(This article is also included in Crossing the Moonlight
https://book.douban.com/subject/36665669/
Last April, when I was free at home, I accidentally translated Yeats' poems with a friend. I knew very little about this great poet of the twentieth century and the founder of modernist literature before, so when I started translating directly, it was natural to enter the text without preconceived ideas, study carefully word by word, and be driven by questions to do extended reading, eliminate question marks one by one, and explain the process of doubt with insight and association, It may also be an appropriate way to approach this poet who is famous for his mysterious and obscure poetry style.
In the early period, an article entitled "Autumn of Entities"（ The Autumn of Body ）In his prose, Yeats described the symbolist poetry as follows: "With a sudden energy, the words full of spirituality and enthusiasm are gathered together. Those words are like an oriental lamp, and the flame flashes in the red and blue dark glass... The light is refracted from each other, like the true flame color on the gem, and becomes a complete word." If we imitate Yeats, Comparing his own poems to ancient and modern light magic devices, the translation and annotation of these poems, in my opinion, is an interesting process of wiping and rekindling the red and blue dark glass lamps one by one, so that the mysterious flame dance with complete spiritual expression finally emerges. Most of the lights in these magic devices are handled by that friend. He reads a lot of poems and writes them himself. He is an expert in this field.
Now, a year later, we have read or translated many of his poems and essays, and have a certain degree of grasp and understanding of his mystical thought, which is a mixture of metaphysics, philosophy, psychology, and has its own system. From his poems, we have selected the most outstanding and obscure Byzantine poems, Try to analyze the lines of this great poetic alchemist, which were melted by his soul, and present the mysterious flame dance that governs the diverse images.
1： Alchemists of poetry and philosophy
During the half century period from the 1880s to the 1930s, Yeats has always been an energetic and influential presence in the English literary world, rarely maintaining creative passion and artistic standards for life or even higher later; In addition to writing poems, he and his friends launched the Irish Renaissance Movement, created the Irish National Theatre, effectively contributed to the Irish national independence movement in his own way, and once served as a senator of the Irish Free State after independence because of his contributions and reputation. In such a complicated and distinguished life, Yeats has displayed a variety of identities: poet, playwright, philosophical researcher, mystic obsessed with metaphysics, collector of myths and folklore, enthusiastic participant in spiritual media soul calling activities, apprentice of William Morris and interpreter of William Blake, An infatuated lover in a frustrated relationship with an actress and radical patriot, a Nobel Prize winner in literature, and a prodigal son who indulges in the hardships of youth and old age. Among these multiple identities, Yeats most valued poets and philosophy seekers. Poetry is naturally his main passion, but this passion is inseparable from the pursuit of the philosophy of explaining the world. The artistic aesthetics of poetry is integrated with the mysticism ideology.
Yeats was born and grew up in the beginning of a modern world. In the late 19th century, the development of natural science and technology overturned the Christian faith that had dominated the human spiritual world for 2000 years. Although those cold numbers and principles and laws explained the external material world to some extent, they could not fill the gap after the death of God. Therefore, turning back to the ancient times, Tracing back to the origin of ancient Greek civilization, the true knowledge of the soul dimension became a trend that affected almost all fields in that era, and gathered many philosophers, artists, metaphysicians and even scientists. Nietzsche is one of them. His maiden work The Birth of Tragedy discusses the ancient Greek tragic art, and discusses that the confrontation and unity of the spirit of Apollo and Dionysus is the driving force for the development and prosperity of ancient Greek culture, and develops the concept of superman on the basis of the interpretation and promotion of the spirit of Dionysus. Yeats once expressed his feeling of reading Nietzsche's works in a letter to a friend in 1903: "I have never read such an exciting book." It is difficult to say to what extent Yeats was influenced by Nietzsche, whether they borrowed and applied his ideological system or whether their thinking had the same origin. After all, most of the metaphysical mysteries that Yeats began to contact and study earlier also reflect the trend of tracing back to ancient times.
