Classics and the Western Canon discussion

For a brief interlude after Spinoza and before we begin our next major read, we’ll read a couple of poems by William Butler Yeats. This week’s interim read is “Sailing to Byzantium.”

Yeats is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth Century. This very famous poem, considered one of his best, was first published in 1927. Yeats wrote it when he was around 60 years old. It explores the poet’s thoughts as an aging man whose heart is “fastened to a dying animal.” He contrasts the sensual, temporal world with the world of immortality and timelessness.

Yeats uses rich, sensual language to conjure up the natural world. Why these details? What do they tell us about his feelings toward the natural world?
What is the difference between “That” country of the opening line and Byzantium?
Why does the speaker want to sail to Byzantium? And why Byzantium? What does his metaphorical journey to Byzantium represent?
What statement is Yeats making about the role and nature of art in the final stanza?

Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

And for your listening pleasure, here is a reading of the poem by John Lithgow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkifZ...

"Flight from Byzantium" (1985), short essay by 1987 Nobel laureate poet Joseph Brodsky.

Coincidentally, I'm reading a biography of Yeats. I haven't gotten to 1927 yet, so I don't know the exact details, but I know that Yeats split his time between England and Ireland for much of his life. That makes me think that the speaker is referring to sailing away from the nascent Irish Free State that existed after the revolution and ensuing civil war to the more calm and quiet suburbs of London. I just read him going back to Ireland during the civil war period, so I'm guessing this was about his leaving it behind after years of hardship, on the biographical level.

I read Byzantium as a stand-in for London (both the capitals of empires), someplace more suited to a man in his 60s, rather than the bustling Ireland. On another level, though, it can be read as Heaven, since he was Catholic, or simply eternity/immortality, given his obsession with the occult, and he's sailing away from life.

Like Yeats, the speaker seems to be an older man and refers to Grecian goldsmiths in the last stanza, which made me think of Keats' Grecian urn, both as a repository of his ashes after he's dead, but also as the work of art, like this and other poems will live on after his death.

Though I'm not sure about it being an urn with the "keep an Emperor awake" and "set upon a bough to sing" lines. The latter makes me think of a nightingale because I was already thinking of Keats' Grecian urn, so maybe intertextual allusion?

Nice pick. I've been writing reviews of contemporary poetry collections since the beginning of the year, so I enjoyed examining an older one.

Aiden wrote: "I read Byzantium as a stand-in for London (both the capitals of empires), someplace more suited to a man in his 60s, rather than the bustling Ireland. ."

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, later became known as Constantinople in honor of the Roman Emperor Constantine. The name was changed to Istanbul in the early 20th century.

In the opening lines, the speaker rejects “That” country because it is a country bursting with the vitality of the young, the passionate, the sensual. “That” country could be a reference to Ireland, but I think it is simply the natural world, a world full of life and vitality but also a place of decay and mortality.

The speaker feels he no longer belongs there as an aged man, “a paltry thing/ A tattered coat upon a stick.” He wants to transcend the ravages of time characterizing the natural world. He metaphorically escapes to the ancient city of Byzantium, which symbolizes the world of art, where he asks to be gathered into the “artifice of eternity.” He rejects his bodily form and wants his spirit to be represented in a form that is changeless and immortal, one that is not subject to time—a work of art: a golden bird that sings on a golden bough of the past, present and future.

Aiden wrote: "Like Yeats, the speaker seems to be an older man and refers to Grecian goldsmiths in the last stanza, which made me think of Keats' Grecian urn, both as a repository of his ashes after he's dead, but also as the work of art, like this and other poems will live on after his death..."

Like you, I see a connection with Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in that the Grecian urn is frozen in time, changeless and immortal, an unravish’d bride of quietness,” a “foster-child of silence and slow time . . .”

I also see a connection with Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” where Keats contrasts the mortality and decay of the natural world, “The weariness, the fever, and the fret/ Here, where men sit and hear each other groan . . .” with the immortal song of the nightingale, a timeless song that was heard “In ancient days by emperor and clown . . .”

Auden's poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" resonates, I think, with Yeats's reflections on mortality in his poem.
On the run now, so hope to return later to say more here.

https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats

Tom wrote: "Auden's poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" resonates, I think, with Yeats's reflections on mortality in his poem.
On the run now, so hope to return later to say more here.

https://poets.org/poem/memo..."

Another beautiful Yeats poem.

If we read Yeats' poem as the speaker's desire to leave the world of mortality in order to achieve an immortality of the spirit through art, what are we to make of the last few lines of the poem in which the bird sings of the past, present, and future to lords and ladies?

Is there an irony there?

Tamara wrote: "a work of art: a golden bird that sings on a golden bough of the past, present and future."

That's the image that came to my mind as well, though I'm not familiar with an analogue. I'm looking forward to finding out from his biography if such a specific image is rooted in mythology, history, or maybe his occult practices.

Tamara wrote: "...what are we to make of the last few lines of the poem [...]? Is there an irony there?"

Aiden wrote: "I'm looking forward to finding out from his biography if such a specific image is rooted in mythology, history, or maybe his occult practices."

