leda and the swan meaning

And how can body, laid in that white rush, The poem, which somewhat unusually for Yeats is a sonnet, is about the rape of the Greek girl Leda by the god Zeus, who has assumed the form of a swan. But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? Leda and the swan. [citation needed], A statue of an egg depicting the union of Swan/Zeus with Leda, is placed on the island Pefnos of Agios Dimitrios village, in the region of Messenia on the coast of the southern Peloponnese peninsula in Greece. The texts presents their confusion and helplessness (‘staggering girl’, ‘helpless breast’, ‘terrified vague fingers’). It also alludes to the Trojan war, which will be provoked by the abduction of Helen, who will be begotten by Zeus on Leda (along with Castor and Pollux, in some versions of the myth). Leda and the Swan copy by Giovanni Francesco Melzi after the lost painting by Leonardo, 1508–1515, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. This is a great cataclysmic moment in history (merging history with myth) for Yeats. "Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet by William Butler Yeats first published in the Dial in 1923. [24][25], Bristol Museum and Art Gallery currently exhibits Karl Weschke's Leda and the Swan, painted in 1986. [32]. Both the Leonardo and Michelangelo paintings also disappeared when in the collection of the French Royal Family, and are believed to have been destroyed by more moralistic widows or successors of their owners.[16]. Leda and the Swan Introduction. A version of the Leda and the Swan story is the foundation myth in the Canadian futuristic thriller television series Orphan Black which aired over 5 seasons from 2013 to 2017. When Zeus overcame Leda with his divine power during the moment of his assault, did he also impart foreknowledge of what this event would cause, before – once it was all over – he dropped her, having done what he came to do? [2] In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris. Photographer Charlie White included a portrait of Leda in his "And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull" series. According to Greek myth, Leda was the mother of mankind. Another of Yeats’s poems, ‘The Second Coming’, explores the idea that another epoch-changing moment may be approaching in the modern age. Yeats, 1924) A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. [7] An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, by Giovanni Battista Palumba, also shows the couple in coitus, but in deserted countryside. [20], Cy Twombly executed an abstract version of Leda and the Swan in 1962. Out of this contact of a superhuman (Zeus) and a human woman (Leda) were … “Leda and the Swan” is a sonnet that, like the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, divides into an octave that presents a narrative and a sestet that comments on the narrative. Yeats went into writing his poem with political intent, but admits that as he began to write “bird and lady took possession of the scene that all politics went out of it” (247). Leda and the Swan by WB Yeats, read by Tom Hiddleston, bodypainting by Gesine Marwedel, soundtrack by Hans Zimmer Klaus Badelt. In his poem “Leda and the Swan,” William Butler Yeats retells the classic Greek myth in which Leda, a human woman, is impregnated by the god Zeus while he is in the form of a swan. [1.1] KASTOR & POLYDEUKES (by Zeus*) (Homer Odyssey 11.298, Homeric Hymns 17 & 33, Terpander Frag 4, Apollodorus 1.8.2, Apollonius Rhodius 1.146, Theocritus Idylls 22.1 & 214, Pausanias 3.16.1, Hyginus Fabulae 14 & 155, Ovid Fasti 1.705) [1.3] KASTOR, POLYDEUKES, HELENE (by Zeus) (Homer Ilia… Michelangelo's cartoon for the work—given to his assistant Antonio Mini, who used it for several copies for French patrons before his death in 1533—survived for over a century. Leda and the Swan (Michelangelo) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some explicitness—more so than in any depictions of a human pair made by artists of high quality in the same period. [14] The Michelangelo composition, of about 1530, shows Mannerist tendencies of elongation and twisted pose (the figura serpentinata) that were popular at the time. (Ulpiano Checa). Did an eagle apologize? The character Frank Wheeler, married to April Wheeler, after having had sex with an office secretary ponders what to say as he is leaving: "Did the swan apologize to Leda? Benvenuto Cellini made a medallion, now in Vienna, early in his career, and Antonio Abondio one on the obverse of a medal celebrating a Roman courtesan.[12]. Figgis’ contemporary version reinvents the idyllic romantic scene of lavish playfulness with a dark humor creating a scene of profanity and horror. [27], Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired by the Michelangelo, which he may well have known. "The fable of Leda" (Leda and the Swan), Eugenio Cajés (copy of Correggio), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. The poem caters to both viewpoints. Stories about sex with animals were fairly common … Leda and the Swan Lyrics. "Carole Harmel", Catalogue essay, Chicago: Galerija, 1983. Leda and the Swan is a lost tempera on canvas painting by Michelangelo, produced in 1530 but now only surviving in copies and variants. Several references to the myth are presented in novels by Angela Carter, including Nights at the Circus and The Magic Toyshop. This conception results in the birth of Helen of Troy, who grows up to cause the legendary Trojan War—an event that, in turn, becomes the catalyst for the Golden Age of Greece and the dawn of modern history. This is what Zeus – as a swan – is doing, in a rather hands-on (or wings-on) way in ‘Leda and the Swan’. Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío's 1892 poem "Leda" contains an oblique description of the rape, watched over by the god Pan.[31]. The theme remained a dangerous one in the Renaissance, as the fates of the three best known paintings on the subject demonstrate. Zeus assaults at once. With Zeus she also had Helen of Troy and with Tyndareus she had Clytemnestra. Because in raping Leda, Zeus made her conceive Helen of Troy, whose beauty would bring about the outbreak of the Trojan War. The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing poses,[3] in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. As well as giving birth to Helen of Troy, Leda will also conceive Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon; Clytemnestra will later kill her husband, after the Trojan War, for sacrificing their daughter in exchange for fair winds from the gods. A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. This single act, Yeats tells us, brings about the Trojan War and, with it, the end of Greek civilisation and the dawn of a new (largely Christian) age. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. (Hilda Doolittle) also wrote a poem called "Leda" in 1919, suggested to be from the perspective of Leda. The second is a secretary who suffers a miscarriage. In summary, ‘Leda and the Swan’ is a sonnet that focuses on the story from Greek myth in which Zeus, having adopted the form of a swan, rapes the girl Leda and impregnates her with the child who will become Helen of Troy. Yeats’s portrayal of this seismic moment is brutal: ‘A sudden blow’, the poem begins, suddenly; there is no preamble here. This is seen in the way the Leda’s thighs are described as “loosening.” She does not appear to be clenching them, or attempting to keep them shut in a forceful way. They were often based on the extremely brief account in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (who does not imply a rape), though Lorenzo de' Medici had both a Roman sarcophagus and an antique carved gem of the subject, both with reclining Ledas. And Agamemnon dead. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, and was last recorded in the French royal Château de Fontainebleau in 1625 by Cassiano dal Pozzo. Genieve Figgis painted her version of Leda and the Swan in 2018 after an earlier work by François Boucher. The myth is also mentioned in Richard Yates' 1962 novel Revolutionary Road. Later, she is ‘caught up’. Yeats was interested in such momentous events. The second of the two poems, ‘Leda and the Swan’, takes us back to the first era of destruction, cruelty and war, before the epoch of Christianity. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. What’s more, a dove was often used in Renaissance paintings depicting the Annunciation scene, in which the Holy Spirit merges with the Virgin Mary – as with the story of Leda and the Swan from Greek myth, fusing the mortal with the divine. Leda and the Swan by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1895, Leda and the Swan by Fernando Botero, 1996, Leda and the Swan, by Massimiliano Soldani, 1725, Leda and the Swan (after Boucher) by Genieve Figgis 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 23 x 31 inches, This article is about the story and its depictions. The beginning of Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” seems to uphold the ideology that women are helpless victims. Also from that era were sculptures of the theme by Antonin Mercié and Max Klinger. Source: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats (Macmillan, 1989) In the W. B. Yeatsversion, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra, although being the daughter of Tyndareus, has somehow been traumatized by what the swan has done to her mo… How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? Leda was seduced by Zeus when he came to her in the form of a swan. Helen of Troy was conceived in the rape of Leda. A swan, Zeus transformed, raping a women provides an image of sneakiness, dishonesty, and tyranny. "Leda and the Swan" is essentially a depiction of a violent sexual encounter between a woman and a bird. Analysis of Leda and the Swan. Yet these are also described as ‘dark webs’, suggesting gossamer-thin softness but also something designed, after all, to ensnare prey; similarly, Leda’s nape is ‘caught in his bill’. Scharf analyses this painting. The Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada has, in its permanent collection, a ceramic "Leda and the Swan" by Japanese-born American artist Akio Takamori. The broken wall, the burning roof and tower He transformed into a swan and appeared in front of her; he seduced her and slept with her. [1] According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. Pingback: A Short Analysis of Yeats’s ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ | Interesting Literature. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats. On that night, Leda also lay with her husband. In the W. B. Yeats version, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra, although being the daughter of Tyndareus, has somehow been traumatized by what the swan has done to her mother (see below). The Casa Buonarroti study. In summary, ‘Leda and the Swan’ is a sonnet that focuses on the story from Greek myth in which Zeus, having adopted the form of a swan, rapes the girl Leda and impregnates her with the child who will become Helen of Troy. He is all powerful, and irresistible. [17] The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare. In the song "Power and Glory" from Lou Reed's 1992 album Magic and Loss, Reed recalls the experience of seeing his friend dying of cancer and makes reference to the myth, "I saw isotopes introduced into his lungs / trying to stop the cancerous spread / And it made me think of Leda and The Swan / and gold being made from lead". Leonardo is famous for his paintings, such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, as well as for influential drawings such as the Vitruvian Man. Yeats presents this tale in a relatively graphic way, so modern readers may find the language disturbing. If you find yourself approaching the poem from a more modern perspective, you might be horrified. "[30] See external links for a bas relief arranged in the position as described by Yeats. This single act, Yeats tells us, brings about the Trojan War and, with it, the end of Greek civilisation and the dawn of a new (largely Christian) age. By presenting a bold and vivid vision of an abuse, the narrator brings the issue of victims of such acts. Yeats' "Leda and the Swan": an image's coming of age, Samuelson blog with thoughts and pictures, 16th century Venetian painting by Il Padovanino, Alternative detail view of the Getty vase, The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Vegetation, Study of a Kneeling Nude Girl for The Entombment, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leda_and_the_Swan&oldid=1005409447, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 7 February 2021, at 14:42. Leda and the Swan is based on the well known ancient Greek myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan in order to make love to Leda, wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, who also happens to lay with her that very night. Perhaps the ‘knowledge’ is simply knowledge of what is to come, regardless of what Leda does. Shot of Gericault's 'Leda'. But what does the final question in Yeats’s poem mean? Discover more of Yeats’s greatest poetry with The Major Works including poems, plays, and critical prose (Oxford World’s Classics). Leda gave birth to an egg. If you find yourself sympathetic to the Ancient Greek perspective, you might think that the encounter is a divine and mystical experience. In the latter novel, the myth is brought to life in the form of a performance in which a frightened young girl is forced to act as Leda in accompaniment with a large mechanical swan. The play is about the disconnection of women in society and challenges societal expectations of childbirth. [citation needed], There is a life-sized marble statue of Leda and the Swan at the Jai Vilas Palace Museum in Gwalior, Northern Madhya Pradesh, India. Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? It tells the mythical tale of Leda being raped by the Greek god Zeus, in the form of a swan, an action that supposedly lead to the birth of Helen of Troy. For more discussion of his work, see our analysis of Yeats’s ‘Among School Children’, our summary of his ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, and our thoughts on his ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. Clytaemnestra, who killed her husband, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, was also supposed to have hatched from one of Leda's eggs. This analysis hasn’t endeavoured to provide neat and glib (and false) answers to these questions, but we’ve sought to highlight the subtle way in which Yeats describes the brute violence of the act while also hinting at its momentous importance for history – or, at any rate, one version of history. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. The result? In April 2012 an art gallery in London, England, was instructed by the police to remove a modern exhibit of Leda and the Swan. A shudder in the loins engenders there This shows Leda and the Swan making love with gusto, despite being on top of a triumphal car, being pulled along and surrounded by a considerable crowd. Leda and the Swan is a Greek legend in which the all powerful God Zeus, taking the form of a beautiful swan, seduces Leda, Queen of Sparta, giving birth to an egg from which the twins Castor and Pollux hatched. William Butler Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" retells the story from Greek mythology of the rape of a girl named Leda by Zeus, the most powerful of the Greek gods. I think the sonnet is not just ambiguous, although it is, it is also ambivalent – Leda’s fingers are “vague” not “panicking” or frantic”. Leda and the Swan by François Boucher, 1740, oil on canvas. [29] Camille Paglia, who called the poem "the greatest poem of the twentieth century," and said "all human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the 'white rush' of experience. Leonardo da Vinci began making studies in 1504 for a painting, apparently never executed, of Leda seated on the ground with her children. The "twist" of the story is that Zeus is disguised as a swan. [6], The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many woodcut illustrations to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book