Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan"

Author(s): Janet Neigh

Source: Journal of Modern Literature , Summer, 2006, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Summer, 2006),
pp. 145-160
Published by: Indiana University Press

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 Reading from the Drop:
Poetics of Identification and Yeats's
"Leda and the Swan"

Janet Neigh
Temple University

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
?William Butler Yeats

One never reads except by identification. But what kind? What is "
tion?" When I say "identification," I do not say "loss of self" I become
habit, I enter. Inhabiting someone, at that moment I can feel myself
by that persons initiatives and actions.
?Helene Cixous

Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), feminist film criticism has cen-
For the last thirty years, beginning with Laura Mulvey s essay "Visual
tered on issues of female spectatorship and the poetics and politics
of identification.1 As Helene Cixous asserts in the epigraph I have chosen
from The Newly Born Woman (1975), text also always engenders identifica-
tions, which she defines as inhabiting another persons agency.2 The process
of identification is one way to conceptualize the intangible forces of exchange
between self and other, more specifically writer and reader, exchanges that are
often motivated by desire. This project of examining feminist reading is also
influenced by Identification Papers (1995), in which Diana Fuss theorizes from
a feminist and postcolonial perspective the political stakes involved in both
visual and textual identifications. I am specifically interested in what kinds of
identifications are made when reading poetry, which Fuss does not address.

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146 Journal of Modern Literature

What forms do textual identif

even to other textual genres?
This essay examines Yeats'
beginning with the famous fin
raped female figure, in order
a develop a feminist postcolon
project, which considers the
mere demonstration of theore
is approached as a socially enga
in the production of feminist
creative method for analyzing
retical to explore the textual p
words, when I take Yeats's so
with the text, which as Cixous
I identify with Leda and her e
dismissing this as a subjective
I allow this response to propel
symbolize the female-identifie
that in its representation of r
Much of feminist film crit
female viewers, yet also out
agency from this position. Ga
of art and literature in her
(1980): "In Dante, as in Yeats
as a means; it is a reactionary
woman, I deliberately refuse t
high art" (18)? Following from
question to his sonnet, I exam
to encounter, read, and resist,
in literature, specifically when
how does one interpret textual
that the text either engenders
Yeats's "Leda and the Swan'is
questions because, as William
Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan'" (
come sign ofa better fiiture"
of feminist and postcolonial p
the poem remain ambivalent
sion. Johnsen interprets the p
nationalist victimization" (86
allegory for anti-colonialism,
essay. I intend to elaborate on

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 147

in order to engage with recent debates about Yeats s sta

writer.3 Through the character of Leda, one can interpr
his political investments in Western civilization as an I
symbolically raped by England. The poem then can be read
statement about Ireland s precarious (post) colonial situatio
a statement about sexual politics, suggesting the insepar
forms of domination. In retelling the Greek myth of Zeus
formative metaphor in the construction of Western civiliz
repeats in A Vision (1925), he illustrates how gender asy
to the order of Western civilization.4 The rhetorical questi
forces the reader to consider what other kinds of civilizatio
More specifically, Yeats questions what power Leda might
before she is dropped to the ground after the rape. His
the sonnet with a question invites his readers (as feminist
the female viewer) to imagine how Leda might recover age
strategies of resistance to colonialism and sexism. His final
readers ask where, how, and whether Leda will find power
Yeats suggests that power for Leda might come from
knowledge of her oppressor. His use of the phrase "put
Leda undergoes identification with Zeus, in that she trespa
through her victimization. In other words, her power com
fication. In Identification Papers, Diana Fuss theorizes the
cess of identification in the context of colonialism, femini
The word paper in the title of her book illustrates her foc
of identification. She proposes that we are always comp
through identification whenever we read and write. Fuss d
tion, similarly to Cixous, as "the detour through the other
(2).To configure this detour as a metaphorical drop from t
illustrates the lack of control that the subject has over ident
that takes one over. Fuss notes the contradictory nature of
identifications can fortify identity, while others put ones i
is what makes the lack of control over the process threate
is a form of internalization that incorporates inside what
This process illustrates one psychic dimension of colonialis
asserts, "a certain element of colonialization is structur
every act of interiorization' (9). Identification helps us t
even in our intimate and everyday relations colonial logics
by revealing how sexual politics and imperialism conve
personal encounters. However, Fuss argues that because ide
the intersections between power and desire it offers ways
subjects act upon one another" in non-dominating ways (4)
with which I agree, is vital to my argument here. In "

