Lord Byron
The Major Works
12mo. xxviii+1080
pp. Introduction [xi-xxiii] and Notes [1021-76] by Jerome J. McGann, 1986.
This edition
first published, 1986.
First published,
with revisions, as an Oxford World's Classics paperback, 2000.
Reprinted, 2008.
Contents
Introduction
Chronology
Note on the Text
POETRY
A Fragment
(‘When, to their airy hall, my fathers’ voice’)
The Farewell to a
Lady
From English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
[Lines to Mr
Hodgson]
Song (‘Maid of
Athens, ere we part’)
Written Beneath a
Picture
To Thyrza (‘One
struggle more, and I am free’)
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
The Giaour
From The Corsair
From Lara
Ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte
Stanzas for Music
(‘I speak not – I trace not – I breathe not thy name’)
She Walks in
Beauty
Stanzas for Music
(‘There’s not a joy the world can give’)
When We Two
Parted
Fare Thee Well!
[A Fragment]
(‘Could I remount the river of my years’)
Prometheus
Stanzas to [Augusta
[Epistle to Augusta
Darkness
Manfred
[‘So, We’ll Go No
More A Roving’]
Beppo
[Epistle to Mr
Murray]
Mazeppa
To the Po
[Stanzas] (‘Could
Love for ever’)
Don Juan
[Stanzas] (‘When
a man hath no freedom to fight for at home’)
Cain
The Vision of Judgment
[Thoughts on
Freedom]
On This Day I
Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year
LETTERS AND OTHER PROSE
To Mrs Catherine
Gordon Byron, 12 Nov. 1809
To Lady
Melbourne, 15 Sept. 1812
To Lady
Melbourne, 25 Sept. 1812
To Lady
Melbourne, 8 Oct. 1813
Alpine Journal (1816)
To Augusta Leigh,
15 Oct. 1816
To Augusta Leigh,
19 Dec. 1816
To Thomas Moore,
24 Dec. 1816
To Lady Byron, 18
Nov. 1818
To John Murray, 6
April 1819
To John Cam
Hobhouse, 17 May 1819
To John Murray, 1
Aug. 1819
From a letter to
John Murray, 12 Aug 1819
To Lady Byron, 10
Dec. 1820
To Thomas Moore,
19 Sept. 1821
From Thomas
Medwin’s Journal of the Conversations of
Lord Byron (1821)
From Detached Thoughts (1821-2)
From Journal (1824)
To Augusta Leigh,
23 Feb. 1824
Notes
Further Reading
Index of Titles
and First Lines
Index of
Recipients of the Letters
================================================
The main virtues of this edition are the scope and the
handsome printing. Childe Harold and Don Juan are complete, and so are six
other of Byron’s long poems (highlighted in bold above). There are enough short
verse and prose excerpts to appreciate Byron’s variety and versatility. The
font is neither miniscule nor squeezed in the page; so you don’t have to ruin
your eyes while reading and there is enough space to indulge in the barbarous
practice of taking notes in the margins. The paper is thick and of remarkably
high quality. In short, the edition is not complete, but it is comprehensive, very well produced for
its size, and easier to read than such mammoth volumes usually are.
On the downside, though it may be easy to read, the
book is not easy to handle. No 1000-page paperback is. Some of Byron’s long
poems (The Corsair, Lara) are so ruthlessly cut, that the
brief glimpses from them might just as well have not been included at all. Some
Byron aficionados may also complain, perhaps not without justification, that his
genius for short lyrical verse is insufficiently represented. All these vices,
however, can be easily turned into virtues. The book may be heavy and cumbersome,
but the binding is sturdy and durable (don’t believe the evil tongues who say
the opposite). The brief excerpts from The
Corsair (canto I, stanzas 9-12) and Lara
(canto I, stanzas 17-19) are included, Mr McGann tells us, specifically to
illustrate the characteristics of the Byronic hero, and they serve this purpose
pretty well. Finally, the short poems may be few, but they are crème de la crème.
There doesn’t seem to be much competition on the
market. In a single volume, the Oxford World’s Classics edition is hard to
beat. This certainly includes Oxford
Mr McGann’s Byronic credentials are staggering. He
edited Byron’s Complete Poetical Works
(7 vols., 1980-93) and wrote at least four books (all diligently listed in the
Further Reading) on Byron and his times. The Introduction and the Notes in this
edition are concise, authoritative and helpful, but not terribly extensive,
original or stimulating. They don’t quite live up to the expectations one is
bound to have, or at least they didn’t live up to mine. Nevertheless, they
still deserve a few words.
The Introduction is a succinct exposition of the
political and social background against which Byron defiantly lived and wrote. It
is marvellously devoid of gossip as far as his personal life is concerned. Mr
McGann notes, with a fine sense of humour, that Byron was “(if the pun be
permitted) man of affairs”, describes his wife as “brilliant and priggish” and
his first book, the privately printed Fugitive
Pieces (1806), as “a loose collection of largely wretched verse”, mentions
his various liaisons in passing, and concentrates on much more important
matters like his travels, works and personality. On the other hand, though only
twelve pages long, the Introduction is not without its fair share of
pretentious academic obscurity (I could do without phrases like “vulgaris
eloquentia” or “vers de société”), and occasionally it takes for granted your
PhD in English political history. Nice essay on the whole, but not an essential
read.
The Notes are notable because they include Byron’s
own (very extensive in some cases, notably The
Giaour and Childe Harold, where
the poet fancied himself scholar and historian) and because for each of the
long poems Mr McGann has supplied a fascinating summary of its place in, and
significance for, the Byronic canon. As far as Byron’s numerous allusions to people,
places, contemporary events, Roman history, Greek mythology and anything else
are concerned, I wish the notes were more extensive and more incisive.
Note that all notes are endnotes, not footnotes. So a
good deal of flipping back and forth can’t be helped, but the poems are not
fragmented by copious explanations on each page. Byron’s own notes to Childe Harold and The Giaour (but not those
to Don Juan) are printed after their
respective works, not in the end of the whole book. This is considerably more
convenient and I wonder why the same method wasn’t used more thoroughly. All
notes are discreetly marked in the text (circles for the editor’s, asterisks
for Byron’s), although pages and line numbers are also provided.
Last but by no means least, Mr McGann has included
all of Byron’s prefaces, advertisements, dedications, epigraphs and the like. These
often contain information of considerable interest. For example, in an
“Addition to the Preface” to the first two cantos of Childe Harold (4th edn.), Byron hilariously addresses
the criticism that his protagonist is “very unknightly”
and in the end, as if by the way, offers this striking insight into one of his
most famous characters:
I now leave ‘Childe Harold’ to live his
day such as he is; it had been more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have
drawn an amiable character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to
make him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further
than to show, that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past
pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature
and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all
excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected.
So much for the edition. Further comments on the
contents are supplied below.
I have recently amused myself
by trying to calculate how many lines of poetry Byron wrote. Roughly, about 64 500
(this includes some 1500 lines of translations, mostly from Virgil and Pulci). Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan, taken together, occupy more
than 21 000 lines. This should be a sufficient proof of their importance
in Byron’s oeuvre. As for this particular book, they occupy some 700 of its
1100 pages. So it is only fair to review them first. But since I read them
last, it will be unfair to the other
works not to review them first.
Beppo, Byron’s
immensely rambling and wickedly funny “Venetian story”, I have discussed elsewhere. Here I
want to address only two stanzas of it (48-49) which seem autobiographical. I say “seem”
because inferring the character of the author from his works of fiction is an
extremely dangerous business. It is customary to take the Byronic hero in
Byron’s works as a truthful projection of the poet. I don’t see why this should
be. It is often forgotten that Byron had a brilliant sense of humour. I don’t
think he ever took himself very seriously. I certainly wouldn’t put it past him
to deliberately make his heroes outrageous and then laugh his head off when the
public, not to say the critics from future generations, take them as truthful
portraits of the author. The case of Beppo
is different, however. No Byronic heroes here. In these two stanzas, it is perhaps
permissible to say that Byron spoke his own mind. Judge for yourselves:
‘England
I said at Calais
I like to speak
and lucubrate my fill;
I like the
government (but that is not it);
I like the freedom
of the press and quill;
I like the Habeas
Corpus (when we've got it);
I like a
parliamentary debate,
Particularly when
'tis not too late;
I like the taxes,
when they're not too many;
I like a seacoal
fire, when not too dear;
I like a
beef-steak, too, as well as any;
Have no objection
to a pot of beer;
I like the
weather, when it is not rainy,
That is, I like
two months of every year,
And so God save
the Regent, Church, and King!
