Islam 1

Assignments

On

Vision of Byzantium and its Underlying Meaning W. B. Yeats’ Byzantium Poems.

Prufrock and Geronation: A Comparative and Contrastive Analysis of the Two

Characters.

Submitted by

Sanzana Islam

Batch: 44th

ID: 193-128-001

Eng-603

Submitted to

Prof. Suresh Ranjan Basak PhD

Dean

School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Department of English

Metropolitan University, Sylhet.

Date: 31st March 2020

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Vision of Byzantium and its Underlying Meaning in W. B. Yeats’ Byzantium Poems.

Byzantium is a symbolic poem that started life as a note in the diary of W.B.Yeats in

1930. He'd long been an admirer of Byzantine art and culture and wanted to combine this

passion with his belief in the spiritual journey of the artistic human soul.

'Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian

millennium. A walking mummy. Flames at the street corners where the soul is

purified, birds of hammered gold singing in the golden trees, in the harbour dolphins

offering their backs to the waiting dead that they may carry them to Paradise.'

Yeats developed this initial scene into a five stanza dream-like drama that is packed with

symbols, allusion and visual strangeness. It has a sister poem 'Sailing to Byzantium' 

published earlier in 1925.

Although the reader is aware of being grounded in some sort of historic city -

Byzantium started life as a Greek colony before becoming Constantinople under the Romans

and is now modern Istanbul - the feeling persists that this could all be someone's exuberant

dream laid bare in the imagination of Yeats.

The narrative is both impersonal and personal; the speaker commentates from a

distance then comes closer to the reader with detailed first person description. There are

repeated words, ambiguous phrases, allusions to mythology, real experiences and unreal

experiences all kept under control by long and shorter, mostly iambic, rhyming lines.

It is known that Yeats had a great enthusiasm for the ancient culture of Byzantium. He

believed it represented an ideal, that the community who lived and worked there were

somehow united in spiritual and artistic purpose. Artistic achievement was proof of this

heightened awareness.

Yeats was also a restless questing individual who, although not conventionally

religious in a churchgoing sense, experimented with and actively pursued alternative spiritual
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goals. He became seriously involved with theosophy, the Cabbala, Hermeticism and

Spiritualism.

In his esoteric, philosophical work, A Vision, Yeats sets out his world view and how

humanity fits into a cosmic system of existence. For him, the cultural and artistic energies of

Byzantium were a perfect form, peaking at a special time in cyclic history. He wrote:

'I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I

would spend it in Byzantium.....I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or

since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that

architect and artificers spoke to the multitude and the few alike.'

So what to make of this symbolic fantasy in rhyme? It combines art, history and esoteric

themes that Yeats studied and experimented with for most of his adult life. It weaves

mythology and symbolism in and out of scenes of spiritual transformation.

W. B. Yeats wrote his visionary poem, The Second Coming, in January 1919 when he

was 44 years old. Already established as a poet, theatre director, politician and esoteric

philosopher, this poem further enhanced his reputation as a leading cultural figure of the time.

In a 1936 letter to a friend, Yeats said that the poem was 'written some 16 or 17 years

ago and foretold what is happening', that is, Yeats poetically predicted the rise of a rough

beast that manifested as chaos and upheaval in the form of Nazism and Fascism, bringing

Europe to its knees.

Yeats had lived through tough times - World War 1 had seen unprecedented

slaughter; several Irish Nationalists had been executed in the struggle for freedom; the

Russian revolution had caused upheaval - and The Second Coming seemed to tap into the

zeitgeist.

'My horror at the cruelty of governments grows greater' he told a friend. His poem

seems to suggest that world affairs and spirituality must undergo transformation from time to
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time. Humankind has to experience darkness before the light can stream in again through the

cracks. Things might fall apart, systems collapse - spiritual refreshment can only be achieved

through the second coming: a Christian concept involving the return of Jesus Christ on Earth.

The cyclical structure of “Sailing to Byzantium” outlined above may be behind the

most often cited reactions to the poem. Yeats appears to have received this criticism on

“Sailing to Byzantium” from his friend T. Sturge Moore, which, ultimately, appears to have

led to the writing of “Byzantium.” Moore wrote: “[‘Sailing to Byzantium’] lets me down in

the fourth [stanza], as such a goldsmith’s bird is as much nature as a man’s body.”44 Indeed,

the element bird, as it bridges the natural and the eternal realms, is partly in nature. Moore’s

criticism, therefore – contrary to a widespread suggestion – might not have been seen by

Yeats as an observation that invalidated the structure of “Sailing to Byzantium.” It might

have merely meant, as Yeats himself wrote to Moore, that “the idea needed exposition.”