• The «golden bough» – through the myth and Turner's 1834 painting – could hint to Frazer's "The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion" (1890);

• «to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come» could be reminiscent of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's work, "Celestial Hierarchy".

The idea of Byzantium being equated to eternity/Heaven made me think of the Byzantine empire (which, I admit, I'm not all that familiar with, other than the Byzantine empire being a descendant of the Roman empire.

It also sounds as though Yeats is saying that he would rather be a statue on display and admired than be in this mortal coil any longer than he already has been. He could be alluding to a funerary urn in the "Grecian statue" line; the "drowsy Emperor" could be God. The whole tone of the poem is one of an overt weariness to life, so this is of no surprise.

Overall, Yeats himself just seems... tired—"[...]a tattered coat upon a stick"—and ready to leave his life behind, which, depressing as it may be, it has a final ring of acceptance to it; it reminds me of "Invictus" by William Earnest Henley.

Mark wrote: "It also sounds as though Yeats is saying that he would rather be a statue on display and admired than be in this mortal coil any longer than he already has been. .."


That’s how I read it. He wants to escape his mortal coil and be frozen in time as a work of art.

But I see irony in this.

The speaker’s golden bird sings of the past, present, and future. In other words, its song is about the passage of time, about mortality. But the bird as artifact is an inanimate object. It is a lifeless work of art and, as such, it comes to life only if it is heard or seen or touched or read by living humans. It relies on an audience to bring it to life. Because it transcends time, it lacks the vitality and energy of that which lives within time. As Keats said of his Grecian urn, it is a “cold pastoral.”

I read the poem as making a statement about the relationship of art to life: We can learn what it means to be mortal through art because art is outside of time. Art derives from and serves life. However, because art is outside of time, it is lifeless and relies on us mortal beings to bring it to life. This relationship is mutually dependent and mutually beneficial. We need art and art needs us. But in each case, something is lost, something is gained.

The speaker can shuffle off his mortal coil and become one with “the artifice of eternity.” The bird, just as this poem, becomes the created artifact that gives the poet access to eternity. But this “artifice of eternity” needs the mortal coil to animate it.

The golden bird’s song of mortality comes alive only when there is a mortal around to hear it. The poem comes alive only when there is someone around to read it. In other words, the poet can achieve immortality only through reliance on the “lords and ladies of Byzantium,” i.e. the mortal world, to animate it—the very mortal world which the poet has renounced.

I just came across this quote from Yeats’ work, A Vision, in his biography. I thought it was interesting in terms of the Byzantium he had in mind: “I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St Sophia [ad 537] and closed the Academy of Plato [ad 529]. I think I could find in some little wine shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even, for the pride of his delicate skill would make what was an instrument of power to Princes and Clerics and a murderous madness in the mob, show us a lovely flexible presence like that of a perfect human body. I think that in early Byzantium, and maybe never before or since in recorded his tory, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, and that architect and artificers - though not, it may be, poets, for language had been the instrument of contro versy and must have grown abstract - spoke to the multitude and the few alike.”

Very nice, Aiden. It helps to explain why he chose Byzantium. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you, Aiden!

Yeats wrote: «I think that in early Byzantium, and maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, and that architect and artificers - though not, it may be, poets, for language had been the instrument of controversy and must have grown abstract - spoke to the multitude and the few alike.»

Last week I read Andreas Rhoby's history of Byzantine literature from 4th to 15th century ("Der byzantinische Literaturhorizont", 2018).

Most authors:

• enjoyed using and often mixing different types of language, including street vocabulary and its neologisms;

• practiced a wide variety of genres, from theological treatise and historical chronicle to epigram, familiar letter and lyrical poem;

• in several cases wrote on architecture as well, describing the monuments of Constantinople (especially during the last centuries of the empire).

To be fair, probably "visual arts" at some point (8th-9th c.) had gone even more "abstract" than any type of literature, considering the iconoclastic controversy and the related approved legislation.

Just wanted to add to this for anyone interested two pieces of information from Yeats’ biography. The first a letter he wrote while writing the poem and the a previous scholar’s obsevation:

“ At the break up of the Roman Empire refugees - flying from a horror like that of Russia today - refugees, both Pagan 6c Christian, came to Ireland. When I hear the Sidhe called ‘The Ever-living’ 6c such names I think of such phrases as ‘Authentic Existants’ - Mackennas translation - ‘True Being’ or so on applied to souls in eternity by Plotinus. Connaught even still sometimes seems to me half Greek. I think - without evidence doubtless - that St Patrick 6c his Christians were not the only missionaries. I came here to write a poem about a medieval Irishman longing for Byzantium - Dublin was too full of distractions - so am rather full of the thing. I want to bring not only Modern but Ancient Ireland into the great world.

“ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is anchored in Ireland as much as in wby’s imagined city on the Bosporus. After all, as T. R. Henn pointed out, Byzantium’s break from Rome was to echo Ireland’s from imperial England.

Apparently, he was imagining himself as St. Patrick after the Romans left medieval Britain like Britains left Ireland over a thousand years later.