leader and his public?
something more abstract?
Yeats’s politics were ambivalent at this point:
anti-democratic/pro-fascist tendencies/ worried about loss of order in the world/disorder growing out of the disturbances of war and revolution

13. Symbolism in “The Second Coming”
Symbolic & prophetic vision
Written in 1920 in wake of WWI
In 1939 (World War II) he wrote to a friend “If you have my poems by you, look up a poem called “The Second Coming”. It… foretold what is happening. I have written of the same thing again and again since.”

15. World War I Racism Darwinism Fin de Siecle Nationalism Capitalism
Eugenics
Nietzsche
Fin de Siecle
Decadence
Nihilism
Literacy
Printing Press
Positivism
Dualism
Crusades
Holy Roman Empire
Neoclassicism
Byzantine
Empire
Marxism
Capitalism
Depression
Sanctions
Stripped of imperial power
World War I
Copernican
Revolution
Imperialism
Rousseau
Radical
Individualism
Industrial
Revolution
French Revolution
Protestant Reformation
The “Individual”
“Cogito ergo sum”
Descartes
Cult of Personality
Totalitarianism
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Bolshevik Revolution
Middle-Class

16. Gyres “a geometrical shape
-  Yeats theory of life expressed in ‘A Vision’ – each gyre gradually rotates towards a point of maximum expansion, at this point a new gyre starts in the centre of the previous. And thus it continues in a never ending line.”
Source:

17. Conical shape consisting of series of ever-widening, connected circles
Repeating trends of history; psychological development, subjectivity vs objectivity, life vs death
An age in history spreads its “ever-widening” influence until it spends its force and ends
Each spiral = 200 years
Beginning of each new gyre brings about chaos and the destruction of the old
Poem describes current historical period (1921) – world on the brink of some apocalyptic revelation

18. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

19. Biblical references
“The blood dimmed tide is loose” -Revelation 17:3-6 that says ‘the beast’ will come as a predecessor to the second coming of Christ.
REVELATION 16:3
‘And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.’
MATTHEW 24: 27-31
“27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
REVELATION 17: 3-6
‘So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.’

20. REVELATION 20, VERSES 1 - 5
4I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.
 7When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth - Gog and Magog - to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

21. Imagery
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” –like a caged beast being released to cause destruction, the beast could be a symbol for World War I
“Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it / Reel shadows of indignant desert birds” –the beast about to take its prey
The poem ends with a rhetorical question, like many of his poems; the effect is it leaves death and life in the balance and our fates uncertain:
“its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”