Satan Bug Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[David Eckels]

I've named him COVID-19

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?

---WBY

[RSL]

Yeats probably had a vision of 2020 when he wrote that.

[David Eckels]

Yeats probably had a vision of 2020 when he wrote that.

It would seem so, Russ, it would seem so.

[John R]

It would seem so, Russ, it would seem so.

Is this for real? Not a composite. Either way, it is well done and striking. And so is Yeats!

JR

[David Eckels]

Thanks, John, but I'm afraid, and I say this slouching, it is a composite. The Satan Bug is what I call these, but I needed a more ominous tone, which fit my mood.

[Frans Waterlander]

Not very tolerant of religion, are we now?

[David Eckels]

Not very tolerant of religion, are we now?

How so, Frank? Certainly not my intent.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Good shot. There's more than one version of the Yeats, clearly: the one I learned, years ago, has

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
Its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is stirring its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Jeremy

[RSL]

Can you give me a reference to that one, Jeremy? Can't believe I've never seen it.

[Frans Waterlander]

How so, Frank? Certainly not my intent.

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
A beast to be born in Bethlehem. How else to interpret that?

[RSL]

Frans, I don't have time tonight to find you a better reference, but try this one: https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-second-coming/

You need to understand something of what Yeats was experiencing at the time he wrote the poem to realize what the poem means. The most important thing isn't it's meaning, though. As with any really good poem the effect it has on you is what's really important. Literal "Meaning" is about as important in poetry as it is in music. Unless you're a "country and western" fan you'll understand what I mean.

[Frans Waterlander]

Frans, I don't have time tonight to find you a better reference, but try this one: https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-second-coming/

You need to understand something of what Yeats was experiencing at the time he wrote the poem to realize what the poem means. The most important thing isn't it's meaning, though. As with any really good poem the effect it has on you is what's really important. Literal "Meaning" is about as important in poetry as it is in music. Unless you're a "country and western" fan you'll understand what I mean.

Yes, I perfectly know what you mean and where Yeats came from, but the poem is still anti-religious in general and anti-Christianity in particular. That's fine, we in the US live in a free country, so far, but it is what it is.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Can you give me a reference to that one, Jeremy? Can't believe I've never seen it.

I learned the poem from a book, Russ (yes, it was a while ago). I'll have a look for it, but I suspect I no longer have it. One online reference to that text is this, although it has "a gaze" rather than "its gaze" and I've no idea how definitive it might claim to be.

[Later...] I've also found this:

Several of the lines in the version above differ from those
found in subsequent versions. In listing it as one of the
hundred most anthologized poems in the English
language, the text given by Harmon (1998) has changes
including: line 13 (": somewhere in sands of the desert"),
line 17 ("Reel" instead of "Wind"), and no break
between the second and third stanza.

Jeremy

[RSL]

Yes, I perfectly know what you mean and where Yeats came from, but the poem is still anti-religious in general and anti-Christianity in particular. That's fine, we in the US live in a free country, so far, but it is what it is.

Images are as important in good poetry as they are in photography. Yeats was reaching for a really powerful image, and he found it in “Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”

I’m not going to make the mistake of trying to explain what Yeats “meant” by this poem. As Archibald MacLeish pointed out in Poetry and Experience, speaking of Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”: “We can agree that whatever it is we know in this poem, we know only in the poem. It is not a knowledge we can extract from the poem like a meat from a nut and carry off. It is something the poem means — something that is gone when the poem goes and recovered only by returning to the poem’s words. And not only by returning to the poem’s words but by returning to them within the poem.”

There are two kinds of images in visual art: images that tell us a story and images that transmit a transcendental experience. There are two kinds of poetry: the Eddie Guest kind that tries to tell you a story, and the Dylan Thomas kind that transmits experience through powerful images. Yeats understood how to do the second thing. Don’t be too quick, Frans, to assume you understand in a literal sense what Yeats “meant” by “The Second Coming.”

[RSL]

I learned the poem from a book, Russ (yes, it was a while ago). I'll have a look for it, but I suspect I no longer have it. One online reference to that text is this, although it has "a gaze" rather than "its gaze" and I've no idea how definitive it might claim to be.

[Later...] I've also found this:

Several of the lines in the version above differ from those
found in subsequent versions. In listing it as one of the
hundred most anthologized poems in the English
language, the text given by Harmon (1998) has changes
including: line 13 (": somewhere in sands of the desert"),
line 17 ("Reel" instead of "Wind"), and no break
between the second and third stanza.

