As political discourse becomes more vicious and the public obsesses on apocalyptic visions, we might want to take a look at a classic poem that foresaw both trends.
"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, written in 1919, looked backward at the violence and false promises of the French and Russian revolutions. However, Yeats also seemed to predict the rise of Nazi Germany and the "beast" Adolph Hitler. Today, the poem seems even more prescient as another monster prepares to take the stage.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The poem’s frequently cited phrase, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," described the weak and venal politicians of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), who eventually submitted to the demands of the passionate Nazis. The "blood-dimmed tide" was loosed in World War II.
In today’s version of the Weimar Republic, President Obama and the centrist Democrats who call for moderation and compromise are the "best" who lack all conviction, while the "worst" are the passionate "tea baggers" and shout-down attendees at the town hall meetings. As Obama continues to cling to the middle ground, I expect the left to join the right in a passionate fury against an administration that has reneged on its promise of "change we can believe in."
"Spiritus mundi" (Latin for "spirit of the world") is the collective unconscious, where individual minds are connected and communicate through the spiritual language of symbols and metaphors. The spiritus mundi is taking physical form through the Internet.
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man" describes Saddam Hussein, who was harried by the "indignant desert birds," the American jet fighters and bombers that ended his reign.
While Christians foresee a "Second Coming" of Christ, Yeats envisions a much different figure, a "beast" who could be the Antichrist. Works for me.
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Bedeviled