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148 Journal of Modern Literature

Yeats presents a rape, but in the

Leda "puts on" Zeus's power, he
self and other might be conceptu
the questions that emerge from Y
analysis of "Leda and the Swan" t
and then allow this analysis to pr
This method will lead me to art
and feminist reading.

READING'lEDAANDTHESWArFROMTH

A sudden blow: the great wings beat

Above the staggering girl, her thigh
By the dark webs, her nape caught i
He holds her helpless breast upon br

How can those terrified vague finge

The feathered glory from her loosen
And how can body, laid in that whit
But feel the strange heart beating w

A shudder in the loins engenders th

The broken wall, the burning roof a
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of t
Did she put on his knowledge with
Before the indifferent beak could le

"Leda and the Swan,"first written

for he rewrote and republished t
The final version, published in
not because it is assumed that th
is the most interrogative and t
the bibliographic history of th
and Material Textuality" (1999).
exclamation marks with questio
made the violence ofthe swan mo
blow: the great wings beating sti
wheel, and hovering still" (Borns
the sonnet, he also seemed to sign

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 149

violence by adding question marks. Moreover, The Tower

symbolic context that has the tower representing, among
tion, monument, structure, loss, and the phallus. Indeed, i
Yeats argues that it is impossible to resurrect the phallus
signifier in the symbolic order. The poems in this collect
impossibility of building a tower of Babel to unify se
language and overcome the inevitable multiplicity of sem
version of "Leda and the Swan" in The Tower makes it th
or perhaps more aptly it is the anti-climax, because this
goes missing in action: "The broken wall, the burning
tower's walls break in this poem and the roof starts on f
the inability of the phallus to signify.
However, the phallus, or the swans body of desire, is
this poem, at least temporarily. The poem begins with "a
part by the colon that ends this phrase, as a reader I f
out of me. This extends the feeling of Leda s victimizatio
knocked from my position as a reader outside ofthe text a
ately.The enjambment and the linking of three sentences
action ofthe first stanza quick and at the same time very
After the "sudden blow," everything feels rushed. Yeats g
to stop and pause after the opening moment of violence.
Further, movement and stasis seem united by the "grea
for if the wings are beating how can they be still? And if
beat (the other meaning of "still") this suggests that the s
lands on the ground and comes to a complete stop. If the
flight, this implies that he lifts Leda off the ground. How
as "staggering," which conveys that she is still standing.
gering contradicts both the "sudden blow," which implie
to the ground, and the wings that are still beating, co
one reads this poem as an allegory for colonial violence, t
much as the colonizer inhabits the territory of the othe
ate the ground of the other completely, leaving space fo
this conveys a resistance to colonial occupation; even afte
manages to stay on her feet.
Although I primarily identify with Leda when reading
acknowledge that the hybridity and merging of oppos
encourage me to identify with the swan. The hybridity
masculine and feminine as well as animal and divine, coerc
with the figure.7 The detached third person narrator iro
than discourages identifications, because the narrator giv
which character the reader should identify with, making
with both actors in the poem. The "loosening thighs," "b

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150 Journal of Modern Literature

"burning" clearly express sexual

in the poem. Coupled with the s
ties encourage readers to identif
of a rapist. The effect of this
recognition of my complicity w
in phallocentrism, and colonialis
by putting into question my abi
force causes me to lose touch w
cannot discern what is feminine
the page), how can I tell this inte
glory," a name for the swan and
in a scene of hybridity and mer
rather than sameness, is the h
"breast upon breast" suggests t
all together. However, even th
poem, it is not extinguished. Th
categories does not create unity
be controlled and binarized by p
and the Swan'highlights the fluid
otherness and transformation.

