Yeats wrote two poems on Byzantium: one is “Sailing to Byzantium” written in 1926 and the other is “Byzantium” written in 1930. The two poems are called the Byzantium Poems. In both poems, the reality and the ideal coexist, as Yeats himself said that “Each age unwinds the thread another age had wound, and it amuses one to remember that before Phidias, and his westward-moving art, Persia fell, and that when full moon came round again, amid eastward-moving thought, and brought Byzantine glory, Rome fell; and that at the outset of our westward-moving Renaissance Byzantium fell; all things dying each other’s life, living each other’s death.” What Yeats said about Byzantium as a symbolic city can be said about Ireland where the poet himself lived. That means he depicted the same world in dual perspectives. He said if he were to choose a city where he would live a month, he would pick up Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. The reason is that religious, aesthetic and practical life were one in the town and at that time. We can say that what Yeats described in the Byzantium poems is the world where religious, aesthetic and practical life are one and the same.

• 최희섭(전주대학교) | Choi, Hie Sup