Yeats was deprived of his Christian faith because he read a biological dictionary explaining Darwin's theory in his middle school. From then on, he began to explore and sort out a new set of philosophy to explain the world as a substitute, which is a lifelong process; And the spirituality, which combines many eastern and western mystical elements, such as alchemy, the Red Cross Society of the Rose, the Jewish Cabala, Buddhist Tantrism, ancient Greek pantheism, and neo Platonism, also became popular in Yeats's era. In his early years, he haunted the Theosophical Association, indulged in reading metaphysical books, learning the secret arts of meditation and practice, and successively joined the Theosophical Association, Golden Li Ming Yin Association and other mystical groups, and was the soul of the latter. After middle age, he also practiced a psychic operation called automatic writing with his wife. In addition, the exploration and theory of Freud, Jung and others in the field of psychology can also find different expressions in Yeats' works. Yeats also regarded William Blake, who used painting and poetry to express mysticism, as the spiritual mentor among the literary ancestors, and studied and interpreted his works deeply.
Yeats did not refuse to accept the above knowledge systems, which belong to philosophy, metaphysics, theology and science. He absorbed very rich theoretical materials, integrated them in thinking and practice, and formed a set of his own philosophy or metaphysics system. He wrote The Rose Alchemy successively（ Rosa Alchemica ）Soul of the World（ Anima Mundi ）In 1925, Illusion（ A Vision ）The publication of the book shows that his theoretical system of explaining the world, which he has explored and pondered for many years, has clearly taken shape. In 1937, the last stage of his life, the book was again published after substantial revision.
Compared with his mystical philosophical works, poetry can be called the ultimate crucible of this alchemist of poetry and philosophy. On the one hand, in his poetry, he added poetics dimension to his mystical world view; The other is that poems with deep symbolic color and musical nature are naturally suitable for the transmission and expression of spiritual thoughts.
In the article "Autumn of Substance", Yeats reviewed the track of the gradual development of the poetic tradition from the Finnish epic "Kalevala" through Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare to the Romantic poets in the direction of materialism, and concluded that people have reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, and from decadence (the prelude to symbolism), the poets will return to the top, Exploring the dimensions of the soul in the opposite direction will take the burden of slipping from the priest's shoulder as its own responsibility. The poetry after that is philosophical poetry, poetry about the essence of things rather than things. Yeats's own poetic creation undoubtedly successfully practices this view expressed in his early articles.
2： Byzantine Psalms
Yeats wrote two poems on Byzantium: Toward Byzantium and Byzantium. The latter one is a further elucidation of the previous one. Both of them are recognized as masterpieces, especially the latter one. Wendler's assessment is that there is no one of Yeats's greatest poems.
The two poems were published in 1927 and 1932 respectively. Yeats was over 60 years old at that time. Previously, in 1922, he was elected to the Irish Parliament, and in 1923, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The year he wrote the previous song, he suffered from a pulmonary congestion; In 1930, after an almost fatal Maltese fever, he began to write the latter song. "This poem really warmed me up," he said. Poetry and fame have reached their peak, but people are also in their declining years. What can we use to resist the chill of death? As the two most successful melting of alchemists in poetry and philosophy in their later years, the answer given by Byzantine poetry is that only the immortal soul can fight against the fast decaying body.
How does the soul achieve immortality? In Yeats's view, the contradiction between the two opposite things is the fundamental reason for the development of the world, and the essence of artistic creation is to integrate the opposite poles. His motivation for writing poetry stems from the opposition between soul and body (heart/ego). The soul desires immortality, while the body is obsessed with individual desires. Artists should make unremitting efforts to pursue a strong and pure spiritual realm in their creation, so that the soul can transcend the limitations of individual consciousness, control the physical body, and create perfect works of art, and the soul can be embedded in them to obtain eternal life.
1: Fire Magic and the Theory of the Historical Cycle of the Double Cone
In the book titled "Magic" written in 1907（ Magic ）In his article, Yeats summarized the core of his metaphysical thought and the theoretical basis of all philosophical and metaphysical schools exploring the soul dimension from ancient times and today into the following three points: "(1) The boundaries of our minds are constantly changing, and many minds seem to converge at one place to produce or reveal a big mind, a big energy. (2) The boundary of our memory is also changing. Our memory belongs to a big memory, part of the memory of nature itself. (3) This great mind and memory can be called by the symbol. " Different philosophies and metaphysics schools have discussed and defined the Great Mind and Great Memory respectively, giving different titles and structural distinctions; For example, Platonism, centering on idealism, calls it idea and soul; New Platonism develops the trinity of Taiyi/reason/soul on the basis of Plato's idealism; Black called it the "imaginary world". Whether it is the world of ideas, Taiyi or the world of imagination, it is considered to be an absolute transcendental reality, which is a higher world than the world of our physical senses; The material world is nothing but the ever-changing diffraction and projection of the eternal world.
