Doomed to Die But Deathless:
An Exploration of Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium”
When we die, what do we leave behind? Do we leave anything? This question haunts us all, but none more so than anyone who creates. In “Sailing to Byzantium”, W.B. Yeats is painfully aware of his mortality, of all mortality, and can no longer bring himself to exist in a place where everyone and everything is doomed to fade and die. In naming Byzantium as his destination, he calls to mind an ancient, immortal city that survived the rise and fall of the Roman empire, where art and culture flourish, and where, perhaps, an old poet could find eternal life through his work. Through the form of the poem itself, the deliberate internal repetition of key words and phrases, …show more content…
After all, traditional heroes are not old, nor are they afraid. But they do go in search of fantastic locations and mystical mentors, and through their deeds they seek immortality. Yeats echoes the everlasting nature of heroes in statuary by asking for “a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enameling” (27). And he has “sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium” (16), which again reminds the reader of Greek heroes, like Jason or Odysseus, whose journeys were largely structured through their nautical travels. The title “Sailing to Byzantium” indicates that the journey itself is the important part, just as it would be for a classical hero; but Yeats arrives at the end of the second stanza, subverting the hero’s journey metaphor in its infancy. Byzantium is his one and only destination, and there he …show more content…
He has left that country in search of it, in “the holy city of Byzantium” (16), which is holy not only as the center of Eastern Christianity in the ancient world, but holy as the immortal and eternal city. His request for a body from goldsmiths is not just a reference to heroic art, but a plea to be removed from the “dying animal” (22) that is his mortal form. In the third stanza he asks for the Byzantine sages to instruct him in that immortality; and yet he calls eternity an “artifice” (24)—despite his hopes, he knows that no one can truly live forever, and the immortality provided by his work is but a shadow of what that could be. Works of art are indeed “monuments of unageing intellect” (8) but their artists are not so lucky. His anxiety at this knowledge shifts into the reluctant acceptance of the final stanza, where he still clings to that promise of immortality in the immortal city, but recognizes that though time does not pass here, it does elsewhere; his song now is “of what is past, or passing, or to come”
An Exploration of Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium”
When we die, what do we leave behind? Do we leave anything? This question haunts us all, but none more so than anyone who creates. In “Sailing to Byzantium”, W.B. Yeats is painfully aware of his mortality, of all mortality, and can no longer bring himself to exist in a place where everyone and everything is doomed to fade and die. In naming Byzantium as his destination, he calls to mind an ancient, immortal city that survived the rise and fall of the Roman empire, where art and culture flourish, and where, perhaps, an old poet could find eternal life through his work. Through the form of the poem itself, the deliberate internal repetition of key words and phrases, …show more content…
After all, traditional heroes are not old, nor are they afraid. But they do go in search of fantastic locations and mystical mentors, and through their deeds they seek immortality. Yeats echoes the everlasting nature of heroes in statuary by asking for “a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enameling” (27). And he has “sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium” (16), which again reminds the reader of Greek heroes, like Jason or Odysseus, whose journeys were largely structured through their nautical travels. The title “Sailing to Byzantium” indicates that the journey itself is the important part, just as it would be for a classical hero; but Yeats arrives at the end of the second stanza, subverting the hero’s journey metaphor in its infancy. Byzantium is his one and only destination, and there he …show more content…
He has left that country in search of it, in “the holy city of Byzantium” (16), which is holy not only as the center of Eastern Christianity in the ancient world, but holy as the immortal and eternal city. His request for a body from goldsmiths is not just a reference to heroic art, but a plea to be removed from the “dying animal” (22) that is his mortal form. In the third stanza he asks for the Byzantine sages to instruct him in that immortality; and yet he calls eternity an “artifice” (24)—despite his hopes, he knows that no one can truly live forever, and the immortality provided by his work is but a shadow of what that could be. Works of art are indeed “monuments of unageing intellect” (8) but their artists are not so lucky. His anxiety at this knowledge shifts into the reluctant acceptance of the final stanza, where he still clings to that promise of immortality in the immortal city, but recognizes that though time does not pass here, it does elsewhere; his song now is “of what is past, or passing, or to come”