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Ashok
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:13 am
Post subject: "Slouching toward ..." |
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I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Thanks.
Ashok
PS: Is there a good reference for literary allusions on the net?
And for prepositional idioms?
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John Dean
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:59 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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Ashok wrote:
| Quote: | I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
It's based on WB Yeats's poem "The Second Coming": |
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 convictions, 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?
As for connotation, a quick Google establishes that people use the
"slouching toward(s)" concept in many ways as best suits their purpose.
As you see from the poem, Yeats was originally suggesting that the
"second coming" would not be of the bright haloed Saviour of popular
belief but something infinitely more terrible.
| Quote: |
PS: Is there a good reference for literary allusions on the net?
And for prepositional idioms?
|
This is the place. You found it.
--
John Dean
Oxford |
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Martin Ambuhl
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:02 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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Ashok wrote:
| Quote: | I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
|
Indeed, there is:
The Second Coming
(W. B. 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 convictions, 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?
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ray o'hara
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:39 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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"Ashok" <adhareshwar@hotNO_SPAMmail.com> wrote in message
news:3oh0jcF5qa0fU1@individual.net...
| Quote: | I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Thanks.
Ashok
PS: Is there a good reference for literary allusions on the net?
And for prepositional idioms?
|
It means moving resignedly, or slowly and without much enthusiasm. towards
the destination. |
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Jim Heckman
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 7:00 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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|
On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net>
wrote in message <jCJUe.10583$FW1.814@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
| Quote: | Ashok wrote:
I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Indeed, there is:
The Second Coming
(W. B. 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 convictions, while the worst
|
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here. Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
| Quote: | 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
|
I've seen versions in which /Spiritus Mundi/ is italicized, but
again I don't have an authoritative source.
| Quote: | 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?
|
Good. Now do it from memory, complete with correct punctuation. :-)
--
Jim Heckman, who can (I *really* like this poem) |
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Martin Ambuhl
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 7:00 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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Jim Heckman wrote:
| Quote: |
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here.
|
I suspect that John and I both found sites with the same wording.
Whether we cribbed from the *same* site is up in the air: the web is
well-known for having the same error repeated through hundreds or even
thousands of sites from cross-cribbing.
| Quote: | Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
|
Then get one. While your Google census gives the right answer, relying
on Google counts is about the stupidest way I can think of to get an
answer. In fact, it is more likely that 99% of the sites your Google
search found cribbed from each other than that John and I found the same
site. An error (or lie) can propogate across web sites faster than an
undergraduate can retype a term paper in his house's archives. |
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Odysseus
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:32 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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Jim Heckman wrote:
| Quote: |
On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net
wrote in message <jCJUe.10583$FW1.814@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
snip |
| Quote: | The Second Coming
(W. B. Yeats)
[...] The best lack all convictions, while the worst
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here. Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
Are full of passionate intensity.
[...] a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
I've seen versions in which /Spiritus Mundi/ is italicized, but
again I don't have an authoritative source.
|
My _Collected Works_ (vol. I: _The Poems_, ed. Richard J. Finneran,
Macmillan, 1989), which calls itself "The complete, standard
edition", has both the singular "conviction" and the italics.
Apparently the poem was originally published in a volume titled
_Michael Robartes and the Dancer_, in 1921, but the copy-text used by
Finneran was the 1933 _Collected Poems_. The apparatus makes no
mention of emendations.
--
Odysseus |
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Phil C.
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:04 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:59:42 +0100, "John Dean"
<john-dean@frag.lineone.net> wrote:
| Quote: | And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
|
I hope I slouched towards my birth. Start the way you mean to go on,
that's what I say.
--
Phil C. |
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CDB
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:44 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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|
"Jim Heckman" <wnzrfeurpxzna@lnubb.pbz.invalid> wrote in message
news:11i78fe2eid1029@corp.supernews.com...
| Quote: |
On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net
wrote in message
jCJUe.10583$FW1.814@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
Ashok wrote:
I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Indeed, there is:
The Second Coming
(W. B. 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 convictions, while the worst
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here. Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
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
I've seen versions in which /Spiritus Mundi/ is italicized, but
again I don't have an authoritative source.
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?
Good. Now do it from memory, complete with correct punctuation. 
|
Can't find Yeats amid the chaos, but the _Norton Anthology of Modern
English Poetry_ also has "conviction", "towards" (as one might
expect) and italics for "Spiritus Mundi". I suppose the italics are
the reason for the persistent rumour that the SM is a medieval
religious work.
OBaue, and speaking of correct punctuation: the last lines, in which a
statement and a question are linked by "and", would be slightly more
comfortable without the question mark: "what rough beast" would be
another thing the poet knows. It's still a linking of a clause with a
phrase, of course. I wonder if he changed the punctuation while
revising. |
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Don Phillipson
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:21 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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"John Dean" <john-dean@frag.lineone.net> wrote in message
news:dfvknj$auv$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
| Quote: | Ashok wrote:
I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
. . .