Finneran, along similar lines, suggests that “Moore had explicated the main idea of ‘Sailing

to Byzantium’ rather precisely – while thinking that the poem was attempting to say

something else.”

“Byzantium,” written in 1930, does reiterate many of the elements of “Sailing to

Byzantium”; moreover, its internal structure shares some characteristics with the other poem.

In “Byzantium,” the stanzas also seem to motivate separate images, but they are connected by

more than a temporal link and the recurrence of certain minims – connections that could also

be found in the earlier poem.

At the beginning of the first stanza, we find the element of the Emperor, whose

“soldiery are abed” (2). The description of dusk already contains a dual set-up of elements

reminiscent of the two contrary worlds of “Sailing to Byzantium.” On the one hand is “a

starlit or moonlit dome” (5) which “disdains” things placed on the other: man, complexities,

fury, mire, veins. These latter elements motivate a sub image of mortal life in the same
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manner as the first stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium” contains a description of life in nature.

Opposed to this image one finds celestial elements (star, moon) and an artificial, artistic

element serving as the exhibit of this portion of the text (dome), which may evoke the idea of

eternity as represented in/by undeceiving, seemingly timeless phenomena.

The analyses of the two Byzantium poems of W. B. Yeats have shown how a

common theme may be treated in essentially different ways. “Sailing to Byzantium” contrasts

the view of the ephemeral, worthless world with the vision of eternal art and Byzantium; its

structure is more linear, with the temporal dimension rooted in the interpretation, not in the

representation, as happens in “Byzantium.” In the latter poem, vision takes over, expelling

view, and becomes the view itself; the lyrical “I” is more suppressed; linearity, apart from

some vague hints at the passing of time, almost disappears.

At the same time “Byzantium,” especially because of the disappearance of the view,

is harder to interpret in itself. It is as if the poem relied on “Sailing to Byzantium” for a

context against which it becomes intelligible.

All of the differences between the poems listed above and taken from different layers

and levels point to the suggestion that “Byzantium” is an inherently symbolic text whereas

“Sailing to Byzantium” approximates that mode of writing without being entirely controlled

by it. This conclusion links and puts in a new light the various observations (regarding the

presence of the lyrical “I,” the use of rhetorical figures, etc.) made about the two Yeats texts,

and it also connects the arrival at symbolism with the arrival in the city of Byzantium, a place

constructed entirely out of a vision that appeared in front of the traveler.

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Prufrock and Geronation: A Comparative and Contrastive Analysis of the Two

Characters.

The 20thcentury, from its birth, marks cataclysm in all spheres of human life,

particularly through two World Wars, affecting the thoughts and activities of modern

generation. Such impacts and changes have been captured by the poets and writers, and they

are reflected in their works. Among them, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)—a poet, philosopher and

critic of the century—observed keenly and presented the society successfully through his

poems. The poems, he composed, are apparently complicated and abstruse in nature for

versatile allusions and complex fragmentation, yet they sharply pinpoint the picture of

disjointed modern world. His poems reflect post-war generation, their deformities in forms of

psychological intricacies, spiritual drought, sexual barrenness, degeneration and even

dehumanization, and foreground a certain quest for redemption. This paper examines Eliot‘s

poems namely ―The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‖ (1915),―Gerontion‖ (1920), The

Waste Land (1922)and ―The Hollow Men‖ (1925) in the light of Modernism. Though the

poems were written and published in different years in between 1920s and 1930s, each of

themholds strong applicability even after the Second World War, containinghomogeneity in

nature,content and implication.To have fuller grasp over modern life, the poems need

expansive reading and analysis. This paper also aims at highlighting the homogeneity of the

afore-mentioned poems in expounding indictment of post-war generation. Furthermore, the

concept of redemption suggested by Eliot has also been put to reassessment.

Eliot was a versatile genius—a poet, playwright, essayist, literary and social critic,

and a philosopher. The poet, an American by birth and a British by choice, called himself

―classicist in literature, royalist in politics and AngloCatholic in religion‖ (qtd. in Levinson

121). A voracious reader, he studied and mastered language, theology, history and

philosophy, and long before commencement of his literary career, he found tremendous
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impetus and interest in the French Symbolists—Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and

Laforgue—whom he first encountered in 1908, in a book by Arthur Symons called The

Symbolist Movement in Literature. Stephen Coote suggests, ―The French Symbolist poets

were of great importance to Eliot‘s development‖ (20). The year 1914 was a turning point for

Eliot as it was the year Eliot met Ezra Pound (1885-1972), his real mentor and a proponent of

imagism. Pound actually encouraged Eliot, helped him write and publish his early poem like

―The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‖. Cootepoints out:

[Ezra] Pound was a brilliant sponsor of young literary talent, and Eliot was one of the

finest disciples among the London Literary figures. Pound set about grooming Eliot,

concerning himself generously in the material details of his life and borrowing money

for the publication of The Love Song of J .Alfred Prufrock and Other Observations.