Fluid identifications are also

poem. One anticipates after the
but there is no description ofth
ing. Yeats never has Leda say no
The only resistance by Leda is
those terrified vague fingers pu
thighs?"This question is ambig
note sexual pleasure and conse
miscuity and openness to sexu
her "terrified vague fingers" wan
her "thighs loosening"? The lin
response to Zeus. Her body is
body want to resist, while other
Her "terrified vague fingers"
contradictory reactions as a read
violence of the sonnet and its co
not stop reading (and interpreti
and compelling.
The following lines further th
body, laid in that white rush, /
The "body" is no longer attach
merged with the swan's, which

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 151

It is not clear whose "strange heart beating" is being refer

heart lies. The image ofthe heart beating also emphasizes
of the poem. Both the swan and Leda are so quiet that
a heart beating. The implied silence strengthens the visu
seems to take place only as vision, and yet the images
power ofthe sense of sight to see and to apprehend.
Geoffrey H. Hartman notes how the description ofthe
thwarts the ability to imagine the fantastical scene: "It e
ofthe visible in the invisible" (23). It pushes the limits of
visualize through these blind spots. Ironically, the detache
tor is unable to position the gaze ofthe poem outside oft
poem because one cannot distinguish Leda's actions from
causes me to stagger in the figurative sense, as in to be b
cannot envision the action of the poem. The intentionally
tions force me to depend more on my internal fantasy be
on the page is "terrified"and "vague."The poem penetrate
asks me to participate in the fantastical recreation ofthe
me more susceptible to identification.
Even though it thwarts visualization, the poem is desc
visual terms. All of the descriptions refer to images that
This is probably due in part to the fact that Yeats based
representation ofthe myth, a Greek frieze in the British
49). When the sense of touch is employed, it is through
as "her thighs caressed." Here I must visualize the swan to
this I cannot quite imagine. In turn, I feel the poem touc
visualize the touch of its "dark webs." The "dark webs," w
the swans webbed feet, also seem to suggest to me the ma
on the page. This thematizes the experience of textual id
I can see the "dark webs" on the page but I cannot see th
that turns these "dark webs" into semantic forces that cr
me that engender horizons of becoming.
The chailenge that this poem presents to specularity ill
of phallocentric power. The next two lines are also diffic
taneously because they both gesture outside ofthe scen
disparate from one another: "The broken wall, the burni
And Agamemnon dead." I previously suggested that the t
phallus. This is why: at this point in the poem, the towe
Yeats makes the out-of-context declaration that the patr
non is dead. The rape, rather than consolidating phallocen
be undermining it.
The first chance to stop and catch ones breath as a
"white rush," comes with the white space that preced

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152 Journal of Modern Literature

"Being so caught up."9This line e

reader, by this point in the poem
gled in the phantasm ofa rape I
the moment of identification, on
is no longer possible to distingu
are so "caught up" in one anothe
whom "the body" belongs. The t
inability to identify the differe
lence of "being so caught up" wh
of colonialism and sexual oppress
able to mark the boundaries betw
incorporate and erase the differ
be so possessed by the other tha
rather than marking our differe
how our identities as separate ar
But to be "caught up" is also to
attentive to the present. This
something that is "caught up" in
imagine being as becoming and t
But Leda cannot fly away from
he rapes her. The swan's "great
as victim does not offer her thi
as a metaphor for freedom, but
complicates the freedom implied
argues, in Working Alliances and
reconceprualize freedom so that
from attachments" (155). With t
is also suggesting a more entang
is inevitably caught up in time
reimagine freedom not as separa
relations with each other?