Which means that I
like all and everything.
Manfred and Cain
are connected in a number of ways. Taken together, they present Byron’s own
interpretation of the Faust legend. Manfred, a disillusioned scientist and
philosopher who seeks oblivion, is closely related to the creations of Marlowe
and Goethe. He makes no deals with the Devil, but the title character in Cain does. Mr McGann praises Lucifer as
“more nobly conceived [than Milton
The tragedy of Manfred lies in remorse for the
inevitable past; the tragedy of Cain,
in revolt against the limitations of the inexorable present.[1]
Written between the summer of
1816 and April 1817, Manfred was, I
believe, Byron’s first extended experiment with blank verse. It is astonishing
how much he progressed in the three years until Cain. Whatever its philosophical depth may be, Manfred is plotless and dramatically weak. It amounts to three
acts, eight scenes and 1338 lines, but they are mostly concerned with Manfred’s
wanderings through the mountains and arguing with supernatural entities (Spirits,
Destinies, the Witch of Alps), human beings (the hunter, the abbot) or himself.
I doubt it would work well on the stage. But some of Manfred’s misanthropic
soliloquies make for a thrilling read:
[I.2.298-308]
How beautiful is
all this visible world!
How glorious in
its action and itself!
But we, who name
ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half
deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar,
with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its
elements, and breathe
The breath of
degradation and of pride,
Contending with
low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality
predominates,
And men are what
they name not to themselves,
And trust not to
each other.
[II.2.258-70]
We are the fools of time and
terror: Days
Steal on us and
steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life,
and dreading still to die.
In all the days of
this detested yoke –
This vital weight
upon the struggling heart,
Which sinks with
sorrow, or beats quick with pain,
Or joy that ends
in agony or faintness –
In all the days of
past and future, for
In life there is
no present, we can number
How few, how less
than few, wherein the soul
Forbears to pant
for death, and yet draws back
As from a stream
in winter, though the chill
Be but a moment's.
Cain is a different
affair altogether. Though it doesn’t lack fantastical elements (the two scenes
of Act II took place traveling in open space and through the realms of Hades),
the play is fiercely dramatic from the first to the last line. The dialogue is audacious,
pointed, meaningful and, I suspect, electrifyingly actable.[2]
“Most impressive in the play”, raves Mr McGann, “is its bold revisionist
inquiry into one of the fundamental myths of western culture.” This is a huge
understatement. No wonder the author was accused of blasphemy. Byron’s answer
cannot be bettered: if Cain is
blasphemous, so is Paradise Lost.
The subjects of Manfred and Cain are not that different. Sometimes they overlap rather
strikingly. Surely, it is no coincidence that both Manfred and Cain should
refer to the Tree of Knowledge, and connect it with death.
[Manfred,
I.1.10-17:]
Sorrow is
knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the
deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of
Knowledge is not that of Life.
Philosophy and
science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the
wisdom of the world,
I have essay'd,
and in my mind there is
A power to make
these subject to itself –
But they avail
not:
[Cain, I.1.104-108:]
What immortal part?
This has not been
revealed: the Tree of Life
Was withheld from
us by my father's folly,
While that of
Knowledge, by my mother's haste,
Was plucked too
soon; and all the fruit is Death!
The theme of death is hardly
irrelevant to Manfred – “Old man!
’tis not so difficult to die” are the (anti-)hero’s remarkable last words – but
it is of paramount importance to Cain.
Byron’s ruthless logic (he uses almost no rhetoric!) tears apart so much of the
Christian theology, that it’s hard to believe how anybody can seriously take
the Bible as divinely inspired, and worship the Author. If He forbade Adam and
Eve to touch the Tree of Knowledge, this can mean only one thing: He considers
ignorance a virtue. Cain, much like the young Manfred, wants knowledge. Unlike
Manfred, however, he doesn’t have to acquire it himself but leaves Lucifer to
give it to him ready-made. If you’re a believer, you can easily escape this
trap by falling back on the old explanation that the Devil tempted Cain as he had
Adam and Eve. If you are a sceptic, you will go with Byron who predicted this
and took the trouble to make Cain dissatisfied with God before he ever met
Lucifer. Besides, Cain is no passive marionette, and neither were Adam and Eve.
The serpent merely told the truth about the Tree of Knowledge. They made the
choice. Likewise, Cain vigorously argues with Lucifer, refuses to worship him
just as Manfred defies the Spirits, and finally makes his own, conscious and
thoughtful, choice.
Knowledge is death. The more
you learn, the more you become aware of your ignorance, the more it kills you.
Ignorance is bliss. This is the conclusion of both Manfred and Cain. The
latter’s case is harder, though. He is confronted with the imbecile piety of
his parents, sisters and brother. They cannot answer his questions. Why
should he, not to mention the myriads to come, suffer for a sin he didn’t
commit? Why omnipotence should coexist with goodness? Why must he die? In spite
of the fratricide, which happens by accident, Cain is an extremely sympathetic
and inspiring character. Byron has surpassed himself in the characterisation
department.
The same goes for Lucifer.
What a remarkable creature! He does demand Cain’s worship, but when this is
curtly refused he is not angry, and he shows Cain the Universe all the same. I
am impressed with his calm and rational conversation. Just about the only place
he allows himself a rhetorical flourish is when he refers to the “Omnipotent
tyrant” (I.1.138). Even then, the closest to anger he ever comes, Lucifer can
predict the New Testament with terrifying accuracy:
[I.1.161-66]
But He! so wretched in his height,
So restless in his
wretchedness, must still
Create, and
re-create – perhaps he'll make
One day a Son unto
himself – as he
Gave you a father –
and if he so doth,
Mark me! that Son
will be a sacrifice!
That aside, Lucifer speaks
the language of reason. He is dedicated to rational argument about truth – “I tempt
none, / Save with the truth” (I.1.196-7) – and his intellectual honesty is
indeed astonishing. Lucifer’s two final speeches that end Act II (and it’s not
the least of Byron’s accomplishments that he makes the Lucifer-less Act III quite
compelling) are rightly praised by Jerome McGann. The first is about Lucifer’s
endless fight with his “Victor – true; but no superior”, and the second involves
Man’s relation with both. Here they are:
[II.2.429-49; 452-66:]
I have a Victor – true;
but no superior.
Homage he has from
all – but none from me:
I battle it
against him, as I battled
In highest Heaven
– through all Eternity,
And the
unfathomable gulfs of Hades,
And the
interminable realms of space,
And the infinity
of endless ages,
All, all, will I
dispute! And world by world,
And star by star,
and universe by universe,
Shall tremble in
the balance, till the great
Conflict shall
cease, if ever it shall cease,
Which it ne'er
shall, till he or I be quenched!
And what can
quench our immortality,
Or mutual and
irrevocable hate?
He as a conqueror
will call the conquered
Evil; but what will be the Good he gives?
Were I the victor,
his works would be deemed
The only evil
ones. And you, ye new
And scarce-born
mortals, what have been his gifts
To you already, in
your little world?
[…]
Evil and Good are
things in their own essence,
And not made good
or evil by the Giver;
But if he gives
you good – so call him; if
Evil springs from him, do not name it mine,
Till ye know
better its true fount; and judge
Not by words,
though of Spirits, but the fruits
Of your existence,
such as it must be.
One good gift has the fatal apple given, –
Your reason: – let it not be overswayed
By tyrannous
threats to force you into faith
'Gainst all
external sense and inward feeling:
Think and endure,
– and form an inner world
In your own bosom
– where the outward fails;
So shall you
nearer be the spiritual
Nature, and war
triumphant with your own.
But Byron doesn’t stop there.
