Yeats and Symbolism Born in 1865, William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright and one of the twentieth century’s foremost literary masters. Yeats is partly credited with the Irish Literary Revival and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. Even though he rejected Christianity, Yeats was spiritual; he developed a unique, philosophical belief system that emphasized fate, historical determinism, and the notion that history is cyclical; Yeats eventually began using the image of a gyre to represent his spiritual canon. Yeats believed that the era he lived in was the end of the Christian-Cycle of the world and the beginning of the Human-Cycle. Much of Yeat’s inspiration was derived from mythologies, mysticism, and the occult of Ireland and other cultures, Christianity included; other inspiration, in his later years, developed from the Irish Rebellion, the Russian Revolution, World War I, and other political matters of his era. Much of the symbolism Yeats uses draws heavily from his metaphysical beliefs; he used well-known symbols to get his point across as well as cryptic and ambiguous symbols to keep his works relevant throughout time. In the poems “The Second Coming” and “Sailing to Byzantium”, Yeats uses symbolism to make poignant, haunting statements on the contemporary issues of his time involving society and human existence that, by his own design, are still relevant today. In the poem “The Second Coming”, Yeats is waxing poetic over the chaos created by war and political strife. His belief in historical determinism is hinted at with the line “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”. It’s also a reference to his cyclical beliefs in that, the conclusion of one era is the beginning of the next, which is strengthened by the next line: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” an allusion that can be construed as the worker-classes ignoring their rulers. Put together, these two lines symbolize the wars and revolutions that plagued Europe during Yeat’s era, as well as those that came before. Also, the lines are meant to transcend time; a current example would be the recent revolution in Egypt, were the people ousted their political leaders. Later in the poem, when Yeats ponders if the Second Coming is at hand, he again alludes to cyclic history and the end of a cycle. The reference of a sphinx-like creature being circled by “indignant desert birds,” birds that could be construed as vultures circling a dying animal, could possibly symbolize the coming death of the old order; in describing the sphinx-like creature with “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” Yeats could be describing how apoplectic the old order becomes when faced with the new. Towards the end of the poem, Christian doctrine and symbolism is again invoked. “That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” symbolizes the approximately two centuries of Christian belief; to expand on that, it could be interpreted to mean that the old order can see its end coming. And, as for the rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem, might that mean the coming of the anti-Christ or perhaps the end of Christianity? With divinity and mysticism aside, the last lines of the poem are relevant today because of the number of people moving away from organized religion. Written in his older years, “Sailing to Byzantium” is Yeat’s poetic treatment on growing old. By Yeat’s own account, he was trying to write about the state of his soul at the age of sixty. The poem opens without symbolism with the line “That is no country for old men.” The next five lines symbolize the circle of life from conception to birth to death. The last two lines of the first stanza makes a statement on the elderly that’s true today; “Caught in the sensual music all neglect monuments of unaging intellect.” Symbolizing older folks as monuments of unaging intellect symbolizes the aging of the body but not the intellect; those caught in the sensual music while neglecting their elders are the youth that are busy copulating, raising families, and living their lives. In the next stanza Yeats says that “An agéd man is but a paltry thing,” and then symbolizes him as a tattered coat on a stick, loose skin and bones. “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.” In this line I interpret Yeats as saying that you have to keep “clapping and singing” to remain young; true enough, even today. But, he presents a valid, circular argument in that eventually there will not be any more new songs, merely the ones the agéd already know. I believe this is also Yeats commenting on how the agéd tend to oppose change and new things. In the third stanza, if taken literally, Yeats is asking sages to teach his soul new songs, to keep him young. I contend that it’s a symbol of the elderly communing with their maker, as Byzantium was once the seat of the Eastern Holy Roman Empire and would have had many churches before it was sacked by the Turks. In the last stanza, Yeats is looking to become immortal through art. Symbolized as “a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep a drowsy Emperor awake.” A modern parallel could be actors and singer that want to be famous and remembered, in effect making them immortal. The last line of the poem reinforces the theme of circular patterns with “of what is past, or passing, or to come.” | Yeats was a poet and a master at his craft. He was well versed in the use of rhyme and meter in poetry. At first a romantic poet and later influenced by modernist poets Yeats relied heavily on symbolism to link contemporary issues of his day with poetry. His belief in cyclical theories, mysticism, and the occult permeates his writing which still has relevance to this day. |

Reference List
Yeats, W.B. “Sailing to Byzantium.” Literature and the Writing Process. 9th Ed. McMahan, Elizabeth, et al. Boston: Longman. 2011. Print.
Yeats, W.B. “The Second Coming.” Literature and the Writing Process. 9th Ed. McMahan, Elizabeth, et al. Boston: Longman. 2011. Print.
“Yeats, William Butler.” Wikipedia.com. Wikipedia, Dec. 2011. Web. 19 Dec. 2011.