The Artifice of Eternity in Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium”

Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium” begins and ends with the concept of reproduction. In the first stanza, this reproduction is natural and sexual, and in the final stanza is entirely a matter of artifice. The living songbird is transformed into both product and producer, with a form of singing that is gilded by a consciousness of its departure from nature. Where natural reproduction replenishes entities that are neverthless always in the process of dying, art—the speaker seems to hope—is potentially eternal. And yet the poem’s final stanza also reminds us that art is ultimately for the living, and only as alive as its audience. Wes & Erin discuss Yeats’s meditation on whether creativity can help us transcend mortality, and how artists should conceive of their relationships to nature and posterity. Upcoming Episodes: Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” and “The Indian to His Love,”; “Picnic at Hanging Rock”; Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” and “An Enemy of the People.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Yeats's poem Sailing to Byzantium begins and ends with the concept of reproduction. In the first stanza, this reproduction is natural and sexual, and in the final stanza is entirely a matter of artifice. The living songbird is transformed into both product and producer with a form of singing that is gilded by a human consciousness of a departure from nature, and where natural reproduction replenishes entities that are nevertheless always in the process of dying. Art, the speaker seems to hope, is potentially eternal. And yet the poem's final stanza also reminds us that art is ultimately for the living and only as alive as its audience. Today we discuss Yeats meditation on whether creativity can help us transcend mortality and how artists should conceive of their relationships to nature and posterity. This is Wes Alwan. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, I guess I thought after Rosemary's Baby, doing a little more Yeats was somehow a natural transition. Maybe the Second Coming would have been more appropriate. But we already did that. 1:52 Erin: Is this our second or our third? Yeats? 1:55 Wes: No, I think it's our second. 1:57 Erin: Okay. 1:58 Wes: I think we did two recordings on Second Coming. 2:01 Erin: That's right. 2:02 Wes: Believe it or not, we took that one poem and we did four hours. 2:05 Erin: Oh, I believe it. 2:06 Wes: I believe it or no, that was back in the day when we were doing Postscript. So we did one hour and a little bit for each one of them. But. Yeah, but Sailing to Byzantium has long been a favorite of mine. And then we'll do Leda and the Swan as well for the next part. But. Yeah. What's your experience with sailing to Byzantium? 2:27 Erin: How many knots is that from here? I guess it's further from Salt Lake City, but anyway. No, I've never sailed to Byzantium, but I love this poem. Sorry. 2:38 Wes: Well, I know you've been to Byzantium because I was in Byzantium. 2:40 Erin: We have been. We have been to Byzantium together. Yeah, I remember. 2:44 Wes: That's right. 2:45 Erin: Specifically, the sages standing in the holy fire. That was a highlight. 2:52 Wes: Well, we were in the Hagia Sophia together. 2:54 Erin: Yeah, we were. We were. 2:56 Wes: So I think even though parts of the poem are taken to refer to Hagia Sophia. I think he was inspired by murals at Ravenna. 3:03 Erin: That's a city I've always wanted to go to. Yeah. 3:06 Wes: But, yeah, we are in the Hagia Sophia together. 3:10 Erin: Yeah. I have a picture of me standing in there, and I was like, oh, Wes took that picture because I was thinking about that the other day. Yeah. I usually. I go to places alone, and then I don't have any pictures of me. So when there's a picture of me that comes up, it's like, who was with. Oh, yeah, Wes was in there. Anyway. 3:26 Wes: Well, that's what I do when I'm feeling old. I head to Istanbul, hang out in mosques. 3:34 Erin: Istanbul, Constantinople. 3:36 Wes: What's your experience with the poem? Well, as opposed to the actual act of sailing? 3:41 Erin: Well, you know, it's one of my favorite Yeats poems. 3:44 Wes: It's. 3:44 Erin: It's a classic. I must have read it in high school. I remember being really impressed by the music of it, as always with Yeats. And. And there's always, you know, Yeats is such a treasure trove of everybody's movie titles or other. You know, he's such a. He's a. He's a great glossary for references. So, of course, that is no country for Old Men. I was immediately like, oh, that's. Yeah, probably when I was 14 or something. I was like, oh, that's. That's where Cormac McCarthy got it from, or something. Or maybe I didn't learn about Cormac McCarthy until later. I don't know. 4:16 Wes: Don't forget my favorite movie, Mackerel, Crowded Seas. 4:20 Erin: Oh, right. 