Critical Essay of Thomas Carlyle: The Hero as Poet

 Like most nineteenth century historians and philosophers, Carlyle promotes the notion that progress is good and inevitable; unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he does not believe that the passage of time in and of itself assures progress. Only when persons of heroic temperament step forward to lead the masses can true progress for society occur. The persons featured in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History were just such people; their actions, and their willingness to live in accordance with the vision of society that motivated them, changed history for the better. Carlyle finds no one around him acting in a way to set his own age right; given to commercialism and self-gratification, the people of nineteenth century Europe lack the will or the leadership to make something worthwhile of their lives. If his work is not totally successful in conveying a portrait of heroism good for all times, it does succeed in showing Carlyle’s disenchantment with the nineteenth century and its lack of heroes.

Carlyle’s basic idea is that all history is the making of great persons, gifted with supreme power of vision or action. It thus becomes one’s duty to “worship Heroes.” We all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great Men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all the rushing-down whatsoever; the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless.
In the world of onrushing liberalism and industrialism, with the memory of God ever dimming through the growth of science and scepticism, Carlyle needs a faith and develops one based on the worship of great men.

This faith, dubious enough under restrictions of law and order, not to mention the existence of great women, becomes even more dubious as handled by Carlyle. As the six lectures progress, he moves from myth to history with no clear distinction. He offers leaders of religious movements, great poets, and military conquerors as equally great or heroic. Hero worship not only should be devout; it actually was. In Carlyle’s estimation, love of God is virtually identical with loyalty to a leader. Despite his scorn for business activity and its operators, Carlyle’s heroes are all men of practical intelligence. He values the same kind of industriousness, resoluteness, and obvious sincerity that could serve to build economic as well as political or clerical empires.

On May 12, 1840, Thomas Carlyle gave his third lecture in his series on Heroes. Titled "The Hero as Poet," it looked into the lives of Dante and Shakespeare. His previous lectures, he said, dealt with the production of older ages, "not be repeated in the new." Divinity as hero and prophet as hero would never happen again, he said. Mankind had advanced to the point where he no longer stooped to such low intellectual things. Or, "if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom, and Heroism, are ever rising higher...." Ah, but the poet! He believed we would always have poet-heroes. "...the hero...can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will according to the kind of world he finds himself born into." Concerning the poet, what would it take to turn a poet into a hero—or maybe a hero into a poet. Carlyle says: 
                                               I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all                                                       sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose                                                     stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the                                                 Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I                                                     fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator,                                                                     Philosopher; in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all                                                     these.
So, he picks Dante and Shakespeare, not because of the greatness of their poetry, but because of the greatness of their lives. Or, perhaps he would say their poetry was great because they were great men and heroes, capable of fulfilling many roles in life. He doesn't completely dismiss aptitude, saying both of these men obviously had aptitude for poetry. And in good Carlylean characteristic, he can't help but bring Goethe into the equation when discussing aptitudes. I think, by the time I finish all of Carlyle's works, I shall be very tired of hearing about Goethe.

Dante he (Carlyle) likes because he rose from some limitations to be able to write his book. Although he was born upper class, the political machinations of Florence drug him down. He was, however, a bright light in a dark age. His life was from 1265 and spanned a mere 56 years, into the next century, which was squarely in the Dark Ages (or Middle Ages if you prefer). Thus his accomplishment was even bigger because of these handicaps. And best of all, Dante was sincere in what he did. As mentioned before, sincerity is akin to greatness as the mark of the hero. 

Shakespeare, Carlyle says, "has given us the Practice of body" whereas Dante "has given us the Faith or soul." Shakespeare worked as the Renaissance was unfolding, which gave him advantages Dante didn't have. Although, Macaulay said that the mark of a greater poet was a great work produced in a civilised age. Easy for a poet to produce a great work in a dark age, harder in a civilised age. How exactly a civilised age is supposed to hinder a poet is something I haven't quite figured out, but I'm not calling Macaulay wrong. Shakespeare clearly wrote in an age more civilised than the age of Dante's labours. Those more astute than I will have to figure out which had the greater environmental handicap.

Carlyle believes Shakespeare could have done so much more than he did, in terms of politics or public leadership. The greatness of his verse demonstrates this. In the end he says, "Yet Shakespeare was greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer."

