Yeats

[Robdob]

"Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the same ground we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitous and progressive; we go both round and upward."
This is out of my english book, The Norton Anthology of English Literature. It is in response to William Butler Yeats and the poetry he created in what was considered his fourth and greatest period. He used symbols he called "gyres," spirals of all kinds, to explore the paradoxes of time and change, of growth and identity, of love and age, of life and art, of madness and wisdom.
I thought this was pretty cool, even inspiring.

 

[cand-E bamber]

its true. when we think we're going in circles.. we're right.

 

[stardragon]

He used symbols he called "gyres," spirals of all kinds

So that's what those slithy toves were doing in the wabe

 

[Bacchante]

The idea of life as a spiral rather than a line was also popular in medieval literature. Dante's Divine Comedy uses it quite a lot. Isn't it weird how true it is? And I get shivers when I think about how the structure of a DNA molecule looks an awful lot like a spiral staircase...