The Sonnet

Sonnets were historically adaptable to a wide range of subjects like love, politics, and religion--for instance, John Donne's Holy Sonnets.

The creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein reads Milton's Paradise Lost. John Milton perhaps did more for easing the rhyme scheme demands of the earlier form. Milton is regarded by most to have enriched the flexibility of the sonnet as an art form.

Still after eight centuries of adaptation, the sonnet has held its shape--a 14 line poem normally in iambic pentameter.

What is iambic pentameter? Look at the first line of Yeats' "Leda and the Swan":

A sud/den blow:/ the great /wings beat/ing still

The first syllable of each of the five poetic feet is soft or unaccented, while the second syllable is accented, thus iambic with five feet per line thus pentameter. This is arrived at (so to speak) as a result of scansion, which is not meant to be, of course, an exact science; one could say, for instance, that the word "wings" above is strong enough to be accented especially because wings are a powerful and essential part of what separates birds from humans (and in this case, an immortal deity from a mortal woman).

Exercise: Scan Yeats' poem.

There are three recognized forms of the sonnet with variations in shape and rhyme scheme. Yeats, it seems, ignores the rubrics of rhyme scheme but the shape of this poem adheres in part to the Italian octave / sestet division.

Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet: Octave abbaabba, Sestet cde cde

Spenserian Sonnet: Octave abab bcbc, Sestet cdcd ee with a closing couplet on the end

Shakespearean Sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg, again a closing couplet on the end

Sonnets then are highly structured both visually and phonologically. They work also in a two part division of thought, kind of like a problem and then a solution or the ease of tension to a situation in the sestet (commonly) or summary in the couplet. The turn or volta is the place where the sonnet moves out of the octave and into the sestet. Or in some sonnets--like the Spenserian Sonnet--the volta is postponed until the release in the last two lines or the couplet.

In this way, modern TV commercials or sitcoms could be said to mimic the artist structure or intention of sonnets, in that these short programs are compact and utilize the problem / solution formula.



Lead and the Swan

Yeats' sonnet opens violently with the use of a colon which is a caesura or pause. The content is inconsistent with the idyllic subject common in sonnets and thus Yeats perhaps creates an oxymoron between form and content. The subject of Yeats' poem is generally agreed to be the rape of Leda by Zeus, disguised as a swan. The content then is taken from Greek mythology and plays a role in the the second division of thought in the sestet. The poem's first two quatrains (together making the Octave) are dramatic and narrative. With the turn or volta, the action changes and we see the aftermath and mythic allusion to Agamemnon. The last two lines of the poem raise a question using the phrase "indifferent beak."

What does the poem suggest about the relationship between gods and mortals?

Details from Greek Mythology: Leda is the wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta. As a result of this rape, she gives birth to two sets of twins from two different eggs. From one egg is born Castor and Clyteamnestra. From the other egg is born Pollux and Helen of Troy. The female offspring become catalysts for the greatest of conflicts in Greek epic poetry: Helen represents the origins of the Trojan War and Clyteamnestra murders her husband Agamemnon on his homecoming day. Why? Agamemnon had previously (at Aulis) sacrificed their daughter so as to assure his victory at Troy. The family violence defines the curse of the House of Atreus and the ongoing cycles of violence among members of the same family. After Agamemnon's death, Clyteamnestra's son Orestes will return and slay her for killing his father. What system of justice does this represent?

The Implications?

Perhaps even more fascinating is the biology-science fiction represented by the cross species reproduction and thus the conclusion that the children are hybrids. What do you make of this detail? Humans having sex with animals is regarded as a serious taboo and in most cases an impossibility. Yet why do you suppose the fascination with this particular myth continues in literature and art? Is it rendered palatable because we know that the Swan is (in reality) the very human-like Zeus? Certainly we don't read this poem literally, like the monster reads Paradise Lost? What happens if you read the poem literally? What confrontations take place?