As was his way, Carlyle did not confine himself to these two giants of the world of the poets. Goethe, as I already mentioned; Mirabeau, Tieck, and even Napoleon are all mentioned in almost the same breath as the hero as poet.
Reference: 
https://brainly.in/question/7848386
http://davidatodd.blogspot.com/2013/03/carlyle-hero-as-poet.html
  

POETRY AND MUSIC CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR SPIRITUS MUNDI (world spirit)

Physicist and poet Dr, Jacob Bronowski once asked “What goes on in the mind when we imagine?”

To a large degree Daniel Khaneman, answers Bronowski’s question when he writes, in his bestselling book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”,

“The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.”

Dr. Bronowski went on to conclude that “imagination is a specifically human gift”. He describes the experiments of Walter Hunter in which Hunter taught a group of dogs that when a light came on over one of ab arrangement of tunnels they would be rewarded with food. However, when Hunter added the dimension of time and made the dogs wait until after the light went out. The dogs forgot which tunnel had the light within a matter of seconds. The results of Hunter’s experiment demonstrated an animal cannot recall a signal from the past for even a short fraction of the time that a human being can. Animals do not depend, as human memory does, on the calling to mind of absent things.

According to Dr. Bronowski, “to imagine” is to make images and to move them about in one’s head in new arrangements. Following is a painting by Suling Wang, an internationally recognized painter, which she calls “Cryptic Butterfly”, inspired by Taiwanese oral tradition. Ms. Wang’s work is composed of meticulously created layers of painted calligraphy and cartoon-like forms overlaid atop other shapes that suggest trees, stems, and mountains all imagined and felt by the artist

Human beings, unlike other animals, fix memories in images or other substitute symbols. With a symbolic vocabulary we spell out the future and not just one but many futures which we can weigh one against the other.

The most important symbols for humans are words, which are abstract symbols other animals do not have. Dr. Bronowski writes “of all the distinctions between man and animal, the characteristic gift which makes us human is the power to work with symbolic images; the gift of imagination.” Both poetry, literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language, and songs, just poetry set to music, are examples of man’s gift of imagination and there may be no more powerful example of man’s gift of imagination and the use of words than W.B.Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming”.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

According to Yeats “Spiritus Mundi”, a Latin term that literally means, ‘world spirit’, is ‘a universal memory and a ‘muse’ of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer’. Yeats used the term to describe the collective soul of the universe containing the memories of all time. From ‘Spiritus Mundi,’ Yeats believed, came all poets’ inspiration.

To Yeats, Spiritus Mundi is the source of all ‘images’ and ‘symbols,’ a ‘collective unconscious.’ Dr. Bronowski’s believed “the characteristic act of the mind of man is “to imagine” which means that Spiritus Mundi is not just available to poets but to all human beings. We can all find comfort in a ‘collective unconscious’ or source of all ‘images’ and ‘symbols.

While Khaneman found “our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed” he would likely add “the emotional intensity of messages to which we are exposed” includes the emotions of both the sender and receiver of “the messages”.

Furthermore, none of this is to say that the sender and receiver cannot be one and the same person, as when we send messages to ourselves with our feelings, recalled from the amygdala of our brain as thoughts described by Dr. Antonio Damasio.

In Descartes’ Error Dr. Damásio presents his “somatic marker hypothesis“, a proposed mechanism by which emotions guide (or bias) behavior and decision-making, and explains how rationality requires emotional input. When making subsequent decisions, these somatic markers and their evoked emotions are consciously or unconsciously associated with their past outcomes, and influence decision-making in favor of some behaviors instead of others.

Dr. Damasio argues that René Descartes‘ “error” was the dualist separation of mind and body, rationality and emotion. According to Dr. Damasio “Somatic markers” are feelings in the body that are associated with emotions, such as the association of rapid heartbeat with anxiety or of nausea with disgust. According to the hypothesis, somatic markers strongly influence subsequent decision-making. Within the brain, somatic markers are thought to be processed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the amygdala. The hypothesis has been tested in experiments using the Iowa gambling task.

According to Dr. Damasio, joy or sorrow can emerge only after the brain registers physical changes in the body. The mind is not separate from the body but rather is an integral part of the biological entity we call a human being. This is why we need to be on guard of the environment (mental as well as physical) into which we go or are sometimes taken.

Perhaps nothing “registers ‘more’ physical change in the body” than real rock ’n’ roll, registered through the human auditory system and there’s no more real rock n roll than Led Zppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”.