Jeremy

I suspect Yeats did the same thing with "The Second Coming" that I did with "Ubon." I wrote it in 1992, and I've made small revisions seven times since then.

[David Eckels]

Frans, as with Yeats' intent, you have no idea of mine. The poem, in my relatively small experience of poetry, is one of the most ominous things I've ever read. In my view it anticipates the evil unleashed upon the world by WWI among "Christian" nations and I have always thought of the poem's imagery as the breakdown of Christian charity, a usurpation of the Bethlehem symbolism. Yeats' poem does a better job than I do. As for interpretation of symbolism, it is personal and thus, to each his own. I had made an image that captured for me the sense of ominous evil that seems to prowl the world today. The red sun caused by California and Colorado smoke contaminating our normally clear blue Arizona skies. I hate these beetles/bugs that come out this time of year and bask in the heat given off from the stucco walls of our house, and I call them devil bugs. The weather, the bug, the times were all composited in my mind and I tried to make an image of that. I can understand your viewpoint, given your own interpretation of Yeat's poem, but I won't apologize for attempting to make an artistic statement, use of it in my caption added to the mood. YMMV.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Bravo, David. Your image, and the juxtaposition with Yeats' poem, work perfectly for me.

And Russ has expressed beautifully the way poetry functions. My wife is a poet, and my life has been significantly altered by Yeats, Thomas, and my wife, among others.

-Eric

[RSL]

Thanks, Eric. David was right on the money.

One thing MacLeish said that I forgot to mention: "[a] poem’s force is carried in the interstices between the images." And that's exactly the case. In a way, I think that's also true with really good visual art. The force isn't so much in the images themselves as in the implications that come as a result of viewing the images.

[Frans Waterlander]

Frans, as with Yeats' intent, you have no idea of mine. The poem, in my relatively small experience of poetry, is one of the most ominous things I've ever read. In my view it anticipates the evil unleashed upon the world by WWI among "Christian" nations and I have always thought of the poem's imagery as the breakdown of Christian charity, a usurpation of the Bethlehem symbolism. Yeats' poem does a better job than I do. As for interpretation of symbolism, it is personal and thus, to each his own. I had made an image that captured for me the sense of ominous evil that seems to prowl the world today. The red sun caused by California and Colorado smoke contaminating our normally clear blue Arizona skies. I hate these beetles/bugs that come out this time of year and bask in the heat given off from the stucco walls of our house, and I call them devil bugs. The weather, the bug, the times were all composited in my mind and I tried to make an image of that. I can understand your viewpoint, given your own interpretation of Yeat's poem, but I won't apologize for attempting to make an artistic statement, use of it in my caption added to the mood. YMMV.

I think we can agree that the poem is critical of Christianity and thank goodness we can express such feelings. I find it interesting that, given this obvious anti-Christian character of the poem, your reaction to my first post was that you did not intend to be critical of religion, but you used that poem to support your image anyway. I find that a little hypocritical, that's all. No apology needed nor looked for.

[David Eckels]

Frans, appreciate your comments, but you missed my point. That you think WBY was being critical of Christianity is your interpretation; I don't care if a thousand scholars agree with you. My interpretation has always been that he was referring to the usurper, the anti-Christ if you will, and for me therein lies the sinister quality of the poem. For me. And that's not to exclude other phrases such as "things fall apart" and "the centre cannot hold" which are decidedly ominous and apropos of events today. Of course, this is only my opinion and I do not think the poem is critical of Christianity at all; indeed my view is the world could use a healthy dose of Christian charity (in the CS Lewis sense) at this time and always. As for hypocrisy, don't you think we've all had enough of that? I resent being called hypocritical on such a subjective basis when I have tried to be clear about my rational, my intention, and my interpretation if not explicit about my faith, none of which need to be justified. Isn't it sad that our animosity is now aimed at whether we hold the "correct" opinion or interpretation rather than directing our energy at finding common ground?

Let me ask you this: Do you find the photograph compelling? sinister? ominous? If so, then I succeeded. If not, then I recognize artistic taste is different for everyone, which I certainly accept. No apology presented. Further, I feel fortunate and grateful that the post provided opportunity for a free exchange of such ideas, just one of the great gifts of Western civilization and democratic culture; is that common ground?