Comment On The Opposition of Art and Life and Youth and Old Age in 'Sailing To Byzantium'

‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is one of Yeats’ later works, composed in 1927, a few years before his death.
The political upheaval and subsequent independence in his native Ireland had resulted in a change
in landscape where the youth and their revolutionary ideas. This poem is a product of Yeats’
advanced age when he contemplated the frivolity of youth and nature, and contemplated more to a
spiritual awakening, and transgression to the immortality of art. Inspired by the art works in
Apollinaire, Ravenna, Italy, Yeats’ embarked upon a change in poetic style. In a belligerent style, he
criticizes the instinctiveness and basal urge of Nature and stylizes art to the point of idolizing it.
Byzantium, is a symbol of unity, merging the ancient Paganism with modern Christianity and the
mortal flesh with the immortal spirit.
The poem represents Yeats’ belief in the dichotomy of art and life, age and youth. He uses the light
tone of an iambic pentameter to convey this everlasting battle. It’s the nature of the young to be
engaged in sensual activities and derive pleasure from them. In the modern age, where the
revolutionary thoughts occupy a front seat in the minds of the youth, the rush of adrenaline spurs
them to believe that they are meant to rule, and soak in the worldly enjoyment. Spirituality takes a
backseat, as mind is too engaged to discover newer physical joys. Yeats’ compares the modern
youth to the activities of salmons and mackerels – two kinds of fish known for their virility. Salmon
jumps over waterfalls, upstream in rivers to reach the spawning ground before dying. Mackerels lay
thousands of eggs in the sea. Like the fish, the youth too are driven to procreate, which ultimately
fizzles out, and the body dies, leaving behind a generation, but no dynasty. Yeats also uses the
imagery of a singing bird, (a repetitive concept throughout the poem) to signify the sensuality of
summer – a warm time where ‘fish, flesh or fowl’ fall in line to the sweetness of the biological music
without paying heed to the tyranny of time, which follows the law - ‘whatever is begotten, born and
dies’. The ancient monuments provide a stark contrast – art against life, holding the pillars of
intellect through ages whilst the ‘dying generations’ fall in a cycle in a land ‘That is no country for
old men’.
Yeats uses the Neoplatonic reference of a body being soul’s coat which is shed upon death, to
describe the liberation of old age. He initially refers to the ‘aged man’ as a ‘paltry thing’, much like a
discarded ‘coat upon a stick’, signifying the physical frailty and decay of an old man. The imagery of
a scarecrow also highlights how repulsive the aged have become for the youth. Yeats’ says the
spiritual liberation would come when the soul would be ready to embark on the journey of self-
discovery and self-appreciation of the decrepitude. While the youth engage in sensual music which
ultimately falters and dies, the music of old age is spiritual, built out of accumulated experience and
is meant to deliver the soul from its mortal cage to the realms of immortality. The ancient city of
Byzantium had held its own when Europe underwent Renaissance – its mosaic art being a symbol
of linearity, abstracted from nature and static. It’s the polar opposite of nature and natural urges
which Renaissance and life upholds and is a school of human procrastination. Yeats therefore
chooses Byzantium as his destination.
Yeats’ urges the Sages, the paragons of intellect, to rise out of the gyrating holy fire of Byzantium, to
impart spiritual lessons and cleanse the mortal hearts consumed with desire. The imagery of a
being rising from the fire is that of the phoenix, the symbol of immortality. The Sages of Byzantium,
signify the ageless intelligence, which has the power to take over the feeble unintelligible mortality
of life. Desire is a bane and drives humans to the verge of ignorance, compared to the boon of
spirituality which drives the intellect of the immortal sages, carved in the golden mosaic of the
Byzantine art. Through the phoenix-like emergence from fire, Yeats draws a link between the Sages
and the immortal man, when the former consumes the latter in purgatory fire. The transgression
from mortality to immortality becomes complete. In a paradoxical manner, he describes his desire
to be free from desire and live forever throughout eternity by encasing his soul into timeless pieces
of art. While the ‘dying animal’ cannot escape the clutches of ‘begotten, born and dies’, artifacts are
free to live on, and that is what Yeats aspires to be.
Art, Yeats says, fulfils a man’s soul more than sensuality. In his mind, a rich emperor would be
drowsy or tired after engaging in activities which youth and life demands. However, he would
spend endless nights appreciating great works of art, as it would satiate his soul truly. The elegant
and abstract audience in Byzantium would always seek the golden bird on a golden bough, singing
lore of infinite time, rather than the senseless music of a live bird which can only sing tunes of the
present. And that fulfilment is what he craves as he seeks to be reborn as a model of art, much like
Keats’ Grecian urn, rather than as a mortal of flesh, which goes through the cycle of ‘begotten, born
and dies’.

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‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is one of Yeats’ later works, composed in 1927, a few years before his death.

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