iii). Ashok Bhargava (156) reaffirms this love-hate antithesis found in later Yeats. Quite simply, Yeats consciously attempted to suppress his physicaldesire and failed. This failure led to an unconscious resentment of the figure (Maud)perceived as responsible for this resulting guilt/self hatred. This (repressed )resentment resulted in violent tendencies and the rape scene in "Leda" is, finally, thesublimation of sexual impulse. Several instances exist to support the correlation between aspects of thespiritual marriage and elements within the poem. Levine, again, cites Moore in notingthese instances. During the summer of 1908, Yeats saw a vision of Maud and himself"joined b y a 'sort of phantom ecstasy,'" which was accompanied by an impression of aswan floating in water. This was followed by a dream in which "Maud reproached Yeatsbecause she could not break down some barrier" (127). Another time Maud wrote that sheand Y eats had "become one with ecstasy" and Yeats had appeared to her triumphantly in adream, after which she woke to a gust of wind blowing in her room and a voice of "anarchangel who announced that from her union a 'great beauty may be born,' once she hadbeen 'purified by suffering'" (127, 128). There is evidence of other such examples. Yeats, the idealistic Romantic, could not let go of the hope that Maud would oneday become a willing participant, physically. Yeats must have hoped that his persistentpassion and intensity would eventually persuade her to give in. Elements from the just-noted example would support this hope and are found in the text of the poem: theswan image, barrier image, the idea of unity through sexual union. At this point, couldYeats's unconscious have been softening the tone (and implications) of the rape in thepoem? These examples suggest that is indeed the case. Additionally, as previouslymentioned, the tone of the poem moves from aggressive to passive. Furthermore, a cluewhich supp...
