one
That place is not suitable for old people. young people
Hug each other, birds in the tree.
Those dying generations are singing.
Waterfalls with salmon, oceans with mackerel,
Fish, meat and poultry have been praising all summer.
All those who are nurtured, born and dead.
They are all obsessed with all kinds of sensory music,
Ignoring the immortal masterpiece of reason.
two
An old man is just a humble object,
Wearing shabby clothes on crutches,
Unless his heart is clapping and singing,
Sing for the rags of the world's clothes;
There is no music school in the world that does not recite songs.
His brilliant landmark works,
So I crossed the sea of Wang Yang,
Come to the holy city of Byzantium.
three
Ah, saints standing in the flame of God,
As the gold mosaic tiles on the wall show,
Please come out of the flame and take part in the operation of the rotating body.
Become a teacher who teaches my soul to sing.
Destroy my heart, it clings to six desires and seven emotions,
Tied to a dying animal without knowing it.
Its own nature; Please take me in.
That immortal handicraft.
four
Once I go beyond nature, I don't want it anymore.
Get a number from anything natural,
It was cast by a goldsmith in ancient Greece.
The body is shaped like gold plating or forging gold.
Awaken the sleeping emperor;
Or put me on a golden branch and sing,
Singing about the past, the future or the present,
Sing it to the ladies and gentlemen of Byzantium.
(translated by Yuan Kejia)
In Ye Zhi's later works, the relationship between old age, life and art is the most involved theme. Sailing to Byzantium reflects his thoughts on these two issues.
When he wrote this poem, he was over 60 years old and his marriage was not very happy. His international reputation can't dilute his frustration. The sadness of feeling old can be reflected in poetry. The first two sections say that Ireland is not a country of old people, where couples, even birds, animals and fish swim in lewdness, and the old people are just "humble objects" and "rags on crutches" So poets will go to Byzantium, which is a place suitable for the elderly. As we have seen in the previous two sections, poets also look down on young people who indulge in the materialistic world, because they are addicted to sensory enjoyment and do not know eternal wisdom and value. This kind of wisdom and value does not exist in the real society, and can only be found in the sacred ancient city of Byzantium.
Byzantium, which Ye Zhi praised time and again. In his view, the Byzantine Dynasty (527-565) under the rule of Emperor Justinian in the 6th century A.D., spirit and material, literature and art and politics and religion, and individual and society were in harmony and unity, which was the only time in history when religious life, aesthetic life and real life could be integrated. So Byzantium is not Istanbul today, but the hometown of a soul, symbolizing his ideal era and ideal country. Its repeated appearance is not only the poet's yearning for the ideal, but also the regret for the defects of modern civilization.
What happened after the last two poets arrived in Byzantium. He asked the saints standing in the sacred flame of God in the mural to help him destroy his "obsession with six desires and seven emotions" and then "put him into an immortal handicraft". Poets would rather stay in a lifeless art world than return to the real world, because everything in nature is dominated by time and will gradually disappear. This shows the conflict between life and art in the poet's concept. He emphasized that the two were incompatible, so he hoped to enter the ancient Byzantium, which was different from the temporary world where lovers indulged in their senses, but a world of soul and eternity.
Therefore, in the end, the poet hoped that he would transcend nature and no longer have a body, but become a golden bird cast by ancient Greek craftsmen and gain eternal life in art. The golden bird here is in sharp contrast with the aforementioned birds, and its advantages are self-evident.
Old age is disappointing, and the only way out is to sublimate short life into eternal art, which is what poetry tells us. It reflects the poet's desire to get rid of material desires and time constraints and move towards rationality and immortality. (Liu Yang)