4:22 Wes: Russell Crowe. 4:24 Erin: That does sound like a movie he'd be in. 4:28 Wes: It's all about Alaskan fishermen. 4:31 Erin: I thought that was made into. Yeah, that was the working title of Finding Nemo. 4:37 Wes: Right, right. 4:38 Erin: What about you? Did you read this in high school? 4:42 Wes: I think I must have. I don't remember. I went through a little bit of a phase in college, or. No. Just after I graduated from undergrad, where I was reading Yeats, living in Washington, D.C. with my mom in her efficiency apartment for a little while while I got on my feet, going to a day job at a Democratic political pollster, reading Yeats at night while eating Chinese food. 5:06 Erin: Sounds good. 5:08 Wes: Yeah. Which part? The efficiency with your mother? 5:11 Erin: Yeah, that part. 5:12 Wes: It's amazing. I think I probably revisited it after reading no country for Old Men, being reminded of it and then really loving it again. And what a great first line. 5:26 Erin: Yeah. I love the bait and switch. You think that is Byzantium, but no you're sailing to Byzantium from that. That is probably Ireland. 5:35 Wes: Right. I think in earlier drafts of this poem, it's clear that it actually. Yeah, it's definitely Ireland. So there's a lot of. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things to say about earlier drafts. I didn't look very closely at that. I just looked a little bit at Helen Vendler. Name of the book, Our Secret Profession. Is that the name? No. 5:54 Erin: I don't know. 5:54 Wes: Yeah, Yeah. I think it's a book called Ars. 5:58 Erin: Is that E. Yeats book? 5:59 Wes: Yeah. 5:59 Erin: Oh, nice. She's everywhere. She's all things. She's all wise and it's great. 6:04 Wes: It's truly. Yeah. What she has to say about this is great and very helpful. And then I looked a little bit at Harold Bloom and. Which is good one. 6:14 Erin: That is no country for old men. The young in one another's arms, Birds in the trees, those dying generations at their song the salmon falls, the mackerel, crowded seas, Fish, flesh or fowl commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born and dies caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of unaging intellect. Should we go stanza by stanza? 6:43 Wes: Yes. 6:44 Erin: Okay. With apologies to everyone for my allergy laden voice. I don't have the gravitas I need to be like Ian McKellen reading this or something. But anyway. 6:56 Wes: Well, I think allergies bring you closer. 6:58 Erin: Yeah, exactly right. 7:00 Wes: To the gravelly old person voice. Goddamn young people. That's what this first stanza really is. He's tired of their rock and roll music. These. 7:13 Erin: Well, I also imagine the country as. This particular country as being the land of allergies. So I feel the need myself to sail away from wherever things are blooming. 7:29 Wes: This is no country for people with sensitive sinuses. 7:34 Erin: Never had allergies like this before. I'm just allergic to Utah at this point. 7:38 Wes: Well, after we're done with this, we can talk a little bit about Claritin. 7:42 Erin: Oh, I'm on. I'm on the heaviest and I'm on like a steroid. Nasal spray. 7:47 Wes: Oh, shit. 7:48 Erin: It is so bad. 7:49 Wes: It's flonase. 7:50 Erin: Yes, it's really bad. 7:52 Wes: Yeah, I take Claritin every day. Cause I have a cat and I can't have a cat. 7:57 Erin: You're allergic to your cat? 7:59 Wes: She's just a little. Because she's like the most hypoallergenic cat I've ever been around. But some cats I'm super allergic to. But her. 8:07 Erin: Wow. 8:08 Wes: You know, I could get by if I had to, even without Claritin. 8:10 Erin: Oh, that's love. 8:11 Wes: It helps. 8:11 Erin: You have a cat and you're allergic. 8:13 Wes: Yeah. That's sweet, because I need to, like, be able to wear her around my neck. 8:18 Erin: Yeah. 8:18 Wes: Just have unlimited contact. 8:20 Erin: Oh, I'm allergic to not having a cat. That's my problem. 8:24 Wes: There you go. There you go. But speaking of cats, flesh instead of fish, flesh and fowl. It's kind of reminiscent of Genesis, I thought. Right. You have fish and fowl, and then the creepy, crawly things on the earth are all the. So, yeah, but it's interesting that he refers to that as flesh. I guess that has something to do with the target of his attitude towards sensuality. Right. The young in one another's arms, the birds and the trees. The bees don't explicitly make a entrance, but I suppose the birds and the bees are really what's going on here. And then the little dig. Right. Well, you're dying too. I may be old, but you're right. Among the dying generations. 