SONNET ON CHILLON (123.) 13. Bonnivard: François Bonnivard, a sixteenth-century Swiss patriot and ardent republican, who took part in the defence of Geneva against the Duke of Savoy and was imprisoned in the Castle of Chillon for six years, - that is, until the castle was captured by his friends. The castle is situated, amid magnificent scenery, at the end of Lake Geneva farthest from the city of Geneva. "It is by this castle," says Byron, "that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse." THE PRISONER OF CHILLON When Byron wrote this poem in two days, not far from the scenes described in it, he was, as he says, "not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard" to make use of it. Perhaps the poem owes something of its poetic truth and power to the fact that, while inspired by the memory of Bonnivard, it is free from the trammels of history. (124.) 52. But: except.- that pale and livid light: Cf. lines 30-35. (126.) 263-264. glimmer of the sun etc.: Cf. lines 30-35. The sunbeam moved slowly on as the sun made its progress in the heavens. (127.) 327. had: would have. PROMETHEUS In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of primeval gods ultimately overthrown by the Olympian gods. Although himself a Titan, "Prometheus, it was said, sided with the Olympians in their struggle against the Titans; but, grieved at their neglect of mankind, he stole fire from heaven and bestowed upon man it and the arts which control of it makes possible. Zeus, angered at this, had him bound to Mount Caucasus. But Prometheus, who was gifted with prophetic foresight, knew the source from which Zeus was to be eventually overthrown, and the god, to win this knowledge, offered to release him. The Titan refused, rather than perpetuate an unjust reign. Zeus then caused a vulture daily to consume his liver, which grew again at night, dooming him to this fate until some immortal should consent to die in Prometheus's stead. This Chiron did, and Hercules slew the vulture and released the Titan." (Webster's New International Dictionary.) This myth, familiar to the Greeks in slightly varying versions, attained its supreme Classical expression in the "Prometheus Bound" of Eschylus together with two lost plays, "Prometheus the FireGiver" and "Prometheus Unbound," the three constituting a unified trilogy. In the many centuries that followed, the story was virtually ignored by poets and dramatists, until, in the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth century, the modern spirit was profoundly drawn to the Titan myth and it was reinterpreted by prominent writers in Germany, Germany, Italy, England, France, and America. Through this ancient story, modern writers expressed their hatred of tyranny, their spirit of revolt, their passion for heroic strength and independence, their sympathy with suffering. "The question the race asks, in this Myth," says G. E. Woodberry, "is 'What is most divine in me' 'What is the god in me?' and Shelley answers, it is allenduring and all-forgiving love toward all; and Herder answers that it is reason, Keats that it is beauty, Goethe that it is liberty, and Hugo that it is immense triumphant toil." What is the answer of Byron? DARKNESS (129.) 50. clung them: dried them up. MANFRED Byron's aim, in this dramatic poem, is similar to that of Marlowe in his "Dr. Faustus" (which Byron said he had not read) and of Goethe in his "Faust." "His 'Faust' I never read," said Byron, "for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Staub bach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than 'Faustus,' that made me write 'Manfred.'" Whatever its literary echoes, "Manfred" is essentially the expression of Byron's moods during his wanderings in the Swiss Alps. The moods of the two preceding poems, and of much of "Childe Harold," Canto Third, may be traced in this work. ACT FIRST (132.) 136. Forgetfulness: Cf. "Childe Harold," Canto Third, line 35, and the motto (page 99). (133.) 202-203. Though thy slumber etc.: Cf. lines 3-7. ACT SECOND (138.) 145-173. My spirit walked not with the souls of men etc.: Cf. “Childe Harold," lines 100-135 (pages 101-102). (139.) 186-187. He who from out etc.: Jamblicus, a mystical philosopher of the fourth century, who, bathing at the hot baths of Gadara, in Syria, evoked the gods Eros and Anteros from the springs. (141.) 275. The buried prophet: Samuel; see 1 Samuel, xxviii, 9 ff. 276. The Spartan monarch: Pausanias, who, having killed the maiden Cleonice by mischance, at length invoked her "unsleeping spirit" and learned that he would ere long be freed of his troubles. He was freed of them by death. ACT THIRD (147.) 88. Rome's sixth emperor: Nero. 101. those who do despair above: those who despair of heaven. "Above" is a noun. 116-123. I could not tame my nature down etc.: Cf. "Childe Harold," stanza cxIII (page 119); also stanza XL (page 106). (148.) 176-179. the giant sons etc.: See Genesis, VI, 1-4.- This subject appealed strongly to Byron, and a few years later he worked it up superbly in his dramatic poem "Heaven and Earth.” MY BOAT IS ON THE SHORE (153.) 3. Tom Moore: See the note on Thomas Moore (page 674, above). CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO FOURTH VENICE AND SUNSET With stanzas I-III, compare Wordsworth's sonnet, written fifteen years earlier, "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic" (page 33); and see the notes on that poem (page 660, above). 1. the Bridge of Sighs: This famous bridge over the canal joins the Palace of the Doges and the old state dungeons. 8. the winged Lion's marble piles: Near the palace stands the lion of St. Mark, emblem of the old Venetian republic. 10. Cybele: the Greek Rhea, mother of Zeus, sometimes regarded as the goddess of town life and represented as wearing a crown of towers. merly, the gondoliers were wont to sing (154.) 20. the songless gondolier: Forstanzas from the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso, the great Italian poet of the sixteenth century. 33. Pierre: a character in the "Venice Preserved" of Otway. On Otway, see the note on page 670. 37-45. The beings of the mind etc.: With this stanza, compare "Childe Harold," Canto Third, stanza vi (page 100). ROME AND FREEDOM (155.) 