Yeats saw it coming

Yeats saw it coming August 18, 2015

The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post both have pieces on W. B. Yeats’ great poem The Second Coming.

One of the defining poems of the 20th century, Yeats wrote it back in 1919, but it seems to predict the rise of Nazi Germany, the growth of Communism, and now postmodernism, the rise of radical Islam, current political trends in Europe, and–for columnist E. J. Dionne–Donald Trump!

The poem, famous for its lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”and “The center cannot hold,” is built both on Yeats’ theories of history and his take on the Christian notion that Christ will be followed by Antichrist.  After the jump, read an excellent unpacking of the poem by David Lehmann, and then see what Dionne does in applying it to today’s political situation.

From David Lehman, A Poet’s Apocalyptic Vision:‘The Second Coming’ outlines William Butler Yeats’s fearful vision of the future based on the moral anarchy of the present.  The Wall Street Journal:

If our age is apocalyptic in mood—and rife with doomsday scenarios, nuclear nightmares, religious fanatics and suicidal terrorists—there may be no more chilling statement of our condition than William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming.” Written in 1919, in the immediate aftermath of the epoch-ending disaster that was World War I, “The Second Coming” extrapolates a fearful vision from the moral anarchy of the present. The poem also, almost incidentally, serves as an introduction to the great Irish poet’s complex conception of history, which is cyclical, not linear. Things happen twice, the first time as sublime, the second time as horrifying, so that, instead of the “second coming” of the savior, Jesus Christ, Yeats envisages a monstrosity, a “rough beast” threatening violence commensurate with the human capacity for bloodletting.

[Keep reading. . .]

From E. J. Dionne, When Yeats comes knocking – The Washington Post:

W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” written in 1919, is my nominee for the most cited poem in political commentary. The line invoked most — “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” — is irresistible. It’s always tempting to assume that the side we oppose brings vast reservoirs of demonic energy to bear against our own sad and bedraggled allies.

The other oft-quoted verse comes four lines earlier, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” This sentiment comes back again and again, at times of stress when Establishments seem to be tottering and when moderate and conventional politicians find themselves outshouted and outmaneuvered.

We are definitely in for another “Second Coming” revival, and Donald Trump is the least of it. The center is under siege all over the democratic world. . . .

Trump is a symptom of a much wider problem in Western democracies. In country after country, traditional, broadly based parties and their politicians face scorn. More voters than usual seem tired of carefully focus-grouped public statements, deftly cultivated public personas and cautiously crafted political platforms that are designed to move just the right number of voters in precisely the right places to cast a half-hearted vote for a person or a party. . . .

Reihan Salam, a conservative writer, is also struck by the similarities between Trumpism and a variety of rebellious movements to the left and right of the middle-ground parties in Europe. He noted recently in Slate that Italy, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Spain and Greece have all seen the rise of new parties that “manage to blend populism and nationalism into a potent anti-establishment brew.”

[Keep reading. . .]

 

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