Lord Byron

Lord Byron (1788—1824), was the most colorful of the En­glish romantic poets. Many people find his adventurous life as in­teresting as his poetry. Byron often set his poems in Europe and the Near East, and they reflect his own experiences and beliefs. His poetry is sometimes violent, sometimes tender, and frequently ex­otic. But the underlying theme is always Byron's insistence that people be free to choose their own course in life.

Byron's life. George Gordon Byron was born in London, but he lived most of his first 10 years in Scotland with his mother. His father, who had abandoned Byron's mother, died when the boy was 3. Byron inherited the title Lord Byron at the age of 10, upon the death of his great-uncle. He then returned to England, where he attended Harrow School and Cambridge University. Byron's first book of poems, «Hours of Idleness» (1807), was severely criticized by the «Edinburgh Review», a Scottish literary magazine. Byron replied with «English Bards and Scotch Reviewers» (1809), a verse satire in which he attacked almost every notable literary figure of the day.

From 1809 to 1811, Byron traveled through southern Europe and parts of the Near East. In 1812, he published the first two can­tos (sections) of «Childe Harold's Pilgrimagc».Thesc cantos, set in the countries he had recently visited, chiefly Portugal, Spain, Alba­nia, and Greece, immediately established his fame. Eastern verse tales, such as «The Bride of Abydos» (1813) and «The Corsair» (1814), kept him in the public eye. In 1815, Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke. They had a brief, unhappy marriage, during which a daughter, Ada, was born. The marriage ended partly be- cause of rumors (hat Byron had committed incest with his half- sister, Augusta Leigh. Byron left England forever in 1816.

Byron spent several months in Switzerland, where he met fel­low poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Byron then settled in Italy, where he carried on a long romance with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli and became involved in Italian revolutionary politics. Byron also wrote such works as the verse dramas «Manfred» (1817) and «Cain» (1821). His last and greatest work was the long, unfinished epic «Don Juan». In 1823, while writing this poem, Byron decided to join the Greeks in their war for independence from the Turks. After a brief illness, he died in Missolonghi, Greece.

Byron's poetry. «Hours of Idleness» is mainly a collection of the learned and romantic poses expected of young poets at that time. In «English Bards and Scotch Reviewers», however, Byron adopted tlie biting, satiric style used by the poet Alexander Pope in his «Dunciad».

Byron wrote the first two cantos of «Childe Harold's Pilgrimage» as a fictional allegory using the stanza form and many features of the literary style of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. This work and the sequence of «Turkish Tales» (1813—1816) that followed defined the character type known as «the Byronic hero». This character is the melancholy, defiant, proudly self-assured man associated with Byron and widely imitated in later literature. In canto III (1816) and canto IV (1818), Byron identifies himself with Harold and through him expresses the loss and defiance the poet felt while living abroad.

During Byron's last years, he wrote several types of works, no­tably such historical and Biblical tragedies as «Sardanapalus» (1821) and «Cain». But the masterpiece of his Italian period is «Don Juan». Byron wrote the poem in the loose, flexible Italian verse form called ottava rima. The poem deflates the legendary lover Don Juan to the level of a comic epic hero. The most important element in «Don Juan», however, is the narrator, a free and self-contradictory spirit whose lone changes continually, ranging through the forceful, bit­ing, sentimental, cynical, self-mocking, and self-assured. The narrator's voice maintains Byron's scorn for what he called cant, the deceptions played by individuals and societies upon one an­other. Despite the range of Byron's poetry, that scorn is the main f'orcc running from the beginning to the end of his career.