The Second Coming (+The Wasteland) notes

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  • The Second Coming
    • "gyre"
      • Yeats created a theory that history was in two conical spirals or "gyres"
        • conflict between "ancient" and "modern" history in the gyres
          • World is reaching the end of one of the gyres - end of the World before it begins again
            • Yeats believed the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation
    • described current world state (1921) in terms of the "gyres" theory
      • Yeats believed the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation
      • "Spiritus Mundi" (12) - spirit of the world
      • right after WW1, world is in turmoil
        • like Eliot's poetry - The Wasteland
    • references the Second Coming of Christ
      • however not as expected, instead new Messiah is a "rough beast" (21)
        • sphinx or not?
        • we have lost touch with religion as the falconer has lost touch with the falcon (2)
          • loss of religion in The Wasteland
          • "stony sleep" - sleep of Christianity of the sleep of the beast"
            • loss of religion in The Wasteland
        • Christianity's version of the Second Coming mentions "glory" and has a sense of finality, this does not
      • "ceremony of innocence" (6) baptisms? or the cultural rituals of civalization
        • lost over time, historical rituals lost through modernisation
          • conflict between "ancient" and "modern" history in the gyres
            • World is reaching the end of one of the gyres - end of the World before it begins again
            • "stony sleep" - sleep of Christianity of the sleep of the beast"
          • "rocking cradle" - birth of Christ?

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