SOURCE: Bradford, Curtis. “Yeats's Byzantium Poems: A Study in their Development.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 75, no. 1 (March 1960): 110-25.

In the following essay, Bradford examines Yeats's creative process by comparing early and later drafts of Yeats's “Sailing to Byzantium.”

1. Background

Yeats's interest in Byzantine art and civilization began in the Nineties and continued through his life. The first issue of “Rosa Alchemica” (1896) refers to the mosaic work at Ravenna (“mosaic not less beautiful than the mosaic in the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of a less severe beauty”),¹ work which Yeats probably saw when in 1907 he travelled in Italy with Lady Gregory. Unfortunately, Yeats has left us no account of his visit to Ravenna. A revision of “The Holy Places,” final section of Discoveries, made for the 1912 edition of The Cutting of an Agate, shows that between 1906 and 1912 Yeats's knowledge of Byzantine history had increased. In 1906 he...