“There’s a lady who’s sure

All that glitters is gold

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven

When she gets there she knows

If the stores are all closed

With a word she can get what she came for”

This is how one reviewer described it.

“Led Zeppelin‘s riff-tastic anthem ‘Stairway to Heaven,’isn’t just a great rock song; it’s the great rock song!

The centerpiece of Zeppelin’s 1971 untitled fourth album, (‘Zoso’ or ‘Led Zeppelin IV,’ ), ‘Stairway’ set the blueprint for all multi-suite hard-rock epics to follow, though none have come even remotely close to matching its greatness. Even on the 12,000th listen, the track’s ethereal magic never wears thin, and that timeless build from Jimmy Page‘s shimmering, fingerpicked guitar intro to the riff-driven full-band attack is one of the most visceral moments in the history of recorded music.”

Poetry, which is nothing more than music without the sound, can be equally evocative in terms of it’s bodily effect. Examples of physical change in the body” evoked with poetry is the work of poet/song writer Leonard Cohen, who Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, perhaps the greatest poet/song writer, called “his nearest rival”. That should be understandable when listening to Cohen’s “So Long Marianne”.

“For six decades, Leonard Cohen revealed his soul to the world through poetry and song — his deep and timeless humanity touching our very core. Simply brilliant. His music and words will resonate forever.” — Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 2008

Visceral means “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect”. So if “the characteristic act of the mind of man is “to imagine” and Spiritus Mundi is not just available to poets but to all human beings then we can all find comfort in a ‘collective unconscious’ or source of all ‘images’ and ‘symbols, a source of a visceral collective unconscious that can bring all people together with poetry and music.

Analysis of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts V-VII

Summary

The Mariner continues telling his story to the Wedding-Guest. Free of the curse of the Albatross, the Mariner was able to sleep, and as he did so, the rains came, drenching him. The moon broke through the clouds, and a host of spirits entered the dead men’s bodies, which began to move about and perform their old sailors’ tasks. The ship was propelled forward as the Mariner joined in the work. The Wedding-Guest declares again that he is afraid of the Mariner, but the Mariner tells him that the men’s bodies were inhabited by blessed spirits, not cursed souls. At dawn, the bodies clustered around the mast, and sweet sounds rose up from their mouths—the sounds of the spirits leaving their bodies. The spirits flew around the ship, singing. The ship continued to surge forward until noon, driven by the spirit from the land of mist and snow, nine fathoms deep in the sea. At noon, however, the ship stopped, then began to move backward and forward as if it were trapped in a tug of war. Finally, it broke free, and the Mariner fell to the deck with the jolt of sudden acceleration. He heard two disembodied voices in the air; one asked if he was the man who had killed the Albatross, and the other declared softly that he had done penance for his crime and would do more penance before all was rectified.

In dialogue, the two voices discussed the situation. The moon overpowered the sea, they said, and enabled the ship to move; an angelic power moved the ship northward at an astonishingly rapid pace. When the Mariner awoke from his trance, he saw the dead men standing together, looking at him. But a breeze rose up and propelled the ship back to its native country, back to the Mariner’s home; he recognised the kirk, the hill, and the lighthouse. As they neared the bay, seraphs—figures made of pure light—stepped out of the corpses of the sailors, which fell to the deck. Each seraph waved at the Mariner, who was powerfully moved. Soon, he heard the sound of oars; the Pilot, the Pilot’s son, and the holy Hermit were rowing out toward him. The Mariner hoped that the Hermit could shrive (absolve) him of his sin, washing the blood of the Albatross off his soul.

The Hermit, a holy man who lived in the woods and loved to talk to mariners from strange lands, had encouraged the Pilot and his son not to be afraid and to row out to the ship. But as they reached the Mariner’s ship, it sank in a sudden whirlpool, leaving the Mariner afloat and the Pilot’s rowboat spinning in the wake. The Mariner was loaded aboard the Pilot’s ship, and the Pilot’s boy, mad with terror, laughed hysterically and declared that the devil knows how to row. On land, the Mariner begged the Hermit to shrive him, and the Hermit bade the Mariner tell his tale. Once it was told, the Mariner was free from the agony of his guilt. However, the guilt returned over time and persisted until the Mariner travelled to a new place and told his tale again. The moment he comes upon the man to whom he is destined to tell his tale, he knows it, and he has no choice but to relate the story then and there to his appointed audience; the Wedding-Guest is one such person.

