The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted
In a pure compound; being so applied,
His venom in effect is purified.
-Tarquin
Lucrece line 530
WARNING: Long Blog Post!
Today's Totally Random line is Tarquin trying to talk Lucrece into going along with his rape of her. But instead of talking about these particular lines I'm going to skip forward a little and talk about the ‘rough beast’ that is Tarquin. Let me explain.
Today’s totally random line is taken from Lucrece, also known as The Rape Of Lucrece. As I said, the three lines above are part of Tarquin the rapist’s lines where he’s trying to talk Lucrece into not fighting him. So I was reading some of the stanzas before and after these lines to get some more context, and that’s when I ran into the following stanza, which is a bit further along, where he’s stopped talking and he’s about to get down to the business of rape.
Here with a cockatrice’s (snake’s) dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself and makes a pause;
While she, the picture of pure piety,
Like a white hind (female deer) under the gripe’s (falcon’s) sharp claws,
Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws,
To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.
And of course, rough beast just jumped up and tackled my attention. In fact, it might just as well have been in bold-faced italics with the yellow, though of course wasn’t.
I've run into this beast before, and so have you if you studied The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats, which you probably did in high school. But is this Yeats’s rough best? Or more aptly, is Yeats’s rough beast from 1900 this same beast of Will’s from 1600? That is today’s question.
Will’s next stanza continues this scene of cosmic disharmony that is present in Yeats’s poem.
But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat,
In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding,
From earth’s dark womb some gentle gust doth get,
Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding,
Hindering their present fall by this dividing;
So his unhallow’d haste her words delays,
And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.
Of course you may need some refreshing of The Second Coming in order to consider what I’m saying. So I’m going to have to do it to you. That’s right; here is the whole The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. Don’t worry, it’s not too long.
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 these words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
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
Reel 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 toward Bethlehem to be born?
That’s it. That’s Yeats. Now tell me: did he borrow Will’s beast? That is the question.
Now, just to add a little icing on the cake, I’m going to throw one more beast at you. This one is in Sam Baker’s song from a few years ago, called The Feast. In it he sings repeatedly What rough beast? Close thine eyes on that rough beast. I ran into Baker’s beast a few years ago and quickly realized that it was Yeats’s beast. And to be clear, there are pieces of Yeats's Second Coming sprinkled all over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No question about that. Even so, I found Baker's use of the beast interesting (almost exciting). So that may help explain my fascination upon running into Will’s rough beast today.
Now you can certainly argue that two words do not necessarily constitute reference or relationship. It could be coincidence. But given the entirety of Will’s stanzas above, I believe that Yeats’s rough beast, which inspired Baker’s rough beast, is indeed Will’s rough beast. What do you think?
See that guy over my right shoulder, my cellar office-mate? Well he was nice enough to take a break from his screen and listen to my question. He read the relevant Lucrece lines and The Second Coming. His conclusion? Yeats used Will's beast; no doubt about it. I agree.
No comments:
Post a Comment