"Oil and Blood," Yeats

[switchercat.livejournal.com]

More Yeats. Posting this one because it's very short and bizarre and seems little-known. I'm finding that Yeats used the word "blood" all the time, in lots of poems, and "beast" too, and there seems to be a symbolic link there from which I want to puzzle out some meaning.

* * *

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I just read something about "The Second Coming" where the "rough beast slouches to Bethlehem to be born" and the commentary was that Yeats (who was a bit woo by all accounts) was describing society in post first world war Europe, and his images of apocalyptic beasts refer to the way society had changed, not in a good way, and nobody knew what was coming next.

[switchercat.livejournal.com]

I did a presentation on "The Second Coming" the other day where I talked about just that!

He was certainly more than a little woo, and sometimes it's hard (or maybe not even worthwhile) to disentangle what's metaphorical/political in his poetry from what's straight-up occult. He seems to have had a justifiable obsession with the idea that some kind of inherent bestial violence is an urge lying dormant in human blood. "Odour of blood when Christ was slain / Made all Platonic tolerance vain / And vain all Doric discipline."