"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. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming allegorically to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. The poem is considered a major work of Modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Video The Second Coming (poem)
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 that followed the Easter Rising, 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.
Maps The Second Coming (poem)
Influence
Phrases and lines from the poem are used in many works, in a variety of media, such as literature, motion pictures, and television. 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), Robert B. Parker's novel The Widening Gyre (1983), Elyn Saks' autobiography The Center Cannot Hold (2007), and The Sopranos episode "The Second Coming" (2007).
A 2016 analysis by Factiva showed that lines from the poem were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding 30 years. In the context of political turmoil after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's election, commentators repeatedly invoked its lines: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
References
External links
- Text and brief analysis
- "The Second Coming" in the context of A Vision
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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