LECTURE 3. Lord Byron had received an immense European reputation during his own lifetime

(1788-1824)

Lord Byron had received an immense European reputation during his own lifetime. Through much of the nineteenth century he continued to be rated as one of the greatest English poets and the very prototype of literary romanticism.

Byron’s persona permeates his poetry. Probably, his greatest creation is his own colorful biography and the image of himself that he impressed upon posterity. His characters are parts of himself.

LIFE

Byron was descended from two aristocratic families, both colorful and wild. His father, Captain John Byron, died when Byron was three. His mother Catherine Gordon after her husband’s death brought her son in near poverty. When Byron was ten, the death of his great-uncle made him the sixth Lord Byron. In a fashion suitable to his new eminence he was sent to Harrow, then to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Despite his distractions at University, Byron found time to try his hand at lyric verse, some of which were published in 1807 in a slim volume, entitled The Hours of Idleness, a collection of sentimental poems. The critics were very harsh, and Byron answered with his famous satire, English Bards and Scottish Reviewers.

In 1809 Byron left England for a grand tour, then customary for a young aristocrat. The Napoleonic wars forced him to avoid most of Europe, and he turned to the Mediterranean. He travelled through Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans. On this tour the first two cantos of his famous Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were written.

After his return he published the first two cantos, and they were received with much acclaim. In his own words, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous”. He became the celebrity of fashionable London, enjoying an unprecedented literary success, which he soon increased by his series of highly readable New Eastern verse tales (The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, The Bride of Abydos). In these, the Byronic hero, in various embodiments, flaunts his misanthropy and undergoes a variety of violent romantic adventures that current gossip attributed to the author himself.

For a while Byron tried to pursue a political career: he occupied the inherited seat in the House of Lords. He was very outspoken about his radical political views, and became a strong advocate of reform, one of the few defenders of Luddites. These experiences inspired him to write political poems such as The Song for the Luddites, The Landlord’s Interest and others.

In the meanwhile, Byron’s growing fame, his good looks and magnetic personality made him a social lion. His private life was a constant source of scandal. In 1815 Byron tried to find stability in marriage, but this attempt proved unsuccessful, and his wife left him about a year later, just before the birth of Ada, his only legitimate child. After this Byron was ostracized by all but a few friends, and finally forced to leave England on April 25, 1816, never to return.

He lived in Geneva for several months in close and intellectually fruitful relation with Shelley, who was accompanied by his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Then he moved to Italy. The period was one of great literary creativity: Byron finished his tragedy Manfred, wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold, Beppo, began the composition of Don Juan.

In Italy Byron became involved in the Carbonari plot against Austrian control over northern Italy. There followed a period of turmoil political activity. In the meanwhile Byron had been steadily at work on a series of closet tragedies (Cain, Sardanapalus, Marino Faliero) and on his superb satire The Vision of Judgement. But increasingly he devoted himself to Don Juan. Confident, that he had at last found his meter and was accomplishing a masterpiece, he kept on in spite of insistent objections against the supposed immorality of the poem by the English public, by his publisher, friends and well-wishers.

Byron finally broke off literature for action when he organized an expedition to assist the Greek war for independence from the Turks. In the dismal town of Missolonghi he lived a Spartan existence. Byron contributed money to the course, but didn’t live long to take part in any military action. In 1824 his health failed him and he died after a series of feverish attacks just after he had reached his thirty-sixth birthday. To this day Byron is revered by the Greek people as a national hero.

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