CHAPTER ffl
THE MEANING OF THE SYMBOLS OF SWANS
The three poems, "The WTild Swans at Coole", "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and
"Leda and the Swan" are discussed chronologically based on the year Yeats composed those poems. This makes the discussion go smoothly with the important events that happen in
Ireland that influence Yeats's poetry. Besides, it also goes along with Yeats's growing thoughts. The discussion of the symbols of swans is preceded by the discussion of the characters of the swans and the setting in each of the poems above. After that, the writer explains what Yeats is trying to express by using the symbol of swan in his poems. First of all the writer discusses "The Wild Swans at Coole" that was written in 1917 and published in The
Wild Swan at Coole 1919. Then she discusses "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" 1919, and the last, "Leda and the Swan" that was composed in 1923 (Magill 3181). 22
3.1. The Meaning of the Swan Symbol in "The Wild Swans at Coole"
"The Wild Swans at Coole" is one of 40 poems in The Wild Swans at Coole. Yeats
states in his book Selected Criticism that a poet writes always of his personal life, in his finest
work out of its tragedy, whatever it be, remorse, lost love, or mere loneliness" (255). At that
time, Yeats wrote this poem in 1917, when he was 52 years old. Thus, the poem talks about
Yeats's feeling about old age. The poem does not mention anything about Irish history and
only concerns about Yeats's idea about change and mutability. Even in W.B.Yeats. Raymond
Cowell states that "The Wild Swan at Coole" does not mention any political events at that time
such as the Easter Rising, the rebellion of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Easter Week
1916(530).
The first stanza of the poem describes the autumn beauty of trees, path and lake at Coole
in the October twilight. In the lake, the writer who acts as the speaker of the poem sees nine
and fifty swans. The setting of the poem is at Coole, the place of Lady Gregory, Yeats's best
friend. In his lifetime, Yeats often visits Lady Gregory's house at Coole. The house itself has
windows looking down to the lake. Besides, he also loves to go to the lake and does fishing
with his friends there (Malins 165).
There are nine and fifty swans in that poem. All of them have the characterization of youth. Firstly, they are very energetic. They form, mount and scatter, wheel in great broken
rings, their wings sound very noisy and they are unwearied (stanza 2). Then, the poem also
states that the swans that reflect youth are brilliant creatures and in pairs they paddle in the cold
companionable streams or climb the air. Here, youth is admired as something beautiful,
romantic and mysterious. Youth, as well as the swan, is described as something beautifuL in
the perfect form, because the time does not vanish it yet. It is romantic, because youth is 23
associated with the time of falling in love, where they go anywhere "in pairs". Finally, youth is said as something mysterious, it exists but it will suddenly have "flown away" (line 29).
In the second and third stanzas the speaker describes himself and his relationship to the swans. It is nineteen years (Stanza 2) since he first saw and counted the fifty-nine swans of the lake, nineteen years since he first saw them mounting and wheeling above him "upon their clomorous wings" as he finished his count below. In these nineteen years (stanza 3) all changes in the poet's life; nineteen years older, perhaps nineteen years sadder, he now steps to the lake with "heavier tread" than he did before.
Based on the character of the swans at Coole, graceful but fierce and passionate against the change of time, they represent the youth. Although years go by, men grow older, the swans remain young, they are still unwearied, their hearts have not grown old.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wanders where they will,
Attend upon them still.
(Chapter IV)
For nineteen years the speaker has been watching the beauty of the Coole swans, his habit of counting them each year now reminds him about his own age. He admires the beauty, passion and most of all, the youth of the swans. He realizes that someday youth - symbolized by the 24 swans - will leave him ("flown away" - last sentence of the poem). It seems that the conclusion is based on the analysis of character of the swans and setting of the poem "The
Wild Swan at Coole" that the swans symbolize youth in accordance to what is stated in Yeats's
Poetry Notes. In that book, it is mentioned that the swans in "The Wild Swan at Coole" symbolize the perfect intensity of youth act, in the changeless of their pattern, which preserves youth in the artifice of eternity (45).