In Soul of the World（ Anima Mundi , 1917), Yeats initially explained his theory. In ancient Greek philosophy, the four basic elements of the world earth, water, wind and fire were used by him to describe the stratification of the world: earth symbolizes the material level of the world, the daily reality; Water is our conscious world; The wind is the gaseous world of the souls of the dead, while the fire world is the most constant and is the location of immortal souls and eternal beauty. He mentioned that there are two kinds of reality, one is the terrestrial reality, that is, the daily reality and the material world; One is fire condition. The reality on the ground is full of opposite things and contradictions, with only bipolar choices; In the fire reality, there is only music and rest, which is the integration of everything. "On top of all this, I believe that there must be some purpose and governing love, which is the fire that makes everything simple."
His theory of world stratification later appeared in Illusion（ A Vision ）A comprehensive and detailed explanation of the book. For the fire state, he introduced a trinity structure of celestial body/ghost/ghost, and "without hesitation" compared itself to the trinity of neo Platonism: celestial body corresponds to Taiyi, Spirit corresponds to reason, and Ghostly Self corresponds to soul. In the Trinity of Neo Platonism, Taiyi is considered as the existence of God, the root of everything, and the universe is the diffraction object of Taiyi. The process of diffraction is divided into three stages: the first stage is reason (ghost), the second stage is soul (ghost), and the soul can not only backtrack to Taiyi through reason, but also can diffract downward into the material world. According to the theory of neo Platonism and his own three principles of magic, the ghost in the fire state trinity points to the big mind, the ghost (i.e. the world soul) points to the big memory, and the celestial body is the root of everything, pointing to the fire of fire state reality; This trinity is Yeats's fire magic world; The moment when ghosts merge into the celestial body through ghosts is called Beatitude, or the only moment, which lies outside of time. Time is only associated with the material world.
In Yeats's theory, there are two ways to enter the eternal fire state from the ground reality where we are. One is the return of death, when people's souls leave behind the flesh and go through the process of purification, entering a moment that integrates all the memories and impulses of their lives, the only moment (One Single Moment); If the ghost is strong enough to fully grasp the ghost, it will be able to inhabit the eternal celestial body, no longer born into natural life, and become the immortal soul of fire. One is that in the strong and pure mental state of being intoxicated, meditating, or doing their best, the living soul gets rid of individual consciousness, receives the illusion enlightenment from the fire state, glimpses the eternal moment, obtains fusion and transcendental experience, or produces insight, or even achieves immortal achievements.
Here we may need a diagram to help clarify the relationship between many concepts and terms in Yeats's fire state theory.
This is the schematic diagram of the fire state trinity in Yeats's version of Illusion in 1937. There is no ghost on this picture, but Yeats explained that the ghost is the third place, including the Passionate Body and Husk, in the lower right corner of the picture. Among them, Husk is the sense of the body, while the passionate body is the purpose of the shell, which is the passion and emotion gathered from the senses; The ghost is actually a mind, which contains knowledge about the body of passion. It weaves and transforms those passions and emotions into holy ideas in the fusion state; The celestial body is the purpose of ghosts, the crystallization of passion and emotion, the passionate body that sublimates and transcends time, the perfect artwork, and the myth passed down from generation to generation, in which the eternal passion and wisdom condense, making everything simple "some purpose and dominating love", and the holy fire of God (Daimon). The holy fire of the god also lies in the most secret place of each individual's heart. Each individual has his or her own Daimon, which is their ultimate self. Each era or group also has a corresponding Daimon.
From Yeats's exposition of fire reality and eternal moment, in addition to the influence of ancient Greek philosophy, especially neo Platonism, we can also see the shadow of Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit confrontation theory and Freud's and Jung's modern psychological theory. The fire reality is roughly a concept that covers or overlaps with Plato's idea world, the transcendental existence of the trinity of neo Platonism, Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit and Jung's collective unconscious.