He builds up a complex and coherent character, not just a metaphysical
chatterbox. Just like he gives Cain humane and sensitive nature, he invests
Lucifer with tragic nobility and pathos. Both are profoundly unhappy. Neither
his family, to which he is deeply attached, nor God’s bloodthirsty demand for
worship can make Cain happy. The reasons for Lucifer’s wretchedness are more
elusive, but I think loneliness and frustration at his lost battle with God are
the chief reasons. Indeed, unhappiness is almost as prominent in the
conversations of Cain and Lucifer as death and knowledge. It adds a friendly intimacy
that is rather touching:
[I.1.121-27;
mislineated:]
Cain. And ye?
Lucifer. Are
everlasting.
Cain. Are ye
happy?
Lucifer. We are
mighty.
Cain. Are ye
happy?
Lucifer. No: art
thou?
Cain. How should I
be so? Look on me!
Lucifer. Poor
clay!
And thou
pretendest to be wretched! Thou!
Cain. I am: – and
thou, with all thy might, what art thou?
Lucifer. One who
aspired to be what made thee, and
Would not have
made thee what thou art.
Cain is a tremendous
piece of philosophical drama. Vast in scope, stirring on multiple levels, and
fantastically readable (the fastest 1794 lines in my reading career), it is a work to regularly re-visit and re-discover. It should be an absolutely required
reading for everybody seriously interested in Byron and it should be included
in every collection of his writings.
Sadly, it is seldom noticed and often neglected.
It is seldom remembered today
that Byron also produced four five-act tragedies in blank verse (Sardanapalus, Marino Faliero, The Two
Foscari and Werner), all written
in 1821-22. I have read none of them, but if they are half as good as Manfred and Cain, especially Cain,
they sure don’t deserve their complete oblivion. Byron’s version of the Faust
legend is not entirely successful, but the visceral intensity of the main
character saves it. Byron’s treatment of the First Fratricide is far less
optimistic than Steinbeck’s in East of
Eden (1952), but not a bit less convincing or powerful.
Hazlitt famously said that Byron “makes man after his
own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other
a yielding slave”.[3] The more I read Byron, the
less I agree with Hazlitt. May the feminists forgive me, but let’s leave the
woman out. Let’s concentrate on the Byronic hero proper. If he is always just a
projection of the poet himself, Byron must have been an incredibly complex
individual. Even Manfred and Conrad, who can easily pass for typical Byronic
heroes, are not the same character at all. They do share an all-consuming love
for an idealised female, an aristocratic background, and a palpable sense of
impending doom, but that’s all. Unlike Manfred, there is nothing scholarly
about Conrad and the reasons for his depression are left tantalisingly obscure.
As for Cain and Lucifer, it should be obvious by now that neither has many
Byronic ingredients in his make-up.
The semi-fabled and slightly sinister
figure of Ivan Mazeppa (1639-1709) had a powerful influence over nineteenth-century
art. Byron started the fashion in 1819 and his work provoked a stark
painting by Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). Some ten years later Hugo and
Pushkin produced their own narrative poems which later inspired musical
responses from Liszt (a symphonic poem) and Tchaikovsky (an opera),
respectively.
Mazeppa comprises 869
lines of energetic, bold and racy narrative verse. The first few stanzas
require some background knowledge of Mazeppa’s biography. Byron realised this
and supplied as an “Advertisement” three excerpts from Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII (1772) – in the
original French. Mr McGann translates them and fills the gaps.
The poem opens immediately
after the Battle of Pultowa (Poltava Ukraine
in service of Peter the Great, and, most controversially, his defection to Sweden
In Byron’s earlier
tales, the conclusion is typically catastrophic at all levels, social,
political, and personal. Mazeppa is
notably different, as if Byron imagined the possibility of an individual
escaping from the large destructive fatalities of history.
I suppose this is true. But
it’s hardly the best thing
this poem has to offer. Except for the stupendous description of the ride,
which neither summary nor quotes could convey in all of its splendour, Mazeppa’s
reflections on various issues are what elevate the poem above the ordinary
adventure tale. Some personal favourites include his meditation on death after
the horse dies (718-62). This is very much the same subject as in Hamlet’s “To
be, or not to be”, and the passage is hardly inferior to Shakespeare’s.
"And there
from morn to twilight bound,
I felt the heavy
hours toll round,
With just enough
of life to see
My last of suns go
down on me,
In hopeless
certainty of mind,
That makes us feel
at length resign'd
To that which our
foreboding years
Present the worst
and last of fears:
Inevitable – even
a boon,
Nor more unkind
for coming soon,
Yet shunn'd and dreaded
with such care,
As if it only were
a snare
That prudence
might escape:
At times both
wish'd for and implored,
At times sought
with self-pointed sword,
Yet still a dark
and hideous close
To even
intolerable woes,
And welcome in no
shape.
And, strange to
say, the sons of pleasure,
They who have
revell'd beyond measure
In beauty,
wassail, wine, and treasure,
Die calm, or
calmer, oft than he
Whose heritage was
misery:
For he who hath in
turn run through
All that was
beautiful and new,
Hath nought to hope,
and nought to leave;
And, save the
future, (which is view'd
Not quite as men
are base or good.
But as their
nerves may be endued,)
With nought
perhaps to grieve:
The wretch still
hopes his woes must end,
And Death, whom he
should deem his friend,
Appears, to his
distemper'd eyes,
Arrived to rob him
of his prize,
The tree of his
new Paradise .
To-morrow would
have given him all,
Repaid his pangs,
repair'd his fall;
To-morrow would
have been the first
Of days no more
deplored or curst,
But bright, and
long, and beckoning years,
Seen dazzling
through the mist of tears,
Guerdon of many a
painful hour;
To-morrow would
have given him power
To rule, to shine,
to smite, to save –
And must it dawn
upon his grave?
I cannot leave this poem
without remarking on Mazeppa’s singular love for horses. When the party stops
for the night, the first thing he does is to take care of his horse. He does so
with more tenderness and consideration than most people lavish on their own children. If
you happen to like horses, these lines (57-77) will probably be among the
highlights of the whole poem for you.
But first,
outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince
rubb'd down his horse,
And made for him a
leafy bed,
And smooth'd his
fetlocks and his mane,
And slack'd his
girth, and stripp'd his rein,
And joy'd to see
how well he fed;
For until now he
had the dread
His wearied
courser might refuse
To browse beneath
the midnight dews:
But he was hardy
as his lord,
And little cared
for bed and board;
But spirited and
docile too,
Whate'er was to be
done, would do.
Shaggy and swift,
and strong of limb,
All Tartar-like he
carried him;
Obey'd his voice,
and came to call,
And knew him in
the midst of all:
Though thousands
were around, – and Night,
Without a star,
pursued her flight, –
That steed from sunset
until dawn
His chief would
follow like a fawn.
If The Giaour is anything to go by, one
must be sorry that Mr McGann didn’t include more of Byron’s “exotic tales” (The Bride of Abydos, Lara, The Corsair). It was first published on 5 June 1813, it became
almost as smashing a success as Childe
Harold had been on the previous year, it went through fourteen editions in
two years, and it developed from 685 lines in the first edition to its final
form of 1334 lines in the seventh (27 November 1813).
Byron, whose self-criticism is unusually acute, calls
this poem “disjointed fragments”. This is hardly something unusual for him (see
Beppo above and Childe Harold below). The reader who demands formal perfection must
get used to formless improvisation – or quit reading Byron altogether. Indeed, when
you see a subtitle like “A Fragment of a Turkish Tale”, you should be prepared for
something like a bunch of “disjointed fragments”. That said, it must be
stressed that The Giaour is more
disjointed and more fragmentary than usual. The stanzas are of various lengths and
separated by mere rows of dots. The beginning is a long, and typically Byronic,
rave about Greece
Dark and unearthly is the scowl
That glares beneath his dusty cowl –
The flash of that dilating eye
Reveals too much of times gone by –
[…]
Will others quail beneath his look,
Nor ‘scape the glance they scarce can
brook.
From him the half-affrighted Friar
When met alone would fain retire –
As if that eye and bitter smile
Transferrеd
to others fear and guile –
Not oft to smile descendeth he,
And when he doth ‘tis sad to see
That he but mocks at Misery.
