Analysis Of William Butler Yeats’ Style Of Poetry In Sailing To Byzantium
Throughout literature, authors often reveal their feelings, purpose, or even some meanings to events in life. This has made literature very interesting as we get to learn about the thoughts of great authors. These authors often express their views through writing of poems, short stories, novels, drawing of art, and many other forms of literature. Therefore, exploring these works allows an individual to understand and have a different perspective about the various events in life. One such author who has managed to express his emotions and feelings through poetry is William Butler. Having written many poems in the collection, The Tower in the year 1928, this essay aims at analyzing one of his poems; Sailing to Byzantium. This paper adopts the thesis argument that Yeats wrote this poem with the aim of trying to understand the importance of age, youthfulness and old age in one’s life as a transition from mortality (in the natural world) to attain immortality (in the spiritual world). This essay also explains how and why, W. B Yeats uses the ottava rima form in the poem, Sailing to Byzantium.
Throughout the poem, Yeats tries to bring out the meaning and importance of spirituality within one’s life. He wants to link spirituality, ageing, and art together as he tries to explain that people are just in a transition towards their spiritual life. Therefore, when one gets old and loses the meaning of his life, dying and joining the spiritual world will allow him to gain this meaning and also lead an immortal life afterwards. Yeats’ poem is about an old man who sets on a journey to find out the purpose/meaning and spirituality of his life. In the first stanza, Yeats clearly describes how the youthfulness of the old man vanishes. The man, therefore, realizes that he can no longer go on to live with the ways of the youth. The youthful ways are characterized by enjoying life, singing songs, and spending time together with each other while neglecting the fact that youthful people will eventually grow up and die. The youths are now leaving like their tomorrows are well assured as it is clearly portrayed in stanza one. The old man, however, can no longer partake in these youthful ways. This causes him to move in search for his other purpose at old age. In stanza two, Yeats narrates how being old often makes someone useless as he cannot contribute to development stuff. Therefore, in order to find the meaning of life at old age, one’s only option is to seek out spirituality. He accepts that life’s only fate is death that leads to the transition from the natural world to the spiritual world. The only way this can be achieved is by sailing to the holy city of Byzantium. However, getting to this city has its own obstacles and challenges that must be endured.
However, the old man still presses on in order to find the meaning of the spiritual life. Stanza three describes the events in the city of Byzantium where the old man finally arrives. Here, he wants to learn of the ways of the city and also get rid of the ways of the natural world. He even begs the souls in Byzantium to purge his soul so that he forgets worldly things and instead, partake the ways of the city. This includes attaining an immortal state, something that is a characteristic of the spiritual life. In stanza four, the old man dreams of how he will get rid of his mortal body and take upon him immortality in the spiritual life. This will allow him to escape the pangs of death forever. He will also find meaning for his life as he will learn the new ways of souls in the spiritual life and thus sing to the king melodiously. This hope gives him a lot of satisfaction. It also gives him peace, thereby, signifying that the old man has found the purpose of his life at old age. From this narration, it can be seen that people often go through a lot of things, including suffering, in life in order to achieve a certain purpose and thus, fulfill the meanings of their lives. Yeats has achieved rhythm in the poem by employing different poetic devices. For instance, he has used alliteration to ensure that the poem is interesting to read. Alliteration is seen in stanza one line five: fish, flesh, or fowl. . . Assonance has also been used in the poem with most lines having words that sound similar, for instance, gold mosaic. By placing punctuation marks in the middle of lines, Yeats has employed caesura. This allows a reader to pause and thus get the right interpretation about the poem. Personification has also been used whereby Yeats has given a human trait (clapping of hands) to something inhuman (the soul). Other poetic styles such as the use of metaphors and enjambment have also been used. This gives the poem a rich background that makes it interesting to read. Yeats has employed unique choice of words in order to achieve a proper rhythm in the poem. For instance, instead of saying an “old man”, Yeats uses the words “aged man” in order to achieve rhythm in stanza two. In order to observe the rules of the poem style and ensure consistency, Yeats has also employed the invasion of words in this poem. This usually entails altering the conventional sentence structure in order to attain a certain rhythm in the poem. Invasion of words is clearly seen in stanzas one and two. Yeats chooses, Ottava rima, as his writing technique which refers to, “an ancient Italian form of writing verses in a poem whereby a stanza contains eight lines that are rhymed in the form of abababcc. ” Ottava rima, is traditionally an Italian poetic form however, the ottava rima stanza in English consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Yeats has maintained this verse form in all the four stanzas, by creating a unique rhythm for the poem. In fact, traditionally, when using ottava rima in poetry, the rhyme scheme is usually, ABABABCC, however, although Yeats begins his poem in that scheme, he then introduces some weird pattern of half rhyming instead of full rhyming which is standard. For example, “O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal,” which doesn’t quite rhyme. Furthermore, Ottava rima, is also known to be used in poems that highlights heroism or epic poems but the irony, however, is that even though the title, Sailing to Byzantium, allows readers to believe that this poem will be an epic or heroic poem, it isn't.