The last two stanzas describe the swans, they are "unwearied", "mysterious" and
"beautiful". They are not changed by the years. Nineteen years do not change anything; the swans' hearts have not grown old (line 4 stanza 4). Dying, the old swan is replaced by younger ones, so the swans are both changing and changeless. Youth will be forever passing yet forever renewed, it is fixed. Then, the poet wonders whose eyes the swans will delight when he awakes to find that they have flown away. When the speaker's youth — it may be his life itself— flies away like the swans, youth itself will still remain, for there will still be young men to gaze in wonder at the still pools and nine and fifty clamorous swans to delight their eyes. This will lead into an understanding that the swans also symbolize the flux and the fixedness of life. For athough individual dies, the pattern of fifty-nine swans remains. They will stay the same, the younger generation will replace the old.
Actually Yeats uses the swans to symbolize youth and the flux and the fixedness of life in
"The Wild Swans at Coole" in order to support his personal feeling about time and his oldest theme - of aging, of passing time (Coles Editorial Board 58). He expresses his idea about the age, the process of growing older, his feeling of being old in his poems. "The Wild Swan at
Coole" is not the only poems that are concerned with his worry about being old. In "Among
School Children", for example, he states that the only real enemy of man is time. Another example, "The Wild Old Wicked Man", is also one of his poems dealing with the age. 25
But a coarse old man am I,
I choose the second best,
I forget it all while
Upon a woman's breast.
Day-break and candle end
The thesis writer concludes that the statement inYeats's Poetry Notes page 45 that the
symbol of swans in "The Wild Swan at Coole" means youth is proven. The swans at Coole, with their characteristic: energetic, beautiful, romantic and mysterious represent the youth.
Besides, the writer finds out that the swans also symbolizes the flux and the fixedness of life.
In this case, the swans' characteristic such as their changeless form, in which the young always
replaces the old, brings the idea that life is fixed. The previous generation will be forever renewed by the next generation.
3.2. The Meaning of the Symbols of Swans in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen"
The Tower, published in 1928 contains 20 poems. One of them is "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen". "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" is written between 1919 and 1922 and originally called "Thoughts upon the Present State of the World" (Cowell 83). Swan becomes important as it functions as a tool for Yeats in expressing that actually his way of thinking is growing. About this, Cowell states that actually "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" is a long poem with several sections and many sliifts of mood and reference (82). Then, he concludes that while Yeats composed the poem, Yeats was "Surveying the evidence for the universality 2o of the destructive impulse in all ages and civilizations, he looked back to the optimistic beliefs he had shared with Lady Gregory and others" (83).
The central emotion of the poem is beautifully presented through the symbolic comparison of the soul to a swan, at once beautiful and pathetic: The wings half spread for flight, / The breast thrust out in pride / Whether to play, or to ride / Those winds that clamour of approaching night. At that time, Yeats notices that his friends as well as the other Irishmen were oppressed by England's policy. Througli the symbolic comparison of the soul to a swan,
Yeats was trying to express his feeling about his own ideaEsm for Ireland: "Thinking of how
'crack-pated' his early ideals now seem, he is tempted to despair, and yet, like the swan, those ideals had a kind of fragile beauty" (Cowell 83).
The time setting of the poem is clearly seen from the title, 1919. The whole poem takes the chaotic situation of Ireland at that time as the setting. From political point of view, the poem presents the bitterness of Ireland's political situation. Yeats thinks that Ireland was being brutally and systematically oppressed in 1919 (Coles Editorial Board 58). The oppression caused dissatisfaction among Irishmen. This made many Irish's leaders decide to make a movement fight against England. Unfortunately, there was no agreement between those leaders themselves. Each of the leaders had different perceptions. Then, they gathered their followers to demonstrate and formed what Yeats calls "multitude" in "Nineteen Hundred and
Nineteen". In the effort to gain their ideal Ireland, they often intimidated their opponents and it caused civil war.
