Thinking Activity-W.B.Yeats

Hello friends!

I am student of English department, MKBU. This blog of my thinking activity task given by our prof Dilip Barad sir. The topic is a W.B.yeats poem. Let's discuss about the same question.

#Pandemic reading of the poem "The Second Coming" written by Yeats.

The second coming is a poem written by Irish poet W.B. Yeats in 1919. First printed in The Dial in November 1920, after words including in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and The Dancer.

The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse describe the atmosphere of post war Europe. Everyone know that the effect of first world war. This time 9 million people die on war. It's bece a historical events in the world. First world war started in the 1914-18 and after Spanish flu Spread in speedy and affected many people and 50,000 million people die in this flu. Spanish flu very dengerous to people and many people die in this flu. We find some avidence of flu in literary texts written by post world war poets, author in their works. Here the second coming is a best example of the Spanish flu.

We can read this poem in seperate context like:

1 The first is political context.

2 religious context

3 pandemic poem.

 Know, the second coming poem looked as a pandemic poem. How can identified this poem is a pandemic poem. Here I find some connections and historical events in the poem. Let's discuss some reason:

-First reason the poet belong to the modern age and he also know for the war poet.

-Second reason this poem we know that the published in 1919 and that time first world war end. Many people die and lots of suffered. Side effects increase, and Spanish flu are widely spread.

-Third reason, we find the history of the poet. The poet's wife death in the waves of a flu pandemic.

There are many reasons to read the the second coming as a pandemic poem.

W.B. Yeats the losses of the first world war were still overwhelming when millions more began to die in waves of a flu pandemic, which infected Yeats wife, George Hyde-Lees, while she was pregnant. She and their child would survive on those time.

The Second coming, the title of the poem means give birth to another. First we read this poem not find any meaning and re read this poem we got the reference of the pandemic poem.

"The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, 

A shape with Lione body and the head of a man"

Ww know that the virus had no shape. But in those poem poet described virus as a lion body and head of a man. Because it not possible but I remember one work Hayavadna written by Girish Karnard.

Yeats wife caught the virus and she was very close to death because she pregnant and pregnant women are very effective in flu. Here we find the current reference of COVID 19 that time pregnant women are not safe and many women die.  

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned"

The another thing is the Bethlehem is not taken here as birth place of Jesus Christ but it's consider here as birth place of flu virus.

#Critical analysis of W.B.Yeast another poem Death.

Death is the shortest poem of all his finest poem. In just a dozen lines, Yeats examines human attitudes to death, contesting them with an animal's ignorance of its own mortality. Death was written in 1929.

Let's tries to discuss in detail:-

"Nor dread nor hope attend  a dying animal,

A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all"

Here Yeats compare man's awareness tha he will die with an animal's luch of awareness of this: an animal neither fears death not hope for life after death. Hindu belived in rebirth and only for karma. Here man does consoling himself through religion that death will not be the end.

"Many time he died,

Many time rose again"

Here poet is probably echoing a sentiment put forward by Shakespeare in Julia's Ceasar 

"Coward die many times before their deaths. 

The brave experience death only once"

We die in the course of our lives many time through failure of nerve or failing to live in same other sense, yet we got another chance to make our lives good this reading of the lines is borne out by the next line, refering as it does to

"A great Man in his pride"

Indeed, a great man, one who has to deal with and confront, men who commit murder, has learnt to ridicule man's fixation upon death, which is described as more supersession means  to replace something.

The poem suggest, when we breathe our last breath on this earth, do we merely replace one kind of existence with another or what happen to us when we die?

Not that these questions trouble the grate men. Yeats mentions he knows death to the home and knows that man has created death. That is death is a man made concept.  Yeats is not denying that men die, what he is rejecting here is the notion that death or mortality is something we should dwell too much upon.

An animal dies, just like a man but an animal does not live it's life governed by questions of what happen when it shuffles off this mortal coil or what might await it after its breathed it's last on this earth.

The great man Yeats refers to in Death is Kevin o' Higgins an Irish politician who had been assassinated in 1927. It poem is not make a political context, but makes a general point about man's attitude to his own mortality. How can we forget that one day we will die?

We find the some rhyming words like:

Attend- end, animal-all, died-pride, Again-men, upon-bone, breatg-death.

It poem rhymes like:ABAB..

Here I wind up my writing two poem the second coming and another poem is Death. Both poem are most important to read the same reality of the life.