Trabalho (em ingles ) sobre poema Leda e o Cisnei

Analisys of the poem Leda and the Swan

In the poem “Leda and the Swan” from Yeats can be understood as the relation of sensory and intelligible, also the articulation of power and knowledge because it joins through the history that Leda's rape could be meaningful. In the beginning stanza there is only the pure, and physical violence in the excerpt “By the dark webs, … He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.” this use of imagery create a very strong emotion. The tone changes in the second stanza, where rhetorical questions appear and state a new idea, directed towards power and differentiation, in “How can those terrified vague fingers push/The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?/And how can body, … but feel the strange heart beating where it lies ”(line 5 to 8) such lines show that the power and violence from Zeus cannot be resisted by the image of her “vague fingers”, one can imagine her inability to escape , it states that it must at least be felt to be somehow different from the other “violence”. The third stanza posits that that violence is somehow a justified act, in the poem, a very descriptive image of the Trojan war in the excerpt “The broken wall, “The burning roof and tower/And Agamemnon dead” the reason for the rape of Leda is that it would led to the Trojan War and then to the birth of Western Civilization, literature, Democracy; in this case an act of violence with its own embedded justification. In the last stanza non-rhetorical question appear and demonstrates a new articulation that dampens the violence, in “ Did she put on his knowledge with his power/Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” the articulation of power and knowledge, shows that she could have had associated the power(swan's power) with his knowledge Zeus's knowledge , the fact is, might even know the future , he knows that their daughter Helen will cause the Trojan War, a wisdom about the destiny that would once create the western as we know, showing, in fact the grandiosity of the moment advocate the violence of the act.

However, the poem has more than one way to be understood, in this case “Leda and the Swan” would not been about the grandiosity, but the despicable act done by a powerful entity that is meaningless, not justifiable, about the dis-articulation of power and knowledge. The reading of the first stanza would not change; nonetheless, the questions on the text have to interpreted as literal ones. In conclusion the understanding of this paragraph lies in the last stanza, the part “So mastered by the brute blood of the air,/Did she put on his knowledge with his power/Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”(line 13 to 15) the phrases “brute blood” shows a purely physical reaction , and in “indifferent beak could let her drop” demonstrates the thing(Swan Zeus) without a soul and a very cold creature that just dropped her, meaningless for him. The entire poem hinges on this vague expression "put on." in the second reading where the act of violence is meaningless the word “put on” shows a impossibility of knowledge and power be the same, it means that one would have to be adjusted over the other a synthetic creation , that was forced like the rape of Leda.

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