Yeats's politics are shown by his attitude toward the anarchic "multitude" in that poem.
It is obviously seen that Yeats believes that the multitude that took many victims at that tune was the result of the wrong political policy, "the mischief from government. In this case, he thinks that the political condition at that time was politics towards death not towards life. It is 27
clear that actually he expects the society to have a dynamic multitude that had a continual
movement that has single focus. In the poem "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen", Yeats
mentioned that he dreams about multitude in Greek perfection. It was "sheer miracle to the
multitude" (line 2). Unfortunately, what happened because of the politics at that time was the
anarchic one and was not the multitude that he expects. As for the anarchic multitude that
happened, he blames the government, this is stated in Graig as "The relationship between the
work of art and its emotion of multitude is, for Yeats, the same as the relationship between the
state or nation and its people; the multitude has to be given its direction by the government"
(196).
In the meantime, the condition in Ireland at that time led nothing but a great horror
(Malins 39). In 1919, at the time Yeats composed the poem, there were many movements
causing civil war. For example, Lloyd George proposed an act, by which Ireland should be
self-governing, but still under Great Britain and Sinn Fein insisted national independence.
Lloyd George, then, recruited ex-soldiers, who came to be known as Black and Tans "drunken soldier", and made many murders. In May 1921, four friends of Yeats became the victim of murder. The description of the terror could be found in Chapter I, stanza 4:
Now days are dragon - ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before.
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy.
And planned to bring the world under a rule, 28
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
Coles Editorial Board claims that "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen", as well as the other
poems in The Tower such as "Meditation in Time of Civil War", The Tower", "Among School
Children" became masterpieces in the works of art because "They seems to stem more directly
from the other side of Yeats's poetic genius" (57). Then, Coles Editorial Board explains it as:
Their secret, in other words, is a kind of inspired egotism ... — a meditative self-
absorption which enable the poet to transmute even the simplest objects of his daily
life - his house (a tower), his garden (full of roses), his paperweight (an Old Samurai
Sword) - into symbols of the highest
order . . . (57)
Thus, swan as one ordinary object in Yeats's daily life, a creature he often saw whether in his
visit at Coole or in any otlier place, means a symbol of the highest order in his poem "Nineteen
Hundred and Nineteen", which is discussed latter.
There are six chapters in the poem and the swan is mentioned in the third chapter. Thus
the discussion of the symbol is focused on that part. The characterization of the swan and the
setting support the revelation of the symbols of swans. In this case, the settings that are
discussed deals with the particular setting of part three of the poem.
There are three stanzas in this chapter and as it appears in line 2 of the first stanza of this third chapter, the swan is compared to the solitary soul.
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone, 29
An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those wind that clamour of approaching night.
In the poem, although Yeats mentioned that "I am satisfied" (line 3 stanza 3) with the
comparison of the solitary soul to swan, in fact Yeats's own expansion takes it beyond a mere
comparison. Yeats's description of its flight calls our attention to the bird as a living thing that has feeling and will. The swan can feel proud of something, "The breast trust out in pride".
Moreover, it has the freedom to do what it wants, "Whether to play, or to ride". As a result, the "soul" takes the second place to the image that is supposed to figure it, and becomes as rich and mysterious in its significance as the bird itself. Smith states that soul and swan seem to fuse - an effect achieved by the ambiguity of the pronoun "it" in "Satisfied if a trouble mirror show it", which could in effect refers to both, making each the mirror of the other (61). The
"image", by taking on a life of its own, as a real creature out there in the wind and water, ceases to be merely an illustration of something else. This explanation goes along with
Jeffares's statement that the swan in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" means solitary soul
(49).
The solitary souL symbolized by a swan that "has leaped into the desolate heaven", will take risks when it enters the world of politics and actions. Actions and politics are degrading and belong to the multitude; lofty ideas and ideals belong to the solitary souls (MacNeice 154).