In fact, the speaker is not our traditional hero but rather an old man trying to leave his body behind. Addiotionally, Yeats’ utilization of ottava rima also signifies that life can be timeless, only that people experience transition to different stages of life, hence his use of ottava rima allows the formal characteristics of his poem to reinforce its content. My personal belief is that Yeats’ use of ottava rima gives the poem extra effect, sort of speak, through its meter and rhyme where the poem is almost hypnotic. In this case, the transition involves moving from the youth age into adulthood and old age and eventually dying and attaining an immortal spiritual life. Therefore, just like how ottava rima still continues to exist, life will also continue to exist in the spiritual world. Yeats’ tone of hope throughout the poem. Even though the flames of the youthful age are dying and the old man is not finding any meaning and importance of life at old age due to his useless state, he still sets on a journey that is aimed at giving meaning back to his life. He is even ready to go through all obstacles (as portrayed in sailing) and transformations just to get himself to Byzantium where he will find peace and eternity. And true to the poet’s words, the old man’s dreams are fulfilled when he gets to Byzantium and attains a spiritual life that is immortal. It is through this hope that he gets to fulfill his dream in life. Sailing in itself, symbolizes a journey to a faraway place. Usually, one decides to sail to a different destination in order to achieve a certain purpose. It could be moving away from trouble at home, moving to another town to conduct business, or sailing to just explore the world. In all these instances, one decides to sail in order to find some specific meaning and satisfaction. Similarly, sailing in Yeats’ poem signifies moving from the natural world in order to achieve immortality in the spiritual world. Because one has to move from a youthful age to an old age and eventually die before getting to the spiritual life, the whole journey is a long process, just like sailing. It also comes with trouble and obstacles such as losing meaning in life, just like sailing will entail facing strong winds and storms at sea before reaching the final destination. This poem reveals that Yeats is trying to symbolize an old person who is trying to find meaning about his life, now that he has aged and his youthfulness is all gone. One can argue that, Yeats ensures that the stress in the iambs falls on words that are vital to the message of the poem and that by having the final couplet in each stanza that he strengthens the endings of each stanza by making them join closely together. The whole poem, therefore, symbolizes that one is only useful as a youth but once he/she gets old, his purpose in the mortal world ceases to exist and thus, accepting spirituality is the only way that old men can understand the meaning of life at such an age. The poem also symbolizes that art, immortality, and one’s spiritual life can actually merge to give meaning to life. The poem also symbolizes that people believe in eternal life, which is, attaining immortality once they die and leave their mortal bodies. This immortality is clearly brought out in the old man’s story. Although he knows that at an old age someone’s usefulness ceases to exist, he still believes that this old age life has some meaning. The embracing of spirituality and immortality, therefore, allows him to achieve his goal of understanding this meaning.
Another example of immortality in this poem, is how Yeats portrays fire and gold. Fires continue to burn for the longest time possible. This is the case of huge fires that are hard to put out. Gold, on the other hand, lasts without losing its value. Whatever happens to it, it still remains gold. Yeats, therefore, uses this to symbolize immortality-something that never dies. It can also be interpreted to mean that as one ages, he/she becomes more fine and valuable just like the gold. Therefore, there is joy in old age. And even if one dies, his spirit continues to live due to its immortal state. Byzantium, in itself, symbolizes a peaceful state of the spiritual life. Given the beauty of Byzantium, a spirit would find rest and eternity together with peace that had been lost at old age when the person was alive. Therefore, sailing to Byzantium shows how one moves from mortality to immortality and enjoying the peace of eternal life. Byzantium can be likened to heaven, because this is where all souls will live peacefully to eternity. These illustrations allow Yeasts to successfully link one’s mortal life in the natural world to one’s immortal life in the spiritual world.
In addition, I agree with the idea that the singing birds in this poem is also a representation of mortality. “The artificial bird of the third stanza is the same as that which Yeats depicted in, “Sailing to Byzantium. As in the earlier poem the bird is a symbol of eternity but with the difference that here it is explexity contrasted with natural birds, to their disadvantage. ” Birds have been known to sing and chirp all their lives, however, once they die the singing stops. This shows that life exists in the natural world but due to the mortal state of people, for example, reflects that with time people die. Including singing birds in the first paragraph has allowed Yeats to clearly portray how youthfulness ceases to exist eventually. This is further symbolized in the salmons mentioned in stanza one. Salmons grow and always swim against water currents in order to reproduce. However, with time, their population decreases especially when they are overpowered by water currents and fail to reproduce. Similarly, as one grows up, he faces various happenings and obstacles which eventually leads to their death, old age being one contributing factor. All in All, this thesis paper has highlighted the aspects of rhythm, tone, symbolism, narration, and the use of ottava rima in the poem, “Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats. It can be concluded that Yeats style of poetry tries to portray the significance of connecting the human world, spiritual world, and art together in order to give life some meaning. The use of ottava rima has given Yeats’ poem a unique writing style that demands the reader's attention where it combines the seriousness of the poem’s connotation and the hypnotic rhyme scheme. It also prompts a reader to dig deeper in order to understand the meaning of the poem.
Furthermore, the style itself is symbolic in the poem. Although it is an old Italian poem writing style, it is still being used in writing interesting poems. Similarly, life never ends, instead, it experiences transition from the natural world to the spiritual world. This transition is aided by art. Yeats believes that at old age where life has no meaning, one has to accept to die and move to the next stage of life, the spiritual life, where every soul leads an immortal life. The spiritual life is peaceful and it never ends, unlike the one in the natural world, hence, people should be prepared for the transition towards the spiritual life where immortality is achieved. People should accept to die and leave behind their worldly deed. Yeats’ style of writing, and how his representation of the old man clearly brings out the need of embracing the spiritual life.
Bibliography
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