From Innisfree to Byzantine: Nature and Culture in W. B. Yeats’ Critique of Civilisation

Can a poet be described as both conservative and revolutionary at the same time? The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, seems to fit the bill. On the one hand, his poems can be filled with the fervour of political protest; but there is also the inherent “conservative” outlook that cannot be denied. Especially in early decades of the twentieth century, while other poets embraced the innovations of modernism, Yeats’ poems maintained their traditional verse forms and rhyme schemes. The strict, traditional poetic forms coupled with classical and mythological themes and motifs create an orientation that seems to favour the past, repudiate the present and dismiss the future.

It would be overly simplistic, however, to label Yeats’ poems conservative, backward looking and lacking in emotional force. Rather, traditional forms and contents are used to mount critiques – impassioned yet within the constraints of aesthetic measures – of the precarity and decay of human civilisations, foremostly the one he was living in. It is not an idealised past per se these poems seek, but rather the ideal of spiritual transcendence and timelessness, as two of his poems, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “Sailing to Byzantium” illustrate. “Innisfree” was dated to 1890, when Yeats was still a young man in his late twenties; whereas “Byzantine” was written in 1927, when the poet was in his sixties. There are alterations in sentiments from the beginning of his career to a mature old age, but both poems show a contrast of nature and culture, one way or another, as critique of human civilisations.

Innisfree

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” depicts an imaginary journey, a deep desire to flee from modern urban civilisation and to pursue a spiritual living in harmony with nature. This is achieved through both formal features and rich imagery. The poem has three stanzas of four lines each, using an abab cdcd efef rhyme-scheme. In each stanza there are firstly three lines that are roughly hexametric, in which consonance, assonance, and especially alliteration abound to create a dream-like tranquillity.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

(lines 1-12)

The phrases “cabin … of clay and wattles made” (2), “live alone in the bee-loud glade” (4), “glimmer … glow” (7), and especially the almost onomatopoeic “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore”(10), create a profound sense of tranquility, but the lulling regularity is broken by a shorter, pentametric last line, which begins with two gentle iambic feet, but finishes with a cluster of three strong beats. The last line of the third quatrain and of the whole poem,

I ^x hear ^/ it ^x in ^/ the ^x deep ^/ heart’s ^/ core ^/,

presents a rhythm that resembles heart beats: da DA da DA da DA DA DA. Both the shortened length and the last triple stress imitating the accelerating heart beat create a profound sense of yearning felt in the heart, conveyed here through a perfect union of the sound and the sense of the words (“deep heart’s core”). In sum, the poetic style and conventions are used to achieve an aesthetic quality and emotional effect.

But aesthetics and emotions are not the only purposes; instead, the expression of longing for natural simplicity speaks against the industrialised civilisation of the late 19^th century England. Nature here represents the spiritual calling of the poet as he rejects the soulless urban culture represented metonymically by “the roadway” and “the pavements grey” (12). The poet imagines dwelling in a hut built with mud and twigs (2), among nine bean-rows and a honey-bee hive (3). The natural surroundings at various times of day are also described, not in a chronological procession, but rather in a montage of images, replete with mingling sounds, colours and movements: bees buzzing (4), crickets chirping (6), songbirds singing and flapping wings (8), and light glistening in purple hue (7). The descent of peace is described in a metaphor of the slow movement of dew drops from the mystic “veils of the morning” (6). Then in the second last line, the sharp discordant contrast is drawn between the natural beauty and plenitude just described and the gloominess and barrenness of the reality of modern city (11).

The contrast is not simply an expression of the poet’s denunciation of England and urban culture and his admiration for Ireland and rural culture; rather, the journey to the Lake Isle of Innisfree symbolises a spiritual pilgrimage to the transcendent. The quasi-religious fervour is especially felt with intertextuality taken into consideration. The opening line, “I will arise and go now,” which is then repeated in the first line of the third stanza, creates a connection with the biblical parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:15), and the arising and going to Innisfree thus becomes a repentance, a turning of the back to the materialistic world and a return to one’s original calling. In addition, Yeats’ “honey-bee” (3) and “bee-loud glade” would recall the fact that honey is the signature food for John the Baptist, the prototype of Christian monastics, who lived in the wilderness and preached repentance in preparation for the coming of God.

In “Innisfree” Yeats also demonstrated great kinship with the tradition of Ireland’s poems of hermits, the so-called “green martyrs”. The images and themes of “Innisfree” bring to mind many similarities with medieval Irish poems, such as “The Hermitage” attributed to St. Manchan of Offaly, and “The Hermit” and “The Hermit’s Song” by anonymous writers, which describe ancient Irish Christian mystics who crafted beehive huts in the woodlands and who, in solitude and in nature, embraced voluntary “death” to the world and sought encounter with the divine (Harrington 18). Yeats’ poem, of course, does not have explicit religious references, but the depiction of nature in its intertextuality reveals a deep yearning for experiencing the transcendent.

