Love is Trouble... Wider Reading 8: Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan" was published in Yeats's 1928 collection “The Tower,” after being rejected for publication by The Irish Statesman. The collection is often considered to be one of the most celebrated and important literary works of the twentieth century. Yeats started writing the poem for a political publication when he was well into his sixties, presumably intending to inject political meaning into it, but he changed it several times before the final version that we know with a new title. Leda, the beautiful Queen of Sparta is bathing when Zeus, disguised as a large swan knocks her off balance. The swan is ferocious as it lands on top of her, and caresses her thighs with his webbed feet and holds the back of her neck in his bill. She can't escape as the swan presses down with his chest on her own. The swan completes the act, and Leda becomes pregnant with, among others, Helen of Troy. This act will cause the entire Trojan War, the death of Agamemnon and the beginning of Rome. As the swan overpowered her, the poet wonders if Leda acquired any of Zeus's knowledge before, his appetite sated, he “let her drop.”

“Leda and the Swan” describes a precise moment which represents a change of era in Yeats’s historical model of gyres, in which a great, changing event happens every two thousand years – the fall of Troy in 2000 B.C, the birth of Christ in A.D. 0, and a “rough beast,” which was supposed to appear around 2000 A.D. It is important to note the lasting impact of the Trojan War. The conflict brought about the end of the ancient mythological era, and the birth of Rome and modern history. Like “The Second Coming,” “Leda and the Swan” is valuable more for its powerful and evocative language — which manages to imagine vividly such a bizarre phenomenon as a girl’s rape by an immense swan — than for its place in Yeats’s occult history of the world.

While the use of sexually suggestive language does alter the perception of rape in the sonnet, it does not thwart it entirely. The references to sexual desires in conjunction with rape are likely the result of cultural attitudes towards rape during the time period in which the piece was written, such as blaming women. Despite its ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem maintains a breathlessness that is partially due to enjambment, a poetic technique that Yeats uses liberally in his poetry. While the subject matter of the poem is violent and disturbing, the structure of "Leda and the Swan" conveys feelings of love, safety and beauty. The intensity of the rape is controlled by the narrow confines of the sonnet, an aesthetically pleasing and heavily structured art form traditionally associated with romance. The violence of the rape is then controlled within the constraints of the sonnet. Additionally, the sonnet itself is brief, thus ensuring the rape will be brief as well.

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Leda and the Swan - Quotations