widening gyre, errant falcon, blood-dimmed tide, slouching beast
November 25, 2020 3:06 PM   Subscribe

A whistle-stop tour of W. B. Yeats quotations in popular culture (Lit Hub): “You can’t beat a good W. B. Yeats quotation, especially in these dour, doomscrolling days. (“The Second Coming”—with its widening gyre, errant falcon, blood-dimmed tide, and slouching beast—has been the English-speaking world’s go-to apocalypse lyric for 100 years now. Whether it’s the Nazis swarming Europe, Trump capturing the White House, or a morose A. J. Soprano attempting to drown himself in a swimming pool, as long as the world continues to be shit, Yeats’ most famous poem will continue to evoke a sense of paralyzing existential terror in its readers.) Though I have absolutely no hard data to back this up, I’d wager that Yeats is the most quoted and referenced (non-Elizabethan) writer in contemporary popular culture.”

Also worth reading: W. B. Yeats: A Fool Amongst Wolves (Litkicks). Yeats previously
posted by not_the_water (28 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
this is just to say

i have eaten
the gyre
that was mere
anarchy

and which
probably would
drown ritual
innocence

quote me
it was blood-dimmed
so blank
and so pitiless
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:39 PM on November 25, 2020 [22 favorites]


Looking forward to reading this. My dad is a very old guy who is part of that last generation to remember the last remnants of anti-Irish epithets from his blue blood classmates when he attended an Ivy League, and as a result he became extremely and wildly proud of being Irish-American even though he's a few generations removed from the immigrants who came over. His bookshelves are fulllllll of various Irish-American/Irish books.

A couple of times before he got too old to travel we visited Ireland together and visited County Sligo where Yeats is buried and where my dad's line immigrated from. For years after our first trip, my Dad made up homemade Christmas cards of a photo we took of Ben Bulben. The final lines of the poem Ben Bulben are also inscribed on Yeats' nearby grave.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:49 PM on November 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


I kept looking for a second page to this article, or really, an entire book. Yeats's influence deserves a little more thought than this.

Just read one of his poems.
posted by acrasis at 4:06 PM on November 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


The book I read was "Yeats: The Man and the Masks" by Richard Ellmann
posted by acrasis at 4:11 PM on November 25, 2020


The poem is certainly chock full of evocative imagery but it's these lines that I recall over and over:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
That's a lot of truth to pack into 13 words, and yet has anybody else ever summed up that thought more succinctly and recognizably?
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:20 PM on November 25, 2020 [26 favorites]


Shall I compare thee to a widening gyre?
Thou keep turning and turning like a certain bird
That cannot hear its falconer,
And loosening mere anarchy upon the world,
And sometimes too thou seem’st to fall apart
As if thy centre cannot hold, and blood-dimmed
Tides are loosed, and rough beasts start
Slouching their way at last to Bethlehem.
And yet thy shapely lion body and man-head
And the way thou moves thy thighs so slow and sexy
Despite thy twenty centuries of being dead,
Troubles my sight in a way that vexes me!
It seem’st the best lack all conviction, while the
worst are full of passionate intensity!
posted by oulipian at 4:30 PM on November 25, 2020 [16 favorites]


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
posted by y2karl at 5:02 PM on November 25, 2020 [6 favorites]


Since the article mentioned Babylon 5, and steeped as I am in cheesy science fiction, I thought of:
Andromeda S1E22 "The Widening Gyre", S2E1 "Its Hour Come 'Round at Last"
Also the remarkable fan-made series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, in season seven, did four sequential episodes titled: The Widening Gyre, Things Fall Apart, The Center Cannot Hold, Its Hour Come 'Round at Last

Considering "The Second Coming" encapsulates Yeats' idiosyncratic idea of cyclical eschatology, it's still amazingly applicable, especially now. Might have something to do with it being written immediately following the 1918 flu epidemic.
posted by jabah at 5:03 PM on November 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Previously
posted by y2karl at 5:06 PM on November 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Turned about the wabe in a widening gyre
All hesitant were the borogroves
And the mome raths were total bastards
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:35 PM on November 25, 2020 [6 favorites]


Considering "The Second Coming" encapsulates Yeats' idiosyncratic idea of cyclical eschatology, it's still amazingly applicable, especially now. Might have something to do with it being written immediately following the 1918 flu epidemic.

