"Sailing To Byzantium’’: Prolegomena to a poetics of the Lyric (Jovitha Rosy)

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                                                                         M. JOVITHA ROSY

"Sailing To Byzantium’’: Prolegomena to a poetics of the Lyric

                                By ELDER OLSON

                        Olson’s essay on Yeat’s ‘’Sailing to Byzantium’’ Olson paraphrases its content. In ‘’Sailing to Byzantium’’ an old man faces the problem of old age, of death, and of regeneration, and gives his decision. He tells us, old age, exclude the man from the sensuous joy of youth; the world appears as it belongs only to the young people. Here the old man is an empty artifice. He is neglected as a tattered coat upon a stick. If the old age frees a man from the sensual position he will rejoice the liberation of soul. The soul learn its greatness from the best works of art. While turning to those great work he learns that these are no mere effigies it also has soul. These works live in the noblest element of god’s fire free from all corruption with the understanding of this. He prays for death, he expert a rein carnation in the immortal and changeless embodiment of art.       

                              The terms around which the poem is organized are a series of oppositions. Youth, sensually active but spiritually passive, the kind of old age lacks both sensually and spiritually old age which has spiritual capacity though it is physically impotent; art considered as inanimate as monuments: and art as animate.  

                              With a content of the poem stated, the analysis of the argument the activity begins in the first two stanzas art is considered as ‘’inanimate’’ and in last two stanzas art is considered as ‘’animate’’. In the first two stanzas ‘’the image of Byzantium’’: are considered as object of contemplation. In the second two stanzas they are treated as God’s who can consume the last shred of the old man’s sensuality; consume his heart and make him them, insouled in the incorruptible. 

                                    Olson points to still other divisions within the two halves of the poem. Stanza I presents a rejection of passion, stanza II an acceptance of intellection; stanza III presents a rejection of the corruptible embodiment, and stanza IV, an acceptance of the incorruptible. There is an alternation, thus, of negative and affirmative; out of corruption into permanence, a clear balance, the proportion being I: II: III: IV; and that orders these section is their dialectical sequence.                                                                                                                                                                               Olson points to additional structural values of the poem which are both organic and geometric. In stanza I a mortal bird of nature amid natural trees sings a brief song of sensual joy in praise of mortal things, of ‘’whatever is begotten, born, and dies’’; in stanza IV an immortal and artificial bird set in an artificial tree sings an eternal song of spiritual joy in praise of eternal things, of ‘’what is past, or passing, or to come’’; and similarly, in stanza II a living thing is found to be an inanimate artifice, ‘’a tattered coat upon a stick,’’ incapable of motion, speech, sense or knowledge, whereas in stanza III what had appeared to be inanimate artifice is found to possess a soul, and hence to be capable of all these. A certain artificial symmetry in the argument serves to distinguish these parts even further: stanzas I and IV begin with the conclusions, and I is dependent upon II for the substantiation of its premises, as IV is dependent upon III.                                                                                                                

                     In discussing how the argument just outlined functions as the soul of the poem, as its ‘’plot’’. Olson rejects theories of poetry that depend on the chance associations of the reader with certain words of the terms used in the poem. Olson says that the poetry takes its association from the content through the juxtaposition to other terms with which they are equated contrasted or combined.     

                       The term ‘’singing’’ is extended beyond its usual meaning to cover two kinds of jubilation, the rejoicing of the natural creature and that of the artificial as a consequence, all the terms which relate to jubilation and song are affected ; for example, ‘’commend,’’ ‘’music,’’ ‘’singing school,’’ and ‘’singing- masters’’ suffer an extension commensurate with that of singing. Byzantium is not a place upon a map, but a term in the poem; a term signifying a stage of contemplation wherein the soul studies itself and so learns both what it is and in what consists true and eternal joy.   

                            Olson has argues that the poets uses object to fit in his poetry to convey his thought. Physical thing determinate the nature and is subject to physical law such as Newton’s law. ‘’The things’’ natural or artificial creatures have only properties as statement within the poem affords them. Every poem is an independent universe with its law provided by the poet.                                              The term ‘lyric’ has been given an extra ordinary varies with the approaches of literary criticism. The critic analyses the various aspects of the poem, ‘’Sailing to Byzantium’’ and concludes that the poem is a poetics of the lyric forms.