Stanzas of Byrons Don Juan and Relation of them to the Wider Context of the Canto - Book Report/Review Example

Offer a close reading of a few stanzas of Byron's "Don Juan" and relate them to the wider context of the canto in which they appear. In this paper Iintend to trace, in close detail, the language of several of the stanzas of Canto The Second of Byron's Don Juan (1819-1824) and relate them to the wider context of the canto and see how that illustrates some of the factors of Byron's work and opinions. I will also bring into the frame of reference some biographical details and some relevant material from his letters, which will help to substantiate some of the meaning in his work. Principally this paper will concern itself with the themes and imagery to be understood and deciphered from Byron's use of language in Don Juan via close reading and analysis. The version of the poem used here is an online annotated edition based upon the 1904, 1957 and 1958 reprints1 and although not a definitive scholarly edition is clear and accessible for close reading and critical analysis. Byron's letters are cited from Byron: A Self-Portrait in His Own Words, edited by Peter Quennell2, and are from 1798 to 1824 and so cover the period when Byron was working on Don Juan up to the time of its publication. Quennell begins by offering us, as biographer and editor, a useful warning when dealing with Byron's work and character: Byron is the most alluring of themes, and although there is no great man who appears at first sight to reveal himself more readily, his character, if we study him closely enough and follow him hard enough, often seems, as our knowledge increases, to be among the most elusive.3 Therefore, close reading of a long poem like Don Juan will be, at times, both revealing and frustrating, but is as good a means as any to attempt to investigate the character of the poet, his philosophies and passions. The choice of Canto the Second is meant to indicate Byron's variety in the tone and momentum in this work. Canto the First is about Don Juan's childhood and youth and how he first experiences passion, love and sex. It is farcical in its tone in places, relating the story of how Juan falls for Donna Julia and gets caught in her bedroom and has to flee. It is light-hearted, like a theatrical farce when the cuckolded husband surprises the two lovers. Don Alfonso, Julia's husband, decides he has to divorce her, so that at age sixteen Juan is responsible for a huge scandal. Canto the First also involves Byron's satirical voice aimed at his fellow poets, especially the Poet Laureate of the time Robert Southey. Southey comes in for particularly vitriolic criticism, and witty asides, and sometimes downright sarcastic comments in Byron's work as a whole, not just Don Juan. With supreme confidence, making his tone all the more attractive, at the conclusion of Canto the First, Byron finishes with an attack on his contemporaries: "Go, little book, from this my solitude! I cast thee on the waters -- go thy ways! And if, as I believe, thy vein be good, The world will find thee after many days." When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood, I can't help putting in my claim to praise -- The four first rhymes are Southey's every line: For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine. (Canto the First, Stanza CCXXII) His quotation here comes from Southey's Epilogue to the Lay of the Laureate and with barbed comments he distances himself from such work, the quality of which he doubts. This is part of Byron's allure, as Quennell mentions that makes his work intriguing, amusing and charming. That, however, is not all that is contained here. Don Juan is a work of light and shade, changing moods and differing momentum. It is after all an attempt at the biography of the legendary fictional rake, whose exploits have been charted by many writers, poets and composers up to the present day. Don Juan, and Don Giovanni as he is sometimes known (such as in Mozart's eighteenth century opera), is an archetype of the eighteenth century. He is the lover who travels Europe having encounters with women of various nationalities and social status. He is the character of legend and myth but it is by his female lovers, and his adventures during his encounters with them, that he is really defined. This is embodied by the variation that is signaled in Canto the Second. Where Canto the First contained the farcical element, with strong satirical content aimed at Southey and others, the second Canto continues in a much more somber vein and pursues that feeling, making it a darker, bleaker, contrasting sequence. Donna Julia of Canto the First is a passionate and poetic woman. There are short descriptions of her physical appearance, 'Her glossy hair,' her eyes: 'large and dark'; but she is epitomized more by moods and moments, nature and feeling, as a Romantic heroine should be. Her Moorish blood and the emotions that flicker and flash across her face show 'As if her veins ran lightning..'