It's based on WB Yeats's poem "The Second Coming":
|
Cf. also the title of the poem. In the English Biblical
tradition, the "second coming" is the end of the world,
viz. various disasters (via the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse) and then Judgment Day. The difference
is that the First Coming was Jesus' birth because "God
so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son . . . "
whereas the Second Coming is not in love but in wrath
(at the world's failure to recognise and respond to the
First Coming.) Yeats sees in Ireland instances of
(or events like) those described in the Book of Revelations.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada) |
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John Dean
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 5:44 am
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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Jim Heckman wrote:
| Quote: | On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net
wrote in message
jCJUe.10583$FW1.814@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
Ashok wrote:
I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Indeed, there is:
The Second Coming
(W. B. 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 convictions, while the worst
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here. Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
|
Mea culpa. I did a quick google and copy-pasted the result without proof
reading. I'm a bad boy....
"conviction" is, of course, right.
What were the odds? Oh, you already checked - 5 to 1 against. Bugger.
--
John Dean
Oxford |
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Jim Heckman
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 3:20 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
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|
On 11-Sep-2005, "CDB" <unbellecd@sprint.ca>
wrote in message <oMUUe.1593$5I2.6071@newscontent-01.sprint.ca>:
| Quote: | "Jim Heckman" <wnzrfeurpxzna@lnubb.pbz.invalid> wrote in message
news:11i78fe2eid1029@corp.supernews.com...
On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net
wrote in message
jCJUe.10583$FW1.814@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
Ashok wrote:
I am intrigued by the expression "Slouching toward X". A few of
the Xs I have seen are Bethleheim, Athens, Utopia, Armageddon.
What does the expression connote? Is it a prepositional idiom
or is there a literary allusion?
Indeed, there is:
The Second Coming
(W. B. 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 convictions, while the worst
I suspect you and John Dean cribbed from the same source, since you
both have plural "convictions" here. Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
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
I've seen versions in which /Spiritus Mundi/ is italicized, but
again I don't have an authoritative source.
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?
Good. Now do it from memory, complete with correct punctuation. :-)
Can't find Yeats amid the chaos, but the _Norton Anthology of Modern
English Poetry_ also has "conviction", "towards" (as one might
expect) and italics for "Spiritus Mundi".
|
Thanks to you and Odysseus for the confirmation. IME
"conviction(s)" and "toward(s)", and even more so the American
spelling "center", are the most common variants one encounters on
the Web.
| Quote: | I suppose the italics are
the reason for the persistent rumour that the SM is a medieval
religious work.
|
Interesting. Hadn't heard that one.
| Quote: | OBaue, and speaking of correct punctuation: the last lines, in which a
statement and a question are linked by "and", would be slightly more
comfortable without the question mark: "what rough beast" would be
another thing the poet knows. It's still a linking of a clause with a
phrase, of course. I wonder if he changed the punctuation while
revising.
|
Yes, that's always struck me, too, as well as the lack of a comma
at the end of the very first line, after "gyre". I've also wondered
why he used semicolons to separate all of the clauses in the first
stanza not introduced by a conjunction, except for "Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, [...]"
with a comma.
--
Jim Heckman |
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Jim Heckman
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 3:20 pm
Post subject: Re: "Slouching toward ..." |
|
|
On 10-Sep-2005, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net>
wrote in message <DyOUe.10124$_84.4872@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>:
| Quote: | Jim Heckman wrote:
|
[...]
| Quote: | Google weighs in with about 5
times more cites for singular "conviction", but I don't have an
authoritative print source handy.
Then get one.
|
Yes'm, massa. I di'n' mean no harm. Please don' beat me.
| Quote: | While your Google census gives the right answer, relying
on Google counts is about the stupidest way I can think of to get an
answer.
|
Undoubtedly. So how did *you* find the version you used to answer
the OP's question?
| Quote: | In fact, it is more likely that 99% of the sites your Google
search found cribbed from each other than that John and I found the same
site.
|
Possibly, but I'd be interested to know what analysis you used to
arrive at that 99% figure. Checking for some of the more common
variants encountered shows that at most about 8.5% of the sites
found by Google have the same wording in all cases as both John's
version and yours, so there's only at most about a 0.72% chance
that both of you would have found such versions had you done
completely independent searches. My naive hypothesis is that you
used the same search engine and copied from the first site returned
by it.
| Quote: | An error (or lie) can propogate across web sites faster than an
undergraduate can retype a term paper in his house's archives.
|
--
Jim Heckman |
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