Diction and Meaning in William Butler Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”

In “Leda and the Swan”, William Butler Yeats addresses a story from Greek Mythology. Leda is the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta. Zeus comes to her in a shape of a swan. The swan and Leda has a sexual intercourse. Most probably Zeus rapes Leda, as we can also see in the general atmosphere of the poem. Leda lays two eggs with two children in both of them. One of these children is Helen, which will be the famous Helen of Troy. One other was Clytemnestra, who is the wife of the Mycenean Commander Agamemnon, and the murderer of him.

The poem starts with an end of an action, there is “a sudden blow”, where the swan comes on to Leda and his “great wings beating still”. We start to observe the rape scene from the middle, where the swan is holding her body with his wings and her neck with his beak. The effect of this, is that it draws the reader, into the action and into the poem easily.

Throughout the poem, Leda described in concrete words and the swan in abstract terms with synecdochies mainly. Leda is described as "the staggering girl" and the poem mentions "her helpless breast”, "her nape", and "her loosening thighs". The swan is never called as Zeus or even “Swan” (actually, Agamemnon is the only name mentioned). The swan is described as "great wings", "dark webs", "white rush", "indifferent beak" and "feathered glory".

Although the “Leda and the Swan” myth -therefore the poem,- has many connections with the Trojan War. Helen is the main reason of the war, name of Agamemnon can be seen in the fourth stanza, and Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon killed him after the Trojan War, because of jelaousy. Helen and Clytemnestra are Leda’s daughters, and Agamemnon was the Mycenean Commander.

The last line of the Fourth stanza is “And Agamemnon dead.”. Trojan War is accepted as an end of the Mythological Era and a start of the modern times, so we can infer that the rape ends at that line, like the war ended with Agamemnon’s death. Therefore, it may be a reference of “the loss of purity”, or an idea that “growth can only be achieved under force and hardships”.

To conclude, we can say that, "Leda and the Swan" is a violent poem and can be seen as Yeats's own perception to a mythological event. However the poem can also be widened to the whole time and than it can represent “women’s loss of purity against male domination”.