St. Patrick's Day Part 4: W.B. Yeats

It is very hard for me to choose one Yeats poem to include, so I'll probably put up a few more in the coming days (by my count, the end of St. Patrick's week is this Sunday when our town's parade happens). Of the many Yeats poems I often come back to, this is probably the foremost. Back for one of the many Irish Lit classes I took in college, I wrote a paper on Yeats and his interest in mysticism and the occult, and focused largely on this poem. For such a short poem, he packs much in. It was first published in 1921 (a turbulent time for Ireland), and is all at once a comment on the current state of society (both in Ireland and the larger world), a warning of things to come, a reference to an ancient past, and an invocation of mystical elements. Every word in it counts; the language of it builds and ebbs and creates a beautiful rhythm that reinforces these many levels of the poem. It is such an important poem, and so beautiful.

"The Second Coming"

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-William Butler Yeats, 1921

(Image via)

'Politics'

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms' - Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics,

Yet here's a travelled man that knows

What he talks about,

And there's a politician

That has both read and thought,

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war's alarms,

But O that I were young again

And held her in my arms.

-W.B. Yeats

THE DYING ANIMAL by Philip Roth

I only recently fell for Philip Roth, having read and loved Goodbye, Columbus over the summer. I came across The Dying Animal in my favorite DC used bookstore (Books for America) and figured it was as good a place as any to continue with my Roth education. I was then unaware, however, that it is actually the third book in the trilogy of Professor David Kepesh novels. To appreciate The Dying Animal it is not necessary to read the other two books first – though (as I have not yet read them and do not know for sure) it may very well be that each book is more complete with the others as context. Regardless, on its own Roth’s short book provides a meditation on innate human nature and the nature of relationships between men and women.

In what could be called the book’s thesis, Professor David Kepesh insists that “No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex.” Kepesh, a product of the sexual revolution of the 60’s and longtime proponent of the freedom that it espoused, both proves and refutes this statement as he recounts his obsession with Consuela, a student of his. In his mid-sixties, he has spent his many years as a professor and public television personality bedding countless students and believing himself in control of his sexual life, until Consuela consumes him. Is it love? As he reflects on the jealousy that plagues him and his inability to stop thinking about Consuela, never does he admit to loving her – he always speaks of her in terms of a sexual obsession. Is this because he truly is only obsessed with her, or because the idea of love doesn’t fit in with the worldview he has practiced and promoted for so many years? Kepesh is on many counts – as an ex-husband, father, and teacher – an unlikeable man. In his world, women exist purely as sexual beings. Yes, he sees them as examples of beauty and acknowledges the intelligence of certain women he has known, but for him they exist primarily in terms of their sexuality. I wouldn’t accuse him of misogyny, however – both sexes exist purely as sexual beings in his view. Through Kepesh’s opinions on sex and the progression of his relationship with Consuela, the novel brings up many questions concerning love, sex, and human nature.

Though I often found myself angry at Kepesh, I think the questions he brought up are interesting and helpful in trying to define relationships (if they can be said to be definable). I am interested to read the other Kepesh novels (particularly The Breast - in which, apparently, he is metamorphosed into, of all things, a breast), though I will not be recommending this book to my parents any time soon, as it is certainly the most explicit book I’ve ever come across. A nice little surprise: I realized about halfway into the book the origin of its title. Like so many great things (Things Fall Apart, No Country For Old Men, Slouching Towards Bethlehem…) The Dying Animal takes its very appropriate title from a W.B. Yeats poem. “Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is…”