10th June 2024
Mariana Rogan, St. Olaf College
According to Yeats, the poet ‘is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.’[1] He writes this in ‘A General Introduction for my Work,’ acknowledging the role of the individual experience in a poet’s work, but emphasises a ‘phantasmagoria,’ a history of images that both influence the poet’s life and serve as a poetic reservoir to draw upon.[2] Yeats shifts the definition of the ‘phantasmagoria’ from an individual dream-like experience to a collective imagination that fuels art-making, manifesting in his pervasive use of imagery from folklore, myth, and the occult in his poetry, particularly in serving the expression of his politics. In ‘Leda and the Swan,’ Yeats utilises a Greek myth that recalls Zeus turning into a swan and forcibly impregnating Leda, Queen of Sparta. Yeats calls on the violent myth to discuss his political beliefs about Irish nationalism and British imperialism, without giving in to the individualism he warns against. In William Johnsen’s chapter on sexual politics in Yeats’s poem, he states that Yeats knew the poem’s violence would be misunderstood by some readers as justifying sexual and political violence, but later revisions opened up the possibility for more progressive readings.[3] Perhaps both in spite of and because of this controversy, he has established the myth of Leda and the Swan in the ‘phantasmagoria,’ as evidenced by Irish singer-songwriter Hozier’s 2022 release, titled ‘Swan Upon Leda.’[4] Hozier engages with the ‘phantasmagoria’ by borrowing and subverting Yeats’s title and its associated Greek mythological imagery in order to make his own contemporary political assertions on imperialism and reproductive rights.
In a note to ‘Leda and the Swan,’ Yeats mentions that it was requested by A.E. Russell for the Irish Statesman, a journal in support of the Pro-Treaty movement and the Irish Dominion League, which advocated for Ireland to have dominion status under the British Empire.[5] Yeats believed at this point that ‘Nothing is now possible but some movement, or birth from above, preceded by some violent annunciation.’[6] At first, Yeats intended for the rape of Leda to be a metaphor for this ‘violent annunciation’ to precede progress towards a sovereign Ireland, but found as he wrote the poem, ‘that all politics went out of it.’[7] Critics such as William Johnsen argue that Yeats’s revisionary process after the poem’s initial publication in 1924 transformed it from its original form as a justification of Leda’s rape, asserting it as a necessary violent annunciation that brings about societal change, to a poem imbued with sexual politics that leads the reader to the imagining of an alternative myth in which Leda fights back.[8] Contemporary academics continue to struggle with Yeats’s poem. In an article on poetics and identification, Janet Neigh comments on the seemingly uncritical depiction of sexual violence in the poem and how it can alienate female readers.[9] Helen Sword and W.C. Barnwell have both written articles attempting to identify the expressive purpose of Yeats’s explicitly violent imagery.[10] Regardless, the poem solidifies the myth of Leda and the Swan as a metaphor in political discussions of imperialism within the ‘phantasmagoria,’ which is what Hozier draws upon in ‘Swan Upon Leda.’
Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known more widely as Hozier, is an Irish singer-songwriter that makes folk, rock, and gospel-inspired music drawing on imagery from Irish folklore, Greek mythology, and the Catholic faith. His interactions with the poetic ‘phantasmagoria’ seem to have a lot of parallels with Yeats’s. Hozier, being an active musician and poet nearly a century after Yeats’s death, is able to also draw on Yeats’s work as part of the collective poetic reservoir. This is most evident in Hozier’s recent release ‘Swan Upon Leda.’ The most notable commonality is the title, but Hozier rearranges his to make clear that Zeus is forcing himself upon Leda without her consent, thus subverting Yeats’s use of the mythological imagery. This subversion is crucial to his intended meaning, as the central metaphor of the song compares sexual exploitation under patriarchy to the exploitation of people and land under imperialism. Yeats’s poem also features the same central metaphor, and Hozier deepens it by discussing how violence against women is not solely figurative, but that concrete acts of violence against individual women are used to enact imperialism. On the day of the song’s release, Hozier tweeted an image that read, ‘Egyptian journalist and author Mona Eltahawy once referred to the global systems that control and endanger women as the world’s “oldest form of occupation.” Ever since hearing her speak in Dublin, I wanted to explore that thought in a piece,’ and captioned the image with ‘Swan Upon Leda October 7, 2022.’[11]
In the first verse, Hozier centralises Leda as the subject of the song, rather than the passive object that she is for Yeats. He sings, ‘A husband waits outside | A crying child pushes a child into the night | She was told he would come this time | Without leaving so much as a feather behind.’[12] Yeats only shares Zeus’s actions and feelings of pleasure with the reader, how ‘He holds her helpless breast upon his breast […]’ and how ‘A shudder in his loins’ impregnates Leda, unknowingly setting in motion the violence of the Trojan War.[13] Hozier subverts Yeats’s depiction by placing an emphasis on the painful childbirth that Leda must bear after being violated, having been left with the consequences of Zeus’s actions. Here the husband figure waits outside, emphasising the low stakes nature of sex and pregnancy for men. Hozier’s Zeus gets away with his violent act, since he goes ‘without leaving so much as a feather behind.’ Hozier seems to initially focus the Leda and the Swan metaphor on reproductive rights and sexual violence. In each chorus, he sings that ‘The gateway to the world | Was still outside the reach of him,’ referring to how the reproductive abilities of women’s bodies remain theirs alone, no matter how men aim to control them.[14]
The final two lines of the first verse connect the themes of sexual exploitation of women and imperialism, when Hozier sings, ‘To enact, at last, the perfect plan | One more sweet boy to be butchered by men.’[15] Zeus’s rape of Leda resulted in the birth of Helen of Troy, who is often unfairly blamed for causing the Trojan War, when it was the men around her that fought over her as if she was property. The violence of Zeus against Leda only brought about more violence, which Yeats similarly references when he describes how Zeus ‘engender[ed] there | The broken wall, the burning roof and tower | And Agamemnon dead.’[16] In both the poem and the song, not only are children born from the act of rape, but events are set in motion that lead to future violence in the form of war and occupation. Hozier and Yeats even share the use of active verbs, “enact,” and “engender,” with the “en-” prefix that emphasise the direct causal relationship between Leda’s rape and future violence.
