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Comment 4 of 4, added on October 23rd, 2006 at 4:15 PM.
I believe Yeats is telling us more then a literal Byzantium as he was into mysticism and Celtic Religion. I believe He was talking of Annwn which is the resting place for Druids.In order to get there one has to pass through a door also his referance of sailing can be clearly related to the River Styx and Greek mythology. To Yeats his heaven is warm and exotic from where he wrote this poem which was in Ireland
Dan Westrum from United States
Comment 3 of 4, added on April 13th, 2006 at 6:22 PM.
need opinion on influence of Frazier on Eliot & Yates. Am writing book on symbolism. Talked to Eliot, 1953 Kaufman Ymca new york,1953. use your own intel.re:"Let us go know you and I..."Please don't post, e-mail me. Thanks,Harry
harry nesbitt from United States
Comment 2 of 4, added on December 17th, 2005 at 11:40 AM.
The "golden bough" in the last stanza must be related to Frazier's "Golden Bough," the odyssey through world mythology where the same practices recur again and again throughout disparate and alien cultures. The golden bough is the mistletoe worshiped by the Druids for a symbol of everylasting life. Really a fungus that merely appears green and flowering in winter, modern culture regards mistletoe as a romantic locus near the solstice. If the narrator is to "sit upong a golden bough," he is choosing an eternal symbol of human love among the ruins of the classical world of emperors, the exotic East, and spiritual imagination.
renny hartmann from United States
Comment 1 of 4, added on August 4th, 2005 at 7:05 AM.
The poem"Sailing to Byzantium"was published in the volume"The tower"in which Yeats mainly makes use of powerful and masculine symbols.On earth Byzantium is a special place now Istanbul,the most important city in Turkey but in antiquity it used to be a former Greek collony.Byzantium,where the first handicrafts and creatures of art from the Greek and Roman empires settled down.Later on,the city of Byzantium becomes Constantinopol and the capital of the eastern roman empire where Constantine as a first emperor who cristainised the church ordered a lot of monuments to be build to christianity.Nowadays the most famous is Haja Sophia(Holly wisdom)or the cathedral of Orthodoxy whom the muslims did not brake down when they conquered Constantinopol in 1452.But,they build the blue Mosque,the largest monument in the muslim art on the other part of the street.In the 20th century Yeats considers the spirit is travelling in a three dimensional kind of trip.In its way from the condition of the body towards refinement and towards pure spirit.It is a three dimensional trip;travel because Byzantium means a trip backwards in history,eastwards in space and upwards as the refinement.The poem presents the travel stanza by stanza and first we are introdused to a world of fish,flesh,all crowded in a frenzy music and swimming in water as a medium where we know life first began.But in fact it suggest man in young age,love,music.Abruptly the poem comments on old age and the soul and the spirit paradoxically remaind young to help creation
Toni from Bulgaria
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I believe Yeats is telling us more then a literal Byzantium as he was into mysticism and Celtic Religion. I believe He was talking of Annwn which is the resting place for Druids.In order to get there one has to pass through a door also his referance of sailing can be clearly related to the River Styx and Greek mythology. To Yeats his heaven is warm and exotic from where he wrote this poem which was in Ireland
Dan Westrum from United States