Byzantium by William Butler Yeats - Essay Example

Byzantium – William Butler Yeats In William Butler Yeats poem “Byzantium,” the poet presents an image that is at once very simple, its images being stripped of all form and function, and at the same time very complex, in that it leaves no form or function for the human mind to grab hold of. As he writes about the city of Byzantium, he makes it clear that though he is using the name of a very human, and very cultured, city, this is no human city he is discussing. For Yeats, Byzantium represented the highest ideals in art, spirituality and knowledge, a kind of heavenly realm in which nothing ever changes but remains perfectly representative of the inner essence of art, beauty and spirituality. This is a city that cannot be conceived of by the average mortal and can indeed only be partially grasped in partial form by a living poet in the throes of vision. However, it is a land for human spirits, a place where they can throw off the “complexities” of life in favor of the eternal purity that is housed here. Without knowing anything at all about the conception of Yeats, but merely relying on the evidence provided within the text of the poem itself, it is possible to grasp this concept of an eternal and unnaturally unchanging perfection of being that so transcends form and rises above function that it remains beyond the living human’s ability to understand or fully appreciate. Through word choice, image comparison and the fate of the “complexities”, Yeats presents us with a picture that communicates his image of Byzantium without any previous knowledge of the poet himself. Yeats’ choice of words within “Byzantium” provides a great deal of information about the city he’s describing. From the beginning line with the word “unpurged,” (1) he sets up a spiritual language that denotes a passage from one state of being to another as the impure thoughts of day retreat into the background. Immediately, the reader has a sense of distance between the everyday world we know and the alternate, purified world contained within the poem. The following lines further emphasize this retreat of the human world by describing the “drunken soldiery” (2), the loud and boisterous humans, as being “abed” (2) and the night sounds “recede” (3) following the “cathedral gong” (4) signaling time to go to sleep. The reader has either crossed into the world of the dream or the worth of spiritual. Because of his previous usage of the word “unpurged” (1) and his use of “disdain” (5) when describing the response of the natural night sky on these human activities, the reader is more inclined to view the world of the poem as being one of a higher spiritual realm rather than a mere dream. This is further emphasized with the belittling of mankind in their description as “mere complexities” (7). In the second stanza, the speaker in the poem describes what he sees as “shades” (9-10), refers to figures bound in “mummy-cloth” (11) and “hail[s] the superhuman” (15), all terms that bring to mind the idea of spirituality and separation body from soul giving freedom and perfection to the latter. The reader is made to understand that we are not discussing a dream or anything that can take place in the normal human world, but instead are getting a rare glimpse at the shadows left behind by the spiritual and perfect world beyond humanity. This other world exists so far distant from ourselves that we must call the things we see there “superhuman” (15) because they can be nothing less. The word “miracle” (17-18) is invoked twice, to underscore the heavenly nature of his speech. By mentioning “Hades” (20), Yeats solidifies the suggestions he’s made so far, indicating this is the realm to which human spirits go once they leave the material plane. Even more, because the bird, or creature, or whatever, is made of pure “changeless metal” (22), like the essence of the soul, like the essence of art, it is able to sing with “scorn” (21) of the “complexities” (24) of the human body. Further, he mentions in the fourth stanza, that the “blood-begotten spirits come” (28), yet the “complexities” (29) leave. He ends the last stanza with the mention, twice, of “spirits” (34) that come to receive the attention of the smithies. As can be seen, the word choice alone is sufficient to demonstrate Yeats’ ideas of a perfect spiritual plane to which human spirits are brought on dolphin-back to the ideal, yet difficult to comprehend by human standards and measures the city of Byzantium. Written in the present tense, Yeats makes the complexity of this otherworldly essence clear within the text of the poem by simultaneously presenting and deconstructing images that are brought forward. In the first stanza, he provides the idea that it is necessary for the human world to fade away in order to understand or even view Byzantium: “The unpurged images of day recede; / The Emperors drunken soldiery are abed; / Night resonance recedes, night walkers song” (1-3). However, because he is speaking to humans as a human, it is impossible for this separation to occur sufficiently enough to adequately portray the image he holds in his mind of what Byzantium is. It is in the second stanza, however, that this concept becomes clear as his