[…]
But sadder still it were to trace
What once were feelings in that face –
Time hath not yet the features fixеd,
But brighter trains with evil mixеd –
And there are hues not always faded,
Which speak a mind not all degraded,
Even by the crimes through which it waded –
The common crowd but see the gloom
Of wayward deeds – and fitting doom –
The close observer can espy
A noble soul, and lineage high. –
Alas! though both bestowеd in vain,
Which Grief could change – and Guilt could stain –
The giaour’s confession forms the long coda of the
poem. It is a magnificent piece of sustained passion in verse that could not
have been written by any other poet. It is quintessentially Byronic. Its vast
scope extends from autobiographical reminiscences to philosophical speculations
and from brisk narrative of events to subtle dissection of the human animal. It
is impossible to give even the faintest idea of all this by quotations, still
less am I able to do so in my own words. Therefore, I will give here only the
last stanza:
He pass’d – nor of his name and race
Hath left a token or a trace,
Save what the father must not say
Who shrived him on his dying day;
This broken tale was all we knew
Of her he lov’d, or him he slew.
“Particular notice should be taken of Byron’s
inimitable notes,” Mr McGann reminds us, “which supply a peculiar ironic
vantage on the heroic tragedy narrated in the verse.” This is true, but it is
not the whole truth. The notes also supply a good deal of relevant commentary
which is quite serious indeed. Much of it is occupied with the historical
background, from exotic Turkish weapons and the amusements of Greek sailors to
local customs and folklore, but some of it is rather harrowing. The note to line
89, for example, describes something which Byron rightly assumes “few of my
readers have ever had the opportunity of witnessing”, namely “the singular
beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few
hours, and but for a few hours” after their death. Byron’s morbidity reaches
its peak when he describes the difference in the countenance of the dead who
were shot from those who were stabbed, the former expression being “always that
of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer’s character” while the
latter preserving “its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to
the last.” My favourite notes, however, are some of the witty gems noted by Mr
McGann. When a character is supposed to have “curl’d his very beard with ire” (line
593), Byron explains:
A phenomenon not uncommon with an angry
Mussulman. In 1809, the Capitan Pacha’s whiskers at a diplomatic audience were
no less lively with indignation than a tiger cat’s, to the horror of all the
dragomans; the portentous mustachios twisted, they stood erect of their own
accord, and were expected every moment to change their colour, but at last
condescended to subside, which, probably, saved more heads than they contained
hairs.
Last and least, the last note contains a plausible explanation
about the fragmentary character of the work:
The story in the text is one told of a
young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident
recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant , and sing or recite their narratives. The
additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished
from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has
retained so little of the original.
Childe
Harold is a monumental
and multifarious work. Its four cantos run to 4538 lines. Its composition
stretched across nearly ten years and half of Europe .
It was begun in 1808-09, during Byron’s Grand Tour (Portugal, Spain, Greece,
Albania), continued in Switzerland in 1816, in post-Napoleonic Europe and after
Byron’s absurd marriage had practically ended, and finished in 1817 in Italy
(Venice), where the author was living in his typically scandalous way.
Therefore, the last two cantos are darker, more introverted and more
pessimistic; lines like “Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string” (III.4)
or “My springs of life were poisoned. 'Tis too late!” (III.7) are quite common
and often elaborated at some length. On the whole, in Mr McGann’s apt words, “Byron
interiorizes the form [of the travelogue] so drastically that it mutates into a
drama of personal history.” Byron’s own agenda behind the work, as quoted
above, can be found in “Addendum to the Preface”.
Ironically, the character of Childe Harold fails to
do exactly what Byron said was his purpose: to give “some connection to the
piece”. It is simply a collection of highly personal impressions, opinions,
reflections and musings of an inquisitive and restless traveller. It is
rambling in the extreme. This is an essential part of its charm. The title
character is seldom mentioned indeed, and even when he is we don’t always learn
something about him. Hence the autobiographical significance is undeniable yet
tenuous. The following stanza, for example, is a clear reference to Newstead Abbey, as well
as to Byron’s youthful escapades, but it is the exception rather than the rule (I.7):
The Childe departed from his father's
hall:
It was a vast and venerable pile;
So old, it seemed only not to fall,
Yet strength was pillar’d in each massy
aisle.
Monastic dome! condemn’d to uses vile!
Where Superstition once had made her den
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and
smile;
And monks might deem their time was come
agen,
If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these
holy men.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that many of
these stanzas are thoroughly autobiographical. If they give out little of
Byron’s actual experiences (like his affair with Florence
With regard to the conduct of the last
canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding,
and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his
own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every
one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's ‘Citizen
of the World’, whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I
asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and
the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and
disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the
composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether – and have done so.
This is true, but it should be mentioned that in the
first three cantos the difference between the pilgrim and the author is rather
tenuous, too. For my part, I am inclined to believe that Harold’s “Byronic”
qualities, most notably his detachment from the herd and disillusionment with
revelry (I.8-11), are accurate depictions of Byron’s own personality. It is
essential to understand, however, they are not the whole of that personality,
no matter how vividly conveyed here and there:
[I.8-9:]
Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe
Harold's brow,
As if the memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurk’d below:
But this none knew, nor haply car’d to
know;
For his was not that open, artless soul
That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow,
Nor sought he friend to counsel or
condole,
Whate’er this grief mote be, which he
could not control.
And none did love him! – though to hall
and bower
He gather’d revellers from far and near,
He knew them flatt’rers of the festal
hour,
The heartless parasites of present cheer.
Yea! none did love him – not his lemans
dear –
But pomp and power alone are woman’s care,
And where these are light Eros finds a
feere [consort or mate];
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by
glare.
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs
might despair.
[III.12]
But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul
was quell’d
In youth by his own thoughts; still
uncompell’d,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell’d,
Proud though in desolation; which could
find
A life within itself, to breathe without
mankind.
[III.15]
But in Man’s dwellings he became a thing
Restless and worn, and stern and
wearisome,
Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt
wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome,
As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the
heat
Of his impeded soul would through his
bosom eat.
Byron’s personality, as expressed in Childe Harold and his writings in
general, is vast and complex, much vaster and more complex than is generally
supposed by superficial folk who chant that Byron, the arch-Romantic, preached
nothing but “follow your passions and damn the expense”. Nor was he ardently
pro-British when his compatriots proved to be plunderers. Some of the most brutal
lines in the whole poem are those dedicated to the deeds of Lord Elgin
(II.11-15). Byron well knew that the “dull spoiler” was Scottish, but he pulled
no punches over England
But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane
On high, where Pallas linger’d, loth to
flee
The latest relic of her ancient reign;
The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was
he?
Blush, Caledonia !
such thy son could be!
Thy free-born men should spare what once
was free;
Yet they could violate each saddening
shrine,
And bear these altars o’er the
long-reluctant brine.
[…]
Cold is the heart, fair Greece
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they
lov’d;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defac’d, thy mouldering shrines
remov’d
By British hands, which it had best behov’d
To guard those relics ne’er to be restor’d:
–
Curst be the hour when from their isle they
rov’d,
And once again thy hapless bosom gor’d,
And snatch’d thy shrinking Gods to
Northern climes abhorr’d!
Byron loved the ancient Greeks and their mighty
legacy as much as anybody, but he spared not the modern Greeks for their meek
submission under the Turkish yoke. In a powerful stanza (II.76), he urges them
to fight for their freedom:
Hereditary Bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike
the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be
wrought?
Will Gaul
or Muscovite redress ye? no!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers
low,
But not for you will Freedom’s altars
flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o’er your
foe!
Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thine
years of shame.
Politics, not surprisingly, play a prominent role in
this poem, quite often linked (even less surprisingly) with war. Byron
criss-crossed Europe in momentous historical
times, and he well knew it. He describes with great vividness the ravages of the
Peninsular War in the battles of Talavera and Albuera (I.38-44). He visits Waterloo Europe and asks, boldly, what happens now that Napoleon
is no longer an emperor (III.18-19):
And Harold stands upon this place of
skulls,
The grave of France ,
the deadly Waterloo
How in an hour the power which gave annuls
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting
too!
