{"id":55,"date":"2020-03-24T23:27:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T15:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/?page_id=55"},"modified":"2020-08-13T17:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T09:16:00","slug":"the-apocalyptic-dimensions-of-war","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/the-apocalyptic-dimensions-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Choice, Determinism, and War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Apocalyptic Dimensions of War: The Centrality of Biblical Narrative Subversion in William Butler Yeats\u2019 \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d <\/h3>\n\n\n

by Veronike-Nicole Ban<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An\noverarching theme in the Christian biblical narrative is the divine selection\nand salvation of virtuous people from sin. In the Book of Revelation, the voice\nof God declares that \u201cthe fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable\u201d shall\nface a \u201csecond death\u201d in the afterlife, cast into \u201cthe lake which burneth with\nfire and brimstone\u201d (21:8) as they are denied the prospect of life in heaven. One\nwould then expect texts appropriating tropes from the biblical apocalypse to espouse\nthe redemption of good humans from evil upon the second coming of Christ.\nHowever, in William Butler Yeats\u2019 poem, rather ironically entitled \u201cThe Second\nComing\u201d (\u201cTSC\u201d) (1919), the return of Christ is a tormenting rather than a\nglorious experience for the entirety<\/em> of humanity, as evil completely\novershadows all good. What significance, then, do the Christian\nthemes in \u201cTSC\u201d have, given that the poem deviates from the conventional\nbiblical narrative of the possibility for salvation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article argues that \u201cTSC\u201d posits that humanity is entirely\nirredeemable \u2013 a harsh, sweeping critique against human morals particularly communicated\nby the overt subversion of biblical narratives. Such a pessimistic contention can\nin turn be explained by Yeats\u2019 experiences with war. In order to accentuate the\nrhetorical effect achieved by the poem\u2019s engagement with biblical narratives, it\nis useful to reference Stephen Crane\u2019s poem, \u201cIn the Desert\u201d (\u201cITD\u201d) (1895),\nwhich uncannily espouses a similar fatalistic vision about the fate of humans\nbut without explicit religious references to emphasise the scale of humanity\u2019s\nvices. Through comparing the poems\u2019 motif of perversion, it becomes\nclear how \u201cTSC\u201d\u2019s additional involvement of biblical narratives in the process\namplifies its stylistic reprobation of human actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overview of the Poems<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Graphic manifestations of human evil underpin the cynical tones of \u201cTSC\u201d and \u201cITD\u201d, providing a strong basis for comparison on how each poem condemns humanity\u2019s flaws. \u201cTSC\u201d narrates a scene of chaos against an apocalyptic backdrop. It resignedly conveys that the sheer amount of brazen malicious actions has corrupted the second coming of Christ. In the first stanza, the persona comments that \u201cThe best lack all conviction, while the worst \/ Are full of passionate intensity\u201d, indicating the imbalance of evil against good. Disturbing spiritual images in the second stanza are premised on this scene of \u201cmere anarchy [\u2026] loosed upon the world\u201d. Enraptured by this apocalyptic event, the persona ends the poem by speculating about a \u201crough beast\u201d that \u201cslouches towards Bethlehem to be born\u201d, prefiguring a twisted, alternative biblical narrative as the ultimate consequence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, \u201cITD\u201d\u2019s persona is fixated on a single, \u201cnaked, bestial\u201d creature in the desert eating its own heart. When asked if it is good, the creature responds indirectly, saying that \u201cit is bitter\u201d but \u201che\u201d (the pronoun employed to reference the creature) likes it. This abrupt conversation ends the ten-line poem. In this short exposition, the creature powerfully embodies humanity\u2019s moral degradation through what appears to be a reductionist, monolithic portrayal of humans as self-destructing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Different from \u201cITD\u201d\u2019s more secular and centralised depiction on the flaws of humans, however, \u201cTSC\u201d proves to capitalise on religious imagery and primes the subversion of biblical symbols in its critique of human actions. \u201cTSC\u201d\u2019s persona, while aware of the premise of human evil, narrates the unfolding of the apocalypse in divine proportions. In contrast, the brevity of \u201cITD\u201d arguably obscures possible biblical references and its exact message on the implications of Man\u2019s actions on the world. In this article, elements of \u201cITD\u201d will thus be juxtaposed with those of \u201cTSC\u201d to emphasise the effectiveness of the delivery of \u201cTSC\u201d\u2019s message brought about particularly by conspicuous employment of biblical references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War: catalyst for moral perversion and physical corruption<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yeats\u2019 condemnation of humanity as morally corrupted and self-destructive is informed by his experiences with war. Comparing with \u201cITD\u201d, one further appreciates how Yeats, like Crane, sensitive to wartime atrocities, directs his criticism through symbols of moral perversion. As Yeats had lived through World War I (1914-1918) before the poem was written, his close encounters with wartime conflict likely influenced his view of humanity\u2019s real, global capacity for destruction and