본 논문의 논지는 말라르메의 󰡔목신의 오후󰡕와 예이츠의 ｢레다와 백조｣에서 강간 환상의 시적 재현이 성적 욕망을 애초의 파괴적인 짐승적 성격에서 건설적인 시적 차원으로 고양시킨다는 것이다. 󰡔목신의 오후󰡕에서 목신 폰은 찰나적 관능미를 영원성과 결합하여, 현실에서는 불가능한 영원한 관능미라는 상징주의 미학을 창조하는 시인으로 변모한다. 그리고 ｢레다와 백조｣의 서술자는 백조의 레다 강간에서 잉태한 인류 문명에 내재하는 폭력의 파괴성을 밝힘으로써, 파괴적 힘의 역사를 힘과 지혜가 결합한 인간화된 역사로 전환하려는 예이츠의 시적 상상력을 시사한다.

예이츠의 시, 레다와 백조 는 인간 문명과 인간 본성에 관한 시로 논 의 되어 왔다. 이 시에서 시인은 인간 본성이 폭력적이고 잔인하다는 견해에 집중한 다. 백조로 변한 제우스가 레다를 강간 하고, 그 결과로 생긴 자손이 본질적으로 잔인 한 폭력성을 가졌다는 것이 이 시에 관한 일반적인 주장이다. 그러나 이 시를 더 자 세히 읽으면 몇 가지 차이점을 발견할 수 있다. 이는 매우 중요한 발견인데, 폭력적인 인간 본성은 가해자만의 특질이 아니라는 점이다. 레다의 태도에서 보인 모호성은, 그 녀가 희생자의 양상을 가지고 있는 것이 사실이기는 하지만 레다와 백조는 상호 공감 하고 있음을 말해준다. 따라서 레다는 가해자와의 동질성을 보여준다. 예이츠는 시에 서 보여주는 폭력성과 양가성의 의미를 인류의 본성과 인간내부의 본질적 갈등으로 확장시킨다.

Yeats invents his own system of metaphors in the poem “Leda and the Swan.” The system urges Yeats to drive his poetry on unknown fields. Rather than following in the well worn tracks of Greek mythology, he tries to idealize a form of poetry that looks brief, yet carefully formed and worded: a metapoetic strategy by using related vocabulary at which he seems to excel. In the first stanza, he claims that Zeus visits Leda as a form of Swan and vividly draws in passionate language a picture of sexual intercourse by his sudden blow on Leda sleeping peacefully. His action looks like a rape on the surface, yet possibly interpreted in a different way, that is adultery between a god and a married woman; yet it thus turns out to be a historical moment worldly and spiritually at the moment of making love. Such words symbolizing as metaphors the relations of Lead and Swan in mythic stories are carefully crafted and allusively materialized to form a metapoetic allegory: a poetry that uses a system of related metaphors, violence and sex, to reflect implicitly on history in poetry and on its poetic program. Whether or not Yeats invents this metapoetic strategy, his poetic symbolism is strongly characteristic of his own connection to Greek symbolism as in mythic stories. Such a metapoetic approach as found in the poem can help us understand much about his own values on humanity, including why Yeats chooses to rewrite about such images, ideas, and poetic patterns as shown in Greek stories, and why−as in his discussion of violence and love put together in physical and spiritual beauty−he puts into question mythic literature and its literary criticism of love and battle just in the poem imitating Greek tales.

Yeats began his career as a poet elaborating the Celtic legends and stories about the life and politics of the Irish people: Irishness was a source of his poetic inspiration. Later he moved to formulations that complicated his own attitudes toward his contemporary politics in Ireland and caused misunderstanding of his works among his readers. Because he emphasized violence embodied in the struggles of political conflicts and historical events. For Yeats, history steps to another stage with violence. In other words, he focused on the violent moment in historical events. In describing the process or movement of memorable event in history he distances himself and keeps his views or judgments on it with ambivalent words. He does not support for or oppose to the only one side in the political event, to show his interest in the significances of the moments. Thus he is far from the passionate politics in his contemporary Ireland. Rather he sees the violence as a power to change in history, as his poem "Leda and the Swan" shows. In the myth of Leda and Zeus he reads the destructive act of rape on Leda by Zeus within the frame of destruction of the nation-state. And Yeats focuses on Leda's tragic experience with powerful and violent Zeus as an event toward the violent and tragic history afterwards. In short, he shows the violence as one committed to change in the history of a state.