Talk:Sailing to Byzantium

Untitled

16 October 2007 - I quickly wrote this article a couple years ago. Reading some of it, I can tell this article could use some editing to improve the readability. If anyone wants to improve it, please do! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.192.208.103 (talk) 15:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to add a note to this entry that both Cormack McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Phillip Roth's The Dying Animal derive their titles from this poem. I didn't know how to format it though, I'll let someone else do that, maybe? Also, what is this (DISCovering) business?

Gnomon says: This poem is still under copyright in Europe. Is it OK to reproduce it here?

The servers are in Florida, so it's probably fine.

I've always applied a different understanding to the lines >Nor is there singing school but studying >Monuments of its own magnificence; taking it to be derrogatory---any school is so focused on its past accomplishments that it is of no use to the poet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.104.27.5 (talk) 17:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Sources

This article's layout is one of the bettere I have seen for a poem, but I do not like that so much interpretation of the text is given without a direct reference being used to describe it. While some aspects of a poem can be take for granted (rhyme scheme, meter, etc), the rest can not be explained without a direct source being credited for the information, or else it borders on Origional Research. I would love to see this article better referenced and worked up to GAC status. Mrathel (talk) 17:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I think a lot of the interpretation should just be deleted. It's a high school essay, not an encyclopedia article. Stuff like this: "Therefore, the speaker has 'sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium'" is pretty unacceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.73.70.209 (talk) 23:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of the commentary seems entirely out of order. eg. the second stanza's commentary requires you to have already read the fourth stanza. --Gwern (contribs) 13:16 31 August 2010 (GMT)

The commentary is in many ways quite amateurish. This poem makes considerable reference to Yeats' mystical ideas on historical cycles (including things like 'perns in gyres'), which placed Byzantium in a central historical position. The same sort of historical thinking is found in The Second Coming, which again refers to gyres. There's no need to go into complicated detail about these rather eccentric beliefs, but the idea that Byzantium is an 'eternal city' is not just some fuzzy poetical allusion, it's rooted firmly in a mathematically worked out view of historical cycles. So, yes, we really do need research and sources. 202.131.238.35 (talk) 09:05, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Popular Culture

Just noticed the following: "Bruce Sterling's 1996 novel Holy Fire takes its title from the third stanza." In 1997, I emailed Bruce Sterling at his well.com address to ask if the title of "Holy Fire" was a reference to Yeats and he said no. Unless he has since changed his mind, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that a two word title which coincides with two words of a poem definitively means that the title is a quote from the poem. Jonathanwallace (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Emailed him again and Sterling confirmed the title was not taken from the poem. Jonathanwallace (talk) 11:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Looked at a copy of Roth's "The Dying Animal" and there is no epigraph citing Yeats. I haven't read it, does anyone know if Yeats is referenced in the text? If not, I question the assertion the title was taken from the poem. May I propose a rule (you can call it the Wallace rule if you like) that book titles not be attributed to poems unless they consist of a unique or unusual phrase from the poem of at least five words? This would leave "No Country for Old Men" but eliminate both "The Dying Animal" and "Holy Fire". I will wait a week or so, then edit the Roth reference accordingly if no-one provides more information, or objects. Jonathanwallace (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Nobody responded so I made the edit. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:30, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Talking to myself here but as I spend more time looking at Wikipedia policies, I don't think my footnote to an email from Bruce Sterling is an appropriate source. I will wait a day or so for others to respond, but I think the best solution is to delete the Sterling reference entirely. Without my footnote, it is an unsourced assertion that a two word title is derived from a particular poem, and is therefore questionable and worthy of deletion. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:11, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

We leave the reference to Sterling's work out of the article completely. It is superfluous information and not relevant. Stuff does not need to be proven that it does not exist. The connection between Yeats and Sterling is completely made up and is someone's WP:OR by association. It's nonsense value is the same as saying: 'Kudpung's book about Thai food Let It Be Chilly is based on a song by Paul McCartney', and expecting it to be proven that it isn't (it isn't) by citing a reliable source. Sterling has been good enough to point out the inaccuracy in the Wikipedia. Kudpung (talk) 01:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Synthesis

Now that I've been editing Wikipedia for a while, I have come to understand that this article is complete synthesis, really a college paper on the poem. I will add some sources and/or stub the article within a few days. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)