Is Childe Harold an Extension of Lord Byrons Personality - Essay Example

Is Childe Harold an extension of Lord Byron’s personality? Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is Lord Byron’s longest narrative poem published between 1812 and 1818. It describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man looking for distraction in foreign lands. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. (Wikipedia) George Gordon Noel Byron was born on 22 January 1788 in London.  He was among the most famous of the English Romantic poets; his contemporaries included Percy Shelley and John Keats.  He was also a satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe.  (The Life of Lord Byron) As a child, he was simply George Noel Gordon, born with a clubfoot. His disability made a mark on his personality that he was extremely sensitive. As a child, he was rumored to be molested by his nurse; later on, he developed an affection or idealized love for his distant cousin Mary Duff that he tried to vainly court her. This affection also shaped his paradoxical attitude toward women. Fate turned on a different road when, at 10, he inherited the title and estate of his great-uncle, the “wicked” Lord Byron. He was brought to England and fell in love with the ghostly halls and spacious grounds of Newstead Abbey. The boy and his mother lived in its ruins for some time. In Nottingham, he was privately tutored, his clubfoot was treated by a quack. An attorney, John Hanson, rescued him from the nurse Mary Gray and from such a situation, that he was brought to London where a reputable doctor prescribed a special brace for his clubfoot. In 1801 Byron went to Harrow, and in the summer of 1803, he was with his mother in Southwell, near Nottingham. Byron escaped to Newstead and stayed with his tenant, Lord Grey, and courted his cousin Mary Chaworth, who later discriminated him as “that lame boy”. This was one of the reasons why Byron soon started writing melancholy poetry. Mary became the symbol of idealized and unattainable love. But when Byron soon achieved fame and became the darling of London society, Mary regretted her rejection on the young man. In January 1809, Byron was involved in politics and he took his seat in the House of Lords. He published an anonymous satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and embarked on a grand tour with a close friend, John Hobhouse. He sailed to Lisbon, which inspired one of his funniest poems, crossed to Spain, then on to Gibraltar to Malta. They soon landed at Preveza, Greece and made an inland voyage to Janina and later to Tepelene in Albania to visit Ali Pasa. In Janina, he began the autobiographical poem, Childe Harold, which he continued upon his journey to Athens. Then in March 1810, they sailed for Constantinople by way of Smyrna. Byron visited the site of Troy and swam the channel in imitation of Leander. His sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression in his mind and character. (The Life of Lord Byron) Lord Byron’s regard and love of poetry can be summed up from the words of the man himself: “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, available from: http://englishhistory.net/byron/poetry.html) Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage has four cantos written in Spenserian stanzas. This consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by an alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line), and rhyme ababbcbcc. The need to find four b rhymes and three c rhymes, and to manage the central and the final couplets, make this a difficult stanza to write in, but Byron claimed that he selected it because it “admits of every variety”. Let’s take a look at the beauty of Canto I, Stanza III Childe Harold was he hight: -- but whence his name And lineage long, it suits me not to say; Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame, And had been glorious in another day: But one sad losel soils a name for aye, However mighty in the olden time; Nor all that heralds rake from coffind clay, Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lies of rhyme, Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime. Although the poem uses old English, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, all throughout it expresses beauty, compassion and other traits of a lonely human in search for truth and finding ways to treat his boredom. Childe Harold is Lord Byron finding himself as he traveled through the many parts of the world in search for his real self. The poetic meter in the poem was first used by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene. The Spenserian stanza is an English poetic stanza of nine iambic lines, the first eight being pentameters while the ninth is a longer line known as an iambic hexameter or as an alexandrine. After Spenser invented it on the basis of the ottava rima stanza for his long allegorical romance, The Faerie Queene, it was again revived successfully by the younger English Romantic poets of the early 19th century, until Byron in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. (Answers.com) Byron started writing the poem on his European tour in 1809 -11 and when the first two cantos were published in 1812 they propelled him more or less immediately to the height of fame. He wrote in his preface that he created the character of Childe Harold “for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece”, but the poems first readers saw Harold as a version of Byron and in the earliest manuscripts he is called “Childe Burun”. (The Literary Encyclopedia) The success of the poem was phenomenal. The publication of the first two cantos in March 1812 created such a sensation that Byron said he awoke one morning to find himself famous. It was such a big happening at that time that carriages blocked the street delivering invitations to fashionable balls and dinners with Byron as the guest and main topic. The expensive first edition of the poem sold out immediately; it was displayed on tables of the most fashionable houses of the time. Then in one of those melancholy nights, the narrator pours his heart on, like he’s remembering his past or calling out to God for help. But when the sun was sinking in the sea He seized his harp, which he at times could string, And strike, albeit with untaught melody, When deemd he no strange ear was listening: And now his fingers oer it he did fling, And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight. While flew the vessel on her snowy wing, And fleeting shores receded from his sight, Thus to the elements he pourd out his last Good Night.’ (XIII, Canto I) On the fourteenth stanza, still at Canto I, he bids goodbye to his land. On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone, And winds are rude in Biscays sleepless bay. Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon, New shores descried make every bosom gay; And Cintras mountain greets them on their way. And Tagus dashing onward to the deep, His fabled golden tribute bent to pay; And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap, And steer twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap. The images he form and present in the poem are very imaginative. The imagery is rich and presents the sights he passed through during his travels. Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land: (first two lines of XV stanza, Canto I) Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage gives a poetic travelogue of picturesque lands and vents to the moods of melancholy and disillusionment of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The poem also conveys a disparity between the romantic ideal and the world of reality, a unique achievement at that time. Byron was then lionized in Whig society and was swept into affairs with the passionate Lady Caroline Lamb, the “autumnal” Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and half-sister Augusta Leigh. (The life of Lord Byron) An interesting article is that of Nail Bezel, a published poet and professor of English at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, entitled Sense of Place and Displacement in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Bezel starts with a brief quotation from Canto IV: The narrator of the poem imagines building a bark: ‘a little bark of hope’, (4/938) ‘…where should I steer?’ (4/944) ‘There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.’ Brezel says that the place of composition and the reference to ‘here’ in the line is Italy, the setting for much of Canto IV. From thereon there is no place to ‘steer’ to. But this obviously could not be an evidence that Italy is home, for the narrator imagines building a bark to go away from it. Elsewhere in the poem there is reference to his being a stranger in Italy. (Bezel) Two eminent critics comment on this, according to Bezel. The first comment is this: The timelessness of art ends the wanderings of Byron’s Pilgrim, for he comes to rest before the beauty of Rome, his search accomplished.’ (Bloom, 6, cited in Bezel) The second comment is this: ‘He [that is, Byron, or his persona,] identifies himself with Italy.’ (McGann, 39, cited in Bezel) According to Bezel, the comments “do not hold in respect to art, for Byron or his persona, imagines building a bark for something further; and they do not hold in respect to the author as man, for Byron seeks possibilities for military glory in Italy, or in Spain, and ironically, and maybe as might be expected, ends up in Greece fighting against Turks.” In respect to the first voyage to continental Europe, Byron expresses a sense of full exile from the home land, as he had to do seven years later. The following lines are from Canto I, from a lyric introduced in the narrative poem, ‘Childe Harolds Good Night’: ‘With thee, my bark, I’ll swiftly go Athwart the foaming brine; Nor care what land thou bear’st me to, So not again to mine.’ [190-193] In Canto III, at the very beginning, we observe similar moods of indifference to England and a sense of lack of purpose or direction. These lines are from the beginning of Canto III. The first group of lines that Bezel quote:   I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by, When Albion’s lessening shore could grieve or glad mine eye. (III, 6-8) The second group of lines are these: Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail Where’er the surge may sweep, or tempest’s breath prevail. (III, 16-18) Bezel noted that there might be some irony relevant to how Byron comes to fight in Greece rather than in Italy or Spain. Lord Byron, the man and the poet, among other things, who got his name and his title and his income and all other consequent privileges in Great Britain and used them up to the desire of what he all is, died abroad, in Greece. The irony was that, according to Bezel, Byron’s dead body was taken back to England; but a burial in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey was very definitely refused. (It was only recently that his body was permitted to be buried in the Abbey.) He was buried at some little known place. That was the way he came back to the land he did not want to come back to. Ironically, 145 years after his death, in 1969, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey. (The Life of Lord Byron)  Bezel wanted to cover points about the ‘Byronic hero’, Byron and the identity of the persona he seems to propose for this work which is Childe Harold’s; the feeling of space and time; the way Byron writes in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and the essential crucial literary and epistemological function of this manner of writing. Bezel also wanted to present certain passages of the work itself and witness experience with the reader rather than just comment on them. That is poetry reading. The read passages could cover experiences, narrative poetry in Spain, Greece, Albania and Turkey, the product of the first continental journey of Byron, which are treated in the first two cantos. The notion of the Byronic hero, according to Bezel, is the gist of what Byron is as legend, as fact and now as history. Here are some lines and phrases manifesting the Byronic hero in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage: ... in Man’s dwelling she 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. (III, 127-130)   And the phrases that display what Bezel calls a kaleidoscope of a Byronic hero: Living ‘in riot most uncouth’; ‘ungodly glee’; ‘concubines and carnal company’ (I,2...); he ‘felt the fullness of satiety: Then loath’d  he in his native land to dwell’ (I, 34-35); he ‘resolv’d to go, And visit scorching climes beyond the sea; With pleasure drugg’d he almost long’d for woe...’ (I, 51-53); ‘Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harolds brow’ (I, 65); ‘A sister whom he lov’d, but saw her not/ Before his weary pilgrimage begun’(I, 84-85); ‘I have thought Too long and darkly’ (III, 55-56); [I] ‘feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate’ (III, 63); ‘Proud though in desolation’ (III, 107). Bezel says that any reader of Byron’s works is inevitably faced with the matter of the relationship between Byron the author and his characters, or whether the characters are various projections of Byron himself, and to what extent. Byron wrote in the preface to the first Canto: ‘A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to regularity.’ Bezel says that he found the disclaimer, ‘no pretension to regularity’, of ultimate significance. Although Byron notes that he introduces ‘a fictitious character’, as he himself indicates there is no ‘regularity’, there are sudden and unexpected shifts from self, self-experience and self-expression to the name Harold. Bezel further notes that Byron handles Childe Harold as a handy figure which he can ignore when he finds it convenient to do so. The name ‘Harold’ sounds merely as a superficial tag. However, this device at times leads to shifting perspectives, so that Byron-Childe Harold’s identity becomes fluid, evasive, to achieve which may be the main function of Childe Harold the persona. In Canto III, Byron refers to his half-sister Augusta and his love for her as if it is Childe Harold’s experience. ‘thus he felt, For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust In one fond breast…’ (III, 474-476) Bezel says that this is the context of how Byron’s own life and the matter of incest became part of his writing. There are two points relevant to the Byron-Childe Harold identity. Point one: in the preface to the first two cantos, Byron refers to Childe Harold as ‘that most unamiable personage’. (McGann, 5, cited in Bezel) Point two: Byron had ‘reluctance to publish Childe Harold, and one was his fear of revealing secrets of his private life and feelings.’ (Marchland, 439-440, cited in Bezel.) Byron admits in the introductory note to Canto IV that the ‘separation’ of Byron and Childe Harold did not work for the reader; so he writes, ‘I determined to abandon it altogether – and have done so.’ (McGann, 122, cited in Bezel) Bezel gives one important point in describing Byron and Childe Harold the persona. He said that the lines indicate a distinction between Byron and the persona he creates. He shows that it is this combination of poet-narrator-persona that takes and guides the reader along and through a pilgrimage. And the reader witnesses this pilgrimage through this combination of figures.  Bezel calls this combination of poet-narrator-persona Childe Byron. Childe Byron, on his pilgrimage, moves in space and in time. This is obvious enough. Everything works in space and in time. Thus a critic writes: ‘Byron was very much a genius of time and space, of the here and now.’ (Langford, 20, cited in Bezel) The notion of ‘time and space’ in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is not confined to the ‘here and now’. The writing takes place simultaneously with the travel and the experience, but the mind in response to the scenes and sites moves in the scope of time with absolute freedom, entirely dependent on Byron’s feeling and in his environment at that time. Each reference to a physical feature of land is also full of historical references and allusions. Bezel quotes a line in Canto IV: ‘Pass not unblest the Genius of place!’ (IV, 604) The Genius of place is not confined to the moment only, for Byron, through Childe Byron, is not writing only what he observes, but relates the moment to the historical context. Some lines in the poem show what Byron seems to expect from writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. First, there is some glow that he receives, being mixed with Childe Harold the persona: …as I glow Mix’d with thy spirit. (III, 52-53) Second, he finds a magnified or ‘more intense’ image of his own in Childe Harold, so there is another reason for the persona. Tis to create, and in creating live A being more intense, that we endow With form our fancy. (III, 46 – 48) Third, Byron expects forgetfulness from such writing, as seen in the lines: to this I cling; So that it wean me from the weary dream Of selfish grief or gladness -so it fling Forgetfulness around me. (III, 32-35)   Fourthly, he expects remembrance, as seen in the lines: …I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land’s language. (IV, 76, 78) Bezel concludes that Childe Byron writes as he lives. Conclusion There is a slight distinction between Harold and the poem’s narrator but many of those who’ve managed to dissect the very essence of the poem believed that the two were difficult to separate. Harold was jaded and misanthropic while the narrator was more impressed by the sights and the different places mentioned in the poem. Harold was truly bored of his situation, and so did the narrator. Europe in the poem mentioned of classical antiquity that Byron had become familiar with through his education of Harrow School and Cambridge University. It also mentioned of political upheavals, popular tourist destinations and some correlations of Byron’s mental state. The whole poem shows a combination of poet-narrator-persona now known as Childe Byron. It is safe to conclude that the character Childe Harold is an expression of Lord Byron himself, or that the character is an extension of the author’s persona. References: Bezel, N. (n.d.) Sense of Place and Displacement in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Available from: http://members.tripod.com/~warlight/BEZEL.html. [Accessed 27 February 2008] The Life of Lord Byron. Available from: http://englishhistory.net/byron/life.html. [Accessed 25 February 2008] Answers.com (2008). Spenserian stanza. Available from: http://www.answers.com/topic/spenserian-stanza. [Accessed 27 February 2008] The Literary Encyclopedia. Available from: http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6044. [Accessed 15 February 2008] Tom Mole, University of Glasgow. "Childe Harolds Pilgrimage." The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 Jun. 2002. The Literary Dictionary Company. Available from: Read More