After explaining the space we live in, this complex real world, and the other side of the fire world with four elements and two polar opposites, Yeats has another set of Gyre to explain time and human history. The opposite poles promote the development of all things and the world in a spiral way. When the movement towards one pole reaches the pole, the spiral ring collapses, the world reorganizes, and the new spiral movement towards the opposite pole starts again and again. Yeats named these two poles Primary and Antistatic. One cone represents the historical development stage towards the pole. The time span is 2000 years, which is called one generation. Twelve generations constitute a grand year, also known as Plato's Year. For example, two thousand years after the end of the classical period of ancient Greece and Rome, which developed toward the corresponding pole, was the two thousand years after the end of the Christian belief, which developed toward the primitive pole. Before the classical period, the Babylonian Starlight Age was two thousand years toward the primitive pole. The change of each generation is divided by the lunar phase cycle. Each generation can be divided into two millennia, and each millennia is also divided into phases according to the moon phase.
After briefly introducing Yeats's complete theory of space and time in the universe to explain the world and history, we can now answer why it is Byzantium.
2: Why Byzantium?
There is a myth about the origin of the ancient Greek city Byzantium, which contains opposites. Byzance, the Greek prince and son of the sea god, received a Delphi oracle to embark on a voyage. The oracle said that he would find what he wanted in front of a group of blind people. When Byzans came to the Golden Horn Bay, he found that the land on the shore was the best place to build a city, and then he turned his eyes to the other side. When he found that someone had built a city there, he understood the meaning of the oracle: if he was not blind, how could he give up such a superior position and choose the other side?
Byzantium, the city founded by Byzantium, later became the capital of Byzantium, the millennium empire. It is the intersection of East and West in the sense of geography, culture and belief. It is also known as the heaven on earth because of the once brilliant religious arts and culture. It is the holy city of many religions, the intersection of human and heaven.
In the book Illusion, Yeats once said: "If I had the opportunity to go to ancient times to live for a month, I would choose Byzantium, a little before Justinian opened the Cathedral of Saint Sophia and closed the Plato Institute." He believed that, "In early Byzantium, religion, aesthetics and secular life were integrated in an unprecedented way... Painters, mosaic workers, gold and silver craftsmen, and biblical painters were almost impersonal, without individual design awareness, immersed in creation, and felt a collective illusion... The works that many people participated in looked like the works of one person, architecture, and pictures The iron arts of patterns, railings and lamps seem to form a unified image. "
Yeats regards the Justinian era as the eighth phase of the two thousand year historical cycle marked by the birth of Christ, representing the stage of the strongest power of the corresponding pole in a millennium belonging to the primitive pole, as well as the fifteenth phase of the millennium historical cycle, representing the state of civilization in the light of the full moon. In this historical period, the Christian civilization of the primitive pole and the classical civilization of Greece and Rome of the corresponding pole reached a balance and unity, and this state was expressed through art. Sophia Cathedral, built at that time, has stood for more than a thousand years and has been regarded as the symbol of heaven on earth for a long time. The mosaic mosaic art, which was in its heyday at that time, intuitively reflected the complete beauty created by many artists beyond the limitations of self-consciousness under the influence of a collective illusion. In addition, the gold and silver handicrafts of this period also reached a state of perfection.
Therefore, when Yeats wrote the poem heading for Byzantium, he did not want to go to the city now called Istanbul, but expressed his pursuit of an ideal existence state and artistic expression that integrates multiple opposites, that is, the artist overcame the opposition between soul and self, integrated his mind and hands, read the intention, and integrated into "unity of being", They also created works of art with "the complete beauty".
Now let's go into the poem and make a section by section analysis.
3: Driving to Byzantium（ Sailing to Byzantium ）
i
That is not the land of the old. Young people
In each other's arms, birds in the tree
——Those dying generations are singing,
The dense waterfalls of salmon, the sea of blue and white fish,
Fish, animals and birds, praise in the long summer season
All kinds of people who are pregnant, born and dying.
Music immersed in the senses, but they
Let's ignore the monument of ageless wisdom.
That is no country for old men. 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.
"That is not the country of the elderly." A simple opening is both a direct message and a sigh, pointing out the contradiction that occupied the center of the poet's consciousness at that time: the aging people are in a summer country where all kinds of people live forever. The next few lines of Yeats use two classic images to describe the grand opposite in front of the old man: the tree of life and the sea of senses. Like the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, there are men and women in each other's arms under the tree, and birds on the tree, all singing. But even though young people and birds are young, life is just a fast decaying process from the beginning to death, so they are also dying generations; Lines 4-7 belong to the sea of senses: "the dense waterfalls of salmon, the sea of blue and white fish," in those waters, the sea is crowded with life, echoing the music of the senses. The last sentence presents a group of opposites at the core of the poem: sensory music and ageless intelligence.
