Yeats sonnet, “Leda and the Swan” is an
aesthetic experience of the bizarre phenomenon of a girl’s rape by a massive
swan. The sonnet evokes a sensory experience, one which brings to life the
coming of a new age. However, through the bold and vivid images of abuse, the
narrator brings attention to the victims of violence and draws attention to their
helplessness. With phrases such as “staggering girl,” “helpless breast,” and
“terrified vague fingers,” the reader is forced to empathize with the victim due
to detailed description and alterations in personality—“Did she put on his
knowledge with his power”--that this abuse unfortunately evokes.
In the poem the elements of the public
and private and uncomfortably intertwine, in that the coming of age of the
girl--the end of innocence coupled with her burgeoning womanhood, becoming a
mother and simultaneously a victim—is portrayed on a grander scale. Yeats draws
attention to how the narrative lens privileges Zeus as the statutory offender. Yet,
it is only through the title “Leda and the Swan” that we are provided with a
direct link to Greek mythology and literature, the only other indication being
the reference to Agamemnon. The reference to Zeus symbolizes the supernatural,
fate, beastliness, masculinity and the uncontrollable, and raises serious moral
and philosophical issues, both in the relationship with gods, relationships
with human beings, and relation with fate and the natural.
The caesura at the center of the first
verse, “A sudden blow; the great wings beating still” (ll.1), highlights the
unexpectedness of the Swans appearance, which heralds the supernatural or inexplicable.
The large bird is already identified as larger than average, with its “great
wings” and its ability to so easily dominate this girl: “Above the staggering
girl, her thighs caressed.” The reader is as shocked as Leda and experiences
the same disorientation due to the lack of context around the sudden violence.
In Lines 3-4 we finally discover the
identity of the molester: “By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,/He
holds her helpless breast upon his breast.” The reader is encouraged to
identify “him” and “he” as Zeus.
In the first stanza, diction such as great wings/staggering girl, thighs/webs,
nape/bill creates parallels between the girl and the swan, a parallelism which
stands in stark contrast to the rhythm of the first stanza. The diction finally
converges in the last line of the stanza with the use of a word ascribed both
to dominant bird and the subjugated girl: “He holds her helpless breast upon
his breast.”
The beginning of the poem creates a
sense of urgency with words like sudden blow, beating, staggering, shudder,
mastered, burning, as well a portrait the girl’s weakness (caressed, helpless,
terrified, vague, loosening). The alliteration in the poem strengthens the
significance of the events, such as ‘great wings beating still Above the
staggering girl’ as well as assisting to create the poem’s melody. This part of
the poem’s rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD highlights the words ‘still’, ‘caressed’, ‘bill’,
‘breast’ and ‘push’, ‘thighs’, ‘rush’, ‘lies’.
The second stanza is more philosophical,
one which brings forward two questions and draws attention to the strangeness
of the events. These questions not only reflect on the disembodiment
experienced by the rape victim, but the direct address to the reader draws
attention to their inexplicability and Leda’s inability to fully reconcile the
violation of body with the supernatural perpetrator. When in lines 5-6 the
narrator asks “How can those terrified vague fingers push/ The feathered glory
from her loosening thighs?” the implied answer is she could not. The use of the
terms “vague” and “loosening” in association with Leda’s body leads one to ask whether
or not the “terror” conveyed by the narrator translated physically into a
committed resistance. In short, her body is helpless in comparison to the
strength of Zeus.
In Lines 7-8 this body is no longer
Leda’s body: “And how can body, laid in that white rush,/ But feel the strange heart
beating where it lies?” The lack of the possessive pronoun forces us to become
the body—it is, quite literally, any body. In fact, Yeats never establishes a
distance between reader and Leda; like her, we can only see "white rush.”
The heartbeat she hears is both that of an animal and a god, and therefore
decidedly inhuman and “strange.” We are placed so close to the swan that we can
hear the heartbeat, and faintly make out the white rush of the feathers. Yeats
evokes her helplessness in the “vagueness” and strangeness of the material
details which might orient us in space and time.