9:15 Erin: I think the contrast between oldness or maturation and this begotten born and dies is an interesting one. Right. Because it seems like later in the poem, this idea of sort of immortality or eternality is expanded upon. And when one is old, well, it seems like the speaker was born old or something. But it seems like something different from being in this cycle, this perpetual cycle that's spinning around and around where you're born and you die and you're born and you die. Being old is something else. Like that's a state that. That seems that the fish, flesh and fowl never achieve old age or something. That's right. 9:57 Wes: You would think there are other old people in this country. 9:59 Erin: Right, right. 10:03 Wes: He could have other old friends. 10:06 Erin: Exactly. They, like, shouldn't they play chess in the park together or something instead? No, 10:12 Wes: old people stuff. 10:13 Erin: Old people stuff. 10:15 Wes: But yeah, so it's a. That. That is a very interesting image when you think about it. A country of the eternally young, or the idea of a country as a metaphor for the. I don't know, the psychological terrain of youth, where once you get older, you kind of leave that terrain. So there is a country, right. For young people, it's the club. It's not just kidding. It's wherever young people congregate. Whatever young people's terrain is, psychologically or otherwise. That is. That is an eternally young country because you. You leave it just by getting older. 10:50 Erin: I see, I see. 10:51 Wes: Yeah. 10:52 Erin: I sort of had this idea that it was a place where you also died. Like the 27 Club, like where everybody just dies. Young. That kind of club. 11:00 Wes: But yeah, Logan's. Logan's Run. 11:03 Erin: Right. Exactly. Yeah. 11:05 Wes: Do you remember that corny movie? No. I mean, that. That movie, he was like, psychologically formative for me. It's, like, deeply ingrained. So. Yeah. But I did try to rewatch it recently, and I do find it a bit hard. When I was younger, it was magic. But having left that country, no longer. Yeah. So this reminds me a bit of Keats. Part of the urn poem. What is it? The frozen images of young people doing young people things. Do you pipe to the spirit? Ditties of no tone. Fair youth beneath the trees Thou canst not leave thy song Nor ever can those trees be bare. So, again, this kind of timeless quality. Because it's. Right. It's on the urn, isn't it? Is this an image on the urn? 11:58 Erin: Yes. 11:59 Wes: Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss Thou winning near the goal yet do not grieve, she cannot fade Though thou hast not thy bliss forever Wilt thou love and she be fair? One of the benefits of being on an urn, as opposed to actually being in real life, being a living being, actual flesh. But here, you know, there is this. There is this dynamism in this first stanza, which he will try to get away from. Right. As he heads towards. Well, he's already foreshadowed here monuments of an un aging intellect. The monument being the thing like the urn, which is the place of stasis and something eternally what it is. So this is the last hope, in a way, for someone who's older and for the artist who's gonna try to leave something eternal and un aging behind. Right. 12:58 Erin: If the urn is just the moment, you know, it's frozen in the moment just before consummation. This seems to be frozen at the moment of consummation. Right. Which is why there's that death inherent in the orgasmic, sensual place. The salmon falls and mackerel crowded seas too. I think of that kind of extreme competition and struggle, which is. Which seems to be inherent too, in the sort of mating ritual that's happening here. Like, there are more phases of the mating ritual going on here than are described in the relatively staid and sort of, you know, the urn is singular too. Like, it has multiple scenes. But in the one scene of courtship that's being described in that passage, it's just the one or it's just the two lovers, right? And he's straining to kiss her and isn't quite there. Whereas this is about the Teeming masses too. You know, this is about like the entire ecosystem that everyone is, in which everyone is struggling and in which there's competition. And that too I think has this kind of like, you know, the death inherent in the life giving moment. Kind of that sort of being pierced through with its opposite. 