Here, the swan is the solitary soul of Yeats himself and other Irishmen that has the same ideas with him that should face the end of his dream of Ireland because of the political oppression at that time. MacNeice claims that it is their duty and it is their tragedy -but 30 perhaps also their necessary fulfillment- to enter this brutalizing world. They have to end all their dreams and they have to accept the bitter consequence of entering the brutalizing world of politics. They have to live in despair; many of them have to die to fight for their ideals. !
The next stanza is about the construction of the soul. Then, in the third stanza, the image of the swan is mentioned again:
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
To end all things, to end
What my laborious life imagined, even
The half-imagined, the half-written page;
O but we dream to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
(Chapter m, stanza 3)
The swan in the first stanza of the third part seems to have self- confidence. It is proud of itself. It is ready to face everything including the night (Chapter m line 10), the setting usually symbolizes death. In fact line 4 of the same stanza also suggests that the swan or the soul will take a very big risk in the effort to fly against the night. Both stanza 2 and 3 of the third part shows that the swan or the soul had already died and gone to heaven. However it is 31 a desolate heaven, in this case, desolate heaven implies the consequence of entering the
"brutalizing world". In the poem, as the swan that has leaped into desolate heaven, the dream of the soul to mend all the mischief has ended (Chapter HI stanza D3).
According to Malins's A Preface to Yeats, it is suggested that originally from Coole, connected to death song, the swan is symbolizing subjective man. In this case, the explanation of Malms' idea can be obtained from the understanding of the context of the poem related with Yeats's personal idea. The term subjective here actually deals with Yeats's system of belief. For one thing, Yeats often uses the image of swan as a symbol of the "subjective".
Magill states that Yeats often uses large noble birds to represent the subjective (3198). Here,
"subjective" is identified as the antithetical gyre in Yeats's system of belief. The characteristic of subjective is "individualistic (self-centered), heroic, aristocratic, emotional and aesthetic".
Yeats identifies himself with the antithetical (subjective) and associates many things that he dislikes (such as democracy) with the piimary. Thus, Magill states that Yeats favores the era of
Homeric Greece "sheer miracle to the multitude" (3195). Unfortunately, the antithetical
(subjective) era ends in the A.D. 2000 and the primary will replace it. This means death song for the swan for "the swan has leaped into desolate heaven" (part lH stanza HI line 1).
On the other hand, Yeats uses the swan that symbolizes subjective man in "Nineteen
Hundred and Nineteen" to express his politics and system of belief. The politics of Yeats could be clearly seen if the poem is related to Yeats's system of belief according to Magill. Since
A.D. 1000 the secular gyre moved into antithetical gyre, in A.D. 2000 the gyre will reach its peak. Yeats classifies the antithetical (subjective) era in politics nowadays as the end of
Fascism. Thus, Yeats is so afraid of the next primary era that will come in A.D. 2000. He sees it as the "horrifying rough beast", and it seems he sees the sign of the primary emerged in his era through "mass-oriented", and democratic society seen from the scene in "Nineteen 32
Hundred and Nineteen". The multitude was going to be anarchic and it meant "the end of all
things". It means that the new era of primary secular gyre will come and the aristocracy should
end. By the coming primary era, Yeats who dislikes the primary thought that it will bring I disaster to the world and it really will ei id all things.
In short, the symbols of swans in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" has two meanings.
First, according to Jeffares, the swans symbolize solitary soul. In this case the swans are
related to Ireland history. Second, originally from Coole, The analysis based on the swans's
characterization and setting of the poem proves that Malins' opinion that the swans which are related to death song symbolize subjective man can be acceptable.
3.3. The Meaning of the Symbols of Swans in "Leda and the Swan"
"Leda and the Swan" is also one of the poems in The Tower. It was composed in 1923.
Jeffares claimes mat "Leda and the Swan" is closely related to Michelangelo's painting in
Venice (44). It is clearly seen that actually Magill also has the same opinion with Jeffares. In his book, the relationship between the poem and the painting could be seen as follows:
The story has often been portrayed pictorially as well as verbally; Yeats himself
possessed a copy of a copy of Michelangelo's lost painting on the subject.