Whether it is the Trinity of Taiyi/Reason/Soul of Neo Platonism or Yeats's own Trinity of Celestial Bodies/Ghosts/Ghosts, the soul (ghost) in the third place at the lower right corner of the figure can either sink down into the material world, be intoxicated with sensory music, or merge into the celestial body to become immortal through the sublimation of reason (ghost). The sea of senses contains the sense consciousness of all life. Sensory music is the instinct and natural intuition shared by all life; And ageless intelligence is the accumulation of human intelligence achievements from generation to generation. Immortal souls residing in the celestial bodies are the carriers of human intelligence deposited since ancient times, and are a kind of existence beyond the realm of life and death. They will directly reflect the minds of specific recipients (such as prophets or artists) with gaseous images, and teach them the songs of their souls.
ii
Old people are nothing but useless things,
Worn overalls hung on poles,
Unless the soul claps its hands and sings, the higher the song,
For the perishable skin of every thread,
There is no school to teach singing, only research
The forest of steles stands majestically;
So I crossed the ocean and arrived at
Byzantium is the holy city.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, 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;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
The second section continues to strengthen the opposition with the diffraction in the first section in the way of seeking to promote before restraining. An old man is nothing but a scarecrow unless his soul claps and sings. The opposition between the elderly and the life in the midsummer of youth has been individuated here as the opposition between the soul and the decayed body (worn jacket). The image of two hands in harmony points to the fusion of opposites, that is, the soul can sing the music of transcendental wisdom in the state of transcending and completely controlling the body; Entering the fire state means that the soul consumes the body, so the more the body withers, the higher the soul's singing.
Lines 5-6 are probably the most obscure part of the poem. There have been two "monuments" in the whole poem. The last line of the first section, "monuments of ageless wisdom", is the carrier of human collective wisdom. Here, "self" indicates individuality, which is opposite to collectivity; The knowledge gained from "exploration and research" and the collective wisdom gained from meditation and insight also constitute opposition. In connection with his own ideological tendency, what Yeats wants to express here may be that those scholars and artists who only devote their energy to the exploration and description of the external world, their achievements only show the development of their personal minds, and can not jump out of the limitations of individual sense consciousness. He is now living in an environment that is neither a country of the elderly nor a school to teach people to understand truth and explore the dimensions of the soul. Therefore, he yearns to cross the sea of senses and go to Byzantium, the model of civilization under the full moon.
iii
Oh, the sages stand in the holy fire of God,
It seems to be on the wall of gold inlaid with flowers,
Come out of the sacred fire and move in a spiral,
Be the teacher of my soul.
Burn my heart; It becomes ill because of desire,
And bound to the dying beast,
It doesn't know what it is; Please put me in
That timeless ingenuity.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
In the third section, Yeats the scarecrow came to the imagined Byzantium. The sages are the prophets or artists whose souls merge into the fire reality (God's holy fire) after death. The lifelike patchwork figures on the golden wall of the cathedral are gathered from countless pieces made by many craftsmen, just like the collective wisdom of human beings with countless prophets' wisdom, which is transformed into images and displayed in the eyes of the minds of the younger generation in the moment of meditation or insight or sleep. In the third line, the poet, like the spiritual medium at the soul summoning meeting, calls the illusion of ageless intelligence, asks them to come out of the fire reality, project it on his mind, be his teacher, enlighten him, let his soul also learn to sing, and catch a glimpse of eternity in the moment of epiphany/god coming/trance/selflessness. The fifth line, the opposition between the decayed body and the soul is further internalized into the opposition between the heart and the soul. The heart, where the senses converge and desire arises, becomes diseased because of desire, and is part of the fast decaying mortal body, unable to recognize oneself. The last sentence: Eternal craftsmanship, that is, immortal works of art, and fast decaying flesh form another set of diffraction opposites.
iv
Once detached from nature, I will never
Take shape from any natural thing,
The ancient Greek goldsmiths
It is made by hammering and gilding,
It is used to keep the sleeping king awake;
Or perch on the golden branches and sing,
To the princes and ladies of Byzantium,
The past, the future and the future.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
In the fifth section, the soul danced a whirling dance under the guidance/inspiration of the prophet's illusion, and finally entered the fire reality, breaking away from the bondage of the body (equivalent to the artist's transcendence of self-consciousness/heart, starting to accept the images drifting in the unconscious, and the imagination and creativity directly reached the true knowledge/transformation). Yeats expressed his wish to surpass in artistic creation and become an immortal soul like the sage in the holy fire with unremitting efforts. The image of the golden bird was multiple merged by him: it is not only an incredible work of art created by the ancient Greek goldsmiths, but also a celestial body bearing immortal passion and wisdom in the fire reality, and it is also a prototype that always exists in the collective unconsciousness of human beings to emerge/educate/enlighten the hearts of ordinary people and generate new images.