14:12 Wes: Yeah, it's the world of becoming, which. Right. As Aristotle would say, it's a combination of beingness and nothingness. Right. Because it's generation growth and then also decay. Everything's on its way to being more actualized or being out of existence. So being as we know it in the world of becoming, of the world of nature, which is. Right, very much what this is, the natural world, as opposed to the world of spirit, whether it's religious spirit or the world of art, of the aesthetic. Right. Is this world of becoming. So in a way, the first stanza is about leaving nature and it, it's, you know, you might see it as a metaphor for contemplating one's own death. I mean the world itself is not a place for old people at a certain point. So you just again you exit naturally. 15:07 Erin: Well, it's certainly not a place for self conscious people. And so that's the other thing. Yeah, yeah, that's. I think I mentioned that before, that line from Bull Durham that I love though this place has its own music, right. He calls it sensual music. It's not the kind of music he's after. And there's something neglectful about this kind of. The music produced in this kind of a place. It's too self interested, it's too harried, it's accidental, it's not studied. And so one, one needs to, to not neglect the monuments of unaging intellect if one is to be actually a self conscious person in the world. And so one has to abandon this country to attain that kind of self consciousness. I don't know if I'm, you know, I might be using that sort of incorrectly but in Bull Durham it's where the world is not made for those of us who were self conscious or. I can't, I can't remember exactly how the line goes, but yeah. Contrasting Kevin Costner's older, more experienced ballplayer with Tim Robbins, completely wild, appetitive pitcher who's all over the place. 16:20 Wes: Salmon falls. Right. The salmon are. This is evocative of the salmon swimming upstream to mate jumping. 16:27 Erin: I think so, yeah. 16:29 Wes: Going up, up the fall. 16:30 Erin: Yes. 16:31 Wes: Ironically, mackerel crowded seas. So, so very much evocative of gener. Or there are two types of generation. Right. There's reproduction. And then there's the generation of growth of a single being. But in this case, yeah, sexual reproduction being emphasized and commending, really, in Genesis, I guess, fish, flesh and fowl are in a way commended to Adam or to the care of human beings and to the naming of human beings. In this case, it's the previous generation that commends these new beings that they give birth to, to this country, to nature caught in that sensual music. All neglect. Too busy having fun to be into higher culture. 17:17 Erin: Well, yeah, it's funny. It's funny. That line, actually, you're making me see that. The possibility of reading that. So that they neglect their own sensual music, isolated as it is on that line. Right, yeah. So they're not even aware enough to know that they are creating a kind of music with. What would that be? Mating calls. Right. They're only seeing the utility or their own desire and therefore the utility of the mating call in order to procure, to keep producing these generations that are like on a conveyor belt, it seems. And they're ignorant of the fact that it is creating music. So maybe it takes. Even takes an older person to even hear that music or to recognize it as such in retrospect. Yeah, interesting. 18:06 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going to share, or I don't know if I've shared it before, but just mention another one of my crazy theories, which is culture itself is a result of sexual selection. And I'm not the first to think of this, but there's a good. 18:22 Erin: I kept reading that on Twitter a few months ago or something like that 18:25 Wes: been written about it. Oh, yeah, that's. People are tweeting. 18:30 Erin: Trump even haven't been on Twitter in a few months. But yeah, last time I was on there, I was like, oh, this is. Some people are really malfunctioning. 18:42 Wes: Why does the peacock have its tail? Because that's the way the women peacock women want it. Or I guess peahens is what they'd be called. So it's sexual selection and that sense. And one can make an argument that that's human. Right. So that gender and the human mind and culture and everything that goes along with it are just sort of sexual selection on steroids in a way. They're selected for not just because they help us survive, but because they're attractive. And it goes two ways in human beings in a way that's not as obvious. Say in birds, where it's the peacock, the male that looks fancy, the female, not so much. But it's more about female Preference. But I bring all that up just because you mentioned utility. And. Yeah, so for, for animals, they're doing all of this proto artistic stuff, right? Singing for the mates. They even do, you know, if you watched some of these nature documentaries where you have the male birds doing these elaborate dances, right? Have you seen these in David Attenborough? And then sometimes they need like backup dancers and they have to rehearse and do all this stuff. 