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{{for|the novella by Robert Silverberg|Sailing to Byzantium (novella)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}}
{{Wikisource|The Tower (Yeats)/Sailing to Byzantium|Sailing to Byzantium}}
"'''Sailing to Byzantium'''" is a poem by [[William Butler Yeats]], first published in his collection ''October Blast'', in 1927<ref>{{cite news |date= |title=Encyclopaedia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sailing-to-Byzantium}}</ref> and then in the 1928 collection ''[[The Tower (poetry collection)|The Tower]]''. It comprises four [[stanza]]s 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 (Christianity)|eternal life]] as well as his conception of paradise.▼
▲"'''Sailing to Byzantium'''" is a poem by [[William Butler Yeats]], first published in the 1928 collection ''[[The Tower (poetry collection)|The Tower]]''. It comprises four [[stanza]]s 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 (Christianity)|eternal life]] as well as his conception of paradise.
==Synopsis==
Written in 1926 (when Yeats was 60 or 61), "Sailing to Byzantium" is Yeats' definitive statement about the agony of old age and the imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a vital individual even when the heart is "fastened to a dying animal" (the body). Yeats's solution is to leave the country of the young and travel to Byzantium, where the sages in the city's famous gold mosaics could become the "singing-masters" of his soul. He hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity." This is a reference to the legend that when the Turks entered the church ([[Hagia Sophia]]) in 1453, the priests who were singing the Divine Liturgy took up the sacred vessels and disappeared into the wall of the church, where they will stay and only come out when the church is returned to Christendom (see Timothy Gregory, ''A History of Byzantium'', page 337). In the final stanza of the poem, he declares that once he is out of his body he will never again appear in the form of a natural thing; rather, he will become a golden bird, sitting on a golden tree, singing of the past ("what is past"), the present (that which is "passing"), and the future (that which is "to come").
[[The Golden Bough (mythology)|The Golden Bough
<blockquote>The seeds of life—
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A second poem written by W. B. Yeats, "[[The Winding Stair and Other Poems|Byzantium]]", extends and complements "Sailing to Byzantium". It blends descriptions of the medieval city in nighttime darkness with spiritual, supernatural and artistic imagery.
Canadian author [[Guy Gavriel Kay]]'s historical fantasy
[[Philip Roth]]'s 2001 short novel [[The Dying Animal]] takes its title from the third stanza, and is explicitly referenced in the text.<ref>"Transnational Trauma and "the mockery of Armageddon": "The Dying Animal" in the New Millennium," AIMEE POZORSKI, <i>Studies in American Jewish Literature</i> Vol. 23 Philip Roth's America: The Later Novels (2004), pp. 122-134. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41206011</ref>▼
▲Canadian author [[Guy Gavriel Kay]]'s historical fantasy duology [[The Sarantine Mosaic]] was inspired by this poem.<ref>Dena Taylor, On Sailing to Sarantium, TransVersions 10, Toronto: Orchid Press, 1999, republished on Bright Weavings (Kay's authorized website) Archived 15 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine</ref>
▲The poem is referenced extensively in [[Philip Roth]]'s 2001
The title of the poem itself has also been adopted as the title of [[Sailing to Byzantium (novella)|a novella]] by [[Robert Silverberg]], an unpublished novel by film director [[Michael Cimino]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Elton |first=Charles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DESPzgEACAAJ |title=Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision |publisher=Abrams Press |year=2022 |isbn=9781419747113 |pages=255–256}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Archerd |first=Army |date=June 4, 1997 |title=Perry making new friends in rehab |url=https://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/perry-making-new-friends-in-rehab-1117863081/amp/ |access-date=August 8, 2023 |magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]}}</ref> and a song by [[Lisa Gerrard]] and [[Patrick Cassidy (composer)|Patrick Cassidy]] on the album ''[[Immortal Memory]].''
==Notes==
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==External links==
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-b-yeats/poetry|name=The collected public domain poetry of Yeats as an eBook|noitalics=true}}
*[http://www.nli.ie/yeats/ Watch 'Sailing to Byzantium' master class video (National Library of Ireland)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070203220551/http://www.nli.ie/yeats/ |date=3 February 2007 }}
{{W. B. Yeats}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Poetry by W. B. Yeats]]
[[Category:Byzantine Empire in art and culture]]
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