And also immediately following the first World War.

I was in an Irish literature class in college, and the professor told us about Yeat's eschatology and stated that he thought we were nearing the end of a 2000-year era of peace. About a week later, we began the major aerial and bombing campaign for the first Gulf War - and when I heard the news, my knee-jerk reaction was "oh shit Yeats was right" and I had The Second Coming stuck running through my head for the next month or so.

This article, though, misses my hands-down favorite instance of Yeats being quoted - it was in a Peanuts daily strip. The first panel showed Schroeder, in his catchers' uniform, walking towards the pitcher's mound. The next panel showed Schroeder on the mound telling Charlie Brown, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold." Then Schroeder just turns and walks away. The final panel shows Charlie Brown watching him go and saying: "When catchers get hit on the head with too many fly balls, they get a little weird."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:36 PM on November 25, 2020 [8 favorites]


Dorian Lynskey wrote an article back in May about the current popularity of "The Second Coming": ‘Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming . In it he refers to Fintan O’Toole’s Yeats Test: ‘Yeats Test’ criteria reveal we are doomed (from 2018, hopefully now the proposed Heaney Test will be more relevant).
posted by scorbet at 5:54 PM on November 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


I love this poem, the imagery, and spirit, the romanticism.


The Song of Wandering Aengus
By William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
posted by Oyéah at 6:19 PM on November 25, 2020 [11 favorites]


I wrote my senior thesis, in part, on Yeats, his poetry and Irish politics in the 1920s. The genesis was an Irish lit class, where we read a slew of his poems, and even a couple of the Japanese Noh plays. And so I've got a sort of mental checklist for every time I see one of those lines come up. Thanks, not_the_water, for the post -- it checked off a few more for me!
posted by martin q blank at 6:30 PM on November 25, 2020


My falcon is getting away.
I no longer believe what I say.
It's a riot, a flood
Of anarchy and blood
And a live sphinx is walking this way.
posted by Redstart at 6:53 PM on November 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


it was in a Peanuts daily strip

April 6, 1993
posted by neuron at 7:25 PM on November 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


OH!

Okay. So. The Second Coming is one of my top Yeats poems, along with He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven. But a third one is a little-known one, that I fell in love with when I saw it...

Along with the poems, Yeats founded the Abbey Theater in Dublin. And...it was a bumpy first couple years - not because of financial problems, though. It was because Yeats sort of deep-down wanted to Use Theater To Elevate The Masses, and did all these weird experimental plays or did gritty realism, and this often pissed off the crowds who wanted to see things like The Importance Of Being Ernest or more conventional stuff. And Yeats...didn't handle that well. There's accounts of riots breaking out during a production of Synge's play The Playboy Of The Western World, and Sean O'Casey's The Plough And The Stars, because the subject matter was too scandalous for some in the audience. And Yeats handled the furor by basically coming out in front of the curtain to lecture the audience for being repressed and backward, which pissed them off even further, of course, and made it worse.

And that's all on top of the usual headache that producing any play is. No matter how smoothly your play is going, no matter how on their game the actors are and no matter how delightful the script or on-the-ball your stagehands are, there is always going to be one rehearsal where people's tempers are a little short and things aren't going right and the actors aren't quite getting it and there's some sudden drama with the box office because a VIP wants a ticket on the day the show's already sold out and...

And hence, we have the poem The Fascination of What's Difficult:
The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

...People, I not only understood Yeats, I knew exactly what kind of rehearsal had inspired him to stomp home late and write this poem, because I have lived it myself.

I kept a copy of this poem in my stage manager's notebook at all times. And I would keep an eye out for when one of the actors seemed to be having a particularly bad day - they showed up late and it just threw them off, they were working on a challenging scene and they were frustrated, they got into a snit with another actor - and during a break, I'd quietly head over and show them the poem, and say, "Here, read this." Invariably, when they got to that line about "my curse on plays", their mouths would start to quirk up into a smile and they'd nod and chuckle, and then when they finished they'd look up at me, feeling a little better, and we'd trade "eh, theater, whaddya gonna do" smiles and each get back to work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:25 PM on November 25, 2020 [22 favorites]


LitHub has been beaten to the punch by 20 years by this gem of the early internet.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 10:29 PM on November 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


I will arise and boot up, and log on to MeFi,
And a pot of coffee brew, of water, milk and grind;
Nine blue tabs will I open, in my browser on wifi,
And spend some time in that buzzin' hive-mind.