19:51 Erin: My favorite part of that is none of them ask what the women bring to the table. You know, It's a given. 20:01 Wes: What about their needs? Anyone ever think about that? 20:05 Erin: Their need is. Yeah, to get a woman. 20:09 Wes: And so there's, there's one species that practices this dance in front of a juvenile male that doesn't look yet look like a male, looks like a female because he's juvenile, doesn't have his colors yet. Anyway, then they do it for the female bird, him, the backup dancers hopping over each other, doing this elaborate ritual. And then she gives some, she looks for a second, kind of cocks her head, making a decision and she'll be like, she'll either fly off or she'll be like, all right, you can mate. Lasts like 3 milliseconds and then it's over. All that to commend what's going to come after it. So. So obviously animals can't become conscious of that. But even in human beings, right, there's sort of that imperative and it doesn't have to be sexual per se. It can be about winning reputation or rising in others esteem. That's part of the motive for artistic production. So it's more self conscious in that sense. But there's something right, to the extent that there's a worldly component to that and maybe even winning a mate, writing love poetry or something like that, it's not as pure as this idea of actually leaving something of yourself behind as a monument. I think they're similar, but. So maybe I'm making too fine a distinction here. I'm not sure, but. Right. Lodged firmly, firmly in the world of becoming and what's going to happen in the world of becoming but right after you're dead should. Doesn't matter, right to you personally if you're actually left behind in some sense. Shouldn't in a way. So the fantasy is taken to a different level at that point of transcending death itself, not just inducing reproduction. Right. Not just saying, okay, I can use my fine feathers, so to speak, to win a mate and then produce the next generation that's going to be left That'll be the monument. That'll be the thing that's left when I die. But no, doing something bigger than that. 22:18 Erin: Yeah. I mean, I think that the positive spin on that. Not that creating art is not interested in other people. Because I think part of what this poem is arguing is that that is a process through which one has to become interested in other people. But I would just say that, you know, to give a point to the young people's country. It is outwardly directed. And it is about, like, finding it's not something that's made too fine a point of in this particular poem. But just. Just to your point that, you know, there is, like, a way in which the potential solipsism of artistic production is actually escaped by this. You know, you could call it, like the utility factor of reproduction. But it's also. It's about trying to win over one other person. You know, it's about trying to please someone else. And therefore it has a kind of. I don't know, an inherent. Like, there's a selfishness to it. But there's also a selflessness which is, I think, present in artistic production as well. But it's more submer. Or it's more refracted. Right. Because you're maybe mostly communing with dead people in most cases. Or people that aren't there yet. So, I mean, there is something like. Of a linkage. There has to be. And I think this is what this poem is arguing like there has to be caring about something other than immediate appetitive needs. Which seems to be the young people's country's prerogative. But there is something that is about more than you, even in the young country. And it's about more than satisfying that I think, like, to reduce it all to appetite or like a kind of inherent selfishness. It doesn't sit right with me because there's too much sacrifice, actually. Right. That comes with that whole process that can't be ignored. I mean, you may be initially driven by desire, but you pay a heavy price for it. Eventually. Most people even know that when they're in the throes of desire. 24:06 Wes: I think, yeah, you pay a heavy price. You gotta be around people. People are pain in the ass. So we get tricked into being around each other. 24:20 Erin: Well, it results in children. And that, you know, especially for. For women, is quite. You know, that's quite the price to pay for Moment of fun. So. 24:31 Wes: Yes. 24:31 Erin: Yeah. 24:32 Wes: I'm just thinking of the. The female finch now trying to take that into her consideration when she's Evaluating the dance. 24:39 Erin: Well, that. But that's it, Right. It has to be worth. It has to be at least worth our while front. That's the whole point. Right. Because it's such a risk. 24:47 Wes: Shall we do the next stanza? 