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WHAT ROUGH BEAST INDEED? A NEW READING OF W. B. YEATS' |
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Little critical attention has been given to this short collection. Lacking a unified theme like The Wild Swans at Coole, which precedes it in Finneran's edition, and The Tower, which follows it, this collection combines three separate mini-themes: gender and love, destructive Irish politics during the Civil War, and beast imagery. The collection immediately follows the last poem in The Wild Swans at Coole, ironically entitled "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes." "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" seems an apt transition into the collection, for it combines the themes of gender and love with beast imagery in a vision of Maud Gonne dancing between a Sphinx-like beast (seemingly a female version of the beast in "The Second Coming") and a Buddha. It also introduces the collection's political theme in Yeats's deliberate ambivalence toward the violence surrounding him, "who never gave the burning town a thought" (57). I do not intend a full discussion of "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes," but suggest that Yeats intended The Wild Swans at Coole to end with this poem as both conclusion to the volume and transition into Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The collection's first four poems introduce the voice of a woman, a new move for Yeats. While the move may not be convincing, it demonstrates Yeats's early concern for gender and his desire to be more "progressive." The move ultimately fails in the short, underdeveloped lines of "She" in "Michael Robartes and the Dancer," but succeeds in the sexually powerful and voracious woman of "Solomon and the Witch." The next five poems - "Easter, 1916," "Sixteen Dead Men," "The Rose Tree," "On a Political Prisoner," and "The Leaders of the Crowd" - represent the collection's political poems. In these Yeats questions the legitimacy of the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish Civil War, vacillating between siding against the British and against the Irish as well, backing himself into a corner from which he can do nothing but write. The last six poems - "Towards Break of Day," "Demon and Beast," "The Second Coming," "A Prayer for My Daughter," "A Meditation in Time of War," and "To be carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee" - represent the collection's beast poems and their effects upon Yeats. In each Yeats presents a beast in slightly different configuration. "Towards Break of Day" presents Arthur's legendary white stag leaping through a waking dream. "Demon and Beast" presents his own body and soul as demon and beast, imprisoning his intellectual construction of self. "The Second Coming" presents an Ozymandias-like inverted god figure slouching to be born. "A Prayer for My Daughter" presents his newborn daughter sleeping through the monstrous storm outside, disturbingly akin to the previous poem's rough beast. "A Meditation in Time of War" presents the Almighty as "One animate" spiritual reality contrasted to humanity's inanimate "phantasy" physical nature. "To be Carved on a Stone at Thoor Ballylee" presents Yeats's reaction to the previous destructive beasts, leaving his art for civilization's re-builders to see. I focus in this paper on Yeats's configuration of beast in "Demon and Beast" and "The Second Coming." |
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"Demon and Beast" |