Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Commentary

This poem recounts Zeus’ rape of Leda, the wife of Sparta’s King Tyndareus. From this union, the twin Castor and Polydeuces were born, as was their sister, Helen of Troy. When Helen was abducted and carried off from Sparta to Troy, her brothers rescued her.

The poem begins with violence. Zeus, having taken the form of a swan, ravishes Leda, and there is neither tenderness nor love in the act; it is a “brutal” violation, not an act of love, in which a god seizes that which he desires by brute force. The first words suggest only a physical assault. There is “a sudden blow,” the “beating” of wings, and a “staggering girl.” However, the next images of the opening lines quickly add a sexual context. The assault is not merely physical; it is sexual-it is rape: the girl’s’ “thighs [are] caressed/By the dark webs,” and “her nape [is] caught in his bill”:

 

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

If we are familiar with the myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan to ravish Leda, these lines make sense at once. If we are not familiar with the myth, the sudden references to “wings” and “webs” and “bill” are not only unexpected but fantastic, even bizarre. The rapist, we realize, is not a man but a bird-the bird, apparently, alluded to in the title of the poem. In either case, the depiction of bestiality-and an adulterous bestiality at that-arrests our attention. The rape becomes both immediate and concrete. It is not merely a past event described; it is one that is taking place, as it were, before our eyes and, as witnesses to this “brutal” act, we must feel much the same as its victim feels.

Leda is not a willing participant in the act. Terrified, she tries to resist, struggling to push her attacker’s “feathered glory from her loosening thighs”:

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

She is unable to prevent the assault. She is, after all, a mortal woman, whereas her attacker is none other than Zeus himself. It is the chief of the gods who holds her “helpless breast upon his breast.”

The next lines reinforce the attacker’s bestial character. The rapist is not human. In fact, Zeus, in his present guise, is of another species entirely, and Leda, “laid in that white rush,” cannot help but feel “the strange heart beating where it lies.”

With his emission, Zeus engenders not only Leda’s future children, but creates the catalyst for the Trojan War as well, for it will occur due to the abduction of Leda’s daughter, Helen:

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

The concluding lines of the poem ask whether Leda envisioned the future war, which Zeus, it seems, even in the act of ravishing her, knew would occur. In addition, these lines tell the reader explicitly that Zeus had no feeling whatever for the object of his lust, dropping Leda with indifference as soon as he had satisfied his passion:

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

The poet leaves no room for debate as to whether Zeus felt any love or affection for the woman he ravished. The god felt nothing for her; she was only a means of satisfying his lust and, perhaps, a vehicle by which to set up the future war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Whether he allowed her to glimpse that future war is unclear, as is the question of his motive if he did allow her a prophetic glimpse of the catastrophe to come. If he did permit Leda to foresee the war, was it to dignify or justify his rape of her or was it to torment her by letting her see what would come of the act? 

Nowhere in the poem do we get any hint that Zeus is at all concerned with Leda as a human being. In fact, the opposite is true. The rape is sudden and violent; Leda is “terrified”; she attempts to resist, but is “helpless,” “mastered by the brute blood of the air.” When Zeus finishes with her, his “indifferent beak” lets her “drop.” It would seem, therefore, that his motive, if he did grant her a glimpse of the war to come, must have been to torment her with the knowledge that her rape would be followed by a future war, resulting from her daughter’s abduction, in which thousands will be killed. Zeus is not human on any level. As a god, he is not only above human beings but he has neither human feelings nor any feeling for them.

From Passion to Profit

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, the one-star reviews on Amazon are more informative than the other rankings. Those who were disappointed by a novel expose a particular narrative's faults, as the reviewers see them, but, at the same time, they suggest faults to be avoided by all writers. A recent review of these ratings for several novels produced this list of demerits:

• boring
• cardboard characters
• cliches
• deus ex machina ending
• expository
• flat characters
• formulaic
• making it up as he goes
• mundane characters
• over-long
• pointless sadism
• politically correct
• preachy
• predictable plot
• rambling
• recycled characters
• recycled endings
• rehash of familiar themes
• repetitive
• ridiculous situations
• self-indulgent (politically)
• shallow characters
• simplistic
• slow-paced
• sophomoric
• stalled action
• stock characters
• unanswered questions
• unbelievable characters
• unfocused and redundant
• unimaginative
• uninspiring characters
• unmotivated behavior
• unsympathetic characters
• washed-out characters

