(117). The text, then, presents the rape scene, painting a vivid and terrifying pictureof its aggressive violence and its subsequent transition to passivity. The text alsoshows a pattern of oppositions and ambiguities which are manifestations of a series ofconflicts between the material world and the spiritual world: the physical and theintellectual. Nancy Hargrove remarks that the apparent opposition between abstract andconcrete is representative of that between "human and divine" (235). Shaw views it in amore personal light: as the opposition "between self and world" (35). The oppositions inherent within the text, and the subsequent series of conflictswhich they represent, are important in that they are manifestations of and parallels tooppositional conflicts occurring in Yeats's own life. The violent textual rape is th eresult of his inability to reconcile these personal conflicts and the poem, then, is anexample of Yeats displacing his frustration, and doing so in a positive and safe manner. If this assertion is indeed accurate, "Leda and the Swan" would be consiste nt withYeats's later poems. Edmund Wilson writes, "The development of Yeats's later styleseems to coincide with a disillusionment" (17). Cleanth Brooks argues that Yeats"proposed to substitute a concrete, meaningful system, substituting symbol" as a way ofcombating harsh, technical reality (69). "Leda" is consistent with the assertions. And, the key to the reality Yeats is attempting to address is Maud Gonne. Maud Gonne was a militant Irish nationalist with whom Yeats was very much inlove, and who appeared as a tortured image in much of his poetry. She gave herselfcompletely to her country and expected the same type of nationalistic dedication fromYeats. They loved one another deeply but were never able to reconcile the differencesin their feelings. Maud Gonne loved Yeats in a platonic sense; Yeats desired a moreall-encompassing love. Both Yeats and Maud Gonne ...