The idea of "being caught up

something. Being caught seems
definitely is. She cannot fly awa
female body and can only fall b
of "being so caught up," I under
rather than engendering freedo
The poem takes place "in the b
This line is incredibly difficult t
scene of the poem: the swan and
does the "brute blood of the air
the tower of the phallus is burn

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 153

interprets the air as representing the fantastical, that the terrai

tion is not free from the material. The violence and blood of h
the limits ofthe imagination. He questions the effect that fan
tion have on the material ground and the effect that the groun
In other words, Yeats questions the limits of poetic thinking t
resist the violence of material reality. By emphasizing the bru
the rape, he deviates from the tradition of idealizing Leda a
In general in his poetry, Yeats looks for ways to resist Englan
Ireland, but he is acutely aware that his language is simultaneo
his oppression, as well as a mode of resistance. Leda's lack of c
the swan's rape illustrates the impossibility of resistance with
The poem inspires readers to imagine how Leda might re
rape and resist the type of social order which engenders this k
"Did she put on his knowledge with his power / Before the in
could let her drop?"The beak is indifferent because the swan c
the mystery of her sexual difference even after penetrating her
to her difference. She drops back into her sexual difference w
with her and yet she gets to take on the knowledge of his ind
concludes the poem focusing on Leda's identifications, rather t
asking what kind of power Leda is able to derive from an even
belie (her) agency. Another way to phrase the concluding quest
is: how can agency be re thought as always partial and complic
lines do suggest that Leda got some of the swan's power from
concluding question of the poem is the third rhetorical questio
version ofthe short sonnet in The Tower. As a reader, I am cont
to answer the poem and to help Yeats envision resistance, whic
how, when reading, one cannot escape complicity with the aut
I conceptualize Leda's drop from the indifferent beak as th
and resistance between the indifferent beak and the violent gro
Before Leda hits the ground and must take on the limitatio
identity there is a brief moment of freedom. In a colonial
of hitting the ground comes with even more force, since it is
is the site of struggle. For Yeats, the drop forms a moment to
modes of being before he hits the ground and must take on th
national Irish identity to fight colonialism. The drop is where
alliances can be made in the interstices between our identificat
occurs between identification and identity, between desirin
falling away from that other, as a separate being. The drop be
imagine the excess produced by the process of identification t
into one's identity. To echo Yeats's famous poem "The Secon
center of identity cannot hold through the play of identificat
poetics enact for the reader.

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154 Journal of Modern Literature

WRITING FROM THE DROP

"Leda and the Swan" encourages r

puts his own identifications on d
birds and women, as well as demo
gods and ghosts, to list just a few
through our often unrequited de
the labyrinth of another's being"
planned "Leda and the Swan" as
relation to world politics," but he
such possession ofthe scene that a
By using the word "possession," h
as one of multiple identificatio
These chimeras of poetic fancy in
Yeats's assertion that this poem l
composition, I argue that the mul
and writer is precisely what make
feminist reading strategies.
In Gender and History in Yeats'
feminist study of Yeats, Elizabeth
personal desire is what qualifies Y
the personal as political (2). As we
that Yeats reveals the inverse, tha
of Yeats's poems are simultaneous
For example, " 'Easter 1916,' a p
martyrs of Ireland and Yeats's
Ireland" (Cullingford 121). Yeat
female other makes clear the con
struction of national identity. He
participate in the construction of
identity through identification w
desires in his everyday life. As F
ordinary process, a routine, hab
our love-objects" (1). Moreover,
informed by the experience ofth
a role in this "habirual compensati
the identifications inherent in th
formed through his internalizati
his heterosexual male identity, w
form the foundations of the poli
often have their roots in unackno
the public stakes of these desires

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 155

of identification on the page to reveal how our interior ev

identification, rather than being a retreat from the social
traverse and form it. Yeats's identifications with female f
identify with his national identity. His ability to inhabit I
by femininity. Specifically, in "Leda and the Swan," Le
the feminine, which allows him to identify with the victi
identity under the brutality of English colonialism. In the r
Zeus and Leda, he questions what the ethics of self/oth
how they might be changed. Zeus is both colonizer and pat
is both feminine other and colonized. Yeats collapses the tw
of oppression to reveal their interconnection as always bou
channels of desire between self and other.