Byzantine

Similar to “Innisfree,” “Sailing to Byzantium” written in Yeats’ more mature age depicts also an imaginary journey through the waters into a transcendent world. But this time the poet departs not only from the ephemeral world of human civilisation, but also from the unending process of ageing and disintegration. Similar to “Innisfree,” “Sailing to Byzantium” also utilises traditional literary form and content to shape poetic thoughts and to create impact on the reader. However, this time nature no longer represents transcendence; instead, it is the ancient culture of Byzantium that provides the symbols of immortality.

The theme of heroic quest is suitably enfleshed in four stanzas in Ottava Rima, a form traditionally established for epic and narrative verse. The first two stanzas use nature as symbol for the transient and perishable world, which is renounced in the startling opening line:

“That is no country for old men”

line 1

One may wonder whether the poet refers to his beloved Ireland or Europe, but “that country” simply represents the materialistic world, where nature’s fecundity is nothing but a trap of endless decay and death, disguised in the desperate fleshly passions of the young, the hedonistic songs of birds, and the frantic sea-crowding of salmons and mackerels:

.. … 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 unageing intellect.

lines 1-8

The use of full or partial alliterations in three words, “Fish, flesh, or fowl” (5) and “begotten, born, and dies” (6), augments the impact of the sensual and senseless image of nature, neglecting “unageing intellect” (8). As part of nature, the human body receives particular attention in the second stanza, contrasted with the soul.

The aged body is “paltry,” a perishable “tattered coat upon a stick” (9-10); but the soul that learns how to sing becomes – like the “unageing intellect” (8) – a monument “of its own magnificence” (14). The poet thus declares, astonishingly:

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

lines 15-16

The next two stanzas describe the spiritual transformation taking place there.

The Byzantine culture was famous for its monumental cathedral of Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), where the Divine Liturgy amidst golden mosaic icons and sonorous songs enchanted the envoys of the Prince of Rus in the tenth century, who reportedly described their encounter with transcendent beauty saying, “We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth …” (Clendenin 12).

Likewise, the poet’s own soul “knows not what it is” (23), but he fervently petitions the deified “sages” to come down from divine fire in a whirl of wind (19) and “be the singing-masters of my soul” (20). He beseeches the sages to “consume,” like fire does, his heart “sick with desire” (21), to detach it from the body the “dying animal,” and to “gather” it “Into the artifice of eternity” (22-24). The word “artifice” here must not be interpreted as deception or trickery, but should be understood in its medieval Latin root denoting masterly craftmanship. Just as intellect alone is ageless, the beauty of art alone leads to immortality.

Whatever is symbolised by nature is totally discarded:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing

lines 25-26

Instead, he asks the artificers to transform his soul into a gold-enamelled songbird with an intellect to sing of eternity, in the icons amidst the sages in God’s holy fire (27-32). The alliterating words “what is past, or passing, or to come” (32) form a contrast with “begotten, born, and dies” (6), as does the bird of beauty and intellect “upon a golden bough” (30) with the natural “birds in the trees” (2). The journey out of nature into the otherworldly culture of Byzantium, then, is not merely a nostalgia for the past, but a quest for knowledge and wisdom surpassing time.

Both “Innisfree” and “Sailing to Byzantium” concern crossing waters to an idealised place, rejecting materialistic and sensuous living (Thorton 290). These two poems are no doubt merely an insignificant sample of W. B. Yeats’ works. However, they demonstrate quite vividly how natural and cultural symbols in Yeats’ poetry function in different ways, but nevertheless express the same critique of human society and civilisation and the profound desire for an existence beyond the ephemeral and the transient. One can see this desire even more intensified in the later poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” with more complex symbolism captured from nature and culture. It is indeed incorrect to simply label Yeats’ poems as conservative and backward-looking. Rather, beneath the traditional poetic forms and tropes is a revolutionary spirit against the materialistic and mundane world, made manifest with an enduring aesthetic and intellectual vigour.

Works cited

Clendenin, Daniel B. Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Western Perspective. Baker, 2003.

Harrington, Maura Grace. “A Millennium’s Journey into ‘the Deep Heart’s Core’: William Butler Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree and Green Martyrdom.” Yeats Eliot Review vol. 26 no. 1, 2009, pp. 17–20.

Thornton, R. K. R. “How Far Is It from Innisfree to Byzantium?” Irish Studies Review, vol. 11, no. 3, 2003, pp. 285–91.

Yeats, W. B. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, edited by John Leonard, 5^th ed. Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 202.

Yeats, W. B. “Sailing to Byzantium.” Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, edited by John Leonard, 5^th ed. Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 210.

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