The tone changes at sestet, where the
poem’s subject shifts from Leda and the swan to Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and the Trojan War.
The shift or turn is the completion of the sexual act: "A shudder in the
loins” echoes a shudder in the poetic lines.
The "broken wall" and "burning roof and tower" refer
to the famous burning of Troy. Leda here, while not the direct cause of the
Trojan War, “engenders” that conflict through her victimization. This stanza links
together the prior scene with Leda and the swan to Leda and Zeus’s daughter,
Helen and Leda and Tyndareus’ daughter, Clytemnestra, who supposedly bring the
death of Agamemnon and the fall of Troy: “The broken wall, the burning roof and
tower And Agamemnon dead.” Lines 10 and 11 are very dramatic, and seem to
emphasize blame while not explicitly giving that blame an object. Could it be
the narrator is evoking the sense that the victim is to blame? In this sense,
“being caught up” reads essentially as a blaming of the victim. Zeus himself remains
untouched by the narrator’s scrutiny; the use of the term “brute” in the next
line seems to compliment the strength of the swan, rather than an accusation.
If Leda is “mastered,” then it could fall on her as being too easily taken or “caught
up”. Despite that “caught” echoes line 3, in which Leda was “caught up” in the
Swan’s bill, it is easily read metaphorically as caught up in lust, or the emotions
of the moment.
The verb tense shifts to the past in lines
11-12: “Being so Caught up,/ So mastered by the brute blood of the air”. The
narrator seems to ask if the girl, “mastered by the brute blood”, changed and
herself became a ‘brute’—this act of uncompromising, self-seeking,
“indifferent” violence against her inspiring violence to rival this force. The
poem concludes with a rhetorical question that remains unanswered: “Did she put
on his knowledge with his power/ Before the indifferent beak could let her
drop” (ll.13-14) The reader much like the ‘staggering girl’ is dropped from the
emotional apex of the poem. The sudden divergence from the iambic pentameter--
that is present throughout and creates and shapes the textual authority of the
poem-- emphasizes and allows for this sudden drop. It is also suggests a
divergence from the former order created through the iambic pentameter, and
thus symbolizes the first act nation building, one which is the destruction of
the former order to allow for the building of a new one. This may indicate transference
of power prior to the “drop” in that is raises the question of whether or not
Leda acquired some of Zeus’s powers. That the question remains unanswered asks
us whetehr the brevity of the event allowed for this transference.
Zeus’ indifference to Leda and to the
reader—outside of the brutality of rape—raises a variety of questions as to the
relationship between the ‘gods’ or the ‘supernatural’ with humanity and
civilization. The narrator-as-observer of the rape adopts an ambivalent tone in
the last six lines, a rhetorical and historical distance that echoes Zeus’
indifference. In the last line the indifference on part of the brute is seemingly
harsher then the rape itself. After the brute receives his release—achieved his
goal— he leaves. How is one to reconcile this helplessness of Leda, and her
placement at the forefront of a mythical war, with the indifference of her
supernatural rapist?
The poem allows for a multitude of approaches.
One can read the girl as a victim of sexual abuse who, through this one scene, is
either transformed from victim to agent, or becomes simply a vessel for Zeus’
power. Another reading casts Leda as a representation of civilization itself,
subject to the whims of the supernatural and powerless despite futile attempts
in resistance. However through the act of birth, this power of the supernatural
power is claimed and commodified, capable of being harvested for the
utilitarian purpose of the new generation. The third approach is to view the
violation of the girl as a necessity, and thus questions our individual
relationship with the events that we are unable to explain, let alone justify. In the events of one’s own life, let alone the
lives of others, one is forced to take on the role of the helpless bystander, a
witness who nonetheless and paradoxically becomes progenitor of an unforeseen
outcome.