24:49 Erin: Yes. 2. An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. Unless soul clap its hands and sing. And louder. Sing for every tatter in its mortal dress. Nor is there singing school but studying monuments of its own magnificence. And therefore I have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium. 25:15 Wes: So, yeah, I like this image. An aged man has a tattered coat upon a stick. 25:20 Erin: Yeah. So cute and pathetic. 25:22 Wes: So the flesh is already disintegrating. So if you can't be in the world of flesh, hopefully you can make it into this more spiritual world. 25:32 Erin: Yeah. But there's still a. You know, the thing that confuses me most in this or that I have the most questions about in this stanza is for every tatter in its mortal dress. So the necessities to sing for the tatter, like to become when one becomes tattered, to then sing for the tatters is an interesting idea. It seems just as connected to the material in a way as the first stanza. So though there's no flesh, Right. Like, there's still a materiality which seems to govern the old man singing. 26:08 Wes: Right, Very good point. Right. So however sublime or aesthetically refined art might be, it will take the human as its object, and the human is tattered and flawed, even in the young. So art, of course. Yeah, is very much focused on our vulnerability and our mortality and on this world of becoming. It takes the world of becoming as its subject matter. And even religious art, right, has to take the spiritual as it is, as it comes, instantiated in human form. If it's pictures of Mary and Jesus, these are. Right. These are people. 26:49 Erin: We should, at some point do Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi, in which, you know, this comes up as a theme in Browning's great poem in which the great Fra Lippo is. Is making angels and various figures too, instantiated somehow. You know, he's using local models, you know, exposing certain things and the town. But, you know, there's this argument that, you know, like, he should be portraying angels in a less fleshy way, that there should be something more ethereal. And, of course, this is at the point at which, in the burgeoning Renaissance, when perspective is coming back in and figures have more of this sense of roundness and of reality, Browning imagines that Fra Lippo is causing a lot of trouble by making people look less like they did in medieval iconography and more like real people. 27:51 Wes: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So, yeah. Just to the point of monuments of an unaging intellect. Well, what does that mean? Yeah. Because often the artistic monument is a monument of something. Subject matter that itself is not un aging. It's human. 28:06 Erin: Right. 28:07 Wes: And essentially tattered. So. Yeah. So you get this right. Explicit idea here that he's gonna sing for every tatter and somehow redeem mortality and human flaws. Nor is there singing school but studying monuments of its own magnificence. So this in a way seems to turn away from the previous idea. So you sing for the tatters, but singing school, I mean, what is this? We study previous great examples of poetry. 28:39 Erin: Yeah. I think the monuments of an unaging intellect, it seems to be the ability to freeze in time. Like to have that first stanza at all. Right. To somehow recapitulate in art the sensual music which without the person recording it would simply fade away or would just continue without any self consciousness about its own existence. And so that un agingness seems to be like. To freeze that moment in time and therefore to like intellectualize it or to make it into something to something in a poem. Those then become ranked, I suppose. Right. So you have the better and the worse efforts. And one has to then study the monuments of magnificence which represent the best examples of the frozen sensual music. Right. I'm just trying to think through this out loud. Or the frozen tatters, if it's Lear or something. 29:45 Wes: Interesting. Yeah. I'm looking back again at monuments of un aging intellect. And now it occurs to me that that is ambiguous. Right. Monuments produced by unaging intellect. Monuments to an aging intellect. So that. Right. There's something in. In the art object that is un aging because it's an expression of some part of us that's un aging and honors that. Right. Is a man is also a monument to that. So it. It expresses it. But then it also is a monument of its own magnificence. In this case, I think that sing. Right. Singing. Singing is a monument of its own magnificent. It points back to singing. So singing versus intellect. Why have we made that transition? Maybe that's my question. Why have we gone from intellect to singing? The first thing that would naturally occur to me at the end of the first stanza is actual monuments like physical monuments. And then maybe after that, because of intellect, philosophy. 