analysis
Rather, the poem is a manifestation of Byron’s own existential frustration – a complex masterpiece therapeutically exercising human angst and effectively addressing all of the previously mentioned issues. And unlike the angry existential philosophers who follow him some years later, Byron’s existential vision is a theistic one: a vision comprised of isolation and loneliness while encompassing a compassion for humanity as a greater whole.
Perhaps it would be best to begin with the most obvious issue raised by the poem: Byron’s satire. Byron beganDon Juan(literally in his «Dedication») as «a literary… manifesto to his age,» and he «vigorously attacks the literary pretensions» of his fellow Romantic poets, or as Jerome J. McGann terms them, the poets of «the Lakist School».
“Don Juan: Canto I” was composed in 1822, the year of the poet’s death. An extraordinarily lengthy poem that Byron had not finished by the time of his death. First of all, the most obvious neoclassical characteristic is Byron’s choice of a subject, Don Juan himself. This subject evokes a period of chivalrous knighthood in which men prove their love for worthy ladies. Byron’s voice is hardly veiled in the poem, and as Canto the First opens, he clearly explains his reason for selecting Don Juan as his subject: “I want a hero: an uncommon want/When every year and month sends forth a new one/Till…/The age discovers he is not the true one:…/I’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan….” (ll. 1-6). In this clearly articulated stanza, Byron explains that there is no contemporary hero worthy of an epic meditation—“I condemn none/But can’t find any in the present age fit for my poem….” (ll. 13-15)– and so he is compelled to reach into the past for an archetypal hero figure. He does not make any false claims about how he will treat this hero, however. Byron’s wit and sense of humor are at their sharpest in “Don Juan,” and he is unsparing in his treatment of the old hero.
Byron also explains in the opening stanzas of the Canto that he will be telling an unconventional tale, warning the reader that he will introduce his own poetic style in the interpretation of the traditional Don Juan narrative. He does not ask for apology; his statement is simply intended to inform the reader about his approach, signaling that “the usual method [is] not mine” (l. 25). Across the span of this long poem, Byron nestles various moral lessons that are intended to convey both classical and romantic ideals. Among these lessons are: “The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone” (l. 502), “Even innocence itself has many a wile/And will not dare to trust itself with truth” (ll. 574-575), and “Love, then, but love within its proper limits” (l. 641). Byron thus defends love as the highest aspiration—“Men have all these resources, we but one,/To love again, and be again undone” (ll. 1551-1552)—but also acknowledges, unlike the other romantic poets, that love has its limits and difficulties. Thus, the reader observes how the neoclassical figure of Don Juan is appropriated by Byron to render a message that one might interpret as a reaction against the full embrace of the romantics’ position.
Refering to Canto III, Byron hoped that by ridiculing his contemporaries (canto III), he could enact «a practical return to the poetic position and understanding of earlier and more traditional poets» (McGann 73). He accuses Wordsworth of being unintelligible («Dedication IV), Coleridge misguided (II), Bob Southey insolent and untalented (III), and concludes that they are «shabby fellows» (VI).
«The point of Don Juan, then,» as Jerome J. McGann remarks, «is to clarify the nature of poetry in an age where obscurity on the subject, both in theory and practice, was becoming rampant» (78). This obscurity had «developed from the increasing emphasis upon privacy and individual talent in Romantic verse» (78). The paradox of Byron’s crusade to save the traditional form of poetry from those bent (in his view) on its destruction is evident when juxtaposed against the myth of Don Juan and Byron’s own life. Byron’s traditional ideas on poetry, and his conservatism (McGann 160) in his attitude toward imagination appear all the more ironic when placed next to Juan’s hedonistic lifestyle and Byron’s rebellious nature.
Satire, as employed by Byron, enables him to address serious issues throughout the poem while serving to undercut the seriousness of those same issues. It becomes an effective vehicle for «educating» («Dedication» XVII) as he entertains, and it serves as Byron’s qualifying device for his theme of «appearance versus reality» (Lovell 21). This idea that things are not always what they seem is representative of both Byron’s outlook and the idea that the alleged cynicism in Don Juan is but a facade covering a greater issue.
