By Elder Olson (The University of Kansas Literary Review, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Spring, 1942, pp. 95-105.)
In "Sailing to Byzantium" an old man faces the problem of old age, of death, and of regeneration, and gives his decision. Old age, he tells us, excludes a man from the sensual joys of youth; the world appears to belong completely to the young, it is no place for the old; indeed, an old man is scarcely a man at all—he is an empty artifice, an effigy merely, of a man; he is a tattered coat upon a stick. This would be very bad, except that the young also are excluded from something; rapt in their sensuality, they are ignorant utterly of the world of spirit. Hence, if old age frees a man from sensual passion, he may rejoice in the liberation of the soul; he is admitted to the realm of the spirit; and his rejoicing will increase according as he realizes the magnificence of the soul. But the soul can best learn its own greatness from great works of art; hence he turns to those great works, but in turning to them, he finds that these are by no means mere effigies, or monuments, but things which have souls also. . . he wishes reincarnation, not now in a mortal body, but in the immortal and changeless embodiment of art.