author explains “Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade;” (9-10). This type of structure is repeated twice more in this stanza with “A mouth that has no moisture and no breath / Breathless mouths may summon;” (13-14) and finally “I call it death-in-life and life-in-death” (16). Through these types of phrases, Yeats presents his readers with an image seen through a clouded window. We see a man, but the man is only a shade. We see a shade, but the shade is only an image. In other words, we see something, but we have no real concept of what it is that we’re seeing. We also encounter a mouth with no moisture and no breath, immediately seeing the “mummy” (11) mentioned earlier, indicating death. Yet it is this breathless mouth which summons, so we are forced to see life in death, a concept mentioned outright in the last line, but with the clouded concept of which is first, life or death, again obscuring the issue. This same sort of structure can be found in the third stanza as well with the “Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, / More miracle than bird or handiwork” (17-18). We have the triple image of a bird, a golden machine and a miracle, yet this thing is none of the above, itself a miracle beyond imagining. The fourth stanza also presents a concrete image deconstructed to nothing in the “Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, / Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame” (26-27) that become “An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve” (32). We, as reader, are presented with the concept of a flame that could not possibly exist with no point of ignition, but simply burning forever with no fuel and no effect. Yet, this flame is described as both an agony and a flame that lacks force enough to singe a sleeve. Having well-established the concept of the city as being a place beyond and above human comprehension while in corporeal form, it is in his continuous use and description of the term “complexities” and the phrase “mire and blood” or “blood and mire” that Yeats really provides the depth of the poem. Yeats explains exactly what he means by the term “complexities” in the first stanza with the lines “All that man is, / All mere complexities, / The fury and the mire of human veins” (6-8). From these lines forward, every time the word “mire” is used, the first thing to pop into the mind is this graphic description of the mechanical workings of the human body as opposed to the spiritual workings of the human soul. The “superhuman” mentioned in the second stanza is not associated in any way with complexities or mires or blood, instead appearing completely lifeless, yet containing the only life worth counting. The bird or machine or miracle that appears in the third stanza “scorn[s] aloud / In glory of changeless metal / Common bird or petal / And all complexities of mire or blood” (21-24). Here Yeats provides his readers with the image of machinery, or at least the idea of changeless metal, as being of supreme composition over and above the common “complexities of mire and blood” of which the human body is comprised. Yet, he leaves space for the human soul to experience the nirvana that is found in Byzantium “Where blood-begotten spirits come / And all complexities of fury leave, / Dying into a dance” (28-30). Although the spirits that come to Byzantium were blood-begotten, or human, they stay while the “complexities of fury,” or the corporeal body, leaves. Yeats provides a beautiful vision of how the spirits arrive at Byzantium, riding astride the dolphin’s backs, where they are introduced to the smithies who work constantly to “break bitter furies of complexity” (37), or to assist spirits in relieving themselves of the binding and leaden material forms prior to entering the heavenly city where only spiritual eyes can see. By introducing his reader to the idea of the “complexities” and the “mire” as being the symbolic words for the material human form enables Yeats to paint a picture with his choice of words and his methods of comparison that conveys to his reader his vision of Byzantium as a holy heavenly city of enlightenment, purity and eternal perfection. By choosing words that are almost automatically associated with a spiritual or at least dreamlike language, Yeats immediately removes his audience from the world of the everyday and transports them into a world he is in the process of defining. Yet the way in which he compares his images only serves to deconstruct the image at the same time that it is being presented, giving the reader a sense that they are only understanding the poem imperfectly, just as Yeats himself is unable to perfectly place into words the vision that he is imperfectly seeing. The one thing that does remain clear throughout is that the world we are imperfectly seeing is infinitely better than the world in which we currently reside, so much so that it is that which places it beyond our material comprehension. This becomes clear by his consistent treatment of the “complexities,” indicating that once these have burned away, our human spirit will be able to fully enter the city, seeing it clearly in its total perfection and becoming an eternal part of this perfection and beauty. Read More