SOURCE: "On Straightening Out Yeats's 'Rough Beast'," in CLA Journal, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, December, 1988, pp. 201-8.

In the following essay, Fleissner speculates on the nature of the "rough beast" in "The Second Coming."

The bestial image at the tail end of William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming" is described there as a "rough" one indeed and so deserves some critical straightening out. Hence yet another note on this famous poem may be justified.

I

As a starter, let us consider a surprising, recent news release, which was boldly captioned, at least in the local papers, as follows: "Move Over, Tarzan: Anthropologist says army of apemen slaves only a test tube away." Composed by Uli Schmetzer of the Knight-Ridder News Service, the essay depicted a dean at Florence University, Brunetto Chiarelli, who had announced that "biogenetic scientists, using refined techniques of artificial fertilization, are capable of creating a new...