Can the centre hold in these troubled and contentious times ?

W.B. Yeats poem speaks as much to the turbulence of our current situation as it did for the time and place of its creation.

   I’ve had a casual acquaintance with William Butler Yeats, crossing paths with the Irish poet from time to time when a few lines from one of his poems were used as an epigram for some writer’s book or they were quoted in an essay or speech as a means of better explaining the point being presented.

   Yeats—who lived from 1865-1939—was one of the more renowned writers of the 20th Century, his work part of the Western Canon. A well-known poem of his, in not the most well-known, is ‘The Second Coming’—made even more popular due to Joan Didion using a phrase from its last line for the title of her collection of reports dealing with the 1960s-- Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

   Her collection, like most anthologies of a non-fiction writer’s past articles, dealt with a variety of issues and topics; each one composed for a specific purpose and in the context of a particular time and place. I doubt that she had any overarching theme in mind as she was going about her journalistic business. But in assembling them as a book, looking back over the course of time, the Yeats’ poem obviously came to mind. ‘The Second Coming’ was published in 1921, a turbulent time of social unrest and cultural and political upheaval, which Yeats dealt with in his poem. The ‘60s could be similarly described. The arresting images he used to describe the situation (as he saw it) seemed fitting for what was happening nearly 50 years later in America. Hence Didion’s use of that final phrase. It gave her individual pieces a larger context, thus a deeper meaning.

It was this book, which I came across a number of years after its publication, that first brought the poem to my attention. ‘The Second Coming’ is not overly long—eight lines in the first stanza and 14 in the second—but the narrative picture that’s presented packs a punch. None more so than the beast-like creature, foreshadowing a seismic shift in history, arising from the desert…  “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” seemingly dark and sinister in its intent, heading methodically as a force of nature towards the holy city of Christ’s fabled birthplace. “It’s hour finally come.” A nameless destruction threatening Western Civilization. Much different than the image that’s usually thought of with the Second Coming.

However, as interesting and alarming as that dire vision is, the line that initially captured my interest—one that I’ve returned to every now and then—is found the third line: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Preceding it, Yeats used the metaphor of a falcon circling beyond the hearing of the falconer. My take from the poem is that of a situation spinning out-of-control, of unleashed forces that threatened to upend the social, political, and cultural norms, and of a foul darkness descending over the light.

As Yeats was composing this work, World War I had ended a couple of years earlier—the blood of that slaughterhouse washing away old Europe. There had been the Russian Revolution and, in his own nation, the Easter Uprising that gave birth to Free Ireland.

Among the scholarly commentary I came across concerning the background and meaning of the poem was that much of the world had grown disillusioned from the violence and upheaval. “Despite all of the seemingly wonderful inventions that had helped usher in the new century, including the motorcar and small aircraft, the world (or society) had begun to fray apart,” it was noted.

Interestingly, those events, in and of themselves, were not what motivated the poem, but were (to Yeats) harbingers of a more fundamental shift in fortunes. Apparently, like some Christians who see current events as foretelling the end times, Yeats felt what was happening “was a passing of one historical cycle that began with the birth of Christ and was now being replaced with a cycle of chaos and cruelty.”

The poet, it seems, had an elaborate theory of how history unfolded; that there were two conical spirals (which he called gyres), one spinning outside the other, which periodically exchanged places in influencing events.

  “ ‘The Second Coming’ was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical moment in terms of these gyres,” it was explained and that “Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along the inner gyre.”

   Well, let’s just say that his metaphysical view of history hasn’t had much impact, nor been given much credence. But as a template for creating an influential poem, it proved valuable.

    While we can say (with reasonable assurance I think) that the events occurring a century ago were not historically inevitable or that they ushered in a new revelation, still there’s no denying that they led to profound changes—both good and ill. Of course, the threads of our collective past; that myriad of strands, more often form a tapestry than they do an easily seen straight line. As such, it’s hard, not to mention risky, trying to explain cause-and-effect.

Which is why a poem like ‘The Second Coming’ is so helpful. It speaks as much to the turbulence of our current situation as it did for the time and place of its creation.

Then, as now, we have the extremes in politics, along with the push and shove for control of government and, with it, the ability to legislate and interpret laws. We still battle over the definition of good change versus bad, the parameters of human rights, the Socratic dialogue on ‘what constitutes a good and just society,’ the proper education of the young, and what’s considered socially-acceptable behavior.

There’s still war, oppression, ethnic cleansing, suppression, and violence. There’s still plenty of finger pointing, the assigning of blame, scapegoating, denial when caught red handed, the holier than thou judgments, and greed.

Yeats, in describing the world around him, talked of “the blood-dimmed tide” being loosed and the “ceremony of innocence” being drowned. I guess you can interpret that as you wish, with opposing sides laying claim. So, too, the line “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

But I come back to “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” for what’s relevant in our current times.

For me the warning of that can be found in the lack of civility in our public discourse, of always putting partisan expediency above the democratic and Constitutional precepts that have underpinned the nation, of forgetting the Golden Rule when it comes to the right to vote or equal pay for equal work or receiving a livable wage, and of abandoning common courtesy in our dealings with others.

The fear is that if things begin to spin out of control, not least of which is an erosion in our dealings with others, it can devolve into something more dire and lethal. History is replete with such dark outcomes.

But there is always choice. The decision to follow a different path.

   Consider our nation’s motto: E Pluribus Unum … “Out of Many One.” It means just that. The notion that each of us is part of the whole; that each of us is equal under the law and its protections; and that each of us (regardless of religious belief, race, color of skin, national origin, gender, or personal orientation) is entitled to the blessings of liberty.

It suggests as well that our diversity, when enlisted in a shared purpose and treated with mutual respect, can be (as it has been) a source of strength rather than of weakness.

Can the centre hold in these troubled and contentious times? Perhaps… if we follow “the better angels of our nature.”

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’.