BYZANTIUM – W. B. YEATS

BYZANTIUM – W. B. YEATS

·         William Butler Yeats was born at Sandymount, a Dublin suburb on June 13, 1865. His father John Butler Yeats, a Protestant was friendly with Henry Irving and later members of The Pre-Raphaelite school of painters. Yeats, naturally influenced by his father, studied art for a short while only to abandon it later. His real interest lay in composing poetry. In the beginning he imitated Shelley, Spenser, Rossetti and Morris.

·         He is regarded as the national poet of Ireland and the irish background contributed to the major themes of his poetry. Yeats’s poetic career can be roughly divided into four phases: i) Romantic phase (1882 – 1907) ii) The Realistic Phase (1907 – 1917) iii) The symbolic or the visionary phase (1917 – 1928)  iv) The phase of Calm (1928 – 1939)

·         Yeats attains fame with The Wanderings of Oision (1889) which features Celtic mythology.

·         The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to him in 1923 only proves his poetic genius excelling in symbols and mysticism.

·         The country that speaker is in does not suit the old. It is full of bounty, with fish in the water and birds in the trees. The young and reproductive are caught in the earthy cycle of life and death. They do not heed ageless intelligence. An old man can be mere pathos. To escape this fate and to get away from his too vital country, the aged speaker has sailed to Byzantium. Once arrived, he calls out to the elders who are part of God’s retinue. He asks them to move in a gyre and take him away to death.

·         He has a living heart fastened to a dead body, and as such cannot live. Once the speaker has died, his body will no longer be organic, but fashioned of metal, like the statues that preserve dying emperor, or perhaps instead molded into a mechanical bird, which will sing to the lords and ladies to Byzantium. This is Yeats’ most famous poem about aging – a theme that preoccupies him throughout The Tower.

·         The idea of elders waiting upon God is not familiar from any Western religion, but would be acceptable under theosophy, which holds that all spiritualities hold some measure of truth. Yeats imagines this process as being consumed by a healing fire that will allow his body to take on any form he wishes when it is finished. His first wish, to become a statue, seems too static.

·         His second, to become a mechanical bird, alludes to the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus. 

·         Theophilus according to legend, had just such mechanical birds. It is thus the poet’s wish to be granted a body immune to death and to sing forever.

·         This poem is written after four years of his writing the poem entitled “Sailing to Byzantium”.

·         The poem Byzantium is parallel to Sailing to Byzantium. Both poems are the poems about escape from a world of flux to the kingdom of permanence.

·         The former is a proper presentation of an ideal state beyond life but the latter describes the voyage to the country of the mind.

·         The opening lines of the poem take us to the scene of night in Byzantium, the ancient capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. All unpleasant images faded away. The soldiers in inebriated condition gone bed. The prostitute’s song inviting customers has stopped. Only the dome of the Cathedral of St. Sophia announces spiritual aspirations, looking down upon man’s complexities, feelings, passions and confusion.

·         In the second stanza, he introduces the Persona who sees before him an image, man or shade and concludes it can be an image more than a shade. The spirit longs for liberation from the  cycle of birth and rebirth. This is evident in the appearance of the ghost from the land of the dead dressed in mummy-cloth. The ghost with no moisture and breath calls the other spirits. The Persona salutes the arrival of the spirit, in its elemental form. It is dead in life as it is a ghost. This superhuman shape is alive, free from all and so it experiences life-in-death.

·         In the third stanza, he elaborately describes the permanence of art as represented by the golden bird. This golden bird is not made by any goldsmith. It is a miracle and therefore superior to any natural bird or flower which grows and dies, or any artificial bird which again changes. The miraculous golden bird planted on the golden branch is a powerful symbol of changelessness and permanence. It looks down upon the moon (waxing and waning). This bird can crow like the cocks of Hades, the land of the dead. The golden bird is scornful of the conflicting emotions and passions of the human heart.

·         In the fourth stanza, Byzantium is presented as purgatory. At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement, immaterial flames, not made by friction of steel with steel nor of burning wood, appear undisturbed by winds. Here the spirits from the world after their death come leaving all their complexities, feelings and passions. The flames purify the spirits as they die in a purgatorial dance getting into a trance. This purifying flame does not harm anything that is material. It only does the function of purifying the spirits.

·         In the last stanza, The dolphins are believed to be carriers of the spirit from the world to the land of the dead according to the mythology. Spirits one after another arrive riding on the backs of dolphins. The flood of life beats against the smithies and they destroy the water of life filled with complexities and conflicting feelings and passions of human heart. The spirits are thus purified through the purgatorial dance. The ocean is agitated by the struggle between the flesh and spirit, as it brings about fresh images of their life experience.

Points to Ponder:

·         Byzantium was the ancient capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

·         The cathedral in Byzantium is the cathedral of St. Sophia.

·         Bobbin bound in mummy-cloth is the experiences covering the soul.

·         The great Cathedral song stands for religious aspiration.

·         The golden bird stands for Permanence of art.

·         The cocks of Hades refer to cocks found on Roman tombstones symbolizing rebirth.

·         The flames on the Emperor’s pavement are not lit by steel or wood.

·         The Dolphin stands for the carrier of the dead to the land of the dead.

·         The complexities of fury mean feelings and passions of the world.

·         It is written in ottava rima, journey to Constantiniople.