What Yeats wants to convey in The Second Coming is as follows:
The core of this poem draws heavily on biblical imagery, especially the Book of Revelation, to create a sense of fear and unease. Feel.
Related extensions
Yeats's poem basically uses unrhymed iambic pentameter, with ten syllables in each line and a total of twenty-two lines. The whole poem is divided into two sections. The first section mainly explains the background, and the second section unfolds the script of "coming again".
This poem has had many Chinese translators, including the famous poets Yang Mu and Yuan Kejia, and their translations have their own merits and many wonderful works. The author tried to translate Yeats's poem into Chinese with ten syllables per line, which is exactly ten words per line, and the form is relatively close to the original poetic style.
In November 1920, the Irish poet William Butler Ye (1865-1939) published a poem titled "Come Again" in the American literary magazine "Sunstorm". It has been published for more than a month so far. century. Yeats was one of the few great poets and playwrights of the 20th century, and the winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature.
This poem is a landmark piece of modern poetry. Its influence is enduring and it has already become a widely cited classic in the cultural circle. The most famous example is the Nigerian writer Chinua. The title of Achebe's (1930-2013) novel "Falling Down" is taken directly from a poem in "Come Again".
In the century since this poem was published, the world has been plagued by conflicts and wars, social unrest, and frequent natural disasters, which have cast a shadow on the future of mankind. It is no wonder that sensitive observers often quote this poem by Yeats to express their worries about the current situation and even the future of mankind.
Since 2016, with the turmoil in Europe and the election of Trump as President of the United States, English writers and authorities have quoted this poem more frequently. Right now, mankind is experiencing a catastrophic epidemic sweeping the world. Hundreds of millions of people have been infected and millions of people have died. The entire world has fallen into chaos, and various conflicts have intensified. At this moment, when we reread this old poem by Yeats that was published a hundred years ago, we naturally feel special emotions.
Why does this poem by Yeats have such great charm? This is closely related to the background of the era in which the poem was produced, as well as the poet's personal experience and unique historical perspective. The first draft of this poem was written in January 1919. At that time, it was just a few months after the catastrophe of the First World War, and it was only three years since the Irish Easter Rising was bloody suppressed by the British colonial authorities. The civil war started by the October Revolution led by the Bolshevik Party in Russia was still continuing.
There were two other major historical events in 1919: In Europe, Hitler devoted himself to the budding Nazi movement; in the East, the May Fourth Movement broke out in full swing in China. Of course, people may not have been able to fully foresee the long-term significance of these two events at the time, but they were also part of the great turmoil in the world at that time.
At the same time, a century-old influenza pandemic was also raging around the world. This pandemic lasted for more than two years (February 1918 to April 1920) and infected as many as one-third of the human population. , leading to the deaths of tens of millions of people. Yeats's wife unfortunately contracted the epidemic during pregnancy and almost died. When Yeats wrote this poem, she had just escaped a disaster and soon gave birth to their daughter. In addition, Yeats's old father, who was far away in New York, almost died of the influenza
It is not difficult for today's readers to understand from Yeats's poems that the above-mentioned events and changes have greatly affected the world and society. , as small as individuals and families, have an impact on Ye Yi.
The poet's anxiety about the disorder of the world is clearly expressed in the third line of the poem: "Everything is collapsing, and the center is difficult to maintain": the perception of blood, death, and violence is presented in "Blood Among the images such as "torrent" and "overflow", the lament about the depravity of human nature is summarized in the seventh and eighth lines of the poem: "The most good people have all lost their faith, and the evil people are burning with desire."