In ‘pride of place’ here last the Eagle
flew,
Then tore with bloody talon the rent
plain,
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations
through;
Ambition’s life and labours all were vain;
He wears the shattered links of the world’s
broken chain.
Fit retribution! Gaul
may champ the bit
And foam in fetters; – but is Earth more
free?
Did nations combat to make One submit;
Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?
What! shall reviving Thraldom again be
The patched-up idol of enlightened days?
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall
we
Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
And servile knees to thrones? No; prove before ye praise!
To cut the long story short, Byron comments
extensively on (human) nature, religion, war, politics, history, society, art
and everything else – including pantheism, mysticism and metaphysics. Some of
his most passionate and most beautiful verse is reserved for the joys of sea
voyage (II.20-21) and the beauty of nature (II.87, III.13), including the
unconquerable Ocean (IV.179-85) and even
a mighty storm (III.92-96). Unlike some whiny modern travellers, he is
appreciative, though by no means uncritical, of the countries he passes through
and the people he meets. He raves about “Lisboa” (I.16), Spain (I.35-37), Albania
(II.88), the Rhine (III.59-60), the Alps (III.62), Venice (VI.1-17), Rome
(IV.78-81) and Italy (IV.26, 47, 55), about the picturesque dress of the
Albanians (II.58, see also the cover of this book) and the Greek struggle for
independence (II.73, 76, 83), about the lives and works of, among others, Rousseau
(III.77-81), Voltaire (III.106), Gibbon (III.107), Petrarch (IV.30-32) and Tasso
(IV.36-39). Amidst all this and a great deal of unabashedly descriptive verse whose
purpose is simply to convey the feelings
aroused by certain places, Byron can always surprise you with a revealing personal
touch that tells as much about him as can be said in so short a space. No one who
reads these lines (II.3), for example, can doubt that Byron was a staunch free-thinker:
Even Gods must yield – religions take
their turn:
‘Twas Jove’s – ‘tis Mahomet’s – and other
creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall
learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim
bleeds;
Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope
is built on reeds.
Byron cannot be called an optimistic writer by any
stretch of the imagination. Quite a few of these 4538 lines give the impression
that he has fathomed the secrets of human existence but not seen much there. If you doubt
that, take a look at, to take but two examples, stanzas IV.108 and IV.121, most powerful depictions of, respectively, the utter futility of our lives
and the illusory nature of love in nine lines. But not the least of Byron’s
considerable achievements is that he could draw some inspiration from his bleak
and godless outlook. In yet another description of Harold which almost
certainly refers to the author (III.16), this is beautifully described:
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With nought of hope left, but with less of
gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though ‘twere wild, – as on the
plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking
deck, –
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore
to check.
The extensive notes are one of the great delights of Childe Harold. They give a lot of
additional information on sundry subjects, from an extensive analysis of the conditions
in modern Greece (II.73) and
the character of the Albanians (II.38) to a lovely eulogy of Julia
Alpinula (III.66) and an amused criticism of the injustice of military history
which remembers the vanquished better than the victors (IV.151). Very little is without interest. Perhaps
what impresses me most is Byron’s scrupulous attention to detail. I should
think poets, of all people, would be tempted to use poetic licence. Well, not
this poet. At one place (I.20), he mentions a Spanish monastery called “Our
Lady’s house of Woe”, but in the note he explains how he was informed “since
the publication of this poem” that he had missed the tilde in the title (Nossa Señora de Pena) and so wrote Pena (woe) instead of Peña (rock). He charmingly explains that
he didn’t think it necessary to alter the passage because, though “Our Lady of
the Rock” is the real name, “I may assume the other sense from the severities
practiced there.” An even more striking example is to be found when he
describes the fortifications of Sierra Morena (I.51). He concludes the stanza
with “The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match” and explains in the note:
All who have seen a battery will recollect
the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was
fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville
Other highlights in the notes include a perceptive
observation on Napoleon (III.41, his great error was “obtrusion on mankind of
his want of all community of feeling for or with them; perhaps more offensive
to human vanity than the active cruelty of more trembling and suspicious
tyranny.”), disturbing reflections on the transient nature of civilisation (II.1) including a great
quote from Servius Sulpicius (IV.44, in a letter to
Cicero), yet another magnificent tirade against Lord Elgin and his gang (II.12), and a heightened discourse on nature
worship as expressed in Rousseau’s Héloïse (III.21). The famous, or notorious if you like,
Swiss philosopher is memorably described in the verse as “self-torturing sophist”
and “the apostle of affliction, he who threw / Enchantment over Passion”. Byron
shows a lot of compassion for his mind “phrensied by disease or woe” and his
life as “one long war with self-sought foes, / or friends by him self-banished”.
I find the stanza on Gibbon (III.107) wonderfully
moving, rather relevant to Byron himself, and a fitting conclusion of my first
– but certainly not last – journey through Childe
Harold:
The other, deep and slow, exhausting
thought,
And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
In meditation dwelt, with learning
wrought,
And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
The lord of irony, – that master-spell,
Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew
from fear,
And doom’d him to the zealot’s ready Hell,
Which answers to all doubts so eloquently
well.
To take an issue with Byron himself (I.200),
I don’t think Don Juan is an epic. It certainly is of epic proportions, running
to 16 complete cantos and nearly 16 000 lines, but I don’t think it is an epic. The Iliad is. Don Juan is
not. The fact that Byron died before he could finish it has nothing to do with
this. It is the profoundly comic nature of the work that undermines its epic
character. No writer who doesn’t take himself very seriously can spin an epic
around himself.
For this is the point. Byron is the
real hero of this poem. I don’t mean that Don Juan is a self-portrait, even an
idealised one. I mean that quite often Byron himself talks to the reader in the
first person singular. These confessions must be taken with a fair dose of
suspicion. But on the whole they seem to be very accurate indeed. When Byron
mentions his uncle’s Narrative
(II.137) or his own swimming the Hellespont (II.105), he mentions
well-documented historical facts. The harrowing story about the Italian officer
shot dead with five bullets on the street (V.33-35) is all true, too. We know
this from Byron’s letter to Moore from December 9, 1820, in which the assassination
is described in detail. It happened just a hundred paces from the poet’s
residence in Ravenna. “This is a fact, and no poetic fable”. Indeed!
The most frequent, and most charming,
intrusions of the first person biographical are the poet’s reflections on his
own poem. In the first canto (I.199-200), Byron frankly tells us this work is
meant to be of epic dimensions but whether it will be depends on the public. That the first twelve cantos are “merely
flourishes” (XII.54) we may accept as a deliberate hyperbole, but Byron was
probably in the earnest that “the plan [for the poem] at present’s simply in
concoction” (XII.87). Most tantalisingly, and only half-jokingly, I think, Byron
professes to be a staunch moralist – “’Tis always with a moral end / That I
dissert” (XII.39), “my object is morality / (Whatever people say)” (XII.86) –
though this does not mean his morality is necessarily one that prudes and prigs
would approve.
Byron is perfectly aware of his countless
digressions and freely admits them to his readers (XIV.7). While discussing the
Norman Abbey in Canto XIII, clearly based on Newstead Abbey, he is right to be
proud of his conciseness compared to Homer (XIII.74): “But a mere modern must
be moderate – / I spare you then the furniture and plate.” Whatever flaws Don Juan may have, there is nothing
among these nearly 16 000 lines even remotely as tedious as the Catalogue
of Ships from The Iliad. Indeed, a
good case can be made that much of the best material lies in the digressions.
Above all, as already hinted above, Byron
insists on factual accuracy (VIII.86, 89). He is emphatic that everything
described has happened, to him or somebody else, at one time or another in
history (I.202; XIV.13):
There’s only one slight
difference between
Me and my epic brethren
gone before,
And here the advantage is
my own, I ween;
(Not that I have not
several merits more,
But this will more
peculiarly be seen)
They so embellish, that ‘tis
quite a bore
Their labyrinth of fables
to thread through,
Whereas this story’s
actually true.
Besides, my Muse by no
means deals in fiction:
She gathers a repertory of
facts,
Of course with some reserve
and slight restriction,
But mostly sings of human
things and acts –
And that’s one cause she
meets with contradiction;
For too much truth, at
first sight, ne’er attracts;
And were her object only
what’s call’d glory,
With more ease too she’d
tell a different story.