The sentence "keep the king awake when he yearns for sleep" also contains a group of contradictions that need explanation: the sleep of nature and the inspiration of art. In his early poem "The Secret Rose", Yeats once described the embodiment of the beauty of nature. The rose lies in the deep cover of sleepy eyes. Compared with the moment when we glimpse eternity and the artistic inspiration bursts, people who are immersed in the desire of nature (sensory music) show a sleepy state every day. Therefore, the king who is eager to sleep can be awakened by the singing of the golden bird, which represents the beauty of eternal art.
The golden branch image comes from the Aeneas Chronicle. Aeneas enters Hades with a golden branch and returns to the world. The golden branch is a magic object that allows people to transcend the realm of life and death. The golden bird perches on the golden branch, indicating that the golden bird perches on the eternal land. This is in contrast to the image of dying birds singing in the tree in the first section. Yeats once mentioned in his notes: "There was a record of an artificial bird singing on a gold tree. The tree is located somewhere in the Byzantine palace. I use this as a symbol to refer to the eternal intellectual joy, in contrast to the instinctive joy in human life." The golden bird faced the Byzantine princes and ladies, On the branch of reason, sing about the past, the present and the future. The past, the present and the future are integrated in a moment, the only moment, and the eternal bliss: this is Yeats's ultimate yearning. The images in his immortal poems are refined by the alchemy of poetry and philosophy. For future readers, his soul will always reside in it and sing ceaselessly.
4: Byzantium（ Byzantium ）
Yeats recorded the bud of this poem in a diary at the end of April 1930: "describing Byzantium, according to the system, the time is set at the end of the first millennium cycle of Christian faith. A walking mummy. The fire purified by ghosts on the street corner, the golden birds made of hammered gold singing on the golden tree, and in the harbor, they carry the mournful dead to heaven with their backs. These themes have existed in my mind for some time, especially the last one. " In October of the same year, Yeats sent a copy of the poem to T Stetch Moore, explained that this poem was triggered by Moore's criticism of the poem "Driving to Byzantium": "You once objected that the golden bird made by the craftsman at the end of the poem is as natural as anything else. This makes me feel that this idea needs further explanation. Bell is used in Byzantium churches.", Compared with Byzantium under the full moon in the previous poem, the time background of Byzantium in the latter poem was pushed back five hundred years, and came to the fifteenth phase of the two thousand year cycle of Christian faith. The classical culture towards the corresponding pole has declined like a dark night star, while the religious belief towards the primitive pole reached its peak, and the bell of the cathedral resounded across the sea under the star light.
The day's raw image disappears;
The emperor's drunken guard was sleeping;
The sound of the night fades, and the singing of the night walkers
With the bell of the cathedral;
Starlight or moonlight shining on the dome
What people are,
Those mixed mortals,
Anger and mud inside and outside human blood vessels.
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
In this section, the poet made a general statement of Byzantium at the turn of the last millennium from the secular, religious and artistic levels with three groups of opposite things. "The images of the day are fading away; the emperor's drunken guard is sleeping;" The guard was originally a force to protect and govern the city, but was drunk and sleeping. The chaos of the day was not dealt with, and the drunken soldiers also formed part of the chaos, indicating that the military discipline is lax and the order of the city is chaotic. The guard and the urban order constitute a group of opposition at the secular and political levels; The picture of broad daylight is called "image", which also conveys Yeats's idea that the real world is nothing but a phantom existence relative to the higher and more constant soul world. The nocturnal resonance refers to the singing of nocturnal walkers and the ringing of cathedral bells. The ringing of cathedral bells represents the religious power that governs people's spiritual level. According to the first draft, nocturnal walkers, or prostitutes, the religion of abstinence and the prostitutes indicating indulgence constitute the religious opposition; The dome illuminated by starlight or moonlight refers to the dome of Sophia Cathedral, which stands out as an immortal masterpiece of art and is full of contradictions among mortals. Immortal works of art and mortal bodies, the natural objects, constitute the opposition in the artistic level. In short, Byzantium at this time was not a heaven on earth, but a city full of contradictions and trapped in the sleep of nature, which was an example of the ground reality relative to the fire reality.
