The Artist’s Dilemma in Yeats’ “Byzantium” Poems

The Artist’s Dilemma in Yeats’ “Byzantium” Poems
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            What is the nature of the connection between body and soul? [you need an immediate connection between these two subjects to integrate them] W. B. Yeats explores the various ways in which reality affects creativity in his companion poems “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927) and “Byzantium” (1932). Through carefully formed metric structure and dark, splendorous imagery Yeats uses the setting of the ancient city of Byzantium (circa 1000 A.D.) to illustrate the potential and limits of the artistic process; he shows that although the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses of the human psyche are constantly in conflict, they must be balanced and feed off of each other in order for the poet to write.

            Yeats’ first poem about Byzantium begins when he is already at the city, looking back on what he has left behind. The place he has left, presumably Ireland due to his mention of singing schools, “is no country for old men” because the young live hedonistically and ignore intellectual pursuits.1 The speaker, who feels like a “tattered coat upon a stick”, feels as though he has lost his vitality and no longer belongs to the world of the senses inhabited by a new generation. The singing schools, places where Irish poets were traditionally trained, now teach only “monuments of [their] own magnificence”, * works written by their poets of past ages.2 The schools seem to believe that art is dead, that there is nothing more for poetry to say – everything has already been said and done and poets might as well become historians simply reliving events of the past. Learning for the sake of learning no longer has a place in this world, which feels overburdened or saturated – now that people believe that the pinnacle of all knowledge has been achieved, only firsthand physical experience is valuable. So the speaker has left the “natural” world to go to Byzantium, where he can continue the literary process and express himself in ways not available to him in a world dominated by the young. “Sailing to Byzantium” was published in 1927, in a social and political landscape still scarred by the First World War, which decimated an entire age group in Europe. Yeats’ mind is still haunted by “those dying generations” of men that have been taken for granted, like the vast schools of fish in the ocean and singing birds in the trees; [connecting the mass-movements of animals to the war casualties is very interesting, very helpful] men continue to depredate the natural world and have finally come full circle to depredating their own species. The shock following the sudden explosion of the size and scale of war must have been overwhelming, and Yeats deftly illustrates the all-too-sudden loss of life by describing animals with the terse phrase “whatever is begotten, born, and dies”. Men, especially older men, are weak and imperfect – what men should look to for inspiration is the “unaging intellect”, presumably encompassing literature, art, and other forms of high culture.3 However, following the fear and trauma of the Great War, as it was referred to in the twenties, people began to lose faith in intellectualism and all of the certainties of the Enlightenment and the Victorian era, and turned increasingly to realism. Authors of the Lost Generation such as T. S. Eliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald created male characters with a kind of impotent intellectualism, who felt disconnected from the world around them and unable to find meaning in their lives. The speaker, on the other hand, feels trapped by the “sensual music” of the modern youth who want only their lovers’ arms. He finds the physical world limiting and must embark on his own spiritual journey to Byzantium to renew his interest in life.4

            The second half of “Sailing to Byzantium” gives an increasingly metaphysical interpretation of art and its function in society. The speaker states that his body is only a “dying animal” that stifles his spirit rather than connecting him to the ‘real’ world. He compares “God’s holy fire” to the golden mosaics for which Byzantium is famed, and then asks ‘sages’, presumably the Christian saints depicted in the mosaics, to guide him in his writing. The third stanza thus functions as an invocation, although he is seeking to write not a factually accurate account of his journey but a description of his aesthetic that values the spiritual over the real. This is why he does not call upon the Greek muses, associated with classical thought and philosophy, but prefers the saints who “perne in a gyre” (move in a spiral) – straight lines would be associated with linearity and logic, while the circle or curve is representative of art or creativity.5 Artifice is the eternal thing– it is what lasts when living beings die – and the speaker disdains to choose a representative form from “any natural thing” but will become a golden bird that keeps the “drowsy emperor awake”. He describes himself as “sick with desire” – his hopes and aspirations are not in tune with his physical body, but inimical to it. Again he emphasizes that nature is imperfect and chaotic; the ultimate beauty lies in knowledge and craft, which does not end or die but can be passed on from one person to another. As a bird, he will “sing... of what is past, or passing, or to come”, i.e. he will know the past, present, and future, which are all encompassed by his artistic vision.6

