Leda and the Swan: Difference between revisions

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== Introduction and Context ==

Written in 1923 and first published in ''The Dial'' before appearing in ''The Tower'' (1928), “Leda and the Swan” is one of Yeats’ most compressed and disturbing meditations on history, violence, and divine encounter. The poem reimagines the Greek myth of Zeus, who takes the form of a swan to rape Leda, the mortal mother of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. This violent act, Yeats suggests, inaugurates a new epoch of civilization—the classical age of Greece—while foreshadowing its eventual destruction in the Trojan War.

[[File:Leda and the swan - Émile Auguste Hublin.jpg|thumb|500px|Émile Auguste Hublin]]

Yeats was fascinated by the cycles of history and spiritual revelation that he explored in ''A Vision'' (1925), his complex system of “gyres” representing recurring patterns of birth, decay, and renewal. In this framework, the rape of Leda marks a pivotal turning of the gyre: divine power violently intrudes into human history, creating a moment of transformation that is both creative and catastrophic.

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 == Introduction and Context ==
 Written in 1923 and first published in ''The Dial'' before appearing in ''The Tower'' (1928), “Leda and the Swan” is one of Yeats’ most compressed and disturbing meditations on history, violence, and divine encounter. The poem reimagines the Greek myth of Zeus, who takes the form of a swan to rape Leda, the mortal mother of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. This violent act, Yeats suggests, inaugurates a new epoch of civilization—the classical age of Greece—while foreshadowing its eventual destruction in the Trojan War.
+[[File:Leda and the swan - Émile Auguste Hublin.jpg|thumb|500px|Émile Auguste Hublin]]
 Yeats was fascinated by the cycles of history and spiritual revelation that he explored in ''A Vision'' (1925), his complex system of “gyres” representing recurring patterns of birth, decay, and renewal. In this framework, the rape of Leda marks a pivotal turning of the gyre: divine power violently intrudes into human history, creating a moment of transformation that is both creative and catastrophic.