Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan

1. Context

   • Based on the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan.
     • The story of Zeus disguised as a Swan to rape a girl by the name of Leda. This led to Leda giving birth to three eggs. In which hatched into Helen of troy, Clytemnestra, Pollux and Castor..
     • Yeats wrote this poem using his own knowledge of the story and also the interpretation he comprised from the painting of Michelangelo.
   • written in 1923 and published in 1928
   • Yeats at first began the poem as one with meanings of politics but then said 'but bird and lady took possession of the scene that all politics went out of it'.

2. Structure

   • Petrarchan sonnet
     • Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efg efg

3. Links

   • Among School Children
     • Yeats talks about Maud having a 'ledean body', thus referring got how she is a women of beauty and also a cause of destruction

4. The Butterfly Effect

   • Violence and destruction
     • 'Violence breeds violence in a kind of destructive cycle.'
       • 'The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/And Agamemnon dead.'
         • 'broken', 'burning' 'dead' all create imagery of destruction
   • By impregnating Leda with Helen, Zeus metaphorically impregnated her with future war and destruction.

5. Superiority

   • use of soft adjectives against strong words creates an image of male superiority and female inferiority. Leda vs Zeus. Human power vs Power of a God.
     • Soft adjectives: 'caressed', 'helpless', 'terrified vague', 'nape', 'loosening' and 'laid'.
     • Strong words: 'A sudden blow', 'beating', 'staggering', 'rush', 'shudder', 'broken', 'burning' and 'brute'.

6. Questions Raised

   • Did Leda know that the swan was Zeus in disguise?
   • Is humanity limited in its understanding of pain and suffering?

7. Innocence