. She is a suitable first lover for Juan, to teach him the lesson of what love, sex and passion can mean and what risks he can run for the delights on offer. She helps to construct Juan and the life he chooses. Haide, the heroine in Canto the Second is a lover of a very different order. She does not appear on the scene for some time. First, Juan endures the ordeal of exile, followed by a savage storm at sea. His mother, Donna Inez, sends him away because of his scandalous affair with Julia. I can't but say it is an awkward sight To see one's native land receding through The growing waters; it unmans one quite, Especially when life is rather new: I recollect Great Britain's coast looks white, But almost every other country's blue, When gazing on them, mystified by distance, We enter on our nautical existence. (Canto the Second, Stanza XII). Byron switches into the first person to immediately present a more profound perspective. He states, in quite informal language, how the sight of the departing shores of 'one's native land' causes anxiety. It shakes his sense of self: 'it unmans one quite.' His memory is of Great Britain, a recent title for his country from the eighteenth century due to colonial expansion. He recalls the white coast, probably a reference to the White Cliffs of Dover, typically the last sight of the country when sailing for Europe. Byron went into exile for real when he was a young man in 1816, as a consequence of his scandalous behavior, which included affairs with married women, divorce proceedings with his wife Annabella, accusations of homosexuality and sodomy, and a possible intrigue with his own half sister, Augusta Leigh. His sexual relationships were public knowledge. This stanza is, therefore, a commentary written from personal and first hand experience, which generates an affinity between Byron and Juan. Byron's tone to Augusta in their correspondence has led biographers and critics to suppose that there was something more than sibling affection between them. It is not so much his endearments to her; those were the conventions of the time, offering her his eternal devotion as a brother. It is the jealousy that is apparent when she decided to take a husband; she married Colonel George Leigh her first cousin in 1807. Byron wrote: 'I feel a little inclined to laugh at you, for love, in my humble opinion, is utter nonsense Can't you drive this Cousin of ours out of your pretty little head'.4 He was consistently derogatory of her husband, preferring to own his relationship with her exclusively: 'I shall, in course, prefer seeing you all to myself without the incumbrance [sic] of third persons, even of your (for I won't own the relationship) fair cousin'.5 Byron was certainly troubled and tormented by his relationships throughout his life and might have courted scandal somewhat but felt genuine remorse at the lost chances of happiness. He was driven, politically and artistically, and therefore found it difficult to maintain the expected, conventional existence. His relationship and correspondence with Annabella, Lady Byron, expresses that. Dark, troubled and forbidden passions underscore his writing and Canto the Second reinforces this change of tone to something bleaker and more turbulent. A storm upsets Juan's progress from Cadiz; 'Cadiz, sweet Cadiz' was a city that Byron loved and was full, in his opinion, of the most beautiful women.6 Juan's turbulent progression begins at a very precise point: At one o'clock the wind with sudden shift Threw the ship right into the trough of the sea, Which struck her aft, and made an awkward rift, Started the stern-post, also shatter'd the Whole of her stern-frame, and, ere she could lift Herself from out her present jeopardy, The rudder tore away: 't was time to sound The pumps, and there were four feet water found. (Canto the Second, XXVII) There is, as Byron specifies here, a 'shift' in Juan's world. The language is brutal, threatening and we feel pity for the ship, 'shatter'd' and torn. They descend into a 'trough' and the sea batters the vessel and starts to inundate her. The feminine ship is a useful image for us, to gain more insight in to Byron's perspective. The crew and sea conspire, over the next series of stanzas, to wreck her as the storm intensifies and the men, in their panic-stricken state decide to get drunk. Juan steps up, surprisingly, and defends the ship. He stands guard to prevent the crew getting at the store of liquor. Juan, the young man - barely more than a boy - who with Julia only found the courage to jump out of a window and run away, has turned a corner. He finds a reserve of strength and bravery in the face of this storm and the onset of tempestuous times in his life. Juan's experiences are far from calm in the rest of the action in this Canto. The storm intensifies further and the ship is wrecked. Juan, his tutor Pedrillo and some of the crew escape in a lifeboat and it is here that his adventures turn gory and murderous. The crew, starving and driven to distraction, resort to cannibalism (after first eating Juan's dog) and the unlucky Pedrillo is the first victim. Juan, engaged now with his newfound persona as a more moral and upright man, refuses to taste the meat of his comrade. It is fortunate that he does not, as the men who do go mad: 'Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,/And with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.'(Canto the Second, Stanza LXXIX). So, beset with storms, the horror of cannibalism, madness and more death he is poised to begin his next adventure. Stanza XLIX reveals a sense of impending doom, describing the 'twilight' scene, veiled and masked visages and a gloomy aspect. This is reiterated in Stanza XCVI, again, at 'twilight' the crew and Juan experience the changes in nature around them and this time sense that they hear noises that are not there. This is a steady, progressive build-up in the language prefiguring the arrival of the heroine Haide. She is from the country with the 'wild' shore. Juan has to struggle through the pounding surf in the darkness and 'faint, emaciated, and stark' reaches the shore and is the only man who survives. Juan is singled out to endure this ordeal and come through and his reward on reaching a new country, faint, dazed and occupying a 'twilight' world of semi-consciousness is to encounter the seventeen-year-old Haide. Her presence is immediately more potent and mysterious than Donna