In front of me floated a phantom, a person or a ghost,
More like ghosts than people, more like ghosts than ghosts;
Because the spool of Hades is wrapped around the dry corpse cloth,
The curved road can be unfolded;
A mouth with neither water vapor nor breath,
Those who hold their breath can call it back;
I call out the phantom of superman;
I call it a ghost in death or a ghost in life.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Phantoms and ghosts are naturally the key research objects of Yeats, a metaphysical esoteric expert. In the article "World Soul" and the book "Illusion", Yeats elaborated on the stratification and transformation of the world between the living and the dead, material and spirit. Ghost is the soul after death, the existence of gas. Phantom is the gaseous projection of the carrier of fire age free intelligence in front of the soul of a prophet or artist. It is neither a ghost nor a human form, but the illusion and manifestation of collective wisdom and abstract ideas.
Yeats was deeply influenced by Nietzsche's thought, and obvious evidence can be seen in this poem, for example, he called the ghost of the soul living in the fire state Superman, and the saying "living soul in death or ghost in life" was also used to describe Aeneas holding a golden bough to surpass life and death in the Aeneid. The spool of Hades can unfold the curved path, so Superman can directly reflect the eyes of the prophets or artists, and it is also beyond the realm of life and death. The image that Hades twines the spool of the dry corpse cloth also refers to the collective unconscious where the dead return. The memories and impulses of life are all intertwined and merged into an axis like cloth, which is similar to the concept of the only moment, another name of bliss.
The breath holding mouth here refers not to the breath free mouth of the dead, but to the breath free state of the soul in the state of meditation or trance. It is the breath holding mouth of the living, and refers to the artists and prophets who enter the state of selflessness and selflessness. Therefore, line 5-6 is to say that Superman's mouth without vapor and breath can be summoned in a strong and pure mental state by artists and prophets who forget to breathe.
Miracles, birds or hands,
It is more magical than the golden art of birds and hands,
Embedded in golden branches illuminated by stars,
Can crow like the cock of Hades in the morning
Or, at the edge of the gloomy moon, laugh loudly,
Shine with constant and unchanged metal,
Dirty birds or petals,
And all mortal bodies mixed with mud or blood.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
After a little observation, we can find that there are parallel sentences and expressions in the second and third sections. Yeats, in his description of the process of seeing the illusion and obtaining artistic inspiration in the state of meditation, displayed the superman's illusion, and then began to describe and display the corresponding works of art, the complete embodiment of beauty. Just as Superman's phantom is neither a person nor a ghost, the miraculous artwork Golden Bird is neither a bird nor a handicraft. It is more magical than birds and handicrafts.
Like Nietzsche, Yeats also regards art as the highest form of survival, and only survival under aesthetic observation can be meaningful. Beauty is the only export of the mortal world. It is said that the golden mechanical bird made by the craftsmen of ancient Greece with the skills of hammering and gilding can sing automatically. Such works of art are not only natural objects, as Moore questioned, but immortal beings perched on golden branches, with the magic power of awakening the dead like the cock of Hades, that is to say, perfect works of art will awaken excitement and inspiration again and again among future generations of admirers.
The golden branches of starlight also point out the time background. The starlight is the weak star light corresponding to the polar force in the millennium cycle, and the moonlight is the moon when the primitive polar religious force is the strongest in the millennium cycle. In Yeats's theoretical system, the moon is the symbol of subjectivity. Religion suppresses subjectivity, so at this time the moon is gloomy. The golden bird has the power to awaken, and also has the power to ridicule the fast-growing and decaying natural things in the mundane world. The golden bird in the immortal soul is the creation of wisdom and passion. It is a moon like and celestial transcendental existence in the dark age.
At midnight, the emperor's stone floor,
The flames flew by without burning wood or being ignited by steel sickles,
The storm is undisturbed, and the flame gives birth to flame,
The ghosts born of blood come here,
Get rid of all the mixture of anger,
Diffuse it in a dance,
A painful suddenly,
A painful flame can't scorch a sleeve.
