Slouching towards Bethlehem

[Uncle Rory]

I wonder if I am just slow or what. I have read Stephen King's "The Stand" like 15 times (it's in there). I have watched Season 4 of Angel at least 5 times. Then last week I was watching the debut of Season 3 of Heroes - and there it was again, this line - Slouches towards Bethlehem. So I got on the internet and looked it up.


The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Pretty dark stuff. So it seems that this poem has been used again and again in the Sci-fi, Horror genre.

From Wilkepedia
Television

In the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer during its sixth season, near the end of the episode, Tara paraphrases the poem during a monologue/dialog with Willow.

All but a few lines of the poem have been lines of dialogue on the television show The Sopranos, including one episode in which Dr. Melfi tells Tony "The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot hear the falconer".

In an episode of the television show Heroes entitled "The Second Coming", the fictional character Mohinder Suresh narrates the poem "The Second Coming" in its entirety at the conclusion of the episode.

The poem also features in the science fiction series Babylon 5. G'Kar recites the poem at the conclusion of season 1 "The Coming of Shadows" as an example of human wisdom and in summary of the seasons events.

Several of the episode titles of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda have come from this poem. The season 1 finale and the season 2 premiere episodes are "Its Hour Come 'Round at Last" and "The Widening Gyre" respectively. "Pitiless as the Sun" is another second season episode.

Film
In a deleted scene from Oliver Stone's 1995 Movie Nixon, Richard Helms' character played by Sam Waterston recites "The Second Coming" in its entirety to President Nixon played by Anthony Hopkins. It is also alluded to in Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, when Gordon Gekko says to Bud Fox, "So sport, the falcon has heard the falconer."

Moral of the story - It is possible to get a Classical Education just by watching Buffy and Angel. Who knew?

Uncle Rory

 

[Lindsey McDonald]

I......er.....yeah.

It took Heroes to jog my memory.......

I'm so embarrased.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

I wonder if I am just slow or what. I have read Stephen King's "The Stand" like 15 times (it's in there). I have watched Season 4 of Angel at least 5 times. Then last week I was watching the debut of Season 3 of Heroes - and there it was again, this line - Slouches towards Bethlehem. So I got on the internet and looked it up.


The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Pretty dark stuff. So it seems that this poem has been used again and again in the Sci-fi, Horror genre.

From Wilkepedia
Television

In the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer during its sixth season, near the end of the episode, Tara paraphrases the poem during a monologue/dialog with Willow.

All but a few lines of the poem have been lines of dialogue on the television show The Sopranos, including one episode in which Dr. Melfi tells Tony "The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot hear the falconer".

In an episode of the television show Heroes entitled "The Second Coming", the fictional character Mohinder Suresh narrates the poem "The Second Coming" in its entirety at the conclusion of the episode.

The poem also features in the science fiction series Babylon 5. G'Kar recites the poem at the conclusion of season 1 "The Coming of Shadows" as an example of human wisdom and in summary of the seasons events.

Several of the episode titles of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda have come from this poem. The season 1 finale and the season 2 premiere episodes are "Its Hour Come 'Round at Last" and "The Widening Gyre" respectively. "Pitiless as the Sun" is another second season episode.

Film
In a deleted scene from Oliver Stone's 1995 Movie Nixon, Richard Helms' character played by Sam Waterston recites "The Second Coming" in its entirety to President Nixon played by Anthony Hopkins. It is also alluded to in Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, when Gordon Gekko says to Bud Fox, "So sport, the falcon has heard the falconer."

Moral of the story - It is possible to get a Classical Education just by watching Buffy and Angel. Who knew?

Uncle Rory

Great observation!

I'm always been curious what this expression means. I mentioned this to my theology professor and she didn't know what it meant either"¦but we did talk about what we thought it could mean, and came to this conclusion:

The question, we think, is: why would one go unwillingly ("slouching") to the Promised Land? The land of "milk and honey"?

In terms of how Yeats used it in context, the poem uses religious symbolism to illustrate Yeats' anguish over the apparent decline of Europe's ruling class, and his occult belief that Western civilization was nearing the terminal point of a 2000-year historical cycle. (The "end")

The title of "The Second Coming" suggests that the poem will depict the Apocalypse, described by St John, an impression reinforced by the description of the "beast" slouching towards Bethlehem, the place of Christ's original birth.

So, this can easily be related to the Angel episode - when Lorne tries to read Cordelia's future and sees jumbled visions of apocalyptic horror and the beast"¦ this indicates an impending apocalypse.

Also, the title is a series of essays by Joan Didion (1968) which mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s.

Hope this helps 🙂

 

[Blondie Bear]

It's also at the end of Good Omens:

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and a dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot . . . no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human . . .

Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield . . .

. . . forever.

They obviously borrowed heavily from 1984, as well.