The Widening Gyre: A Deep Dive into W.B. Yeats, Modernism, and the Apocalyptic Imagination
This blog task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad, the head of the Department of English MKBU, on W.B.Yeats's poems where we will analyse both of his poems with the help of online video lectures, Hindi podcast, and study questions.
Introduction
William Butler Yeats stands as a monumental figure in twentieth-century literature, bridging the worlds of Romanticism and Modernism with a distinct, often prophetic voice. His work is characterized by a profound engagement with the political turmoil of his native Ireland, the catastrophe of global conflict, and a complex, personal mythology that sought to impose order upon chaotic experience. In poems such as "The Second Coming" and "On Being Asked for a War Poem," Yeats grapples with the disintegration of traditional structures—historical, moral, and spiritual—while questioning the role of the artist in times of crisis. These works illustrate his mastery of symbol and form, revealing a poet who refuses to offer easy reassurances, choosing instead to witness the terrifying birth of new, uncertain eras.
The Online Class Experience & "The Pandemic Reading"
1.1 The "Pandemic Reading" of The Second Coming
In the video recordings, the discussion centers on a groundbreaking interpretation often missed in traditional textbooks: the influence of the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu.
- The Blood-Dimmed Tide: Traditionally, critics read the "blood-dimmed tide" as a metaphor for the bloodshed of World War I or the Bolshevik Revolution. However, as discussed in the class, the imagery is startlingly clinical. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, victims often suffered from severe hemorrhaging. The virus would cause blood to fill the lungs, literally "drowning" the patient in their own fluids. Yeats’s phrase "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" takes on a terrifyingly literal meaning here.
- The Invisible Enemy: The class discussion highlights how the "rough beast" represents the invisible, creeping terror of the virus. Unlike a war, where the enemy is a soldier across a trench, a pandemic is an "anarchy loosed upon the world" that cannot be fought with guns. The "widening gyre" becomes the spiral of infection rates, spinning beyond the control of the "falconer" (science/government).
1.2 "Refusal-as-Assent" in On Being Asked for a War Poem
The second major takeaway from the online class is the concept of Refusal-as-Assent.
- The Paradox: When Yeats was asked to write a war poem, he refused. But he did so by writing a poem. This is a brilliant Modernist paradox. The class explained that this is not mere cowardice or aloofness; it is an assertion of the autonomy of art.
- The Statesman vs. The Poet: The video lectures emphasize the line, "We have no gift to set a statesman right". This is often read as humility, but the class revealed it as biting sarcasm (or Dhvani in Indian poetics). Yeats implies that the "statesman" is too entrenched in the dirty business of "meddling" to listen to the higher truths of poetry. The poet’s role is not to offer propaganda for the "right" side of a war, but to preserve the eternal human experiences—symbolized by the "young girl" and the "old man"—that war threatens to destroy.
1.3 Student Responses & Indian Poetics
A unique feature of our study material is the integration of Indian aesthetic theories (Rasa and Dhvani) into the analysis of Western Modernism. In the "Student Responses" section of the blog, we see fascinating applications of these theories:
- Vakrokti (Oblique Speech): Students argued that On Being Asked for a War Poem is a prime example of Vakrokti. Yeats’s refusal is "crooked" or indirect speech; he says "I will not speak of war," which is, in itself, a powerful statement about war.
- Adbhutam Rasa (The Sentiment of Wonder/Terror): In The Second Coming, the "rough beast" evokes Adbhutam—a sense of awe mixed with terror. The "blank and pitiless" gaze constitutes a "Bibhatsa" (disgust/grotesque) element that disrupts the "ceremony of innocence".
Insights from the Hindi Podcast
2.1 The "Zeitgeist" (Spirit of the Times)
The podcast connects Yeats's 1919 "Spiritus Mundi" to our modern "Zeitgeist." The hosts discuss how the anxiety Yeats felt—watching civilization crumble under war and disease—mirrors the collective anxiety of the 2020s. The speakers highlight that literary critics often overlook the "biological catastrophe" in favor of political ones, a gap this podcast seeks to fill.
