byz

Rebecca Kon

Donal Harris

English 4W M/W 9:00-10:50

11 October 2010

Becoming Byzantium

            Byzantium. A city that ceased to exist, at least in name, millenia ago, yet a city that still survives today. In William Butler Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” the historic city serves as a vehicle for Yeats in pondering his impending mortality. Throughout the poem Yeats reflects on the eternal nature of Byzantium in contrast to his own finite existence, and searches for a way to emulate Byzantium’s longevity.

As an ageing man of sixty, Yeats compares his physical form to that of the artifacts of Byzantium. Located in an ideal location for monopolizing major trade routes of the area, Byzantium grew quickly into an affluent city, displaying its wealth through magnificent art and architecture. Despite it having no Christian significance, Yeats refers to the city as holy, fantasizing about the “gold mosaic of a wall” (18). The beauty and power of Byzantium has been preserved through the centuries in its literal, tangible form. By contrast, Yeats recognizes that “an aged man is but a paltry thing” (9). He finds himself hating the human form with which he is stuck, unable to even recognize it as a part of himself. The human body ages and fails, indifferent to the will of the soul within. Instead, Yeats longs for “such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make” (27). Yeats knows that people, including himself, will eventually die and be forgotten, but he sees the buildings of Byzantium standing still with their gold walls, and wishes that he, too, could exist in the form of something of ageless beauty.

Being incapable of existing forever as a piece of Byzantine art, the narrator expresses the desire to exist posthumously through his art. Byzantium was a relatively short-lived city, giving way to Constantinople which in turn gave way to Istanbul. However, without the prior existence of Byzantium, neither Constantinople nor Istanbul, both [adjective] cities in their own right, could have existed. Byzantium’s influence was so great modern historians refer to the surrounding empire as the Byzantine Empire. Similarly the narrator recognizes that he, too, can become more than “a tattered coat upon a stick” if “soul clap its ands and sing” (10-11). The reference to song is a metaphor for all art. Regardless of the artist’s age, the art will always have the capacity for life. It will always be able to evoke emotion and response from those exposed to it, provided the listeners are willing to hear the song. While unable to take the form of “hammered gold” (cite), the narrator hopes to set upon a golden bough to sing” (cite). To find himself in the same standing as the artists of Byzantium, his art as everlasting. By singing from Byzantium, the art

Yeats, despite receiving far greater recognition in his lifetime than most poets do, greatly fears fading into obscurity after his death. Many contemporary poets of the day, the “young in one another’s arms” (1-2), criticize Yeats’ work, arguing that it is outdated and inapplicable to the modern world. Having devoted his entire life to his work, his work being the one chance Yeats has of making a lasting impact on the world, he is terrified the contemporary poets will make his life obsolete. He hopes that instead he can, like Byzantium have laid the groundwork for more poets to produce poetry in the same vein, and that he too can be remembered as the foundation for something great.

Influence. This is Byzantium’s lasting triumph, and all Yeats can hope for is that it can be his as well.