That's quite a list of complaints, but many of them can be categorized into four groups, most of which concern the so-called elements of fiction:

• characters
• plot
• technique
• structure

It may be surprising that established writers continue to experience difficulty with such basics of their craft, but, according to readers' complaints, they do, sometimes so much so that readers vow never to waste another dime on their once-favorite authors' dreck.

Part of the problem might be that established writers are too comfortable. They've developed a formula that works for them and which their fans more or less accept, even expect. Getting published is difficult, and maintaining a spot at the top of bestsellers' lists is next to impossible. When writers have accomplished these feats, they are apt to be reluctant to try something new. As a result, they employ the same formula over and over again, cranking out the same tried-and-true tale, until, at last, their faithful readers abandon them. 

An occasional influx of “new” readers (those who haven't tried the established writer's work before, possibly because they were young when the writer was well-established) keeps the dollars—and the formulaic novels—coming. The number of readers appears to be declining, perhaps rather sharply. If this is true, eventually, established writers won't be able to rely on “new” readers. If enough of their faithful followers stop following them, they could be in trouble.

Since many established writers have earned fortunes, they'll be able to live out their days in comfort, although their reputations will suffer and there's not likely to be, for them, a literary legacy (not that there would be otherwise). Even the most literary of writers often vanish from the bookstores and the public consciousness within a generation or two of their deaths. Only the best of the best survive for centuries, although with diminished sales.

What's the solution? The only possible remedy that occurs to me is simple. Writers, whether of horror fiction or another genre or of fiction of lasting literary value, started because they had something to say. They had a fervent desire to communicate a truth, a vision, a belief, and they cared about the “people” (their characters) about whom they wrote. They need to return to these roots, the emotional, indeed, spiritual, roots of writing.

As time went by and dollars accumulated in their bank accounts, many seem to have become more interested in sales than in the stories themselves. We can think, easily, of writers who continue to write not because they have something worth saying, but despite the fact that they have nothing to say anymore; they've communicated their truths, visions, and beliefs long ago. Now, they simply rehash them.

They're not in the writing business to convey a message that's important to them and perhaps to society, but to see their names on yet another bestseller's list, to add yet another million dollars to their bank accounts, to compose yet another self-indulgent lecture on politics, and to inflate their egos one more time. Just as politicians are loathe to give up their power and the perks of their offices, writers don't want to forego the pleasures of wealth and fame. In short, writing, for them, is no longer a passion, but a business—a business and a means of stroking their egos. As Stephen King said, in a relatively recent interview, he plans to continue to write every day because he needs something to do to fill up the hours.

Summer Morning, Summer Night: A Review

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Ray Bradbury has made quite a career out of nostalgia, and his affectionate respect for the past continues to serve him well in Summer Morning, Summer Night (2008), a collection of short stories unified by the common setting of Green Town, Illinois. Not altogether unlike Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, which Bradbury admits influenced the structure, if not the contents, of The Martian Chronicles, this anthology is gentler and more sensitive than Anderson’s gallery of the grotesque tended to be. The characters, however, are often eccentric in their own ways, and most are, like their author, sensitive and understated, even in their eccentricity.

The first story in the collection, “End of Summer,” concerns a sexually repressed schoolteacher, thirty-five-year-old Hattie, who lives with her grandmother, aunt, and cousin, who are equally straight-laced and no-nonsense. Although Hattie fears being found out by one of them, she also defies their narrow, emotionless, sexless lives. She has repressed her own sexuality, but, in this story, she throws caution to the winds. In fact, she has apparently taken some risks even before the story proper commences. She is a voyeur; in this tale, she becomes, also, a seductress. She seems to delight in outraging her family’s stern sense of propriety, even if she does so in secret. It is enough for her, it appears, that she knows that she has violated their taboos.