Riding on the dolphin's mortal body mixed with mud and blood,
The ghost is next to the ghost! The Gold Ware Workshop was separated from the flood.
The emperor's gold workshop!
Marble slab under dance steps
Separate the bitter billows,
Those illusions will still
Generate fresh images,
The dolphin breaks the waves, and the bell disturbs the ocean.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
The fourth and fifth sections are closely related, so they are interpreted together. The fourth section superficially describes that the ghost danced a whirling dance on the stone paved ground at night in Byzantium, ignited the fire of purgatory, and after getting rid of all complicated earthly thoughts and purification, he could ride the Shanghai Dolphin Ferry to the paradise on the other side. This is a mythical story of ancient Greece and Rome. Yeats mentioned in his letter to a friend that he got inspiration when observing a marble sculpture work of Raphael on a related theme. In the poem, he juxtaposes and blends this image with the image of goldsmith forging a golden bird, and also blends the image of ghosts dancing in the fire of purgatory with the image of goldsmith achieving soul transcendence in the process of artistic creation.
During the Byzantine period, marble was widely used in urban buildings. The emperor's stone floor could be either the corner floor or the stone floor of the Jinqifang. The word "ghost born of blood" is even more thought-provoking. If it is the soul of the dead, there is no need to add an adjective, so it is also likely to describe the following scene: during the creation process of goldsmiths, the soul danced in a whirl dance against the flesh, broke away from the flesh, broke away from the shackles of self-awareness, and turned into a ghost to see the phantom of superman, That is, inspired by the existence of some kind of intelligence in the collective unconscious, they are ignited by the flame of inspiration and create extraordinary works of art. The dance of rotation, the trance of pain, and the flame of pain are the three steps of soul purification and transcendence. This also coincides with Nietzsche's analysis of the purification of the soul of the ancient Greek tragic art in the Birth of Tragedy. The tragic heroes in the ancient Greek tragedies fought as hard as they could in their unalterable fate, saw the truth of life in failure, fell into a painful trance, and finally gave up themselves, but because of giving up, they achieved transcendence, and also let the audience's emotions be vented and purified.
Raphael's paintings containing the image of dolphins
The fifth section starts from the image of Raphael sculpture (according to the research of foreign scholars, there is no Raphael sculpture of dolphins carrying ghosts across the sea, Yeats may also mention another sculpture containing dolphins or another mural with related themes, of course, it may also be the impression of integrating many memories), and the purified ghost has been carried by dolphins, In other words, you can control dolphins, the incarnation of primitive impulses of life, cross the sea of senses that integrates all life consciousness, and go to the other shore. In the second line, this image is transformed into an eternal image through the artwork created by the goldsmith. So the second line "The ghost is next to the ghost" is followed by "The Jinqifang is separated from the flood", forming the visual juxtaposition and convergence of the two images. Dolphins with mortal bodies break the waves in the sea of senses, and goldsmiths with mortal bodies also dance the dance of soul transcendence on the marble floor of the Goldware Shop, separating the waves of sense consciousness and desire. Medieval clergy once said that God sealed the fields full of flowers, mountains with green trees, fish and melted snow in marble. Because of its delicate and smooth texture of fusion, marble is often used in Yeats's poems to point to the fusion and transcendence of the soul, to immortality and the divine world.
The last three lines of the poem are recognized as the greatest lines in the history of English literature. They present all life consciousness in a magnificent image. The artist overcomes his own limitations to create perfect works of art and achieves immortality by this process, presenting the transcendence of the beauty of art to ordinary people and the salvation of life. Dolphins break the waves and bell sounds disturb the ocean, which means that the ocean of life consciousness will be disturbed by two opposing forces, namely, dolphins representing life instinct and primitive impulse and bell sounds representing religious power, and will be in perpetual turbulence. The aesthetic existence and the pursuit of immortal artistic creation are the ways to transcend the Saha world, and the creative efforts of generations generate images on the sea. The golden bird of the ancient Greek goldsmith and the marble sculpture containing the image of a dolphin inspired Yeats's Byzantine poems, and which later generations will be inspired by Yeats's Byzantine poems to create new inspiration and new images that will emerge forever in the collective wisdom of mankind?
All regular script characters in this article are quoted from multiple volumes The Collected works of W. B. Yeats , published in the Beijing News on June 13, 2021, which is Yeats's birthday.
Crossing the Moonlight: New Translation and Annotation of Yeats's Poetry
