WC vs. Literature: Yeats It or Break It (May 28, 2011)

[Bandit LOAF]

After Colonel Blair defects in Wing Commander IV the game cuts back to a scene between Tolwyn and Paladin discussing the news. Tolwyn attempts to explain the news by quoting a poem, which Paladin continues:

Paladin: Blair? Defected? I find that hard to believe. He was always a hot head, but... what on earth induced him to– what the devil is going on out there?
Tolwyn: The intelligence I’ve collected is erratic, unreliable. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The best lack all conviction..."
Paladin: "Whilst the worst possess a passionate intensity" – Yeats.

As Paladin indicates, these lines are from a poem by
William Butler Yeats (Wikipedia) called The Second Coming. The 1920 poem is usually considered to be a commmentary on the disasterous state and uncertain future of Europe after World War I--certainly germane to the post-war confusion and impending doom of the 2673 Wing Commander universe--although there is also a running argument that it owes more to Yeats' pre-war fascination with ancient apocalyptic mythology.

​

Yeats' ears are burning--thanks, gen-select bioweapon.​

Yeats went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry. His work is still widely read today and The Second Coming is frequently read in literature survey courses. Here is the complete text:

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 conviction, 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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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?

​

One thing's for damn sure: Yeats would have loved the end of Righteous Fire.​

--
Original update published on May 28, 2011

 

[Bob McDob]

Here's another place where the novel makes an interesting contrast.

"I still don't understand how this could happen," he said, hoping to draw him out.

Tolwyn looked away. "Who knows why anything happens anymore? The whole damned structure of society is collapsing around us. Debts are mounting, trade and trust are falling, and even Earth, the center of our culture, is blighted. The center is failing and the periphery is falling into chaos. Is it any wonder that insane things are happening?"

"I'm not sure I'm following you," Taggart replied, a little alarmed by Tolwyn's response. The admiral looked at him with uncharacteristic intensity.

"Surely you can see it for yourself, Paladin, even up there in your council rooms. Our Confederation is disintegrating. We're losing our frontier stars while the central government haggles over words and nuances of law that will just be ignored. We're falling into anarchy, atrophying as our economies falter, our Fleet withers away, and our so-called leaders squabble. We're fraying, flying apart as we lose our common ground, our center." He fixed Paladin with a fierce stare. "People are starving, and as they starve, they forget their civilization. Face it, our golden age is passing and all that awaits is ruination and conquest by whatever force decides it wants us."

Taggart studied Tolwyn's face as the admiral ranted. The Tolwyn he knew subscribed to bitter logic, never flinching from the hard logic or cold, calculated choices that often cost lives. The Tolwyn of old would never have permitted himself this rambling discourse.​

(Price of Freedom, 209-210)

Clearly Ohlander was familiar with the poem, but he decided to rephrase it. I guess this is supposed to mark the contrast between the disciplined, public Tolwyn, who speaks in sound bites, and the private one, who lapses into angry, meandering lectures.

 

[Quarto]

I get the impression the author, for whatever reasons, didn't want to reference Yeats - he rewrote the conversation in such a way as to avoid any direct quote. Maybe it wouldn't have worked too well here - what with the access we're given to Paladin's internal monologue, there would have had to be a paragraph about the poem itself and its significance. Things that you can leave unexplained in a film often can't go without an explanation in a book.

 

[Bob McDob]

It might also be a case of differing characterizations - Malcolm McDowell plays Tolwyn with a strong degree of reticence throughout, the type who could be expected to spout poetry rather than elaborate, while Mr. Ohlander's version is a bit more personable and given to small talk - again, the differences between mediums and the luxury of space a novel affords.

 

[Ilanin]

Or Ohlander just missed the double meaning contained in the scene. The Confederation's finest officers (Blair, Eisen, "the best") are confused by the situation and many of them are abandoning previous loyalties ("lack all conviction"). Meanwhile, the Black Lance (Seether, Tolwyn himself) are seized with the desire to "improve" on humanity and are willing to go to great extremes to do so ("the worst are filled with a passionate intensity).

The fact that it is Paladin who completes the poem rather than Tolwyn adds to the effect; obviously Tolwyn is not about to describe himself as "the worst".