More speculatively, a number of
reflections are relevant to Byron himself. There are startling confessions of
anti-British sentiments (X.66-8), failing creative faculties (IV.3), craving
for success and contempt for posterity (XII.17-8). He is unapologetic about his
literary productivity and social notoriety (XIV.9-12). In one particularly
affecting passage, he reflects (at 30!) on the encroaching middle age and his wasted
youth spent in chasing worthless fame. These are sobering stanzas (I.213-18):
But now at thirty years my
hair is gray –
(I wonder what it will be
like at forty?
I thought of a peruke the
other day – )
My heart is not much
greener; and, in short, I
Have squander’d my whole
summer while ‘twas May,
And feel no more the spirit
to retort; I
Have spent my life, both
interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deeme’d,
my soul invincible.
No more – no more – Oh!
never more on me
The freshness of the heart
can fall like dew,
Which out of all the lovely
things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful
and new,
Hived in our bosoms like
the bag o’ the bee:
Think’st thou the honey
with those objects grew?
Alas! ‘twas not in them,
but in thy power
To double even the
sweetness of a flower.
No more – no more – Oh!
never more, my heart,
Canst thou be my sole
world, my universe!
Once all in all, but now a
thing apart,
Thou canst not be my
blessing or my curse:
The illusion’s gone for
ever, and thou art
Insensible, I trust, but
none the worse,
And in thy stead I’ve got a
deal of judgment,
Though heaven knows how it
ever found a lodgement.
My days of love are over;
me no more
The charms of maid, wife,
and still less of widow,
Can make the fool of which
they made before,
In short, I must not lead
the life I did do;
The credulous hope of
mutual minds is o’er,
The copious use of claret
is forbid too,
So for a good
old-gentlemanly vice,
I think I must take up with
avarice.
Ambition was my idol, which
was broken
Before the shrines of
Sorrow, and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left
me many a token
O’er which reflection may
be made at leisure:
Now, like Friar Bacon’s
Brazen Head, I’ve spoken,
“Time is, Time was, Time’s
past” – a chymic treasure
Is glittering Youth, which
I have spent betimes –
My heart in passion, and my
head on rhymes.
What is the end of fame? ‘tis
but to fill
A certain portion of
uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing
up a hill,
Whose summit, like all
hills’, is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak,
preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they
call their ‘midnight taper’,
To have, when the original
is dust,
A name, a wretched picture,
and worse bust.
But Byron is not one to wallow in
self-pity. The above stanzas are the closest he ever gets to it. And that’s far
enough for me. He reflects on being called a misanthrope “Because / They hate me, not I them: – And here
we’ll pause.” (IX.21), on the educational value of bitter experience that
“’Twill teach discernment to the sensitive / And not to pour their ocean in a
sieve.” (XIV.49), and on his refusal to sink into weeping forgetfulness (IV.4)
with admirable fortitude.
How seriously should we take these
confessions? I am inclined to believe Byron meant every word of them. It is
hard to say when he is more serious, at his most or least flippant, but this
may be a foolish question. It’s like choosing between night and day. Both are
equally true, whichever you may prefer.
Leaving aside the author, there is
little characterisation and no plot whatsoever. If that’s what you’re reading Don Juan for, you’ll be disappointed. The
whole story, such as it is, can be told in a single sentence. Don Juan is born
and raised in Seville, has to leave it as a young man for naughty reasons
(Canto I), and then embarks on a series wild adventures all around Europe,
notably in Greece (II–IV), Constantinople (V, VI), Ismail (VII, VIII), St
Petersburg (IX, X) and England (XI–XVI). Except for the first two and by far
the longest cantos (438 stanzas altogether), which are relatively packed with
incident, the rest is mostly packed with description and digression. Sometimes
Byron almost perversely leads you to a climax that never comes. Lambro’s return
to his island only to find a party celebrating the (obviously false) news of
his own death (III.26-57) is a striking example of this. The passage is tense,
dramatic, promising and – left hanging in the air.
But if you know something about Byron’s
longer works, notably Childe Harold
and the Turkish Tales, you know this digressive diffusiveness is typical of him
– and it doesn’t matter. He remains fantastically readable, engrossing and
thought-provoking, never mind his awkward (sometimes non-existent) ideas of
rhyming. As for the characters, what they lack in coherence and complexity,
they more than make up for in penetrating vividness.
Don Juan’s character is not as shadowy
as generally supposed. He is an admirable creature, “a boy of saintly breeding”
(IV.19.) “as warm in heart as feminine in feature” (VIII.52). Sometimes he is pardonably
self-absorbed (IX.68), “a little superficial” (XI.51) and “a little dissipated”
(X.23), quite a socialite in courts and country houses all around Europe. But
he is remarkably little spoiled by the circumstances of his life (XII.49). He
is not very thoughtful or troubled by moral dilemmas (XII.81), yet he is brave,
noble and humane. The confrontation with Lambro (IV.46-51) shows him at his
courageous best. When the sailors want to get drunk during the
storm, he bars their way to the liquor and says: “But let us die like men, not sink below /
Like brutes” (II.36). He storms Ismail and kills willingly for the Russians,
yet he is moved to save a ten-year-old girl when two Cossacks are about to kill
her (VIII.91-102), and he further takes care of her welfare.
Most important of all, and quite
unlike Don Giovanni from Mozart’s eponymous masterpiece, Don Juan neither looks
for trouble nor breaks female hearts unless compelled by circumstances
(VIII.53-4, XII.85). He does not seek seduction but inadvertently invites it (XV.12):
His manner was perhaps the
more seductive,
Because he ne’er seem’d
anxious to seduce;
Nothing affected, studied,
or constructive
Of coxcombry or conquest:
no abuse
Of his attractions marr’d
the fair perspective,
To indicate a Cupidon broke
loose,
And seem to say, “resist us
if you can” –
Which makes a dandy while
it spoils a man.
Some of the other characters, though
simplified, are not forgettable. One of the most memorable is Catherine the
Great herself, no less, who is rather prominent in Canto IX, including a very
favourable comparison to Elizabeth I (IX.81). Gulbeyaz, the star of Cantos V
and VI, is a fine study of that godlike aristocratic haughtiness that never
meets “with aught save prayers and praise” (V.122). This species, fortunately
extinct today, tells you as much as anything about the different social context
then and now. There is something to be said about the mathematical and puritanical
Donna Inez, Don Juan’s mother and a subtle way for Byron to have fun at the
expense of his wife (I.10-18); the noble Donna Julia (I.55-61), who seduces Don
Juan at the tender age of 16 (she being quite mature at 23) (I.68-85), the lovely
Haidee, a pirate’s daughter (II.125-7) and a child of nature (II.202) who saves
Don Juan only to fall tragically in love with him (II.182-98); the meddling Lady
Adeline, unfortunately prominent in the last four cantos, and her husband Lord
Henry who – let Byron explain (XIV.70-72):
He was a cold, good,
honourable man,
Proud of his birth, and
proud of every thing;
A goodly spirit for a state
divan,
A figure fit to walk before
a king;
Tall, stately, form’d to
lead the courtly van
On birth-days, glorious
with a star and string;
The very model of a Chamberlain
–
And such I mean to make him
when I reign.
But there was something
wanting on the whole –
I don’t know what, and
therefore cannot tell –
Which pretty women – the
sweet souls! – call Soul.
Certes it was not body; he was
well
Proportion’d, as a poplar
or a pole,
A handsome man, that human
miracle;
And in each circumstance of
love or war
Had still preserved his
perpendicular.
Still there was something
wanting, as I’ve said –
That undefinable ‘Je ne sais quoi,’
Which, for what I know, may
of yore have led
To Homer’s Iliad, since it
drew to Troy
The Greek Eve, Helen, from
the Spartan’s bed;
Though on the whole, no
doubt, the Dardan boy
Was much inferior to King
Menelaus: –
But thus it is some women
will betray us.
There is something to be said about all
these and many other characters, but I do not propose to say it just now. But I
must say I am sorry Byron didn’t make more of these marvellous creatures. He
drops them too soon.
