Wednesday, December 03, 2003

So, here are a few lines from one of my favorite poems:

"Things fall apart; the center 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."

This is from Yeats' "The Second Coming." Early drafts of the poem show he was referring to wars such as World War I, the Anglo-Irish War and the Bolshevik revolution. The lines are a pretty good description of a world that has war unleashed upon it, right?

Nope. This is a rape? Why? Because my professor says so. In fact, the one thing I have learned this semester is that everything is about sex. Eating is sexual because food penetrates your body. A nose is sexual because it extends from the body. All of my professors are literally obsessed with finding sex in everything - and especially rape.

Hey, I'll be the first to admit Shakespeare is full of bawdy jokes, and Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" is obviously about a rape, but please.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Not everything is about sex.

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?