- "Readiness is All": One of the key "life lessons" extracted in the podcast discussion is the Shakespearean/Yeatsian idea that we cannot control the "gyre" (the external chaos), but we can control our "readiness". The podcast draws a parallel between the "falcon cannot hear the falconer" and our modern disconnection from truth due to social media algorithms and "fake news".
- The "Mind Game": The podcast emphasizes that On Being Asked for a War Poem teaches us about mental preservation. In a world of 24-hour news cycles demanding our outrage (the "war"), Yeats advises us to focus on the "young girl" (beauty) or the "old man" (wisdom). This is presented not as escapism, but as a survival strategy for the mind—a way to keep the "centre" holding when things fall apart.
Detailed Thematic & Textual Analysis
3.1 The Second Coming: A Blueprint of Chaos
The Gyre as History:
Yeats believed history moved in 2,000-year cycles (gyres). The Christian era (order, centralization) was ending, and a new, antithetical era (chaos, decentralization) was beginning.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre"
The repetition of "turning" mimics the dizziness of a world spinning out of control. The "widening" suggests that the centrifugal force (chaos) has overcome the centripetal force (order).
The Breakdown of Communication:
"The falcon cannot hear the falconer"
This is the defining metaphor of the poem. The "falcon" represents humanity, logic, or society. The "falconer" represents the controlling principle—God, reason, or tradition. The silence between them is where the terror lies. It is not that the falconer is dead, but that the falcon has gone too far to hear him. This mirrors the Modernist theme of alienation.
The New Nativity:
Yeats subverts the Christian Nativity story. Instead of a baby Jesus bringing peace, we have:
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man"
This Sphinx-like figure represents a pre-Christian, primal force. It has a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun". The sun is indifferent; it shines on the murderer and the saint alike. This "pitilessness" is the hallmark of the new age—an age of scientific detachment and industrial slaughter. The beast "slouches"—a verb that suggests a grotesque, clumsy, yet inevitable birth.
3.2 On Being Asked for a War Poem: The Sounds of Silence
The Argument for Silence:
"I think it better that in times like these / A poet's mouth be silent"
Yeats argues that "times like these" (times of crisis) are exactly when poetry should not try to be journalism. Journalism reports the "blood-dimmed tide"; poetry must look beyond it. If a poet engages in the "slanging match" of politics, they lose their "gift".
The Archetypes:
"A young girl in the indolence of her youth, / Or an old man upon a winter's night."
These figures represent the cyclical, enduring aspects of human life. Governments rise and fall, wars begin and end, but youth and age, love and death, remain. Yeats chooses to write about these "eternal" subjects as a form of resistance against the "temporal" noise of war.
Expanded Discussion Responses
(i) Discussion Question: Imagery of Disintegration
Q: How does Yeats use imagery to convey a sense of disintegration in The Second Coming?
Yeats does not just tell us the world is ending; he uses a specific sequence of kinetic and visual imagery to make us feel the structural collapse.
- Kinetic Disintegration (Motion): The poem begins with motion that is out of control—"Turning and turning." The "widening gyre" is a geometric image of disintegration. As the spiral expands, the center becomes weaker. The famous line "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" is not abstract; it is a physics description of a flywheel spinning too fast until it shatters.
- Liquid Disintegration (The Flood): The "blood-dimmed tide" suggests that the boundaries between land and sea, life and death, have dissolved. A "tide" is usually a natural, rhythmic force (controlled by the moon), but here it is "loosed" (unleashed) and "blood-dimmed." It represents a violation of nature's laws.
- Moral Disintegration: The image of the "best" lacking conviction while the "worst" are full of "passionate intensity" describes the disintegration of the moral compass. It visualizes a world where the moderates are paralyzed by doubt (think of the "indecisive" Hamlet), while the fanatics (fascists, extremists) act with terrifying certainty.
- Biological Disintegration: As noted in the Pandemic Reading, the "drowning" of innocence conveys the disintegration of the human body itself under the assault of disease or violence.
(ii) Discussion Question: The Politics of Apolitical Poetry
Q: Do you agree with Yeats's assertion in On Being Asked for a War Poem that poetry should remain apolitical?
This is one of the most debated questions in literary history.
