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Leda and the Modernists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Helen Sword
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Abstract

Read as a fable of divine inspiration, the myth of Leda and the swan offers a model of creativity that is both compelling and problematic; while it affirms the visionary poet's privileged position as mediator between a divine force and humankind, it does so only by insisting on the artist's victimization and feminization. Apparently well aware of this paradox, Yeats, Rilke, Lawrence, and HD, in their revisionary accounts of the myth, all foreground the dialectical relation between passivity and authority— between spiritual annunciation and literary enunciation—that informs their own, and indeed any, visionary poetics. At the same time, however, these modernist poets resist a strong identification with Leda herself, disassociating themselves from her role as victim even while seeking to participate in her revelatory “knowledge” and “power.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 2 , March 1992 , pp. 305 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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