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4 unusual facts about Sailing to Byzantium


Robert Silverberg

Silverberg received a Nebula award in 1986 for the novella Sailing to Byzantium, which takes its name from the poem by William Butler Yeats; a Hugo in 1987 for the novella Gilgamesh in the Outback, set in the Heroes in Hell universe of Bangsian Fantasy; a Hugo in 1990 for Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another.

Sailing to Byzantium

Cleanth Brooks asks whether, in this poem, Yeats chooses idealism or materialism and answers his own question, "Yeats chooses both and neither. One cannot know the world of being save through the world of becoming (though one must remember that the world of becoming is a meaningless flux aside from the world of being which it implies)".

In the BBC documentary series The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski cites the 'monuments of unageing intellect' as a primary focus for his series of essays.

The Sarantine Mosaic

The title and much of the thematic development alludes to the poem Sailing to Byzantium, a work of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.



see also