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{{for|the novella by Robert Silverberg|Sailing to Byzantium (novella)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}}
▲{{short description|poem by William Butler Yeats}}
{{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 (
==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]] is a reference to the ''[[Aeneid]]'', book VI, by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC), where it is offered as a gift by Trojan hero [[Aeneas]] to [[Proserpina]] to enter the gate of the underworld. Aeneas' father [[Anchises]] describes the spirit inside every body
<blockquote>The seeds of life—
▲"'''Sailing to Byzantium'''" is a poem by [[William Butler Yeats]], first published in the 1928 collection ''[[The Tower (book)|The Tower]]''. It comprises four [[stanza]]s in [[ottava rima]], each made up of eight ten-syllable lines. 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.
fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they
▲==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." 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").
are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled
by earthly limbs and flesh that's born for death.
That is the source of all men's fears and longings,
joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heavens' light,
shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep.
(''Aeneid'' VI:843-848) </blockquote>
This describes the tension between physicality and spirituality, mortality and immortality, which are the themes of this poem.
==Interpretation==
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<blockquote>I am trying to write about the state of my soul, for it is right for an old man to make his soul, and some of my thoughts about that subject I have put into a poem called 'Sailing to Byzantium'. When Irishmen were illuminating the [[Book of Kells]], and making the jeweled croziers in the [[National Museum of Ireland|National Museum]], Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so I symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city.<ref>Jeffares, Alexander Norman, ''A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1968) p. 217</ref></blockquote>
[[John Crowe Ransom]] comments: "The prayer is addressed to holy sages who dwell I know not where; it does not seem to matter where, for they seem qualified to receive the prayer, and it is a qualified and dignified prayer."<ref>Quoted in San Juan,
[[E. San Juan Jr.|Epifanio San Juan]] writes that the action of the poem "occurs in the tension between memory and desire, knowledge and intuition, nature and history, subsumed within a vision of eternal order".<ref>San Juan,
[[Cleanth Brooks]] asks whether, in this poem, Yeats chooses idealism or materialism and answers his own question, "Yeats chooses both and neither. One cannot know the world of being save through the world of becoming (though one must remember that the world of becoming is a meaningless flux aside from the world of being which it implies)".<ref>Cleanth Brooks, "Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium'", in Staton, Shirley F., ''Literary theories in praxis'', (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1987) {{ISBN|0-8122-1234-7}} p. 17</ref>
==Influence==
A second poem written by W. B. Yeats
Canadian author [[Guy Gavriel Kay]]'s historical fantasy
The poem is referenced extensively in [[Philip Roth]]'s 2001 novel ''[[The Dying Animal]]'', which also takes its title from the poem.<ref>"Transnational Trauma and "the mockery of Armageddon": "The Dying Animal" in the New Millennium," AIMEE POZORSKI, ''Studies in American Jewish Literature'' Vol. 23 Philip Roth's America: The Later Novels (2004), pp. 122-134. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41206011</ref>
▲A second poem written by W. B. Yeats: "'''Byzantium'''" extends and complements "'''Sailing to Byzantium'''". It blends descriptions of the medieval city in nighttime darkness with spiritual, supernatural and artistic imagery.
A phrase in the opening line of the poem, "no country for old men," has been adopted as the title for many literary works, most notably as the novel ''[[No Country for Old Men (novel)|No Country for Old Men]]'' by [[Cormac McCarthy]]''<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Frye |first=S. |year=2006 |title=Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' and McCarthy's ''No Country for Old Men'': Art and Artifice in the New Novel |journal=The Cormac McCarthy Society Journal |volume=5}}</ref>'' and [[No Country for Old Men|its film adaptation]], as well as the short story "No Country for Old Men" by [[Seán Ó Faoláin]], the novel ''No Country for Young Men'' by [[Julia O'Faolain]], and the novel ''No Country for Old Men'' by Alan Schwartz.
▲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 2010-02-15 at the Wayback Machine</ref>
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==
{{
==References==
* [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium "Sailing to Byzantium"] ''Poetry Foundation''. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220614035247/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium |date=14 June 2022 }}
* [http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/734_11.html "Sailing to Byzantium"]
==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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