The church doors burst open, and the wedding party streams outside. The Mariner declares to the Wedding-Guest that he who loves all God’s creatures leads a happier, better life; he then takes his leave. The Wedding-Guest walks away from the party, stunned, and awakes the next morning “a sadder and a wiser man.”

Form

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but occasionally as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though there are again many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

Commentary

This second segment of the “Rime” concludes the Mariner’s narrative; here he meets the host of seraph-like spirits who (rather grotesquely) rescue his ship by entering the corpses of the fallen sailors, and it is here that he earns his moral salvation through his confession to the Hermit and the subsequent confessions he must continue to make throughout his life—including this one, to the Wedding-Guest. This second segment lacks much of the bizarre imagistic intensity found in the first section, and the supernatural powers even begin to seem sympathetic (the submerged spirit from the land of mist and snow is now called “the lonesome spirit” in a side note). The more gruesome elements still surface occasionally, however; the sinking of the ship and the insanity of the Pilot’s son could have come from a dramatic, gritty tale such as Moby- Dick, and the seraphs of the previous scene evoke such fantastical works as Paradise Lost.

The figurative arrangement of this poem is complicated: one speaker pronounces judgements like “A sadder and a wiser man / He rose the morrow morn”; the side notes are presumably written by a scholar, separate from this first speaker; independent of these two voices is the Mariner, whose words make up most of the poem; the Wedding-Guest also speaks directly. Moreover, the various time frames combine rather intricately. Coleridge adds to this complexity at the start of Part VI, when he introduces a short dramatic dialogue to indicate the conversation between the two disembodied voices. This technique, again, influenced later writers, such as Melville, who often used dramatic dialogues in his equally complicated tale of the sea, Moby-Dick. Here in Coleridge’s poem, this dialogue plunges the reader suddenly into the role of the Mariner, hearing the voices around him rather than simply hearing them described. Disorienting techniques such as this one are used throughout the “Rime” to ensure that the poem never becomes too abstract in its interplay between side notes and verse; thus, however theoretical the level of the poem’s operation, its story remains compelling.

Analysis of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts I-IV

Summary

Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled old sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient Mariner’s “glittering eye” and can do nothing but sit on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a ship out of his native harbour—”below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse top”—and into a sunny and cheerful sea. Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that the bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself from the Mariner’s story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a giant storm rose up in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land “of mist and snow,” where “ice, mast-high, came floating by”; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice. But then the sailors encountered an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice cracked and split, and a wind from the south propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy stretch of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner’s face, and the Wedding-Guest asks him, “Why look’st thou so?” The Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow.

At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird that made the breezes blow. But when the fog lifted soon afterwards, the sailors decided that the bird had actually brought not the breezes but the fog; they now congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind pushed the ship into a silent sea where the sailors were quickly stranded; the winds died down, and the ship was “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.” The ocean thickened, and the men had no water to drink; as if the sea were rotting, slimy creatures crawled out of it and walked across the surface. At night, the water burned green, blue, and white with death fire. Some of the sailors dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms deep, followed them beneath the ship from the land of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight and hung the corpse of the Albatross around his neck like a cross.

A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that they were unable to speak. But one day, gazing westward, the Mariner saw a tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into a ship, moving toward them. Too dry-mouthed to speak out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner bit down on his arm; sucking the blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough to cry out, “A sail! a sail!” The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it was a ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and “thicks man’s blood with cold.” Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the woman won, whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to instantly emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by one—all except the Mariner, whom each sailor cursed “with his eye” before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies and rushed by the Mariner.

The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his skinny hand. The Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no need for dread; he was not among the men who died, and he is a living man, not a ghost. Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled across its surface. He tried to pray but was deterred by a “wicked whisper” that made his heart “as dry as dust.” He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who glared at him with the malice of their final curse. For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. At last the moon rose, casting the great shadow of the ship across the waters; where the ship’s shadow touched the waters, they burned red. The great water snakes moved through the silvery moonlight, glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and became beautiful in the Mariner’s eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that moment, he found himself able to pray, and the corpse of the Albatross fell from his neck, sinking “like lead into the sea.”