Thank you so much for posting, not_the_water. Not just for the Yeats, but for reminding me of Litkicks. I am old enough to remember ... when LitKicks had a vast and sprawling message board, ten years ago, maybe more. Wot times we had there! I really missed that place until I signed on to MetaFilter.
posted by valetta at 12:09 AM on November 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Yeats is one of my favorite points. "The Second Coming" is indeed eminently quotable, but my favorite of his is this:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

It is a loose translation of Pierre de Ronsard's "Quand vous serez bien vieille", but where Ronsard is nasty and narcissistic, Yeats is wistful and poignant. I discovered the two poems almost simultaneously in high school, in dueling AP French/English literature classes, and it was an amazement to me that translation could be more than transliteration.
posted by basalganglia at 4:56 AM on November 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


This is a great thread.

My late, favorite cat was named Maud Gonne (MacBride), btw.
posted by thivaia at 5:16 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Thank you for all who posted Yeats' writings, especially "Song of The Wandering Aengus" which is also a beautiful song, covered by many singers, my favorite being Judy Collins' version. These were what I needed to read after rising from some bad dreams.
posted by mermayd at 6:54 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


If I had a kebab stand, it would be called "The Widening Gyro"
If I wrote a Middle East picaresque, it would be titled "Couchsurfing Toward Bethlehem"
If I ever set up a protest encampment, it'd be dubbed "The Passionate In Tent City"
If I ran a messenger service it'd be "The Errand Falcon"

u.s.w.
posted by chavenet at 7:07 AM on November 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


Wasn't Yeats also involved with the esoteric circles at the time, and connected to the likes of Aleister Crowley and/or Madame Blavatsky?
posted by acb at 8:29 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Wasn't Yeats also involved with the esoteric circles at the time

Yeah, including automatic writing, and the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn".

If people are interested in more about Yeats, the National Library of Ireland has a long-running exhibition on him that's available online (it is flash based though, and it features as one of the Previously links) - it includes stuff on his occult interests. They also have monthly tours of their exhibition, which are now Zoom-based instead.

Have to admit, I'm getting a lot of Leaving Cert English flashbacks from this thread. That said, I think my favorite Yeats poems not already mentioned are "September 1913" and "Easter 1916" (particularly in juxtaposition), and "Sailing to Byzantium".

The first two were before and after the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, and his feelings about Irish Nationalism, which is probably another of the background influences for "The Second Coming". (It would have been written during the Irish War of Independence.)
posted by scorbet at 8:58 AM on November 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


"No one can read Mr. Yeats’s Autobiographies and his earlier poetry without feeling that the author was trying to get as a poet something like the exaltation to be obtained, I believe, from hashish or nitrous oxide. He was very much fascinated by self-induced trance states, calculated symbolism, mediums, theosophy, crystal-gazing, folklore and hobgoblins. Golden apples, archers, black pigs and such paraphernalia abounded. Often the verse has an hypnotic charm: but you cannot take heaven by magic, especially if you are, like Mr. Yeats, a very sane person. Then, by a great triumph of development, Mr. Yeats began to write and is still writing some of the most beautiful poetry in the language, some of the clearest, simplest, most direct."

-T.S. Eliot, 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism'
posted by clavdivs at 1:47 PM on November 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Have to admit, I'm getting a lot of Leaving Cert English flashbacks from this thread. That said, I think my favorite Yeats poems not already mentioned are "September 1913" and "Easter 1916" (particularly in juxtaposition), and "Sailing to Byzantium".


Same here scorbet , and a lot of the litkicks article felt like I was writing a test essay!

It is amazing how much Yeats is still in my brain after all these years.
posted by Fence at 6:08 AM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


On NPR Weekend Edition this morning, Yeats was a topic. It seems he was vaguely into fascism at some point.
posted by njohnson23 at 10:57 AM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


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