The Second Coming (+The Wasteland) notes

Created by: Georgia Pegden
Created on: 02-04-13 19:47

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The Second Coming
- "gyre"
  - Yeats created a theory that history was in two conical spirals or "gyres"
    - conflict between "ancient" and "modern" history in the gyres
      - World is reaching the end of one of the gyres - end of the World before it begins again
        Yeats believed the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation
- described current world state (1921) in terms of the "gyres" theory
  - Yeats believed the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation
  - "Spiritus Mundi" (12) - spirit of the world
  - right after WW1, world is in turmoil
    - like Eliot's poetry - The Wasteland
- references the Second Coming of Christ
  - however not as expected, instead new Messiah is a "rough beast" (21)
    - sphinx or not?
    - we have lost touch with religion as the falconer has lost touch with the falcon (2)
      - loss of religion in The Wasteland
      - "stony sleep" - sleep of Christianity of the sleep of the beast"
        loss of religion in The Wasteland
    - Christianity's version of the Second Coming mentions "glory" and has a sense of finality, this does not
  - "ceremony of innocence" (6) baptisms? or the cultural rituals of civalization
    - lost over time, historical rituals lost through modernisation
      - conflict between "ancient" and "modern" history in the gyres
        World is reaching the end of one of the gyres - end of the World before it begins again
      - "stony sleep" - sleep of Christianity of the sleep of the beast"
  - "rocking cradle" - birth of Christ?

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The Second Coming (+The Wasteland) notes

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