One thing about Don Juan that impresses me on the whole is the scope. Byron does
call it “Epic Satire” (XIV.99), but though it contains both epic and satirical elements,
surely it contains a lot more than that. Auden was more right than wrong that Don Juan “is not a satire but a comedy”[5],
but this, too, is a gross oversimplification. When Byron describes the English
aristocracy (XIII.79ff.) and their country life (XIII.101ff.), he is satirical.
When he describes Juan’s ghostly adventures (XVI.111-23), he is comic. But now
and then, rather often actually, he is neither comic nor satirical. He is never
sentimental or lachrymose: “mine is not a weeping Muse” (II.16). The shipwreck and
its aftermath in the second canto (II.26-107) are as terrifying as anything ever
penned by anybody. Julia’s letter to Juan after their affair ends ignominiously
(I.192-7) is genuinely passionate, even tragic. So is Haidee’s death (IV.69-71)
and plenty of other episodes (some to be mentioned below, some first-person
asides already mentioned above).
Byron’s frequent digressions, for one,
two or a dozen stanzas, are one of the great glories of Don Juan. He takes a shot at everything.
Occasionally, it’s a potshot. Usually, it’s a sniper short. The witty and
funny, even flippant, surface should not obscure the deadly accuracy of the
Byronic gun.
Bernard Shaw was right, in his Epistle
Dedicatory (1903) of Man and Superman,
to dismiss the title character as “not a true Don Juan at all”. But if he
merely missed the point here, Shaw was as wrong as he could be when he claimed
that “Byron’s fragment does not count for much philosophically.” Byron was no
fan of muddled metaphysics – he famously “shot” Coleridge in this respect
(Dedication, II) – but that is a poor reason to neglect his musings on life,
death and everything else. He was not an intellectual or a philosopher, but
neither was he just a dumb producer of pretty stanzas. Goethe, under the false
impression of being damning, was more right than he knew when he said that “The
moment [Byron] reflects, he is a child”.[6] Indeed! Byron had the childish, and marvellous, ability to see things with
complete simplicity. He also had experience and erudition that no child can
possess.
Many people wrongly associate
simplicity with superficiality. They differ in degree rather than kind, it is
true, but it’s a significant difference. Superficiality is merely skating on
the surface without probing the essence. Simplicity is skipping the surface and
going straight for the essence. The difference is of course subjective and depends
on a writer’s ability to convince.
Simplicity and superficiality needn’t
have anything to do with each other, and in Byron they don’t. Examples of his unique
insight into the human condition are countless in these sixteen cantos. Even
the prosaic ones are often profound. Byron knows, for example, that eating is
one of the most important things (V.49; XIII.99), that hoarding money is a
great pleasure and therefore misers are far from being unhappy (XII.4-12), and
that seasickness can make you forget whatever suffering afflicts you at the
moment, including lost country, family and beloved (II.19-21). He has the intellectual
honesty to admit the finality of death (V.36-9) and the nothingness of life (VII.4-6),
and in both cases he makes pretty good cases. He is certainly aware of the dark
depths of the human soul (XIV.101-2):
‘Tis strange, – but true;
for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction: if
it could be told,
How much would novels gain
by the exchange!
How differently the world
would men behold!
How oft would vice and virtue
places change!
The new world would be
nothing to the old,
If some Columbus of the
moral seas
Would show mankind their souls’
Antipodes.
What ‘Antres vast and
deserts idle’ then
Would be discover’d in the
human soul!
What Icebergs in the hearts
of mighty men,
With Self-love in the
centre as their Pole!
What Anthropophagi are nine
of ten
Of those who hold the
kingdoms in controul!
Were things but only call’d
by their right name,
Caesar himself would be
ashamed of Fame.
Two of the most disgusting inventions
of humanity, war and slavery, are prominently demolished in Don Juan. The latter is mentioned only
once for five stanzas (V.26-30), when Don Juan is sold at the slave market in
Constantinople, but there is no ambiguity about Byron’s position. “’Tis
pleasant purchasing our fellow creatures”, he remarks with undisguised sarcasm.
He describes how the bidders shamelessly ogle the merchandise, “this superior
yoke of human cattle”, and haggle among each other as if they were “in a mere
Christian fair”. In a masterstroke of Byronic mockery, our poet wonders whether
the conscience of the buyer didn’t oppress him during the “gloomiest hour”
after dinner. Pretty good achievement for exactly 40 lines of verse!
The siege (VII) and conquest (VIII) of
Ismail, in which Russians and Cossacks killed some 40 000 Turks (VIII.127)
in December 1790, are one of the greatest indictments on war known to me in
print. Many stanzas describe the carnage in graphic detail (VIII.20, 43, 69,
82, 122), including the heart-wrenching story of a father and his five sons (VIII.105-18),
but one of them is especially disturbing because it goes deeper. Byron knew
very well and said with brutal directness – what most people know but few dare
to admit even to themselves, let alone publicly – that wars in history have
been fuelled as much by the greed for gold and glory of rulers and generals as
by the innate and ineradicable (?) savagery of the common man (VIII.82, my
emphasis):
The city’s taken – only
part by part –
And Death is drunk with
gore: there’s not a street
Where fights not to the
last some desperate heart
For those for whom it soon
shall cease to beat.
Here
War forgot his own destructive Art
In
more destroying Nature;
and the heat
Of Carnage, like the Nile’s
sun-sodden Slime,
Engendered monstrous shapes
of every Crime.
Here is a fine example of simplicity
that goes to the heart of the matter and explains a lot, in this case about the
prominence of wars in human history. Except for a few special cases of fighting
for liberty against invaders, like Leonidas and Washington for example, Byron
condemns this lunacy completely (VIII.3-5). At one place (VII.80), he casually
mentions how we have equalled Homer in blood. Think about that in the light of
both our last century and the Greek bard’s addiction to gory spectacles. Other
cantos are peppered with anti-war sentiments as well. One of the naughtiest is echoing
Horace’s “worst cause of all war”, yet not mentioning the exact word (“cunnus”,
a woman, i.e. Helen of Troy) and actually reversing the argument as “that great
cause of war”, namely Catherine the Great whose joy at the news of the massacre
at Ismail is almost orgasmic (IX.55-9). Semi-legendary figures like Wellington
(IX.1-10), Suvorov (VII.8, 55, 69, 87) and Potemkin (VII.36-7, “a great thing
in days / When homicide and harlotry made great”) do not escape the onslaught,
either.
No name or vocation is sacred enough to
be spared Byron’s arrows or bullets. On monks, for instance: “Those vegetables
of the Catholic creed / Are apt exceedingly to run to seed.” (XIV.81). Possibly
my greatest favourites are those about Petrarch, “the Platonic pimp of all
posterity” (V.1): “Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, / He would
have written sonnets all his life?” (III.8). The most vicious attacks are
reserved for the Lakers (the poets, not the LA basketball team). This should
come as no surprise to anybody who cares to read the dedication to “Bob
Southey”. Still, sometimes Byron’s virulence is surprising even by his own
standards, yet relentlessly amusing (III.93-4):
All are not moralists, like
Southey, when
He prated to the world of ‘Pantisocracy’;
Or Wordsworth unexcised,
unhired, who then
Season’d his pedlar poems
with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before
his flighty pen
Let to the Morning Post its
aristocracy;
When he and Southey,
following the same path,
Espoused two partners
(milliners of Bath).
Such names at present cut a
convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in
moral geography;
Their loyal treason,
renegado rigour,
Are good manure for their
more bare biography.
Wordsworth’s last quarto,
by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birthday
of typography;
A drowsy frowzy poem, call’d
the ‘Excursion’,
Writ in a manner which is
my aversion.
That the wives of Coleridge and
Southey, who were sisters, “were not milliners, however”, as Mr McGann tells
us, hardly matters.
Mr McGann considers Don Juan Byron’s “masterwork”, “the most
comprehensive epic of his age, and arguably the greatest English poem since
Paradise Lost.” I don’t know about Byron’s age or Milton’s masterwork, I am not
familiar with either, but I’m not sure Don
Juan is Byron’s greatest work. It is a great summing-up of his work. But it
is longer rather than greater compared to Childe
Harold. It has elements of the Turkish Tales, but it doesn’t supersede
them. Certainly, it doesn’t make superfluous his tragedies in blank verse,
various other narrative poems (e.g. Beppo,
Parisina, Mazeppa, The Prisoner of
Chillon) and a good deal of short and not so short poems of many moods
written on many occasions. Byron’s greatest masterpiece is his complete oeuvre.