published in Venice in 1499. The name Leda comes from the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, in which a king’s daughter is raped (or seduced, depending on the interpretation) by the god Zeus in the form of a swan. Or is this too uncharitable a view of Yeats’s perceived uncharitableness? This quote supports the theory that the poem maintains double meanings. Yet what is often overlooked in analysis of ‘Leda and the Swan’ is the fact that Yeats merges the violence of the rape with a more sinister softness: Zeus is, after all, a swan (not, as he would be with Europa, a bull), a delicate though sometimes unpredictable bird; and note how Leda’s ‘thighs’ are ‘caressed’ by the swan’s wings. Therefore, Yeats intended to use the myth, Leda and the Swan, as a metaphor for something powerful rising out of a violent act. A corporation uses genetic engineering to create a series of female clones (Leda) and a series of male clones (Castor) who are also brothers and sisters clones as they derive from one mother who is a chimera with male and female genomes. His full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, of ser Piero from Vinci". W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939. Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! [18] After something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very sensuous Boucher,[19]), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments. Leda and the Swan, one of Twombly's most accomplished works, illustrates his career-long attraction to the stories, literature and events of classical antiquity, an interest that expanded further after moving to Rome in 1957. In 2,000 BC, the rape of Leda by Zeus (as a swan) inaugurated the next epoch; 2,000 years later, the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary would signal the arrival of a new era. Did a lion apologize? Leda and the Swan. [11], There were also significant depictions in the smaller decorative arts, also private media. The ‘shudder in the loins’, Zeus’ orgasm, brings about ‘The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead’: all references to the Trojan War. H.D. See for example a marble relief with the Swan, grasping the back of Leda's neck with his beak, excavated in Argos, Not a woodcut, as Bull (p169) wrongly says (see Hind BM catalogue, The Illustrated, Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986 p.315. ‘Leda and the Swan’ (published in 1924) is one of W. B. Yeats’s most widely anthologised poems. The damage has been repaired, though full restoration to the original condition was not possible. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's rape of Leda. More specifically, Yeats believed that something he called ‘annunciation’ – which involved gods interfering in human affairs and using their divine energy to breathe new life into human civilisation. The work depicted the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan. explores the idea that another epoch-changing moment, The Major Works including poems, plays, and critical prose (Oxford World’s Classics), analysis of Yeats’s ‘Among School Children’, thoughts on his ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem, A Short Analysis of Yeats’s ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ | Interesting Literature. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art. The third voice, a girl who is pregnant and leaves her baby, mentions "the great swan, with its terrible look,/ Coming at me," insinuating that the girl was raped. Because in raping Leda, Zeus made … As the quote continues, Yeats’ associates the swan, aka Zeus, with the “feathered glory,” he has taken on the role of dominate god. Image: Engraving of Leda and the Swan by Cornelis Bos (16th century), via Wikimedia Commons. History . Leda gave … In addition, a sculptural group, similar to the Prado Roman group illustrated, was believed until at least the 19th century to be by Michelangelo. From it hatched the ... physiologist and much more. Leda and the Swan (W.B. It remains a baffling question, with no clear answer. In W.B. [9][10] Palumba made another engraving, perhaps in about 1512, presumably influenced by Leonardo's sketches for his earlier composition, showing Leda seated on the ground and playing with her children. Leda resisted the god’s advances, and so he seduced her in the form of a swan. This composition is known from many copies, including an ambitious engraving by Cornelis Bos, c. 1563; the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence; two copies by the young Rubens on his Italian voyage, and the painting after Michelangelo, ca. She becomes pregnant and the following births of Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux all have profound effects on the history … [22], Avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren along with other members of the Viennese Actionist movement, including Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch, made a film-performance called 7/64 Leda mit der Schwan in 1964. The story starts here with Zeus turning himself into Swan to approach Leda, as we said many stories have different versions, so in other versions, it is said that Leda turned herself into Goose to avoid Zeus. The king of Greek gods and goddesses living on Mount Olympus, Zeus or Jupiter appeared to Leda in the form of a Swan and made love to her. 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