30:51 Erin: Right. 30:52 Wes: But when we get to the second stanza, now we. Now it sounds more like poetry. 30:56 Erin: Right. But this is where I think that any. Any actual intellect that he's describing in the first stanza is just this idea of this frozen sensual music or this sensual music transcribed. That's all it is. I'm gonna get this wrong, but Yeats has this poem. It's called A Prayer for Old Age. And the first four lines, God guard me from those thoughts. Men think in the mind alone. He that sings a lasting song thinks in a marrow bone. Yeah, so. So this is a really important idea in Yeats, that I don't think that there is this division necessarily between intellectual life and the sensual in that they come from different realms. I think it's simply the recording of the sensual music that distinguishes the young from the old. 31:47 Wes: Or. 31:48 Erin: Or this idea of self awareness, self consciousness, whatever you want to call it. 31:51 Wes: Right. 31:51 Erin: Because there's no. In fact, I think this. This speaks to a really profound and deep truth, which is that the only thing that makes. Makes something intellectual as such is simply the. The noticing of the sensual. Like the noticing of those qualities of life which maybe other people don't notice. The examination, Right. The dwelling upon those things which we actually all experience, but which few do notice. Remark upon, record. Write down in some way, right? So there's like an inherent connection. So he's not saying that there's some sort of higher life which the young people are divorced from. Rather, they're participating in something which the older or the artistic person is merely noticing more intensely. Right. And so that. That, like. I'm calling it transcription, because it's like the idea of writing down the song. So you preserve something about. Like the fact that it is a song is essential. And you have to preserve the song in the handing down of the intellectual information. Because something about the song, something about the beauty is essential to that information, to understanding the country of the young. Otherwise it's not accurate and it's not a great. It's not a monument of magnificence. So the magnificence has to have the beauty preserved. 33:19 Wes: And you're thinking here of the. So the primary beauty is the beauty of. Is natural beauty or. 33:25 Erin: Yes, yeah. 33:26 Wes: The beauty of the song that's used. 33:30 Erin: The sensual music. 33:32 Wes: Yeah, the sensual music of life. 33:34 Erin: Of life. 33:35 Wes: Right. So whatever's naturally beautiful about that, and then you're doing things with it poetically, just to keep with poetry, since I think that's largely what this is about. You do things formally. Right. To create beauty by the very nature of the structure of the poem and the way language works. So there's beauty that is not Related to the beautiful content, but somehow. Right, so it's not. It's new, but it's somehow meant to convey that original beauty which is its object. Am I getting that right? 34:11 Erin: Yes. 34:12 Wes: Right. So if you do a landscape painting, for instance, the beauty of the painting is not just the beauty of the thing that you took the picture of or made the picture of, it's the beauty of the painting. But it has to capture something about that original natural beauty. It transforms it. Obviously, you know, as an aesthetic object, the two are related. So. Yeah, this is interesting. This isn't something. I don't know if this is getting at your point. It is, but it's something I haven't thought about. 34:41 Erin: Yeah. I think part of it is the choice in what one records, Right. Like, there's the mere fact that one chooses this landscape versus that landscape and what one cuts out of the frame, et cetera. That's the thing that we've chosen to preserve the extent to which it's preserved poorly or not, or it's shown to sort of best advantage. But I think it's easier to make this connection in poetry because one could say that, you know, to use the most obvious example, the iambic pentameter is the pulse, right? So that the music in poetry as transcribed from the sensual music, the meter, somehow it gives the life to the preserved piece of sensual music on the page. So that there's some sort of pluck something out of life which we deem worth recording, we record it on the page. And then with, you know, if we're lucky, and we produce something of great magnificence, it somehow is then imbued with this kind of divine, kind of artistic divinity in which, like, life is blown back into it through the beauty of that song. Right. But that it has, like a music in it seems to me to be