            The companion poem “Byzantium” begins on the streets of the title city at midnight. “The unpurged images of day” are gone – night is simpler and more beautiful, with all sensory information hidden in darkness. Human existence is an unnecessary complication, a blot compared to the “moonlit dome” of the cathedral, i.e. the architecture of the Hagia Sophia. The miraculous golden bird scorns the “[c]ommon bird or petal” that lives and dies and purifying fires that burn in the streets cleanse the “mire” of humanity.7 The Emperor is again mentioned, and from his previous description as the man at the head of the court who will be kept awake by the singing of the poet’s spirit bird it can be inferred that he represents the heart or central focus of the intellectual/ literary effort. However, Yeats complicates his own theme by using a different meter and rhyme scheme than the previous work. “Sailing to Byzantium” is written in straight iambic pentameter with rhyming lines ABABABCC. “Byzantium” is more loosely structured, basically iambic but sometimes with more than one unstructured syllable per foot, with three lines of five feet followed by a line of four feet, another line of five feet, two lines of three feet, and a final line of five feet. The rhyme scheme is AABBCDDC, but Yeats often uses slant rhymes like ‘cloth’ and ‘path’. The resulting feeling is richer but more chaotic, unlike the pure, simplified intellectual expression expected from the introduction in “Sailing to Byzantium”. [great attention to form] Curiously, some of the images in Byzantium also evoke a feeling of an ending or apocalypse. The dead roam the streets, eldritch [why eldritch?] fires burn without fuel, and the sea runs with blood. The “Emperor’s drunken soldiery” are asleep – the Apollonian image of the soldier as a peacekeeper ruled by the need for order who keeps the city functioning has been subsumed by the Dionysian, the unpredictable and sensual element of human experience symbolized by wine and revelry.8 These events are similar to the omens that were said to presage Julius Caesar’s death. This, combined with the fact that at the time the Hagia Sophia was being built the Roman Empire was disintegrating, foreshadows the emperor’s demise.

            What is the significance of the emperor’s eventual death? The speaker traveled to Byzantium to escape the pettiness and distraction of the physical world in his old age, only to find that his imagined intellectual world is also ending. Without the emperor this world will lose order and significance, and the speaker will be trapped in Byzantium as he is in his physical body without a way to renew his spirit.  [sensing the impending decline of Byzantium in Yeats's poem is very good, a great suggestion] However, his artistic visions are “images that yet/ Fresh images beget”.9 The dolphins that are carrying spirits across the ocean will one day return and the speaker or someone like him will carry on the effort of expanding his mental horizons. This world of ancient Byzantium was, after all, created by the speaker, and was given existence and form by the human imagination. Although the speaker in his old age has lost his feeling of connection with the outside world and its experiences, his spiritual existence feeds off of his physical existence and vice versa. The juxtaposition and intermingling of man, shade, and image in the second stanza describes the interplay between the artist, his thoughts, and his work. [yes, since the unpurged images of day have receded, this image must be purged, an example of the Byzantium process] When the three are out of balance, the creative process ends – “breathless mouths may summon” ** but artwork by itself can only inspire the thoughts and work of others.10 Art without human emotion as a vehicle for interpreting it is pointless. As long as the speaker can balance the Apollonian and Dionysian within himself, he can continue to write; thoughts must be expressed through the realm of shared experience, and the aim of poetry is to use such common ground as a medium. Yeats masterfully achieves such a balance as he creates a journey of self-discovery through both the disconnected external world of an aged man and the rich but isolated internal sphere of his personal aesthetic.