In an ironic way, this tells the story of Byron's life. He couldn't have known it at the time, but he was to die, in Greece, fighting to liberate the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire. He did not get shot or hanged—he died of a fever. But before he died, he wrote (in Don Juan) a lovely passage about liberty and Greece. I'll just give you the key quatrain.
The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might still be free.
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The Byronic hero is too grimly anti-social and self-absorbed to pursue political causes. Childe Harold, "the most unfit / Of men to herd with Man," shuns "the hot throng" and the "contentious world" (2.568, lines 100–101; 575, lines 657, 661). But however apolitical, this iconoclastic figure is nonetheless a child of the Revolution in his intellectual rebelliousness and contempt for conventional morality. His studied gloom reflects the discouragement of post-revolutionary Europe. Childe Harold's fierce melancholy darkens further as he tours the continent where the hope of freedom has turned to dust and red clay mingled with the blood of the slain at Waterloo (2.569–72). Napoleon, presented as something of a Byronic figure himself, serves as yet another reminder that no unsullied heroes are to be found in the modern world (2.572–74).
Nonetheless, both Byron's poetry and his life reveal the possibility of a very different attitude to heroism and even revolution. While Byron always eschewed the revolutionary idealism and utopian exuberance of earlier Romantics, he was still irresistibly drawn to noble, impossible causes, as he acknowledges with ironic resignation in "When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home":
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.
(2.561, lines 1–4)
Byron refused to take himself too seriously as a hero or revolutionary. The peculiar mixture of heroic aspiration and ironic self-mockery which characterized Byron's personality is the theme of "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos" (2.55–56). Here Byron ridicules his own attempt to perform a noble feat and swim across the Hellespont—the body of water dividing Europe from Asia—like the classical hero Leander. A "degenerate modern wretch" like himself, exhausted by making the crossing in "the genial month of May," is no match for the heroes of antiquity (2.556, lines 9–10). But this ironic, even facetious poem makes light of everything: Leander's grand and tragic passion as well as the uninspired inadequacy of modern times, and the poet's own half-wistful longing to emulate the heroics of Leander most of all. Yet in spite of the many layers of irony in this poem, the fact remains that the poet has performed an extraordinary feat, and lived to write about it.
Byron's pessimism and ironic skepticism did not prevent him from taking action in pursuit of causes he perceived as just. He is still regarded as a hero in Greece for the role he played in the Greek war of independence. Byron died at Missolonghi in Greece shortly after his thirty-sixth birthday, which provided the occasion for the poem "January 22nd. Missolonghi" (2.562–63). In this poem Byron turns his back on his past, and abandons as well the comforting refuge of irony, to seek a "Soldier's Grave" in "the land of honourable Death" (1.563, lines 38, 34).
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George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
England
I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state? -- Lord Byron, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 5 July 1821
Born of noble blood, and with a clubfoot, Lord Byron struggled through poverty and scarlet fever to finally land the family title and estates in 1798 upon the death of his granduncle. In his studies, he was unproductive and lazy, yet he excelled in swimming, boxing, and cricket and read profusely. In 1803 he fell in love with Mary Chaworth, who was already engaged to another man. Her marriage inspired several of his early poems. In college, Lord Byron carelessly overspent his allowance, and continued to improve in boxing, fencing, and swimming. In 1806, he wrote his first volume of work, Fugitive Pieces. Yet it was not published until 1807, after revision and expansion, and under the title of Poems on Various Occasions. Hours of Idleness (1807) and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) followed, and granted him immediate fame. In December of 1809, following a tour of coastal Europe, Lord Byron settled in Athens, where he finished the first canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. In 1811 he returned to England, and submitted the first and second cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) for publication. Lord Byron's activities in Parliament at the time were notable and he enjoyed the status of a London socialite and acquainted himself with many prestigious writers and literary figures. In 1813, Lord Byron published The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. In 1814, he published The Corsair, which became popular in a short matter of time, and Lara. In 1815 he married Anne Isabella Milbanke who bore him a daughter in December. The two would later separate in 1816, and Byron would be cast down from London high society and would flee from England, singing "Adieu! Adieu! my native shore/Fades o'er the waters blue (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto i. Stanza 13)." He met Percy Shelley in Geneva and the two formed a close acquaintance. Lord Byron would send The Prisoner of Chillon and canto III of Childe Harold to England with Shelley. Although he was separated from England, Lord Byron continued to produce an extraordinary amount of work. He would finish Childe Harold and begin Don Juan in 1818. The years following he would become involved with a noblewoman, Countess Teresa Guiccioli. In 1822 he would lose her to a Papal decree that bound her to her father. Also in 1822 Shelley and Williams drowned and were cremated on shore by Byron and Hunt. With the completion of Don Juan in 1824, Lord Byron died of fever and was returned to England for burial. He died a national hero in Greece as he tried to unite the divergent country.
Criticism
Lord Byron now stands as the quintessential figure of British Romanticism. His passion, reflected in his poetry and his lifestyle, was at the same time intriguing and horrifying to English society. Yet his merits as a writer are not to be denied. From satires to dramas to tragedies, Byron was a master of storytelling, lyricism, and cynicism, and intrigued audiences with his allusions to passion, nature and adventure. He created the Byronic hero, a wandering, brooding man who shuns society and is burdened by the guilt and sins of his past: "But my soul wanders; I demand it back/To meditate amongst decay, and stand/A ruin amidst ruins; there to track/Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land/Which was the mightiest in its old command,/And is the loveliest, and must ever be/The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;/Wherein were cast the heroic and free… (Noyes 819)" It is this spirit of darkness that continues to influence artists today.The Byronic hero is in Lara, Manfred, Childe Harold, Don Juan; the Byronic hero is Byron himself. Byron wasn't all "doom and gloom." As extravagant and hedonistic as he was, he was known to be generous, kind, courageous, and hard-working if he could set his mind to it. He was also extremely religious and dreaded the judgment that would come after death. The Vision of Judgment (1822) reflects his "vision of judgement." The devil and the Lord squawk at each other in the same way as Mephisto and God in Goethe's Faust. That was precisely why he created the Byronic hero. Byron was not a brilliant poet; in fact much of his poetry is riddled with stylistic errors. Yet his work conveyed a unique spiritual agony and suffering that only Byron himself could produce. His disillusionment and cynicism still intrigues and delights audiences today.
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Several of the Romantic poets took pride in boasting of their opposition to conventional morality. This pose found its logical extreme in claiming to regard Satan as a hero—or at least the version of Satan who appears in Milton's Paradise Lost. In works such as Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Manfred, Lord Byron created a kind of Satanic hero marked by gloom, contempt for mankind, and a sinful past. This figure became known as the Byronic hero, and was confused by many readers with Byron himself. Yet as Byron revealed in other poems and in his life, he was not incapable of idealism and even heroic action.
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For his own part, Byron felt all the excitement of a new adventure, and the satisfaction that he was putting his hereto pleasure-seeking life to some good use. He was not hostile to the Ottomans or Islam-indeed he had romanticized the Turks in The Bride of Abydos and a canto of Don Juan-but he did believe deeply in justice, personal liberties, and the self-rule of all nations. He was now seriously taking up the call he had half-mockingly proclaimed in these anapestic stanzas of 1820:
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.
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