(21)

Thus the French Symbolist poets and Pound paved the way for Eliot and a new literary trend

called Modernism. Besides, Pound appreciated Eliot‘s poems and style of Modernismand

praised Eliot as a modernist poet pronouncing that Eliot ― has actually trained himself and

modernized himself on his own‖ (qtd. in Eliot 7). The statement clarifies how Eliot has turned

out to be a self-made modernist.

Modernismis the concept used to imply a polygonal movement or revolutionary

practices especially in literature, arts, music, film, architectureand the visual.Though the term

is oftenplaced to mean a period of time approximately between 1910s and 1940s, it actually

emerged as a literary movement in the 1890s, reached its peak in the wake of World War I,

and remained influential to the late 1940s. The term cannot be taken as a singular consistent

movement; rather,it functioned as a multifaceted platform where a variety of movements,

artifacts, thinkers, artists, and cultural practices came together under an umbrella term called

‗Modernism‘. It shook the base of literature adopting diverse, distinguished and novel
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characteristics in contents and concepts, language and styles, expression and narration, and

structure of a literary work. Jeff Wallace declares Modernism as ―the moment at which art

stops making sense‖(3). The termis defined by J.A. Cuddon as ―A breaking away from

established rules, traditions and conventions, fresh ways of looking at man‘s position and

function in the universe, and many experiments in form and style‖ (516). Peter Barry

considers it an ―Earthquake in the arts which brought down much of the structure of

pretwentieth century practice in music, painting, literature and architecture‖ (78). Modernism

is therefore regarded as the herald of changes and experimentation because it has opened up

ways for diversity in literature.

T.S. Eliot’s earlier poems, published in two volumes titled Prufrock and Other

Observations (1917) and 1920 (initially named Ara Vos Prec) have been eclipsed by The

Waste Land (1921) and its extraordinarily rich, multifaceted reception. Yet most of the

poems contained in these first two books prefigure what was to come later: what explodes in

The Waste Land is as it were latent in the verses that preceded it. Although it may sound

paradoxical, we could even state that the poems written before 1921 complete the poem that

followed them. This impression is reinforced by the fact that most readers come to “The Love

Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “Gerontion” 1 after having read Eliot’s best-known poem,

even perhaps with some critical or historical knowledge about it.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse Eliot’s earlier production, in search of

consistencies with the later poems (especially The Waste Land) in terms of imagery, where

they are more obvious. A number of images will be discussed in the sections that follow;

together, they make up an imagery cluster or construct that could be labelled “the city,” or, as

suggested by the title, “the proto-wasteland,” since it contains, developed or in embryo, some

of the basic components of “the wasteland” construct, more complex in its range of images

and the meanings they convey.

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Other poems in Prufrock, such as the “Preludes,” also offer a dispassionate view of

the city as a puzzling, troubling realm of impersonality and soulless life. In the lines that

follow, profusely synaesthetic, the poet uses synecdoche to refer to the citizens in the streets

(whom he seems to be watching from a window or from a distance), grabbing a coffee before

going about their everyday tasks. Interestingly, the city is personified (endowed with a

conscience), whereas the people who wander in it are reduced to body parts, performing

automatic actions:

The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

From the sawdust trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands. (14-18)

“’Gerontion,’ in 1919, marks a second crystallization and synthesis which lifts it entirely

above the rank of the poems composed at about that time, such as ‘The Hippopotamus’ or ‘Mr. Eliot’s

Sunday Morning Service’ which read as though they were the work of a much younger, less mature

man…. The reader of ‘Gerontion’ had to learn how to supply the missing connectives…. The verse of

‘Gerontion’ reveals the fullest impression of Eliot’s mastery of the Jacobean dramatists….’[Edward]

Fitzgerald in his pathetic, charming, and impotent old age, pondering on the pessimism of Omar

[Khayyam], and beating out the futility of his final years, may have crystallized in Eliot’s mind the

situation…of “Gerontion”.’

J. Alfred Prufrock: The speaker/narrator, a timid, overcautious middle-aged man. He

escorts his silent listener through streets in a shabby part of a city, past cheap hotels and

restaurants, to a social gathering where women he would like to meet are conversing.

However, he is hesitant to take part in the activity for fear of making a fool of himself. 

Overall, Eliot’s poems “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”and “ Geronation” he

was using both traditional and innovative poetic techniques an devices in his work. And he
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also uses fragments in his poems. “Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in

one of Shakespeare’s plays. And “Geronation” displayed by the World War II.