Cumplimiento de Contratos

“That is the usual method, but not mine”: Childe Harold‘s Pilgrimage and Don Juan

At this juncture, the question of why Byron created the individual hero as such a prominent figure in his oeuvre must be considered. Byron‘s ―uncommon want‖

foregrounds the two meanings of ―want‖ with aplomb as he indicates the dearth of hero- figures whilst simultaneously coveting the same:

I want a hero: an uncommon want,

When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,

The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I‘ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan, We all have seen him in the pantomime

Sent to the devil, somewhat ere his time.

(Don Juan I. 1: 1-8) Byron immediately confronts the hero‘s status as the central necessity of an epic poem, or in Byron‘s case, his poetry in general. His narrator registers his irritation with the state of the hero in contemporary literature, as the ―gazettes‖ (3) offer gushing compliments until they discover that the feted character is not ―the true one.‖ Curiously, the narrator, while seeking to avoid the pitfalls of other authors, makes no claim for the veracity of Don Juan‘s heroism, instead appealing to Juan‘s well-known status in down-market

productions such as pantomimes. The narrator minimises the scope of the hero from the outset, lending credence to McGann‘s view that ―In Don Juan, Byron leaves behind everything in Milton that is divine, heroic, and ideal in order to align himself with everything else in Milton which is human, ordinary, and contextual.‖1 However, McGann‘s statement would seem to deny that humanity can contain divine, heroic and ideal concepts, which Don Juan at no point contends. Rather, Byron draws attention to our mixed condition and creates a determinedly mixed hero who is presented to the

reader by a narrator intent on holding the reader‘s attention with his verbal virtuosity. The narrator introduces his hero from a familiar and worldly perspective; the narrator is not secondary and passive, instead he is the active figure as he is the shaping power, and therefore the central character. He diminishes Juan‘s importance; the hero features as necessary material for his performance. Byron leaves the reader with the impression that the narrator could have chosen another hero; importantly, he establishes that the hero needs the narrator. The balance of power has shifted; the narrator‘s expressive power eclipses the hitherto central hero. After running through various other options, the narrator defends his choice and returns to his initial assertion: ―So, as I said, I‘ll take my friend Don Juan.‖ (Don Juan I. 5: 40)

Yet the narrator requires a hero, whether Juan or another, for his epic. Byron‘s poetry revolves around the relationship between the individual and society, and the hero is the perfect vehicle for its exploration. Byron is resolutely humanist and the ebb and flow of his optimism reflects the varying level of faith that he places in the ability of the

individual within society to shape his lot.2 Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage seeks to ground itself in recognisable reality and climb towards a higher state instead of attempting to transcend the conditions of earthly existence. When Byron writes ―There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here‖ (Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage IV. 105: 945), the line does not reveal a continued nihilistic bent; rather, as Vincent Newey writes: ―Patterns of quest and aspiration are present in Childe Harold: Byron wants (that is, lacks and desires) somewhere to steer, a locus of higher truth and a state of higher being. In Canto III he steers towards Nature, in Canto IV towards Art.‖3

Yet Newey understates the constant counter-current in Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage where Byron longs to cease, once and for all, longing for a higher state of being. The interplay between these two powerful drives propels the poem.

The attempt to seek truth and transcend the mutable conditions of the quotidian in Childe

Harold‟s Pilgrimage Canto III develops Byron‘s attempt to wrest the Wordsworthian

2 _{See Bostetter, 254.}

3 _{Vincent Newey, Centring the Self: Subjectivity, Society and Reading from Thomas Gray to Thomas Hardy} (Aldershot: Scolar P, 1995), 181.

concept of Nature to his own perception of value. The provisional character of identity expressed by the dissolution and reintegration of Harold reflects the status of nature in relation to man, as the individual projects meaning onto his surroundings which remain subject to the shifting and eddying of impressions. Byron continually draws attention to the ―made‖ condition of humanity‘s understanding of nature and reminds his reader of the human focus of his poetry by his use of language:

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where roll‘d the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desart, forest, cavern, breaker‘s foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome

Of his land‘s tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature‘s pages glass‘d by sunbeams on the lake.

(CHP III. 13: 109-17) This stanza shows Harold adapting nature to the particular needs that require fulfilment in the self. He perceives ―friends‖ and a ―home‖ (13: 109-10) in order to feed his desire for companionship, and on to an external and inhuman nature, Harold extrapolates ―a mutual language‖ (13: 115) that he prefers to the conversation of society. While couching itself as a descriptive passage, the stanza draws attention to the synthetic mode of Harold‘s perception. The construction of the phrase ―Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends‖ (13: 109) [emphasis added] indicates the self-made relationship between

unfeeling nature and Harold‘s ability to anthropomorphise his surroundings. The

following stanza continues in the same vein as Harold more obviously creates an alternate anthropocentric universe:

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, Till he had peopled them with beings bright

As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,

By insisting on the constructed nature of any relationship with nature refigured as a conscious presence, Byron moves away from Wordsworth‘s conception of nature which humanises and connects man and nature: ―Byron steadfastly refuses (as Wordsworth does not) to internalize or humanize the attributes of divine authority, freedom, and creative might.‖4