Form

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but, occasionally, as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though again there are many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

Commentary

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is unique among Coleridge’s important works— unique in its intentionally archaic language (“Eftsoons his hand drops he”), its length, its bizarre moral narrative, its strange scholarly notes printed in small type in the margins, its thematic ambiguity, and the long Latin epigraph that begins it, concerning the multitude of un-classifiable “invisible creatures” that inhabit the world. Its peculiarities make it quite atypical of its era; it has little in common with other Romantic works. Rather, the scholarly notes, the epigraph, and the archaic language combine to produce the impression (intended by Coleridge, no doubt) that the “Rime” is a ballad of ancient times (like “Sir Patrick Spence,” which appears in “Dejection: An Ode”), reprinted with explanatory notes for a new audience.

But the explanatory notes complicate, rather than clarify, the poem as a whole; while there are times that they explain some un-articulated action, there are also times that they interpret the material of the poem in a way that seems at odds with, or irrelevant to, the poem itself. For instance, in Part II, we find a note regarding the spirit that followed the ship nine fathoms deep: “one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted.” What might Coleridge mean by introducing such figures as “the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus,” into the poem, as marginalia, and by implying that the verse itself should be interpreted through him?

This is a question that has puzzled scholars since the first publication of the poem in this form. (Interestingly, the original version of the “Rime,” in the 1797 edition of Lyrical Ballads, did not include the side notes.) There is certainly an element of humour in Coleridge’s scholarly glosses—a bit of parody aimed at the writers of serious glosses of this type; such phrases as “Platonic Constantinopolitan” seem consciously silly. It can be argued that the glosses are simply an amusing irrelevancy designed to make the poem seem archaic and that the truly important text is the poem itself—in its complicated, often Christian symbolism, in its moral lesson (that “all creatures great and small” were created by God and should be loved, from the Albatross to the slimy snakes in the rotting ocean) and in its characters.

If one accepts this argument, one is faced with the task of discovering the key to Coleridge’s symbolism: what does the Albatross represent, what do the spirits represent, and so forth. Critics have made many ingenious attempts to do just that and have found in the “Rime” a number of interesting readings, ranging from Christian parable to political allegory. But these interpretations are dampened by the fact that none of them (with the possible exception of the Christian reading, much of which is certainly intended by the poem) seems essential to the story itself. One can accept these interpretations of the poem only if one disregards the glosses almost completely.

A more interesting, though still questionable, reading of the poem maintains that Coleridge intended it as a commentary on the ways in which people interpret the lessons of the past and the ways in which the past is, to a large extent, simply unknowable. By filling his archaic ballad with elaborate symbolism that cannot be deciphered in any single, definitive way and then framing that symbolism with side notes that pick at it and offer a highly theoretical spiritual-scientific interpretation of its classifications, Coleridge creates tension between the ambiguous poem and the unambiguous-but-ridiculous notes, exposing a gulf between the “old” poem and the “new” attempt to understand it. The message would be that, though certain moral lessons from the past are still comprehensible—”he liveth best who loveth best” is not hard to understand— other aspects of its narratives are less easily grasped.

In any event, this first segment of the poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his trials and shows, in action, the lesson that will be explicitly articulated in the second segment. The Mariner kills the Albatross in bad faith, subjecting himself to the hostility of the forces that govern the universe (the very un-Christian-seeming spirit beneath the sea and the horrible Life-in-Death). It is unclear how these forces are meant to relate to one another—whether the Life-in-Death is in league with the submerged spirit or whether their simultaneous appearance is simply a coincidence.

After earning his curse, the Mariner is able to gain access to the favour of God—able to regain his ability to pray—only by realising that the monsters around him are beautiful in God’s eyes and that he should love them as he should have loved the Albatross. In the final three books of the poem, the Mariner’s encounter with a Hermit will spell out this message explicitly, and the reader will learn why the Mariner has stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell him this story.

Analysis of W B Yeats’ The Second Coming

Summary

The speaker describes a nightmarish scene: the falcon, turning in a widening “gyre” (spiral), cannot hear the falconer; “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”; anarchy is loosed upon the world; “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The best people, the speaker says, lack all conviction, but the worst “are full of passionate intensity.”

Surely, the speaker asserts, the world is near a revelation; “Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” No sooner does he think of “the Second Coming,” then he is troubled by “a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi, or the collective spirit of mankind: somewhere in the desert, a giant sphinx (“A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”) is moving, while the shadows of desert birds reel about it. The darkness drops again over the speaker’s sight, but he knows that the sphinx’s twenty centuries of “stony sleep” have been made a nightmare by the motions of “a rocking cradle.” And what “rough beast,” he wonders, “its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Form

“The Second Coming” is written in a very rough iambic pentameter, but the meter is so loose, and the exceptions so frequent, that it actually seems closer to free verse with frequent heavy stresses. The rhymes are likewise haphazard; apart from the two couplets with which the poem opens, there are only coincidental rhymes in the poem, such as “man” and “sun.”

