![]() It is this courage to look with unflinching honesty at the difficult, complex and, sometimes, very uncomfortable truth that characterises Yeats’ work. Over the years I have come back to the poem and I now realise that the shock is not the act of rape itself, but the suggestion that Leda may be complicit in it, that her ‘vague fingers’ may not want to push Zeus from her ‘loosening thighs’. The rest of the students were looking blankly at the poem so I struggled to explain what I thought was happening, although I was shocked by what I read: a woman was being violently raped by a swan. ![]() Well, I read it through twice and was immediately struck by, firstly, the power of the language and, secondly, the horror of what was happening. I remember Mrs Smallwood asking my class what we thought the poem was about. My first experience of Yeats was during my first English Literature A Level class: the very first text we were given was Leda and the Swan. In Broken Dreams, for instance, he becomes the ‘poet stubborn’ writing of Maud’s beauty when ‘age might have chilled his blood’. His poems are laden with self mockery, poking fun at his own pomposity. This view of Yeats, however, as a tortured artist blind to how ridiculous he appears to other people misses the greatness of Yeats’ work which arises because he is all too aware of how ludicrous he appears to others. These biographical details convince many casual readers that Yeats was clearly an ineffectual aesthete whose art arose from his personal failings. He then proposed to her daughter, and was again rejected. My thought with you always.Yeats is sometimes, misguidedly, defined by his lifelong infatuation with a woman, Maud Gonne, who rejected his proposals of marriage on at least four occasions. We were quite happy, & we talked of this wonderful spiritual vision I have described - you said it would tend to increase physical desire - This troubles me a little - for there was nothing physical in that union - Material union is but a pale shadow compared to it - write to me quickly & tell me if you know anything of this & what you think of it - & if I may come to you again like this. We were in Italy together (I think this was from some word in your letter which I had read again before sleeping). Then I went upstairs to bed & I dreamed of you confused dreams of ordinary life. I went again twice, each time it was the same - each time I was brought back by some slight noise in the house. We melted into one another till we formed only one being, a being greater than ourselves who felt all & knew all with double intensity - the clock striking 11 broke the spell & as we separated it felt as if life was being drawn away from me through my chest with almost physical pain. ![]() ![]() I only saw your face distinctly & as I looked into your eyes (as I did the day in Paris you asked me what I was thinking of) & your lips touched mine. You had taken the form I think of a great serpent, but I am not quite sure. We went somewhere in space I don't know where - I was conscious of starlight & of hearing the sea below us. ![]() It was not working hours for you & I thought by going to you I might even be able to leave with you some of my vitality & energy which would make working less of a toil next day - I had seen the day before when waking from sleep a curious somewhat Egyptian form floating over me (like in the picture of Blake, the soul leaving the body) - It was dressed in moth-like garments & had curious wings edged with gold in which it could fold itself up - I had thought it was myself, a body in which I could go out into the astral - at a quarter to 11 last night I put on this body & thought strongly of you & desired to go to you. Last night all my household had retired at a quarter to 11 and I thought I would go to you astrally. That play is going to be a wonderful thing & must come first - nothing must interfere with it. I had such a wonderful experience last night that I must know at once if it affected you & how? for above all I don't want to do any thing which will take you from your work, or make working more arduous. It is not in a week but in a day that I am writing you. ![]()
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