brutality. Literary scholar Vincent Sherry (2007) notes that the \u201chorrific extremity [\u2026], colossal novelty and atrocity\u201d of the battles on the European continent generated the rhetoric of Yeats\u2019 war-related poems such as \u201cTSC\u201d (p. 190). Yeats\u2019 employment of apocalyptic imagery, then, can be seen as his attempt, amongst many other contemporaries, to make sense of an international conflict which caused some of the most unprecedented, bloodiest battles to occur. Already in the first stanza, the gruesomeness conveyed by the phrase \u201cThe blood-dimmed tide\u201d implies that the scale of bloodshed was so great in volume that the \u201cceremony of innocence is drowned\u201d in it. This metaphor of drowning additionally conveys in a lucid manner how the recurrence of violence destroys moral purity just as how large-scale wars cause an upheaval of societal order. Accompanying this metaphor is a graphic depiction of a bestial physique emerging from humanity\u2019s moral degradation. Readers are presented with the image of \u201cA shape with lion body and the head of a man\u201d in the desert; the being is apathetic and handicapped, with a \u201cgaze blank and pitiless\u201d and \u201cmoving its slow thighs\u201d. This half-human, half-beast faces impending doom as \u201cindignant desert birds\u201d \u2013 presumably vultures \u2013 signal its imminent death. The fusion of Man and beast constructs a corrupted image of humanity, utilising the literal damage to allude to the finality of destruction in war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his magnum opus, The Red Badge of Courage<\/em> (1895), Crane had explored psychological complexities of a fictional private fleeing from the atrocities of battle in the American Civil War, displaying a personal interest in understanding the negative impact of wartime experiences. Crane\u2019s disgust towards war echoes in \u201cITD\u201d, where the creature is primitively \u201csquatting upon the ground\u201d and eating his heart from his hands, the cannibalistic act representing self-destruction and conveying repulsiveness. Yet, just as the figure in \u201cTSC\u201d has a human head, this creature exhibits a human-associated trait of self-awareness as it is able to speak and communicate its thoughts and actions: when the speaker asks, \u201cIs it good, friend?\u201d, the creature\u2019s immediate response is \u201cIt is bitter\u2014bitter\u201d, before unabashedly declaring that he \u201clikes\u201d it, rhetorically conflating \u201cgood\u201d with \u201cbitter\u201d as a reflection of corrupt morals. Both poems\u2019 creatures hence deliberately have remnants of humanity identifiable in them. This symbolically suggests that these perverse creatures are transitioning from the ideal, virtuous notion of humanity to being totally non-human and amoral, just as how society descends from peace and order into mortal violence through war. The creatures\u2019 physique and behaviour sensationalise and hence stress humanity\u2019s self-inflicted path to moral and physical destruction as was felt by both poets through their awareness of wartime experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Effect of\nSubverting Religious Narratives <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Expanding on its theme of perversion, \u201cTSC\u201d goes further than \u201cITD\u201d to openly engage in biblical narrative subversion. Consequently, Yeats\u2019 approach produces a twofold (human and divine), harrowing vision to convey the impact of the horrors of war on a cataclysmic scale, escalating its critique of humanity\u2019s propensity for destruction. This is most clearly illustrated through the figure supposedly representing the returned Christ: after \u201ctwenty centuries of stony sleep \/ Were vexed to nightmare\u201d, a \u201crough beast, its hour come round at last, \/ Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born\u201d. Deliberately mentioning Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, the poem perverts the story of salvation. Instead of the Saviour, a savage, lazy creature is produced, congruent with the apparition of the \u201cslow\u201d beast-human chimera earlier in the poem. In doing so, \u201cTSC\u201d contests the biblical image of an upright, powerful, and radiant Christ in the Revelation, whose \u201chead and his hairs [are] white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes [\u2026] as a flame of fire [\u2026] and his voice as the sound of many waters.\u201d (1:12-16). The poem hence illustrates a \u201cdeformed reverence\u201d (White, 2019, p. 195) to convey how humans\u2019 overwhelming evil is reflected in the birth of a new, grotesque god, denying humans themselves of the biblical redemption that had been foretold for them. By proposing that humanity\u2019s vices caused its total deviation from salvation, \u201cTSC\u201d intensifies a rampant fear of wartime societies that wrongdoers amongst societies can sabotage in totality the just and good aspects of the world: if what the Bible predicts is totally changed, it must imply that a superscalar, moral conversion has occurred throughout the world big enough to alter the religious narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is thus that \u201cTSC\u201d deviates from \u201cITD\u201d in its approach to convey its harsh critique on humanity: its deliberate appropriation of the biblical apocalypse conveys beyond doubt to the reader that it views the whole world as hopeless. In \u201cTSC\u201d, this biblical apocalypse augments a sense of helplessness felt by the speaker, who can only bear witness to the events unfolding before their eyes. Indeed, the persona’s main role in \u201cTSC\u201d proves to be spectator-like, a mere commentator of the apocalypse, whose own speculation about the macabre rebirth of Christ is fuelled from pre-existing fears. When the half-human, half-beast image from \u201cSpiritus Mundi\u201d \u2013 the \u201cworld spirit\u201d \u2013 appears, the persona receives it passively, only commenting that it \u201ctroubles [the speaker\u2019s] sight\u201d. Contrastingly, in \u201cITD\u201d, the lack of a religious backdrop constructs an ambiguous position for the speaker, giving rise to diverging takes on the poem\u2019s underlying message. One can argue that the persona could just be another human, with intact, upright morals, especially since he addresses the creature as a \u201cfriend\u201d. The creature, then, may not necessarily be read as the overarching manifestation of humanity, but rather how other<\/em> good humans may perceive their sinful counterparts. Hence, one may just as strongly propose that the poem suggests that the effects of humanity\u2019s vices are not enough to corrupt the whole of humanity, as another positing that the creature is the reductionist portrayal of mankind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some interpretations of \u201cITD\u201d contend that religious subversion is strong in \u201cITD\u201d, especially considering Crane\u2019s own religious conflict and how he was grappling with \u201cthe nature of God and existence\u201d (Sorrentino, 2014). In such interpretations, including one proposed by The Poetry Foundation, the person who judges the beast in the moral \u201cdesert\u201d is interpreted as the returned Christ himself; when the conversation ends after the creature expresses non-repentance, it conveys the hopelessness of humans in the eyes of divinity who decides to abandon the creature (humanity) after that brief, telling conversation. The desert could also refer to Christ\u2019s experience of Lenten temptation, but here, instead of emerging untainted by the devil, a self-consuming, sadistic creature is seen, having succumbed to evil. In response to this view, I argue that the fact that such biblical interpretations of the poem strengthen its reprobation of humanity\u2019s vices, further reinforces how a subversion of religious narratives is utilised to emphasise the critique on humanity\u2019s moral decline. This was explicitly done in \u201cTSC\u201d. These interpretations, reflecting the intention of readers to attribute a subverted biblical narrative to \u201cITD\u201d, are therefore in line with what \u201cTSC\u201d has achieved more overtly, embracing and twisting the religious apocalyptic narrative as an integral part of its fatalistic outlook on war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTSC\u201d\nenriches an age-old discussion on humanity\u2019s vices and a fear that wrongdoers\namongst societies can sabotage in totality the just and good aspects of the\nworld. Through explicitly subverting the biblical narrative of the apocalypse,\nYeats\u2019 poem is able to capitalise on bestial configurations of Christ and Man\nto envision an image of the consequences of humanity\u2019s propensity for\ndestruction on apocalyptic scales. Poems like \u201cITD\u201d focus more on portraying humanity\u2019s\nmoral degeneration while leaving the floor open for religious interpretations\nfrom their readers, and the enigma generated from its brevity leaves room for\ninterpretation as to whether the poem is intended as a representative depiction\nof all humans. Given both poets\u2019 sensitivity to wartime displays of human\natrocity, reading the poems as a critique of humanity\u2019s wrongs in a monolithic\nmanner is in order; eventually, \u201cTSC\u201d communicates more clearly the defeatist\nmessage that the whole of humanity is irredeemable, a view with which one\nsensitive to wartime experiences would often pessimistically concur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Davis, L. H. (1998). Badge of courage: the life of Stephen Crane<\/em>. New York: Mifflin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deane, S. (1998). Boredom and apocalypse. Strange country: Modernity and nationhood in Irish writing since 1790<\/em>. Clarendon lectures in English literature. Clarendon Press, p. 145-197. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

King James Bible online. The Bible (King James\nVersion). Last accessed 12 Mar 2020 at https:\/\/www.kingjamesbibleonline.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sherry, V. (2009). The Great War and modernist poetry. The Oxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry<\/em>. (ed. Kendall, T.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 190-207. doi:10.1093\/oxfordhb\/9780199559602.001.0001. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorrentino, P. (2014) Stephen Crane: a life of fire<\/em>. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Poetry Foundation. \u201cThe\nSecond Coming by William Butler Yeats\u201d. Last accessed 18 March 2020 at https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/43290\/the-second-coming<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Poetry Foundation. \u201cIn\nthe Desert by Stephen Crane\u201d. Last accessed 18 March 2020 at https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/46457\/in-the-desert-56d2265793693<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, T. (2019). On reverence and its discontents. Crosscurrents<\/em>, 69(2), p. 184-218. doi:10.1111\/cros.12369.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Veronike-Nicole Ban Introduction An overarching theme in the Christian biblical narrative is the divine selection and salvation of virtuous people from sin. In the Book of Revelation, the voice of God declares that \u201cthe fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable\u201d shall face a \u201csecond death\u201d in the afterlife, cast into \u201cthe lake which burneth … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Choice, Determinism, and War”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-55","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalpatmos.com\/vol4issue2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}