As the story opens, she lies awake in her room, counting “the long, slow strokes of the high town clock” (9). Judging by her count, it is two o’clock in the morning, and the streets are deserted. She rises from her bed, applies makeup, polishes her fingernails, dabs perfume behind her ears, casts off her “cotton nightgown” in favor of a negligee, and lets down her hair (9). Gazing into her mirror, she is satisfied with the image of herself that meets her gaze:

She saw the long, dark rush of her hair in the mirror as she unknotted the tight schoolteacher’s bun and let it fall loose to her shoulders. Wouldn’t her pupils be surprised. She thought; so long, so black, so glossy. Not bad for a woman of thirty-five (9).

Having donned the uniform of a literal lady of the evening, Hattie sneaks past the closed doors of her grandmother, aunt, and cousin, anxious that one or more of them might choose this moment to exit their bedroom, but, despite her nervousness, nevertheless pauses to stick “her tongue out at one door, then at the other two” (10).

Outside, she pauses to enjoy the sensations of the “wet grass,” which is “cool and prickly,” and, after dodging the “patrolman, Mr. Waltzer,” surveys the town from the vantage point of the courthouse rooftop before sneaking from house to house to eavesdrop and spy upon their residents (10).

One of the men upon whom she spies follows her, and she seduces him--or perhaps it is he who seduces her. In the night, when darkness and shadows rule, passions are abroad in the darkness, and it is difficult to say, sometimes, who is the predator and who the prey. It may be that both are seducers, just as both are seduced.

After the assignation, Hattie returns to the house she shares with Grandma, Aunt Maude, and Cousin Jacob, no longer wearing cosmetics, dressed primly, and behaving properly, except for the smile she seems unable to shed, even in the austere presence of her repressive kinsmen, who chastise her for being late to rise and tardy to work. She leaves their company, still smiling as she runs out of the house, the door slamming behind her.

In this story, the monster is not the typical bogeyman, but the strict propriety of the prim and proper family of which Hattie both is and is not a member. A synecdoche of society itself, the rigid demand for conformity and the repression of personal passion of which has a debilitating effect upon the individual human spirit because it represses the fleshly aspects of human existence, Hattie’s family and its unyielding demands for steadfast respectability, at the very cost of one’s soul, suggests that it is inhuman to deny one’s physical appetites.

In demanding that these vital elements of their personalities be repressed, her relatives become more like machines that saintly souls, whereas, because of her covert rebelliousness, which allows her to remain true to herself, including the passions and appetites of her fleshly existence, Hattie shows the monstrosity that hides behind the familial and social demands for sexual repression and emotional rigidity. Ironically, her behavior, which would, no doubt, scandalize her family, as it would her community, is the salvation, rather than the ruination, of her soul. Her actions stand as a silent, even secret, rebuke to the harshness of an overly restrictive and conventional lifestyle. Hattie dares not disturb the universe--or even her own household--but, in private, she finds the sexual release that is denied to her in the public arena of her life, and these nocturnal assignations, brief as they may be, are enough to bring a smile to her lips that does not fade. The private life is all we have, Bradbury suggests, but it is enough when one finds another with a similar attitude and similar needs with whom to share it. Sometimes, heroism is as quiet and as passive-aggressive as the rebellious, but discreet, protagonist of this gentle tale of gallantry and pluck.

This story is itself a synecdoche, as it were, for the entire anthology of which it is the first flower. The other stories are just as delicate, just as beautiful, just as perfumed with the scents of joy and sorrow, reminiscence and lament, magic and wisdom. Most of all, they are instances of poetry, prose poems which assert, each one, in its own way, the enchantments and mysteries of life, as they manifest themselves in things both small enough to go unnoticed by all but the most sensitive and discerning and large enough to shake children and adult alike with laughter or with tears. A slender volume, Summer Morning, Summer Night is as deep and broad as the gray-haired man who, in writing it, packed every page and paragraph with as much Green Haven, Illinois, as would fit. The book shows why Ray Bradbury remains a treasure as much today as he was when he first broached the enchanted wonderland of modern middle America, well over half a century ago.