This is far greater than any of its parts.
A Byron without Don Juan would have been a lesser Byron, no question about that.
But a Byron with only Don Juan would
have been a lesser Byron still. Far lesser! There is more variety and more
versatility in Byron than you have dreamed in your Juanesque philosophy.
Nevertheless, the poem remains a
towering achievement and an indispensable read for Byronic enthusiasts. Don Juan is a flawed masterpiece, but
what matters are the many masterstrokes, not the few flaws. I am looking
forward to a future re-reading. The thing is truly inexhaustible.
Mr McGann did come tantalisingly close, closer than most, in achieving the impossible: demonstrating Byron’s versatility in a single volume. The inclusion of shorter poems and prose is essential in this respect.
The hyper-famous “She Walks in Beauty” is not among my favourites from Byron’s shorter poems. It’s beautiful, of course, but it doesn’t have Byron’s usual passion, the dark intensity that makes him special. Simply compare “She Walks in Beauty” to the two “Stanzas for Music” that surround it or to any of the poems addressed to Augusta that follow a little later, and you will know what I mean.
The hyper-famous “She Walks in Beauty” is not among my favourites from Byron’s shorter poems. It’s beautiful, of course, but it doesn’t have Byron’s usual passion, the dark intensity that makes him special. Simply compare “She Walks in Beauty” to the two “Stanzas for Music” that surround it or to any of the poems addressed to Augusta that follow a little later, and you will know what I mean.
“Darkness” is unique not only
in this book but possibly in Byron’s complete works. It consists of 82 lines in
blank verse without any interruption
whatsoever and it describes nothing short of the end of the world. It opens
with the psychedelic line “I had a dream, which was not all a dream” and is spellbindingly
bleak until the end. The whole thing feels like some sort of apocalyptic
science fiction, as if the Earth were torn away from the Solar System and
frozen in the interstellar night, but conveyed with extraordinary power. The
first and the last lines should be enough to illustrate this:
I had a dream,
which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was
extinguished, and the stars
Did wander
darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and
pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and
blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went
– and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot
their passions in the dread
Of this their
desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into
a selfish prayer for light:
[…]
The waves were
dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their
mistress, had expired before;
The winds were
withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds
perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them –
She was the Universe.
My fascination with “Prometheus”
has purely musical roots. There is no evidence to suggest that Franz Liszt knew
about, much less was inspired by, Byron’s work to compose his symphonic poem of the
same name, but I can’t help feeling that he did and was.[7]
Broadly speaking, both masterpieces follow overall struggle-to-victory
progression, but both have rather ambiguous conclusions. Unlike “Darkness”, “Prometheus”
is organised in three longish and elaborately rhymed stanzas. The last one
contains a particularly beautiful passage about
Thou art a symbol
and a sign
To Mortals of
their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is
in part divine,
A troubled stream
from a pure source;
And Man in
portions can foresee
His own funereal
destiny;
His wretchedness,
and his resistance,
And his sad
unallied existence:
The prose extracts amount only to some fifty pages or so,
but they cover the last fifteen years of Byron’s life and provide a fascinating
counterpoint to his poetry. The range is characteristically vast, from letters and
journals, themselves diverse, to conversations and philosophical speculations
about mind and matter (“Detached Thoughts”).
Byron’s letters are rich. There is just about everything in them from his daily activities and
criticism of his own works to bawdy gossip and lurid anecdotes. The epistolary
voice varies from intimate and confessional (with his sister and close friends)
to cool and almost formal (with his wife and, to some extent, his publisher). Witty,
charming, passionate, sensible and touching, these letters make for a lively
reading. You cannot afford to miss them if you are seriously in Byron.
The only letter to his mother shows the 19-years-old
Byron as a shrewd observer of people and manners in the exotic, then as now, South-eastern
Europe . He admires the physique of the
Albanians and simply adores their garish dress (as you can infer from the cover
of this book). The letters to Lady
Melbourne are carelessly written and full of somewhat tedious accounts of his
flirtations, but they are frequently enlivened by delicious sense of humour.
“This business is growing serious”, he gravely writes at one place, “I think Platonism in some peril”. It never
becomes clear whether those flirts with Caroline or Florence
The letters written in and
after 1816, the watershed year in Byron’s life when he left England Italy Murray
Besides, I mean to
write my best work in Italian – &
it will take me nine years more thoroughly to master the language – & and
then if my fancy exists & I exist too – I will try what I can do really. – As to the Estimation of the English which you talk of,
let them calculate what it is worth – before they insult me with their insolent
condescension. – I have not written for their pleasure; – if they are pleased –
it is that they chose to be so, – I have never flattered their opinions – nor
their pride –nor will I. – Neither will I make
‘Ladies’ books’ ‘al dilettar le femine e la plebe’ – I have written from the fulness
of my mind, from passion – from impulse – from many motives – but not for their
‘sweet voices’. – I know the precise worth of popular applause – for few Scribblers
have had more of it – and if I chose to swerve into their paths – I could
retain it or resume it – or increase it – but I neither love ye – nor fear ye –
and though I buy with ye – and sell with ye – and talk with ye – I will neither
eat with ye – drink with ye – nor pray with ye. – They made me without my
search a species of popular Idol – they – without reason or judgment beyond the
caprice of their Good pleasure – threw down the Image from its pedestal – it
was not broken with the fall – and they would it seems again replace it – but
they shall not.
Alpine Journal is a most curious work. Inspired by a
journey through the Swiss Alps in September 1816 and written in some sort of
shorthand that suffers from wanton excess of dashes (quite typical for his
letters also!), this journal was destined for the eyes of “my Sister Augusta”
alone. It is a series of notes, quite rambling and often dry, but not without
trenchant observations and flashes of brilliance. Byron seldom misses an opportunity to make fun of his
compatriots. I am especially fond of one episode. This is a gem:
–
went to Chillon through scenery worthy of I know not whom – went over the Castle of Chillon
It should be noted that this visit, indeed several
visits, to the Castle
of Chillon
The last two pieces of prose
form a poignant coda of the whole book. The journal entry is dated “February 15th,
1824” and describes in graphic detail “a strong shock of a Convulsive
description but whether Epileptic – Paralytic – or Apoplectic is not decided by
the two medical men who attend me”. References to poor health are frequent in
Byron’s letters too, but they are easy to miss because he never dwells on the
subject. The last letter is from 23 February 1824 and was sent from “Messolonghi”
(aka “Missolonghi”), the little village in Greece England as a companion
to Ada Italy Europe , did such
things too.
[1] The Works of Lord Byron: Poetry, ed. E. H.
Coleridge (7 vols., 1898-1904), vol. 5, p. 200.
[2] I hope Peter Shaffer will forgive my borrowing
this lovely phrase – “electrifyingly actable” – without quotation marks. He
originally used it about Tennessee Williams.
[4] In one of his notes (IV.181), Byron goes even further: “Buonaparte – a man who, with all his vices and his faults, never yet found an adversary with a tithe of his talents (as far as the expression can apply to a conqueror) or his good intentions, his clemency or his fortitude.”
[5] W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, Random House, 1962, p. 388. The difference between satire nad comedy is beautifully explained by Mr Auden: “both make use of the comic contradiction, but their aims are different. Satire would arouse in readers the desire to act so that the contradictions disappear; comedy would persuade them to accept the contradictions with good humor as facts of life against which it is useless to rebel.”
[7] But there is some evidence that Liszt did know
Byron’s Mazeppa. It is, of course, Hugo’s poem that is quoted in the score
by way of preface and was probably the major source of inspiration (as you
would expect from somebody who was quite at home with French but knew little
English), yet note the epigraph from Byron’s work (“Away! – Away! –”). The
poems make for an interesting comparison. Both concentrate on the wild ride, but
Hugo’s is considerably grander on rhetoric and shorter on narrative.