Newey‘s phrase, ―steadfastly refuses‖ indicates Byron‘s constant opposition to joining two disparate elements into a stable, permanent and synthetic poetic union. His constant reminder of the man-made connection between self and nature or divinity undermines and interrogates Coleridgean and Wordsworthian poetics that claim to transcend humanity and discover an external message that can be read by the poet.5 This is not to say that Byron chose to downgrade nature to mere scenery.6 Byron instead refuses to countenance the almost sanitised and safe version of nature he perceived when man and nature are shown to be synonymous, or that man can meaningfully control nature. The image of a dialogue between man and nature, repeated as late as the final few stanzas of Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage should not be taken to mean that the narrator has a privileged insight into nature, or that their conversation resembles a man speaking to men. By this late stage of the poem, nature is prized for its otherness, and its dissimilarity to mankind, and mankind for its ability to animate nature using the mind. What Byron demands is the reader‘s awareness of the synthetic nature of the creation, situated in an act of the will. The interview between man and nature revolves around what can be read into nature by the observer; longing, combined with an inability to be satiated create the self. The speaker can mingle, but never unite with Nature. Man and Nature are separate, though they can flow into one another.

I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne‘er express, yet can not all conceal.

4

Newey, 205.

5 _{For examples of this, see ―Tintern Abbey‖ or ―Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamounix.‖}

6_{Timothy Morton‘s excellent essay on Manfred and eco-criticism provides a reading of Byron that indicates} Byron‘s engagement with nature and demonstrates the often over-looked relationship that Byron has with nature. Timothy Morton, ―Byron‘s Manfred andEcocriticism,‖ Palgrave Advances in Byron Studies, ed. Jane Stabler (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 155-70.

(CHP IV. 178: 1598-1602) Instinct and feeling, and the intense longing for community with Nature propels the narrator to escape the confines of ―all I may be, or have been before.‖ As in The Giaour, what the speaker ―may be‖ is questionable; perspective and interpretation form a self that changes moment by moment. ―To mingle with the Universe‖ (178: 1601) requires a degree of passivity on behalf of the speaker; feeling as opposed to assertion allows this communication between the self and Nature. This passivity shows Byron to withdraw from a purely will-driven concept of the hero. Instead, Byron shows a range of emotional inflections within his exploration of the hero; passivity and activity become twin poles between which he moves. Extremities, such as self-overcoming, strength and force gain their intensity only by the presence of their opposites lurking behind or within the text. The mingling of power and powerlessness defines the Byronic self, which shifts between different modes of being as the parameters of the self fluctuate and alter.

There can be no complete union; oneness between the individual and the other cannot be achieved, despite all attempts. The individual becomes hero by his mixture of singularity and universality, as Byron weaves into his presentation the recoil from and attraction to other people, forces, or places which almost, yet never fully, mirror the self. While William Hazlitt may have intended his comment that Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage shows Byron creating ―everlasting centos of himself‖ as a jibe, this observation becomes fundamental to Byron‘s poetic process.7

While Byron does not pour autobiography on to the page as Hazlitt suggests, exploration of the self is the theme of the poem. This centrality of the self propels the individual into the hero, as Byron seeks a locus through which to explore the complex pattern of alienation and community, aspiration and doubt, and self and other. Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage and Don Juan show Byron‘s deep

engagement with questioning the roles of hero and narrator in his poetry The hero and the narrator stand in these poems as mutually dependent entities; one acts or suffers and the other communicates.

The gulf between the narrator and the hero offers a further variation on Manfred‘s saddened theme: ―The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.‖8 In Childe Harold the poetry opens up a gap between the figure of Harold and the more knowing narrator who underlines the forced, projected character of Harold‘s communion with Nature. Byron incessantly explores this gap as he shows the mind‘s ability to animate the mute and external in the same way that spirit animates matter:

Could he have kept his spirit to that flight He had been happy; but this clay will sink Its spark immortal, envying it the light To which it mounts, as if to break the link

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.

(CHP III. 14: 122-26) The opening condition proves to be unfulfillable; Harold cannot keep ―his spirit to the flight,‖ (14: 122) and the inevitable falling away finds expression through enjambed line- endings which capture a cycle of yearning and disappointment, and renewed yearning. The individual‘s ability to transcend the conditions of life can only be sustained for a limited period of time before the mortal part of man wrests control away from the spirit. This mixed condition, and the individual‘s alienation from fellow humanity despite his need for society, render the self‘s predicament difficult and ambiguous. In the same way, Byron‘s poetry is dependent on the reader‘s reception. Byron‘s awareness of the

difficulty of separating self from hero, poetry from reader, and spirit from matter led him to manipulate and project a hero and a narrator whose ambiguous identities would captivate by their dual performance.

Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage is the poem that launched Byron on to the literary scene and

propelled him into the realm of celebrity. When Jerome Christensen discusses the ―literary system of Byronism,‖9

it is in Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage that Byron starts to examine the role of the hero and the possibilities and limitations of the creation:

8 _{Manfred 1.1: 12} 9 _{Christensen, xvi.}

Byron too, pilgrim of eternity, seeks out and relishes, far more than his Romantic contemporaries, the limits inherent in writing whilst using them to dramatize the clash between limitless energies and bounded existences.10

A key phrase here is ―seeks out and relishes‖; Byron makes poetic capital, as Beatty and Newey imply, out of his sense of divisions. Byron most strikingly demonstrates

mankind‘s mixed condition by enacting a split between hero and narrator where one acts, and the other reports. But this method requires action to be the centre of the poem, and

Childe Harold becomes an increasingly lyrical narrative. Lacking a quest, the

―precariously open‖ narrative becomes internalised.11

Byron casts on to the narrator the burden of making something happen in language, and the narrator becomes active by Harold‘s lack of expressive capacity. The challenge of Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage was to create an epic poem that could house the hero, his narrator, and the poet. The difficulty of this endeavour becomes apparent by the evolution of the poem from a travelogue to an intensely lyrical poem preoccupied by the growth of the poet‘s mind. The spontaneity of the poem resides in the seeming freedom of the poet to record all elements of his journey, both psychological and geographical: ―The trust lies not so much in the knowable self as in what happens on the page when he picks up the pen.‖12 Byron‘s difficult relationship with both parties stems from his vacillation between over-identification and faltering identification with each. Harold, propelled purposelessly through foreign lands, becomes second to the lyric self that bursts to the fore, and ―Harold is pushed to the margin.‖13 The poem seems to lack stability, with Harold apparently lending the poem a centre through the first three cantos,14 only to be dismissed by the poet as a needless invention due to public disregard for the character‘s separation from the poet. Byron seems, at this stage of his career, incapable of separating poet, narrator and character sufficiently. This blurring of the boundaries led the audience to transpose the life of the poet onto the presentation of the hero. It is disingenuous to argue that Byron wanted his work to stand outside of his

10 _{―Preface,‖ Byron and the Limits of Fiction, viii.} 11

Rawes, 7. 12 _{Nellist, 42.} 13 _{Rawes, 13.} 14

Comparing the poem with Eliot‘s The Waste Land, Geoffrey Ward writes: ―Of course, Childe Harold does not at all feel like Eliot‘s poem: but both are concentrated, centreless epics whose lack of a stable centre for experience is their true subject,‖―Byron‘s Artistry in Deep and Layered Space,‖ Byron and the

biography; from his earliest publications, Byron utilises his biography as a means of creating poetry and drawing the frame of reference back to the self. Byron‘s irritation at this juncture is his lack of control over the three entities of narrator, hero, and self; their blurring is largely due to a lack of understanding as to how best to manipulate the possibilities of the self in poetry, and the boundaries between the hero and his narrator. By 1816, when Byron publishes ―When We Two Parted,‖ he could expertly misdirect, manipulate, and speak to his audience.15 Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage is Byron‘s apprenticeship, and performing the self was a technique learned in the poem via the ambiguous relationship between the three parties in the poem. Where Shelley‘s early work, Alastor, manages to define the difference between its hero and narrator with different philosophical worldviews, Byron has not quite managed the necessary demarcation, nor does he glory in the ambiguity or the possibilities inherent in their similitude. The identification of the hero with the historical poet is so complete that when canto III‘s opening with its autobiographical revelation shifts to a sketch of Harold, the movement does not feel sufficiently like a movement. Byron seems to be donning a costume rather than seeking to create another character:

He, who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him; nor below Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, Cut to his heart again with the keen knife Of silent, sharp endurance:

(CHP III. 5: 37-42) Byron‘s uneasy amalgamation of self and hero veers on the edge of mawkishness as he seems to narcissistically mythologize the self with only the slightest of veneers to act as an ill-fitting mask. Yet Byron‘s self-awareness in these early stanzas of canto three prevents any such slide into self-interested confession. He experiments with the ability of

the self to act as a connective device in lieu of the hero, and he projects himself into the poem to mingle with the hero in fertile and enriching ways.16

Byron‘s practice in Don Juan and Beppo has clear links with as well as evident

differences from his preoccupations in Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage. The critical story of his career being a movement from tragic beginnings to mature comedy does not

encompass Byron‘s pervasive interest in the nature of the poet, his narrator, and the hero. In Don Juan Byron becomes fully alive to the possibilities of the split and similarity between the three parties of the poem. As Jerome Christensen argues, the performance of Harold and his narrator compared to Juan and his narrator differs mainly by the approach that Byron takes to their status:

He [Harold] provides the artifice of order, awkwardly gives (to borrow the phrase applied to Harold in the preface) ―some connection to the piece‖— the task that the narrator and hero of Don Juan will perform with wanton facility.17

―Wanton facility‖ encapsulates the narrator‘s joyful freedom and vigour in the poem. Not only is Byron now aware of the multitude of possibilities on offer to him via the narrator and hero‘s relationship to each other and the poet, but he exploits them with exuberance. The audience‘s equation of Harold with Byron, which was a cause of anger