related to this idea of the mating call, or even just like the heartbeat has something alive in it. 35:59 Wes: Yeah, very good. And that's why he went to Byzantium, and that's why. 36:03 Erin: So the destination is Byzantium. What that means is one thing, but also the idea of the Odyssey to get there is another. I mean, you know, the Odyssey doesn't exist, right. It's like. It's just, I have sailed the seas and come, Right? But there's some journey, some attainment that has to happen that sort of elided here. And Byzantium is the object. So why Byzantium, I suppose, is just like the most essential, Right. So it seems like this exoticized location, I suppose, first of all, I mean it's the holy city of Byzantium, so it's this meeting point between east and West. It's like the, the navel of the Western world or something like that. Or of the world. I mean. 36:45 Wes: Yeah, I mean I had this question, of course, what is the significance of Byzantium for Yeats in particular? And I think it has something to do with the monumental nature of the city. Yeah, you were talking about the Odyssey and how that can't happen yet. It can't happen until Leda gets with the swan. I know, and Helen is born and Troy is over overrun and all that. And I guess Byzantium would be not too far from Troy. I mean Troy comes to be associated through the Aeneid, Right. With the rise of the Roman Empire as well. And then as at a certain point, as the western half is failing, the Byzantium becomes the place. But my primary association is of Byzantium with this particular type of religious art. And think of the murals that he's talking about, which seem to be, have a gold background and they're specifically Christian in nature, but they're, I mean, I guess you could say this about Christianity in general, but it's overlaid on its, you know, kind of pagan precursor. 37:56 Erin: Yeah, I mean, because of that overlay, it's the. So it seems like it's the nexus of all wisdom somehow or of all threads kind of merge there, come together there. 38:06 Wes: He had some, you know, I guess the thing we're leaving out is he had all these mystical ideas that he had that I didn't want to get into remind myself it has some significance in his system. We could just say that and these thousand year cycles or whatever or 2000 year cycles and things like that. And one of them is a specifically Hellenic, I guess era and the next is Christian and then there's the second. 38:31 Erin: Yeah, but there's also just this idea of the, you know, I mean like one could say that Rome is the same way. Right. There's the idea of the Judeo Christian and the Greco Roman and that those two things, you know, overlaid on top of each other in a particular place make it all the richer as a symbol for these types of intelligences coming together. And like in Ravenna or in, in Venice, another similar city in which these cities are places of trade and therefore where all of these various traditions came together and are reflected in the architecture. So they have, as in Venice, there's Moorish influence. Same thing in Ravenna. Right. There's a tremendous amount of east and west collision happening. 39:20 Wes: Byzantium is the city where Christianity truly becomes ascendant over ancient Rome. That's where Constantine makes it. So it certainly is that nexus point for transition from the Greco Roman to the Christian. 39:36 Erin: Right. And if you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul. 39:44 Wes: So I think we're. I think we're gonna spend the whole recording. 39:48 Erin: Oh, no. Okay. 39:51 Wes: I was thinking later would be be Leda and the Swan would be a kind of a backup, but maybe we could do another Yeats recording next time with Leda and then something else. 39:59 Erin: Yeah, that would be good, because I have more to say about Leda than I do about Sailing to Byzantium. Yeah, like way more, for some reason. 40:08 Wes: Well, that swan is very sexy. 40:10 Erin: Yeah. Yikes. 40:12 Wes: Irresistible. Some say. 40:14 Erin: Well, the music of sailing to Byzantium is so insane, intense that it takes, you know, like, in a way, it's such a. We're making more of it than I thought we would. Because in a way, it's a. It's so clear. Like the. The diction is so clear and yet, of course, scratch the surface for a second and everything comes out. But anyway. 40:34 Wes: Right. Yeah. Well, so that concludes part one of our recording on sailing to Byzantium. We got through exactly half, so good job. We'll do the second half in part two, stanzas three and four. Thank you. 40:51 Erin: Thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast Please send your questions, feedback, and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook @subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.