The Second Coming (poem)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Turning and turning in the widening gyre Surely some revelation is at hand; -- "The Second Coming" (1920)by William Butler Yeats |
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"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Historical context
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, that followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, at a time before the British Government decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.
The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic: In the weeks preceding Yeats's writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was convalescing, he wrote "The Second Coming".
Influence
Phrases and lines from the poem are used in many works, in a variety of media, such as literature, motion pictures, television and music. Examples of works whose titles draw from "The Second Coming" include:
- Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart (1958);
- Joan Didion's essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
- Walker Percy’s novel The Second Coming (1980)
- Peter De Vries' novel Slouching Towards Kalamazoo (1983)
- Robert B. Parker's novel The Widening Gyre (1983)
- The 1996 non-fiction book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline by Robert Bork
- The song "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (which quotes or paraphrases almost all of the poem) by Joni Mitchell from her 1991 album Night Ride Home
- Lou Reed in his preamble to the song "Sweet Jane" on the 1978 album Live: Take No Prisoners
- Elyn Saks' memoir The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007)
- The episode "Revelations" (9 November 1994) of the science fiction television series Babylon 5.
- Stephen King's novel The Stand references the poem numerous times, with one character explicitly quoting lines from it.
- Junkie XL's soundtrack to Zack Snyder's Justice League features a song titled "The Center Will Not Hold, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep", referencing the "second coming" of Superman after his death in the film's prequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and his subsequent resurrection in this film.
- Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987) says, "So the falcon's heard the falconer, huh?"
- Good Omens (1990) parodies the poem, "slouching hopefully towards Tadfield".