Sailing to Byzantium (Magill Book Reviews)

In “SAILING TO BYZANTIUM” the aging poet confronts his own mortality and describes the triumph of art and the soul over the decaying body.

In the first two sections of the poem, the poet tells of his quest for a song of the soul rather than the body, an eternal song rather than a song of what is passing. He hopes to learn that song in Byzantium because, for Yeats, ancient Byzantium represented a culture whose various arts were the product of a single idea, a single image, and thus contributed to one vast and eternal design.

Part three of the poem is an invocation to the sages of Byzantium, calling upon them to instruct the poet in the song of the soul. Finally, Yeats presents an image of the poet removed from nature, his soul no longer “fastened to a dying animal,” his song encompassing past, present, and future at once. The poet is now an emblem of eternity, a golden figure hammered into shape by some ancient, anonymous craftsman.

“SAILING TO BYZANTIUM” becomes a richer poem when placed in the context of Yeats’s other writings, both poetry and prose. Rather than standing as any final statement on the nature of the poet, it represents one stage in a conflict that lies behind many of Yeats’s best poems. And no summary can do justice to the poem’s principal virtue, the grace and vitality of its language, which combines conversational ease with lyric intensity.