Commentary

Because of its stunning, violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language, “The Second Coming” is one of Yeats’s most famous and most anthologised poems; it is also one of the most thematically obscure and difficult to understand. (It is safe to say that very few people who love this poem could paraphrase its meaning to satisfaction.) Structurally, the poem is quite simple—the first stanza describes the conditions present in the world (things falling apart, anarchy, etc.), and the second surmises from those conditions that a monstrous Second Coming is about to take place, not of the Jesus we first knew, but of a new messiah, a “rough beast,” the slouching sphinx rousing itself in the desert and lumbering toward Bethlehem. This brief exposition, though intriguingly blasphemous, is not terribly complicated; but the question of what it should signify to a reader is another story entirely.

Yeats spent years crafting an elaborate, mystical theory of the universe that he described in his book A Vision. This theory issued in part from Yeats’s lifelong fascination with the occult and mystical, and in part from the sense of responsibility Yeats felt to order his experience within a structured belief system. The system is extremely complicated and not of any lasting importance—except for the effect that it had on his poetry, which is of extraordinary lasting importance. The theory of history Yeats articulated in A Vision centres on a diagram made of two conical spirals, one inside the other, so that the widest part of one of the spirals rings around the narrowest part of the other spiral, and vice versa. Yeats believed that this image (he called the spirals “gyres”) captured the contrary motions inherent within the historical process, and he divided each gyre into specific regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and could also represent the psychological phases of an individual’s development).

“The Second Coming” was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical moment (the poem appeared in 1921) in terms of these gyres. Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along the inner gyre. In his definitive edition of Yeats’s poems, Richard J. Finneran quotes Yeats’s own notes:

The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to its place of greatest contraction... The revelation [that] approaches will... take its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre...

In other words, the world’s trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and heterogeneity is now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed, but from the contrary inner gyre—which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The “rough beast” slouching toward Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker’s vision of the rising sphinx is his vision of the character of the new world.

This seems quite silly as philosophy or prophecy (particularly in light of the fact that it has not come true as yet). But as poetry, and understood more broadly than as a simple reiteration of the mystic theory of A Vision, “The Second Coming” is a magnificent statement about the contrary forces at work in history, and about the conflict between the modern world and the ancient world. The poem may not have the thematic relevance of Yeats’s best work, and may not be a poem with which many people can personally identify; but the aesthetic experience of its passionate language is powerful enough to ensure its value and its importance in Yeats’s work as a whole.

Aspect of Symbolism in W. B. Yeats’ Byzantium

One of the most captivating things about W.B. Yeats' poetry in general and Byzantium in particular is its rich symbolism. Symbols are essentially words which are not merely connotative but also suggestive, evocative and emotive. Symbols conjure before the mind's eye a host of images attached to them.

Things that are difficult to explain or are inexpressible can be conveyed through symbols. Byzantium is indeed a laudable attempt at bringing together aesthetics, spiritualism, symbolism, and mysticism together on one common platform. The effect is both revealing and enthralling. The epic exploration of the other world brings into perspective, the question of life in death and death in life.

The poet symbolically leaves the world of limitations to usher into a world of permanence and artistic eternity. Tired of life's agonizing existence, the poet seeks recluse and relief in death and beyond.

W.B. Yeats' Byzantium is a highly symbolic poem. It contains variety of symbols. While some symbols in this poem are easy to understand as they come from W.B.Yeats' stock arsenal, other are complex and obscure. The resonant, sonorous and glittering quality of these symbols makes "Byzantium" a visual and acoustic treat.

Yeats writes in his essay "The symbolism of Poetry", "All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their preordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions" (46). Not all symbols that Yeats uses are 'emotional symbols'. He points out, "there are intellectual symbols, symbols that evoke ideas alone, ideas mingled with emotions" (49).

The deft use of these symbols in "Byzantium" enhances the reality of the present and mystery and richness of the past.

W.B. Yeats interweaves several different threads in "Byzantium", thereby granting the symbols richness and intricacy. Byzantium was the capital of the eastern Wing of the Holy Roman Empire. It was known for its works of art; especially mosaic work and gold enameling. In W. B. Yeats' poem Byzantium ceases to have its traditional meaning. It typifies a world of artistic magnificence and permanence.