DROPPING FROM IDENTITY INTO IDENTIFICATION

Even though the process of identification is bound up in c

along with theorists such as Diana Fuss and Homi K. Bh
textual identifications forms a method to begin to ima
relationship to the other might be possible. Alain Badiou, i
on the Understanding ofEvil, asserts that positioning the o
of ethics by such theorists as Luce Irigaray, Jacques Der
Levinas is misdirected because it distracts from the multip
within each subject. Badiou thinks that an emphasis on
"All-together Other" prevents the recognition of common
ing of collectivities to resist domination. However, an und
otherness produces and mediates our identities through ide
lapse the enforced binary between sameness and differenc
difference within each subject becomes intelligible throug
consequence of our desire to be (the same as) an other. Her
other as the "All-together Other" in the way Emanuel L
at the level of interpersonal relations; the ways in which w
other. One can see in an examination of Yeats's composit
how his desire for others shapes his identity. The psych
identification is a way to think through the politics ofthe o
of interpersonal relations and private fantasies (that often
in the quotidian practices of reading and writing) to begin
our everyday fantasies and material relations with others
our subjectivities.
Fuss emphasizes the difficulty of recovering identifi
liberatory ethic because of the investments of psychoanaly
discourse. This is demonstrated by "Leda and the Swan," w
potential violence of identification through the metaphor

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 156 Journal of Modern Literature

that identification reveals the p

and apprehend at the expense o
lies a murderous wish: the subje
the place it longs to occupy"
that the other inhabits. The "sudden blow" of "Leda and the Swan" can be a
metaphor for the violence of identification in colonialism. By using the image
of Leda in Zeus s "indifferent beak," the desire to ingest and devour the other
(and her difference) is conveyed.10
"Leda and the Swan" highlights the complicity of identification with
colonial wings, so that one can drop from those wings into new territories of
relationship between self and other. To put this in the colonial terms invoked
by Yeats's poem, how can Ireland drop from England's beak without invoking
a traditional nationalism that depends on a usurpation of the other to define
the nationalist self? This form of nationalism is in itself an agent of imperialism.
How can identification form the basis of collective liberation, rather than be an
agent of oppression? How can the multiplicity of others implicit in every "I am
I, am Fbegin to be heard (Yeats, Collected287)} I suggest that it is possible to
reach a non-violent relationship to the other through identification, but to get
there one must navigate through the violence to begin to migrate away from it,
which are precisely the lines of flight mapped out by "Leda and the Swan."
Homi K. Bhabha explains the potential of shifting away from identity poli?
tics to politics as identification in his introduction to a special issue of Critical
Inquiry, "Front Lines Border Posts." He suggests that politics as identification
unmoors the fixity of identities and makes "I am" statements much more fluid.
In every "I am" one also needs to hear and acknowledge the "not-I" that allows
that "I"to come into existence (Bhabha 451-53). I hear this otherness in the
following lines from Yeats's poem "He and She": "She sings as the moon sings:
/ 'I am I, am I;'" (Collected 287). One hears in these two lines the feminine
other declare a palindromic-like becoming. The feminine other conflated here
by both the symbol of the moon and the speaking female subject represents
simultaneously the other, the "not-I," and also the "I" revealing the multiple
and contradictory identifications which make the identity of the "I" possible.
In repeating the first person pronoun, Yeats emphasizes the multiplicity ofthe
self and the self s difference from itself. Bhabha writes,

[...] historical becoming is constituted not as a dialectic between first and third
person but as an effect of the ambivalent condition of the borderline proximity
?the first-in-the-third / the one-in-the-other. (434)

A politics of identification allows one to apprehend and approach the "border?

line proximity"between identities.This is in part what makes a reading practice
which tracks identifications valuable. Consequently, the perceived difference
between subjects can thereby become less divisive. Focusing on identification