If there are some obvious external reasons for the harsh satire in the text (and Byron’s world view), there are even more possible internal elements which result in the Byron vision. It seems too obvious to assert that Don Juan is autobiographical, yet in a letter to his publisher, Byron wrote, «‘The truth is that (the poem) is TOO TRUE'» (Bostetter 7). Leslie A. Marchand’s biography of Byron (as referred to in Candace Tate’s essay) tells us that Byron’s childhood was remarkably similar to Juan’s. Byron’s father, Captain John Byron, thus becomes Don Jose, and Donna Inez, like Byron’s mother, becomes «repression personified» (Tate 91).
Canto 1, then, becomes a «deliberate innovation to the traditional Don Juan myth,» and in it «Byron’s own oedipal problems emerge as the ultimate conflict in his psychodrama, with Juan as the protagonist of myth and psychodrama both» (Tate 90-1). In the poem, Byron «depicts the formative events of his life, his experiences as son and husband, but so thoroughly rearranged as to raise a private past into a public fiction. The impulses behind the rearrangement are the key to the poem, for in retelling in this oblique fashion the circumstances of his childhood and marriage Byron is able to construct an ideal version of them, one that is favorable to the ego whose fragility is betrayed by the divided self-presentation» (Manning 46). Byron is especially sympathetic to Byron-as-Juan, and depicts him «not as the ruthless seducer but as the innocent seduced» (Bostetter 3).
Byron confronts the angst obsessing him, but from a safe distance: «what Byron-as-Juan painfully endures, Byron-as-narrator rises above, turning to comedy the bitterest elements of his own life and indeed narrating them as if they were not part of his life at all. The narrator, above the action and exercising supreme control over it, is an image of Byron as he would like to be, a self-reassuring demonstration that he was master of the problems that tormented him…. By showing Juan in his childhood Byron demythologizes the story and gives instead a psychological sketch of the effects of environment on character» (Manning 46).
Because he is educated/influenced/manipulated by women, it is little wonder that Byron-Juan has no voice in Canto 1 and feels the need to escape. His tragedy is that he moves from one mother figure to another. «As Inez’s social and psychological peer, Julia becomes a parental substitute for Juan…. she embodies again (Byron’s) own mother’s violent hatred toward her husband and the emotional excesses that her stern Presbyterian principles neither disciplined, nor relieved, but as with Julia, and Inez, hatred is nicely submerged beneath a veneer of respectability, and the hated husband is replaced by the more easily dominated son» (Tate 94).
«The point of Don Juan, then,» as Jerome J. McGann remarks, «is to clarify the nature of poetry in an age where obscurity on the subject, both in theory and practice, was becoming rampant» (78). This obscurity had «developed from the increasing emphasis upon privacy and individual talent in Romantic verse» (78). The paradox of Byron’s crusade to save the traditional form of poetry from those bent (in his view) on its destruction is evident when juxtaposed against the myth of Don Juan and Byron’s own life. Byron’s traditional ideas on poetry, and his conservatism (McGann 160) in his attitude toward imagination appear all the more ironic when placed next to Juan’s hedonistic lifestyle and Byron’s rebellious nature.
Satire, as employed by Byron, enables him to address serious issues throughout the poem while serving to undercut the seriousness of those same issues. It becomes an effective vehicle for «educating» («Dedication» XVII) as he entertains, and it serves as Byron’s qualifying device for his theme of «appearance versus reality» (Lovell 21). This idea that things are not always what they seem is representative of both Byron’s outlook and the idea that the alleged cynicism in Don Juan is but a facade covering a greater issue.
If there are some obvious external reasons for the harsh satire in the text (and Byron’s world view), there are even more possible internal elements which result in the Byron vision. It seems too obvious to assert that Don Juan is autobiographical, yet in a letter to his publisher, Byron wrote, «‘The truth is that (the poem) is TOO TRUE'» (Bostetter 7). Leslie A. Marchand’s biography of Byron (as referred to in Candace Tate’s essay) tells us that Byron’s childhood was remarkably similar to Juan’s. Byron’s father, Captain John Byron, thus becomes Don Jose, and Donna Inez, like Byron’s mother, becomes «repression personified» (Tate 91).
