I was just attempting to read more of Yeats' poetry, sifting through my volume of "The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats" of which I have read approximately one 25%, when I ran across his poem "The Wild Swans at Coole." Perhaps it's the fact that I just got through a unit on The Catcher in the Rye with my students, but it struck a very Salinger-esque pose in my mind, especially the ending, where he's contemplating his relationship to the swans:
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
The mention of the swans as "unwearied," the jealously inherent in the phrase "their hearts have not grown old," and, of course, the fear of their inevitable departure, all speak strongly to me of Holden Caulfield's obsession with the ducks in the lagoon in Central Park. The fear of aging and of dying (in both instances, made even more clear by the onset of winter) is made more mystical in Yeats' poem through his focus on swans rather than on ducks; such mysticism would naturally feel out of place in Holden Caulfield's all-too-earthbound world. But the underlying concept is undoubtedly the same. Perhaps it's just a coincidental parallel. But it's an interesting one, anyway.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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