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's'leda and the Swan" 157

allows an exploration of the connection between the s

through the more personal and quotidian relation of self
it possible. Yeats inhabits his Irishness?his relationship
first-in-the-third)?through his unrequited relationsh
(the one-in-the-other). Identification as an ontological de
the "I want" implicit in every "I am" to be heard (Bhabha
a temporal performative utterance that desires its own b
for identity, mediated by my desire for the other, is wha
formation. "I am I, am I" could be echoed by "I want you
an other both permits identity and puts that identity in
through the fluidity of our identifications promotes a les
one's identity and an openness to difference. The desire to
is actually fueled by a desire to be close to an other, to b
When one hears the otherness implicit in identity, the de
what appears to be separateness from the collective actua
be close and stand beside others. Bhabha asserts that the
of identification is that it creates fluid alternative maps f
Yeats's poetics exhibited in "Leda and the Swan" begin
identification, rather than a politics of identity, to inven
relationship between the individual and the collective bey

CONCLUDING NOTES: READING FROM THE DROP

By tracing the fluidity of our identifications in our read

revealed as fluid and open to transformation. The me
conceptualize the act of reading also asserts that one
fixed location but rather a space/time of movement in w
intertwine. One reads from the drop as a subject-in-proc
the text. Leda's rape and her drop from the swan's be
the private desires of reading impact the public realm. T
desires of reading play an active role in the public realm
main premise in States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats and Joyce, and
Deleuze argues that desire is no longer, as Lacan suggests
object, but rather a flow that forms connections and cre
25-29). For her part, Mahaffey argues that Yeats invites
that utilizes the productiveness of desire (8). This is exem
three rhetorical questions within "Leda and the Swan" th
imagine possible solutions for the seemingly unanswerab
tion "did she put on his knowledge?" is the most intense
my analysis of "Leda and the Swan,"I hope to have demon
on identification allows for a more complex and nuan
the productiveness of desire when reading. If the private

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 158 Journal of Modern Literature

imagined as public political force

subject can exert the force of he
ing, like writing, becomes an a
composition as performance (Ma
Reading from the drop thus en
gives me agency to resist the psy
ing "Leda and the Swan," in order
imagine non-violent relations bet
moment ofa pure resistance to th
re-articulate the terms of the po
change. I suggest a politics of rea
fluidity of one's identifications w
water, which collects for a mome
being hold together before they s
the memory of the drop's fleetin

Notes

1. For the evolution of these discussions in feminist film criticism, see Sue Thornham, ed. Feminist
Film Theory: A Reader. New York: New York UP, 1999.

2. I originally came across this quotation by Cixous in Elin Diamond's "Rethinking Identification:
Kennedy, Freud, Brecht"in the Kenyon Review 15.2 (Spring 1993): 86-100.

3. Many ofthe essays in W.B. Yeats and Postcolonialism (2001), edited by Deborah Fleming, make an
excellent case for Yeats as a postcolonial writer. Jahan Ramazani,in The HybridMuse: Postcolonial Poetry
in English (2001), also positions Yeats as an early postcolonial writer. In Nationalism, Colonialism and
Literature (1990), Edward W. Said calls him a writer of decolonization who anticipates postcolonial
literatures of the third world. Said identifies two phases of anti-imperialism: the first being nativism
which works for nationalist independence, and the second a post-nationalism liberationist model?"a
transformation of social consciousness beyond national consciousness" (83). Said reads Yeats as part
ofthe first phase but sees moments where he begins to envision the second. I interpret "Leda and the
Swan" as a moment when Yeats moves toward the second model.

4. The poem prefaces the last chapter in A Vision illustrating its centrality to Yeats's poetics and his
theories of historical process. He describes the importance of the myth in the following quotation: "I
imagine the annunciation that founded Greece as made to Leda, remembering that they showed in a
Spartan temple, strung up to the roof as a holy relic, an unhatched egg of hers; and from one of her
eggs came Love and from the other War" (268).

5. The poem was first published in 1923 in the following periodicals: The Dial and To-morrow. A
subsequent version was then published in the 1924 edition of The Catandthe Moon, then he revised it
and published it in A Vision in 1925, and then he revised it again and included it in The Tower in 1928
(Bornstein 47-50). For a detailed discussion of these variants and their bibliographic contexts, see
Bornsteins essay.