Canto 1, then, becomes a «deliberate innovation to the traditional Don Juan myth,» and in it «Byron’s own oedipal problems emerge as the ultimate conflict in his psychodrama, with Juan as the protagonist of myth and psychodrama both» (Tate 90-1). In the poem, Byron «depicts the formative events of his life, his experiences as son and husband, but so thoroughly rearranged as to raise a private past into a public fiction. The impulses behind the rearrangement are the key to the poem, for in retelling in this oblique fashion the circumstances of his childhood and marriage Byron is able to construct an ideal version of them, one that is favorable to the ego whose fragility is betrayed by the divided self-presentation» (Manning 46). Byron is especially sympathetic to Byron-as-Juan, and depicts him «not as the ruthless seducer but as the innocent seduced» (Bostetter 3).
Byron confronts the angst obsessing him, but from a safe distance: «what Byron-as-Juan painfully endures, Byron-as-narrator rises above, turning to comedy the bitterest elements of his own life and indeed narrating them as if they were not part of his life at all. The narrator, above the action and exercising supreme control over it, is an image of Byron as he would like to be, a self-reassuring demonstration that he was master of the problems that tormented him…. By showing Juan in his childhood Byron demythologizes the story and gives instead a psychological sketch of the effects of environment on character» (Manning 46).
Because he is educated/influenced/manipulated by women, it is little wonder that Byron-Juan has no voice in Canto 1 and feels the need to escape. His tragedy is that he moves from one mother figure to another. «As Inez’s social and psychological peer, Julia becomes a parental substitute for Juan…. she embodies again (Byron’s) own mother’s violent hatred toward her husband and the emotional excesses that her stern Presbyterian principles neither disciplined, nor relieved, but as with Julia, and Inez, hatred is nicely submerged beneath a veneer of respectability, and the hated husband is replaced by the more easily dominated son» (Tate 94).
A further twist in this Oedipal dilemma is the fact that Don Alfonso doubles as a father figure to both Julia and Juan, and the incest implication is obvious. «Alfonso’s relationship with Inez and the chance of his being Juan’s actual father, or at least old enough to substitute as the father symbol in the exclusive ‘only mother,’ ‘only son’ affliction, sets up an oedipal configuration between these three characters, which is further complicated by the possibility that Julia is ‘sister-mother’ to Juan».
What is Byron trying to do with the poem? Where is he trying to go?
George M. Ridenour, one of the preeminent Byron scholars, contends that the important point in reading Don Juan is in viewing the poem as representative of the myth of the Christian Fall. This view would be a logical extension when considering Byron’s Calvinistic background combined with his psychological neuroses. «Whether it was the result of the Calvinistic influences of Byron’s Scottish childhood, whether it was temperamental, aesthetic, the product of his own experience, or any combinations of these factors, Byron seems throughout his life to have had peculiar sympathy with the concept of natural depravity…. ‘Byron held consistently to a belief in the existence of sin and the humanistic ideal of virtue as self-discipline. The fall of man- however he resented the injustice of its consequences- is the all-shadowing fact for him.’… It is clearly true… that in the poem the Christian doctrine of the Fall is a metaphor which Byron uses to express his own personal vision» (Ridenour 20-1).
Underneath the cynical veneer is a man of compassion- compassion for humanity and the human condition. Byron constructed his own meaning: «In an age full of new inventions, ‘for killing bodies, and for saving souls,’ both alike make with great good will, the satirist finds a true function in exploring the ambiguities of human aspiration…. Byron despaired of apocalypse, and yet could not be content with Man or nature as given. He wrote therefore with the strategy of meeting this life with awareness, humor, and an intensity of creative aspiration…» (Bloom 4, 14). Byron was indeed a suffering soul, yet those factors in his life which tormented him, his «sense of sexual guilt, the bleak view of human destiny, the passionate hatred of tyranny and war, and the revolutionary zeal for the freedom of oppressed peoples» (Bostetter 3), were the same factors which made Don Juan a masterful exploration of the human condition and which made Byron himself great. Don Juan, finally, is neither a nihilistic or idealistically moral work. To consider it one or the other would do Byron injustice. It is a complicated tale of a human existential dilemma, encompassing both nihilism and traditional morality. Don Juan is Byron in a nutshell: as he was and as he wished humanity to be; a disillusioned yet continually idealistic portrait of mankind.
http://nieveroja.colostate.edu/issue5/byron.htm