William Butler Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919, shortly after World War 1 ended. WW1 was such a horrific war, Ireland was headed towards a civil war, and a revolution had just toppled the old Russia (Cohen 1). It is easy to see why Yeats felt that the world was going through a significant time of change. In fact, Yeats believed that 1927 would be “The Great Year” where the world would enter into a new era (Weeks 287).
Yeats believed in a cyclical view of history, which he envisioned as two gyres, one of them inverted. Time spins along a diminishing gyre, and it reaches its minimum at the same time the second gyre reaches its maximum point. Each gyre represents about two thousand years. So essentially there are two thousand years of peace and then two thousand years of chaos (Mann 1). Yeats believed WWI was the beginning of this chaos. Unlike the Christian era which was very predictable, this new era was to be completely unpredictable, but definitely full of anarchy and confusion. Yeats was a huge supporter of Irish nationalism. As previously mentioned, Ireland was headed towards a civil war. Most of Ireland was still loyal to great Britain, but factions wanted Ireland to become its own nation (Dasenbrock 1262). Perhaps since Yeats believed the world was heading towards anarchy and chaos, he felt Ireland becoming its own nation was part of that era. Yeats even once wrote, “I took satisfaction in certain public disasters, felt sort of ecstasy at the contemplation of ruin” (qt. in Cohen 2). Yeats had a passion for traditional Irish folklore and was a huge contributor to the Irish Literary movement in the late 1800s. One of Yeats’ major influences was John O’Leary, who was a father figure to him. O’Leary was editor of The Irish People and a fellow Irish nationalist. He was convicted of treason in 1865 and spent two decades in jail, before returning to Ireland and becoming a major influence on Yeats, for both his political views and his writing style.