Hozier’s second verse contains a similar intertwined discussion of reproductive rights and imperialism. ‘A grandmother smuggling meds | […] | Weaves through the checkpoints like a needle and thread | […] | She offers a mothers smile and soon she’s gone.’[17] These lines refer to the lengths women would go to in the Republic of Ireland in order to perform necessary abortions before it was legalised in 2018. There is a feminine power in these lines as Hozier depicts the grandmother breaking the law to attain reproductive care for a young girl in need. It is her ‘mother’s smile’ that allows her to pass through border checkpoints; she does not need the brutal force of Zeus’s ‘sudden blow’[18] to achieve ownership over female procreation. This verse continues to link reproductive freedom to imperialism in the second and fifth lines, as Hozier describes the grandmother going ‘Past where the god-child soldier, Sétanta, stood dead […]’ as ‘Someone’s frightened boy waves her on’ at the checkpoint.[19] Sétanta is a demi-god from Irish mythology. The phrase ‘stood dead’ refers to how he tied himself to a rock pillar near the modern border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, so he would meet his death standing up rather than lying down. This reference to Irish mythology places Hozier once again into conversation with Yeats and with his use of the ‘phantasmagoria.’ However, Yeats kept his version of ‘Leda and the Swan’ void of any references to Irish mythology. Hozier’s synthesis of the two mythologies in a discussion of imperialism is what allows him to elevate his critique of British imperialism in Ireland as having a present impact on the reproductive rights of Irish women. Hozier also explicitly draws parallels with this to Israel’s imperial presence in Palestine. For example, to end the first chorus he sings ‘Empire upon Jerusalem,’ referring to Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem in a direct parallel to the title, ‘Swan Upon Leda,’ comparing it directly to Zeus raping Leda.[20] To end the second chorus, he sings, ‘Occupier upon ancient land,’ referring again to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, but also to the history of British occupation of Ireland, which has its own rich ancient history and mythology.[21]
Hozier is not the only musician to write about Leda and the Swan after Yeats’s poem. A quick Spotify search brings up several examples by artists such as Mephista, Loners, and others. They span all genres and each carry different interpretations of the myth. Hozier’s is the most popular according to numbers of plays, and is closely tied to Yeats through a shared Irish heritage and commentary on British imperialism, which distinguishes it from other occurrences of the myth in the ‘phantasmagoria,’ or the collective imagination. The song’s relevance to current political discourse, including contemporary discussions of Irish independence, reproductive rights, and Israel’s occupation of Palestine is what places it in direct conversation with Yeats’s ‘Leda and the Swan.’ Hozier manages to subvert the more problematic elements of Yeats’s poetic rendition of the myth, drawing on the same poetic reservoir to create a new piece relevant to the globalised Ireland of 2022, in the same manner that Yeats’s poem spoke to his own 20th-century Ireland.
Sources
Image Credit: ‘Leda and the Swan’, Cy Twombly (1962)
[1] W. B. Yeats, ‘A General Introduction for my Work’, in W.B. Yeats: Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 28-29.
[2] Yeats, W.B. Yeats: Selected Poems, p. 29.
[3] William Johnsen, ‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’ in Yeats and Postmodernism, ed. by Leonard Orr (Syracuse University Press, 1991), p. 80.
[4] Hozier, ‘Swan Upon Leda,’ from Swan Upon Leda (Rubyworks 2022).
[5] Johnsen, ‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’, p. 80.
[6] Johnsen,‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’, p. 80.
[7] Johnsen, ‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’, p. 80.
[8] Johnsen, ‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’, p. 89.
[9] Janet Neigh, ‘Reading From the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,”’ Journal of Modern Literature, 29.4 (2006) pp.145-160.
[10] W.C. Barnwell, ‘The Rapist in “Leda and the Swan,”’ South Atlantic Bulletin, 42.1 (1977) pp. 62-68; Helen Sword, ‘Leda and the Modernists,’ PMLA, 107.2 (1992), pp. 305-318.
[11] Hozier [@Hozier], ‘Swan Upon Leda October 7, 2022 https://t.co/k2xMo2e6N9’, Twitter, 2022 <https://twitter.com/Hozier/status/1577051127144939520> [accessed 28 October 2022].
[12] Andrew Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda,’ Genius, October 7, 2022, <https://genius.com/26862755/Hozier-swan-upon-leda/> [accessed 28 October 2022].
[13] Yeats, ‘Leda and the Swan’, in W.B. Yeats: Selected Poems, p. 149.
[14] Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda’.
[15] Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda’.
[16] Yeats, ‘Leda and the Swan’, p. 149.
[17] Hozier-Byrne,‘Swan Upon Leda’.
[18] Yeats, ‘Leda and the Swan’, p. 149.
[19] Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda’.
[20] Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda’.
[21] Hozier-Byrne, ‘Swan Upon Leda’.
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