It is a world of immortality beyond limits of time and space. It also denotes a place of unity; spiritual or otherwise. Richard Ellman writes, "Byzantium is a holy city, because it is the capital of Eastern Christendom, but it is also Yeats's holy city of the imagination as Golgonooza was Blake's" (257).

The resplendent transcendental world Yeats visualizes in "Sailing to Byzantium" now gets replaced by the images of a dreary, dark and ghostly place; full of phantoms, 'mire and blood'.

"Byzantium" has three key-symbols in the poem; the Byzantine dome, the golden bird perched on the golden bough and the flames of mosaic on the Empereror's pavement. All three put together stand for the culmination of achievement in art. Being classic works of art they also symbolize immortality and eternity.

They are as timeless and beautiful as John Keats Grecian urn. T.R. Henn remarks, "Byzantium…has a multiple symbolic value. It stands for the unity of all aspects of life, for perhaps the last time in history. It has inherited the perfection of craftsmanship, and more than craftsmanship, perhaps, the 'mystical mathematics' of perfection of form in all artistic creation".

The presence of the moon in the poem signifies a lot. First of all, the moon is a symbol of rhythm and cycle of time. It also represents the different phases in man's life. It denotes the center ground between the earth and heaven, the light of the sun and night. It is typifies the center point between the conscious and the unconscious. This mood is unmistakably present in "Byzantium". John Unterecker writes about Yeats' use of symbols:

Yeats draws his from nature, that same natural world glorified by the romantics. Because Yeats thinks of himself as the "Last of the Romantics," a man born out of his time, he assigns his symbols other values than the romantics did. Made "strange" by those values, his "masked" romantic images jolt us into a recognition of their symbolical function (Unterecker 40).

The dome that soars high towards the sky symbolizes the kindred meeting point of heaven and earth. Obviously, it stands in direct contrast with 'the fury and mire of human veins'. The very fact that the golden bird and the golden bough are made of gold, says it all. Gold is a precious metal, it never rusts.

The rays of the Sun are also golden and symbolize knowledge and permanence. Byzantium is symbolic of a place that may resolve the eternal struggle between the limitations of the physical world and the aspirations of the immortal spirit.

The golden bird is a timeless artifact like the poem "Byzantium" itself. The repeated use of the term 'complexities' by the poet, signifies that there is no easy solution to the enigma of life and death, mortality and immortality and the question of salvation or redemption.

'Mire' in the poem refers to the cycle of birth and death and man's inherent relationship with dust and clay. It also reminds one of the famous Biblical lines, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

The 'mummy cloth' clearly signifies that what it holds inside is beyond the question of life and death. Hence, the poet seems to liken death in "Byzantium" and sees end to human problems with the end of physical bond with the earth. The word 'superhuman' is significant as it has been used by the poet for a ghostly figure. It means, the likelihood of gaining super- stature is possible only after death and not in one's lifetime.

The description of events in poems like "Byzantium" is cosmological. When asked about the basis of such depiction, Yeats says that they are, "purely symbolical ..... have helped me to hold in a single thought reality and justice" (A Vision 25). He explains his theory further at another place in "A Vision", "The whole system is founded upon the belief that the ultimate reality, symbolized by the sphere, falls in human consciousness... into a series of antinomies" (187). Such antinomies or contradictions do confront the readers while trying to understand the complex structure of obscure symbols used by Yeats in "Byzantium".

The flames of the Emperor's pavement are fuelled by deep spiritual realization. Thus, these flames are flames of divine purgatorial fire. The spirits brought to Byzantium by Dolphins through the sea of time are covered with 'mire and blood'; here blood signifies impurity or spurious state. 'Faggot' in the poem signifies martyrdom.

This means, the impure spirits must pass through an intensely trying spiritual fire, they must consign themselves to this fire to emerge like a phoenix. This agonizing dance of fire, flames and faggots would eventually turn these spirits into something pure or 'superhuman'.

Yeats deliberately stirs up a poetic passion while describing his symbols to achieve a desired poetical effect. B. Chatterjee's comment about the use of symbols in Byzantium is significant, "The image after image is evoked-bird……… and these lead the reader's mind through a crescendo of horror, through the torture and terror of hell. But is it Hell or Purgatory? Yeats' attitude is ambivalent" (145).

Video Lecture on Elaine Showalter's Essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness