Introduction:
"Sailing to Byzantium" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, first published in
the 1928 collection The Tower.
It comprises four stanzas in ottava rima,
each made up of eight lines of iambic
pentameter. It uses a journey to Byzantium (Constantinople)
as a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Yeats explores his thoughts and musings
on how immortality, art, and the human spirit may converge. Through the use of
various poetic techniques, Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" describes
the metaphorical journey of a man pursuing his own vision of eternal life as well as his
conception of paradise.
Discussion:
Sailing to Byzantium was written by W.B. Yeats
(William Butler Yeats) and was published in 1927 in the collection, The Tower. Its main theme is the triumph
of art over death. Yeats always admired Byzantium, the capital city of the
Eastern Roman Empire, which was called Constantinople and Istanbul in later
times. Yeats was of the opinion that Byzantine art and architecture represented
a blend of “religious, aesthetic and practical life.” The idea, artistic beauty
is eternal reflects Keats’ words “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (satyam, sivam
sundaram – alagum kadavulum sathyamum onre) In this poem, Byzantium is a symbol
of the soul, eternity and the permanence of art, contrasted with the natural
world of decaying life. “Sailing to Byzantium” shows his contempt for mere
bodily pleasure divorced from spiritual longings.
In the first stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium”, Yeats
expresses his dissatisfaction with the life of the senses led by birds, fishes
and humans. They indulge in unlimited procreation. For example the salmon
leaping upstream, excited by the urge to spawn (to produce); the seas teeming
with mackerel; and human beings engrossed in sensuality as in an entrancing
music. But the poet dismisses all of them as “dying generations”. They are all
caught up in the unbreakable cycle of birth and life and ending up in death.
They ignore artistic objects which have a deathless appeal. Hence, Yeats says
that this country (Ireland) is not for old men.
In this country old man is considered as a petty thing. He is a
“tattered coat upon a stick” – it means the old man is like a scarecrow and his
body is like a worn out cloth that wrapped upon the thin skeleton. In old age
the body decays but the soul matures. In this state the robust joy the soul has
to sing louder and louder. The only hurdle in this way is getting the right
school where the soul can get an education which is difficult to find in that
country because every singing school, instead of caring for monuments of
unageing intellect is busy studying the monuments of its own significance. This
means that in Ireland the young generation instead of valuing the old men’s
wisdom trumpets its own sensual achievements. As a result of the difficulty in
finding the right school for his soul to be educated in that country, the poet
decides to sail across seas and go to the holy city of Byzantium.
All gross sensual desires have to be burnt out of
the mind. This is possible only if we submit to the divine which Yeats associated
with ‘fire.’ People become sages and saints by passing through “God’s holy
fire”. They are coming in continuous chain like thread from roll. Yeats invokes
such spiritually advanced people to master and purge his heart of all sensual
appetite and create a taste for eternal verities and values. Yeats still doubts
about the maturity of his soul. He knows that still the soul is sticking on the
decaying thing, his body. So he requests the saints and sages to consume his
soul which has still desires on worldly things. He pleads the angels to take
his soul to the threshold of heaven ‘artifice of eternity’ for his soul does
not know what to do.
The wish to enjoy sensual pleasures without any
interruption is so great that people want to be reborn in order to continue
their enjoyment. Yeats, rejecting sensuality and delighting in art, wants to be
reborn as a golden bird which was hammered and enameled by Grecian goldsmiths.
The ordinary bird sings ‘all summer’ and its music ‘dies soon’. But the golden
bird which is the result of great art has an everlasting appeal, embracing the
past, the present and even the future. Moreover, great art appeals to
intellectually and spiritually elevated people like emperors and lord and
ladies, dispelling their intellectual and spiritual drowse and stagnation and
creating an awakening in them.
Conclusion:
Thus, in this poem Yeats appreciates beauty which
has the power of enlightening the soul of human beings. In fact, nature’s
beauty is God’s creation and so it has godly spirit in it.
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