Julia. The older woman was exotic and passionate, while Haide is mystical and somewhat sinister. She revives Juan with an intimate act: 'the small mouth/Seem'd almost prying into his for breath.' (Stanza CXIII) Byron describes her hair, its tendrils and auburn locks and how it is braided around the back into tight bunches. She has a commanding air and is a woman of intriguing contrasts. She is young and tender, yet possesses a gravity and sternness. Byron lavishes sumptuous detail into her description. She is clearly the type of young woman that attracted him, but there is something so much more than beauty about her and in Stanza CXVII he reaches it: Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes Were black as death, their lashes the same hue, Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies Deepest attraction; for when to the view Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies, Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew; 'T is as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength. (Canto the Second, Stanza CXVII) This, again, is Byron's voice directed to us in the first person. It is he who is creating Haide and is simultaneously besotted by her. The culmination of Juan's struggles is to reach the land where death is in the eyes of the woman who saves him. There is a resonance here with the adventures of Odysseus and his meeting with Circe, the sorceress, on her island. Juan, like he, is destined to stay with this woman for a time, as her husband. He is embraced by, revived by and married to death in the rest of this canto. Her appeal is behind her veiled lids, which once they reveal her glance pierce the heart more forceful than an arrow. Her attraction is like that of a coiled snake waiting to strike and once she does her beauty is like venom that poisons and subdues. Byron was continually attracted to 'dangerous' female beauty. He reiterates the pleasure he finds in seeking this out and mythologizing it in his verse in a poem like "She walks in beauty like the night'. The woman in this work is, like Haide, one of contrasts: 'dark and bright' and glowing and shadowy. These contrasts and mysteries add to the attractiveness of the woman and the hint of the mystical and supernatural begins to represent the Gothic in his poems. It is not difficult to imagine in the description of Haide a close association with vampire women and John Keats's Belle Dame Sans Merci. This type became an icon of the Romantic Movement, a 'beldam' being also derived from an old word for 'witch', thus emphasising the affinity in Romanticism for traditional poetic forms and the roots of language. This type of woman embodies the concerns and anxiety associated with the philosophic and moral musings regarding sexuality and identity. The male poet, such as Byron, felt the desire to isolate himself and to be alone with his sensations and sensibilities, but at the same time desired women (including his own half-sister), yearned for children and was aware of his ties to his family with the title and lands he had inherited. He had to find some sort of compromise, some way to reconcile his lust and his anxiety. He was troubled as a child, born into relative poverty and obscurity with only distant aristocratic ties. He suffered from talipes, or club foot, when he was born and so had to endure the pain and discomfort of that as well as the feeling that he was imperfect. He strove to reconcile himself to this, taking more and more risks in his life and seeking to push himself to the physical limit with exercise such as swimming. Knowing that he might be physically undesirable and finding himself the successor to the title of 'Lord Byron' he sought to construct an identity as poet, lover, and eventually military hero. His conflicting views on women are found in the difficult and dangerous experiences of Juan. Haide is more of a free agent than the women Juan has known so far. Her father is Lambro, the Greek pirate and whilst he is away at sea Haide can control her destiny and she chooses to be with Juan. She 'was Nature's bridepassion's child,' and she exerts her independent will, 'she was one/Made but to love, to feel that she was his/Who was her chosen'. The will of woman was one of the themes that Byron sought to uncover in his work. This helps to create the intrigue and 'alluring' quality, as Quennell put it, found in his work and that appealed to large numbers of readers. He has humour, audacity and charm, but also demonstrates his doubt, conflicts and frustrations via painful, disturbing and bleak imagery. Hovering between worlds, half-awake, half-asleep Byron's hero encounters the woman who will be identified as his wife, but she is simultaneously marked out for death (which eventually comes in Canto the Fourth) at which point Lambro also sells Juan into slavery in Turkey. If we feel we understand the sentiment in Byron's work we can also be aware there is a reserve, an elusive quality of mystery and doubt. With his anxiety around identity, conflict with society and creation of scandal Byron was an unconventional figure who was exiled and famous for it. There is a definite sense that he was 'performing' the poet in his work with his addresses to the reader, slow development of narrative and digressions. He tantalises the reader and is unafraid to be shameless, witty and sarcastic. Don Juan is a work of many parts, written over a period of time, it constructs the rakish hero as Byron constructed the Romantic hero-poet. BIBLIOGRAPHY Byron, George Gordon, Don Juan, www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/donjuan.htm Peter Quennell (ed.), Byron: A Self-Portrait In His Own Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1990) Read More