There has been considerable critical discussion of the degree of interrelationship
between that picture or other graphic depictions and Yeats's poem, but to no
very certain conclusion . . . (3192).
Taken from Greek mythology, the swan in the poem represents Zeus, the ruler of the gods, who seduced Leda for his passion. The first and second stanza describes the action of the swan seducing a girl. In the first part of stanza three, before the break, the poet mentions series of result of the seduction: 33
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead "The broken wall" and 'the burning roof and tower" refer to Troy (Smith 112). Troy was a city in Greek Mythology that was destroyed because of Helen. The story of the falling of the city is called as Trojan War. It is a very famous war in Greek history because it took many viclims. Actually Troy was a superior civilization city and they lost because their enemy used a strategy to manipulate them. As mentioned in Chapter JQ, the cruelty toward Leda resulted Helen. In Greek mythology, Helen was the cause of the biggest war in liistory. The war began because Paris, the son of King of Troy, stole Helen from her husband Menelaus, King of Sparta. The war ended with the fall of Troy and victory in the hand of Menelaus. In the war, Agamemmon, Ms brother, helped Menelaus. On the return of Agamemmon from Troy, his own wife, Clytemnestra, killed him. Clytemmestra carried on the murder for the payment of the death of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemmon and Clytemmestra, by Agamemmon himself to save his journey to Troy (Hamilton 253). Because the swan in "Leda and the Swan" is Zeus who disguised himself to get Leda, thus the swan characters in "Leda and the Swan" are the same with the characters of Zeus in Greek Mythology. However, in discussing the characters of the swan in "Leda and the Swan", the writer does not take all Zeus's characters from Greek myth as references, but only in Zeus's characters which can be seen from his deed while he was disguising himself to the form of swan. Actually, the whole poem describes the swan's characters as a passionate, powerful. aggressive and cruel creature. First of all, the swan in "Leda and the Swan" is very passionate. The swan is just one of many forms of Zeus to get woman or goddess. He used to disguise himself for his passion. In 34 Myths of the Greeks and Romans, there is a poem from Graham Hough as a comment about that: Ageless, lusty, he twist into bull, ram, serpent, I Swan, gold rain; a hundred wily disguises To catch girl, nymph or goddess; begets tall heroes (116) In "Leda and the Swan", the swan uses its power to force its desire toward the girl. It is so powerful that the girl cannot refuse it. The girl is so afraid but she is helpless to reject the swan: "How can those terrified vague fingers push / The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?" (line5-6). Second, the swan is also powerful. Zeus was the ruler of gods. The sea and all the rocks obeyed him and he owned springs, rivers and tributaries. Even in his form as swan, he was still powerful. Of course Leda cannot resist him, even monstrous ocean, earth and the mountaintop trembled before Zeus's terrible eye. Zeus could strike men down or raise them up. He was strong thus he could do anything he liked (Grant, 104). Moreover the swan is also very aggressive and cruel. From the first line of the poem, Yeats describes the swan's action with the words "sudden" and then "rush". The action is full of immediate attack from the swan. This makes the girl becomes terrified (Line 5). "Leda and the Swan" deals also with Yeats's politics, although he, quoted from Craig's Yeats' Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry, states that: I wrote "Leda and the Swan" because the editor of a political review asked me for a poem . Then I thought, "Nothing is now possible but some movement from above preceded by some violent annunciation". My fancy began to play with Leda and the Swan for metaphor, and I began this poem; but as I wrote, 35 bird and lady took such possession of the scene that all politics went out of it (199) It seems that Magill has a different opinion in interpreting the notes above, he sees that "Leda and the Swan " is political enough. His perception is draw n from the consideration that Helen is the causal factor in the Trojan war, otherwise, the allusion of the burning city and deceased king (Agamemnon dead) would be meaningless in the poem (3193). For that reason, in analyzing the symbol of swan in the poem, the writer connects Greek mythology and Yeats's system of belief with Yeats's politics. With the connection of Greek Mythology and