- The Case for Agreement (The Yeatsian View): One might agree with Yeats that art has a higher calling than politics. Political poetry often ages poorly; it requires footnotes to explain the specific "statesman" or "law" being critiqued. By remaining "apolitical," the poet touches on the universal. For example, Homer's Iliad is not just about the Trojan War; it is about rage and grief. Yeats fears that if he writes about the "war," he becomes a tool of the "statesman"—a propagandist rather than a prophet. His silence is a way of protecting the purity of the language from the corruption of political slogans.
- The Case for Disagreement (The Activist View): However, many argue that "silence" is a political choice that favors the oppressor. As the podcast noted, refusing to speak against a war can be seen as "refusal-as-assent"—implicitly accepting the status quo. Poets like Wilfred Owen or W.H. Auden (who famously wrote "We must love one another or die") believed that the poet has a moral duty to warn, to witness, and to "set the statesman right," or at least to expose the statesman's lies. To say "We have no gift" can be seen as a cop-out, a refusal to use the power of words to stop suffering.
Synthesis: Perhaps the answer lies in the middle. Poetry should be political, but not politician-like. It should address the human cost of politics (like the "blood-dimmed tide") without becoming a manifesto for a specific party.
Analytical Exercise – Comparative Study
Task: Compare the treatment of war in On Being Asked for a War Poem with other war poems by Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.
This comparison reveals the spectrum of Modernist responses to the catastrophe of WWI.
| Feature | W.B. Yeats | Wilfred Owen | Siegfried Sassoon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stance | Detached/Aristocratic: He looks down on the war from a distance (his "ivory tower"). He sees it as a temporary madness beneath the dignity of art. | Immersive/Witness: He is in the mud. He writes from the perspective of the victim. His goal is "The Pity of War". | Satirical/Angry: He is angry at the leadership. He writes to expose the incompetence of the "statesmen" Yeats ignores. |
| Imagery | Abstract/Archetypal: "Winter's night," "indolence," "silent mouth." No guns, no blood, no mud. | Visceral/Grotesque: "Froth-corrupted lungs," "vile, incurable sores," "gas," "mud". | Conversational/Biting: "Good-morning; good-morning!" The cheerful greeting of a General sending men to die. |
| Philosophy | Art for Art's Sake: The poet must preserve Beauty and Truth amidst chaos. Politics is a "meddling". | Art as Protest: The poet must tell the Truth, even if it is ugly, to stop the "Old Lie" that war is glorious. | Art as Weapon: Poetry is a tool to attack the establishment and mock the "incompetent" authority. |
| Result | A poem about the nature of poetry. | A poem about the physical reality of death. | A poem about the social hierarchy of war. |
Conclusion of Analysis:
Yeats represents the "High Modernist" desire to build a fortress of culture against the chaos. Owen and Sassoon represent the "Trench Poets" who believe the fortress has already been blown up, and the poet’s job is to document the ruins. Yeats’s silence is a philosophical shield; Owen’s scream is a moral imperative.
Creative Activity
Prompt: Write a modernist-inspired poem reflecting on a contemporary global crisis, drawing on Yeats's themes and techniques.
Below is a sample poem that mimics Yeats's use of "gyres," "beasts," and "disintegration" but applies them to the crisis of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Disinformation.
The Silicon Gyre
The server hums in the widening web, The user cannot hear the algorithm. Truth falls apart; the logic cannot hold; Mere data is loosed upon the world, The pixelated tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of wisdom is drowned; The best lack all connection, while the worst Are full of viral intensity. Surely some update is at hand; Surely the Great Reset is at hand. The Great Reset! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Cloudus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of Silicon Valley A shape with metal body and the mind of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as a lens, Is processing its fast thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant Twitter birds. The power drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of human sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a glowing screen, And what rough bot, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the network to be born?
Conclusion
W.B. Yeats stands as a titan of literature because he did not just write about his time; he wrote about the cycles of time. In The Second Coming, he gave us the vocabulary to describe the feeling of impending doom—whether it's a world war, a pandemic, or a climate catastrophe. In On Being Asked for a War Poem, he gave us a controversial but essential defense of the artist's right to remain independent.
To truly master these poems, you must read them not just as historical documents, but as living texts. The "rough beast" is always slouching towards us; the "gyre" is always widening. The question is: will you be the falcon that gets lost, or the poet who finds the words to describe the storm?
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