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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.22 pp.29-42
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2004.22.29

Yeats’s “Byzantium”: Exposition of What?

Woo Cheol Hwan

Abstract

Yeats received a letter from Sturge Moore complaining about the way he dealtwith the goldsmith's bird in his “Sailing to Byzantium”. After Yeats had done acomplete version of “Byzantium”, he wrote to Sturge Moore saying, "The poemoriginates from a criticism of yours." He added that the idea needed exposition.
The focus of this paper is to discuss what that idea was which neededexposition. Frank Kermode maintained that Yeats wrote the latter poem to makemore absolute the distinction between the goldsmith's bird as the Image and thenatural bird. On the other hand, A. E. Dyson argued that Moore's criticism "can besafely ignored." Balancing these two contrary views, we have to rely on what Yeatshimself implies as to this topic.
What Yeats has to say about Byzantium as a symbolic city can be found in hispoem itself and in his book A Vision. In the poem, we find the followingexpressions, "A Starlet or moonlit dome disdains / All that man is, / All merecomplexities / The fury and the mire of human veins." As is evident to all Yeatsstudents, a starlet night is a moonless night, phase 1 (complete objectivity) and amoonlit night is a full moon (complete subjectivity) in his system. These twophases represent superhuman purity. At these two phases human life cannot exist;for all human life entails a mixture of the subjective and the objective, hence "merecomplexities." But their importance lies in the fact that they point to two differentdirections for human beings to pursue perfection. He wrote in his A Vision, "inearly Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious,aesthetic and practical life were one." In addition, we have a great dome, symbolicof inclusiveness and the process of purgation in stanzas 4 and 5.
We can infer that Yeats tried to represent Byzantium as an ideal city where "religious, aesthetic and practical life" are lived out in harmony with the vision ofperfection available to man. But as night becomes day in Byzantium itself,"unpurged images" will surge upon the streets of Byzantium, and so goes on andon the process of purgation.

「비잔티움」-예이츠의 해명이란?*

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