Yeats's system of belief with Yeats's politics as starting point, Jeffares' statement that actually the swan in "Leda and the Swan" symbolizes power and war comes out (44). The writer also considers that the swan is also the symbol of new annunciation of history. After the swan initiated the antithetical religion in 2000 B.C. and the dove initiated the primary religion (Christianity) in the year zero, Yeats predicts that the next antithetical religious annunciation comes in A.D. 2000. At that time, the history will be initiated by the other bird as the other form. In this case, it will be the annunciation of antithetical religious gyre as well as primary secular gyre that will come in A.D. 2000. In contrast to the forthcoming of antithetical religious gyre, the next primary secular gyre will come out. Yeats observes this as the end of aristocracy as the nature of the antithetical secular gyre (Craig 198). Then, he sees that the following primary secular era would bring disaster and death. The sign of the annunciation of the primary secular era is the anarchic multitude in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and the falling of Troy in "Leda and the Swan". In other words, the sign of the annunciation is the sign of universal destruction. The universal destruction that does not only occur in Ireland becomes the very obvious sign that the world are facing the next annunciation. The destruction is caused by the violent annunciation, for in each annunciation, there should be violence. In "Leda and the swan", Leda becomes the victim of brutalisation and the swan becomes the -V. agent of brutalization (Craig 199). Therefore, it is obvious that Yeats uses the swan in "Leda and the Swan" as the symbol of a new annunciation, not only an annunciation of the Greek history, but also the annunciation of the new primary secular ( Fascism) and antithetical religion gyres in his system of belief. Moreover, based on Yeats's system of belief related to Greek Mythology as its reference, the swan in "Leda and the Swan" symbolizes power and war. Actually this leads into Jeffares's opinion that actually the swan represents power (44). It is seen from the eggs resulted from its action, from one of the eggs came Love (Castor) and from the other, war (Hellen). Jeffares thinks that Yeats uses the story of the Leda and the swan to show a great power that can change the civilization. It is in his book, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats; he states that Yeats consideres the swan is the cause of Grecian civilization (44). In the action that brings the change of civilization, the swan had union, through sexual relationship, with human being. In this union, the humankind and god, the natural and the supernatural descend a super human being that had the power of god in her blood and took the form of human being. Helen, as the result of Zeus's seduction toward Leda, has the characteristic of super human, as she was called as the most beautiful girl in the world that could bring a new civilization to the world. Besides, in Greek mythology, symbol of swan also deals with power because it is another form of Zeus, the ruler of the gods. Even though in the form of swan, Zeus still has having his power so that he could do the terror and brutalisation toward Leda. In addition, the swan has the power to start a new civilization as well as a Great War in Greek history, the Trojan War. The results of the war are clear, the fall of Troy and the death of Agamemnon. In other words, the swan in "Leda and the Swan" symbolizes power and war because, based on Yeats's system of belief with Greek mythology as the allusion of the poem, the swan is the annunciation of Grecian civilization and the cause of Trojan War. It actually proves that the symbol of swan is a universal symbol, the "archetypes", that becomes the foundation of "Leda 37 and the Swan" as well as the Greek Mythology. It is because Leda and Irishmen have similar experience, oppression from the authorities. In summary, the swan symbol in "Leda and the Swan" through the Greek mythology and Yeats's system of belief connected to Yeats's personal political point of view is revealed as new annunciation of history, power and war. The swan symbolizes an annunciation of Grecian civilization and the next primary secular as well as antithetical religious era. It also symbolizes power and war seen from the results of its actions, the new history and Great War in Greek mythology. This means that in the analysis based on the context which sees the swan as the main character of the poem, the writer justifies that Jeffares' idea that the symbol of swan in the poem symbolizes power and war is appropriate.