6. It is interesting to note that the only two elements invoked are air and fire. There is no water
associated with the image ofthe swan as there is in Yeats s other swan references, such as in the poem
"Wild Swans at Coole."In colonial terms, by dispensing with water England must possess Ireland by
descending from above rather than across the water. This suggests a rejection of geographic determinism
in the marking of national boundaries.

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Poetics of Identification and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" 159

7. It would be interesting to trace the symbol of the swan in Yeats's poe

of two white birds in union in his early love lyric "The White Birds" wit
ship between the masculine and feminine in "Leda and the Swan." The fo
"The White Birds": "For I would we were changed to white birds on the w
(41). Here the relation between self and other, "I and you," is one of bliss
is because in his early poetry he objectifies and appropriates the female
edging her sexual difference, whereas in "Leda and the Swan" he tries to
difference.

8. This is stressed as an emotional recognition to emphasize how poetics has the power to move
beyond the intellectual into the visceral and the realm of psychic fantasy, which is the terrain of our
identifications,

9. Another possible symbolism for the white swan in Yeats's poetics is the white space of creative
invention. Yeats is aware that the white space ofa poem is not pure and innocent waiting for the author's
intention to sculpt "dark webs" on it but rather pregnant with a complicated and violent history. His
white space is overwritten with his colonial education in English literature.

10. The focus on the mouth as the site of speech illustrates how colonialism functions at the linguis-
tic level. Ramazani asserts that Yeats "feels that he is both devoured by and devourer of the English
language and other culture inheritances" (39). Yeats devours Western symbolism in his employment
of the Greek myth and the sonnet form from English literature, and yet these devour his ability to
identify with his Irishness. He is powerless to resist putting on the knowledge of English literature in
his poetics.

Works Cited

Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding Evil. Trans. Peter Hallward. New York: Verso,
2001.

Bhabha, Homi. "Editors Introduction: Minority Maneuvers and Unsettled Negotiations." Critical
Inquiry233 (Spring 1997): 431-59.

Bornstein, George. "How to Read a Page: Modernism and Material Textuality." Studies in Literary
Imagination 32.1 (Spring 1999): 29-58.

Cixous, Helene and Catherine Clement. TheNewly Born Woman. 1975.Trans. BetsyWing. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P, 1988.

Cullingford, Elizabeth Butler. Gender and History in Yeats's Love Poetry. New York: Cambridge UP,
1993.

Fleming, Deborah, ed. W B. Yeats and Postcolonialism. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill P, 2001.

Fuss, Diana. Identification Papers. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Hartman, Georfrey H. Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today. New Haven: Yale UP,
1980.

Jakobsen, Janet R. Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998.

Johnsen, William. "Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan." Yeats and Postmodernism. Ed.
Leonard Orr. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1991. 80-89.

Mahaffey, Vicki. States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Experiment. New York: Oxford UP,
1998.

Ramazani, Jahan. The HybridMuse: Postcolonial Poetry in English. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001.

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 160 Journal of Modern Literature

Said, Edward W. "Yeats and Decolonization

Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said, C
U of Minnesota P, 1990.69-95.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Wo

Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poem

Scribner, 1983.

-.A Vision. New York: Collier Books, 1966.

-. Yeatss Vision Papers. Ed. George Mills Harper. 3 vols. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1992.

This essay examines Yeats's well-known sonnet "Leda and the Swan, "beginning with
thefamousflnal interrogative couplet as the swan drops the raped female figure, in
order to take up some implications of identification to a develop a feminist postcolonial
reading strategy. Yeats presents a rape, but in the conclusion ofthe poem when he asks
whether Leda "puts on" Zeuss power, he questions how exchanges of power between
self and other might be conceptualized beyond domination. Following from recent
criticism on Yeats that explores his work from a post-colonial perspective, this essay
pursues the intersection of sexual and colonial politics in 'Leda and the Swan."

Keywords: W. B. Yeats / feminism / postcolonialism

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