703. Niobe: Boasting of her many children, Niobe, queen of Thebes, was punished for her presumption by the loss of all of them. "In her voiceless woe" she was changed to stone. (156.) 734. Tully's voice: the voice of Marcus Tullius Cicero, often called Tully. DESIRE AND DISILLUSION (157.) 1128. upas: a tall, poisonous tree of Java, formerly said to be so noxious as to destroy all living creatures that drew near it. This poem, the last great work of Byron, exceeding 15,000 lines in length but left unfinished at his departure for Greece, is commonly regarded as his masterpiece. Into it he has poured himself - all the conflicting elements of his large personality: wit, satire, cynicism, sentiment, pathos dominate by turns, or blend into an incomparably piquant mixture. Upon completing the first canto of "Don Juan" Byron said that it "is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything. But I doubt whether it is not at least, as far as it has yet gone · too free for these very modest days." After the publication of the first two cantos, he wrote in a letter: "You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny: I have no plan — I had no plan; but I had or have materials. . . . Do you suppose that I have any intention but to giggle and make giggle? — a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant." When the fifth canto was done, he said that he had only begun the work. "I meant to take him the tour of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure, and to make him finish as Anacharsis Cloots in the French Revolution. . . . I meant to have him a Cavalier Servente in Italy, and a cause for a divorce in England, and a Sentimental 'Werther-faced man' in Germany, so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each of those countries, and to have displayed him gradually gâté and blasé as he grew older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether to make him end in Hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest. The Spanish tradition says Hell: but it is probably only an allegory of the other state." The hero's name Byron derived from a familiar Spanish story relating to the profligate Don Juan de Tenorio. JUAN AND HAIDÉE (162.) 1542. the Stygian river: the river Styx, over which the shades passed into Hades. Byron brings in the Greek as well as the medieval notion of punishment after death, for the sake of Haidée. But is her devout knowledge in this stanza consistent with her "pure ignorance" in stanza cxc? (164.) 1624. Castlereagh: an unpopular Tory statesman who was leader of the House of Commons during part of Byron's lifetime. 1633-1638. Oh, Love! of whom etc. Love troubles all mankind, in different ways, as the following attest: Cæsar, fascinated by Cleopatra; Antony, who surrendered himself to her charms and destroyed his career; Titus, master of the passion, who, unpopular because of his attachment to Berenice, sent her away from Rome after becoming emperor; the Roman poets, Horace, Catullus, well versed in Love's lore, and Ovid, author of "The Art of Love"; and Sappho, the great Greek lyric poetess, who seems to have been the centre of an aristocratic literary society of women at Mytilene, and who, according to the story, finding her love of Phaon unrequited, leaped from the Leucadian rock, a promontory of the island of Leucadia, into the Ionian Sea. 1643. Belisarius: a general of the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century, who conquered the Persians and the Vandals of Africa, but was unable to cope with his wife Antonina, a woman of vicious char acter. 1649-1650. Epicurus and Aristippus, a material crew!: ancient Greek philosophers who held that the highest good in life is pleasure. Although some of the later adherents of this doctrine were certainly a material and sensual crew, Aristippus and Epicurus, who established the doctrine, believed that the attainment of a high quality of pleasure demanded self control and moderation. Byron, like many others, has misrepresented their teaching. (164.) 1656. the royal sage, Sardanapalus: semi-legendary king of Assyria. In Byron's fascinating drama, of which this genial hedonist is the hero, written two years after the present Canto, romance and mockery are also mingled. (165.) 1691. Platonic, universal: In the philosophy of Plato, true reality resides, not in the world of the senses and of the individual things perceived by the senses, but in the world of "the Idea,” the ideal, the universal. "He who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or in the likeness of a face, or hands, or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, nor existing in any other being; but Beauty only, absolute, separate, simple, everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever growing and perishing beauties of all other things" (Plato's Symposium). In the preceding stanza, Byron means that when we adore a beautiful person or object (the "real," or, better, the actual), we are, rather, adoring "ideal beauty" as imparted to that person or object. This Platonic conception of beauty easily lends itself to fallacies and distortions; the ambiguities of the familiar phrase "Platonic love" are a sufficient example. Byron, anything but a Platonist, uses the conception playfully. THE ISLES OF GREECE (166.) 676. "Ça ira": "It will succeed," a song of the French Revolution. (167.) 686. De Staël: In her book on Germany, Madame De Staël had asserted that Goethe summed up German literature. The Pegasus he'd prance on" would therefore be Goethean. 687. "trecentisti": authors of the fourteenth century in Italy, of whom the chief were Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 692. Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! According to myth, the island of Delos rose from the waves of che Ægean Sea and became the birthplace of Phoebus Apollo, god of poetry and music. 695. The Scian and the Teian muse: Homer and Anacreon, born, or said to have been born, respectively, at Scio and Teos. 700. "Islands of the Blest": the happy abodes vaguely located in the "Western Ocean" where the favorites of the gods were said to dwell after death. 701. Marathon: the plain between mountains and sea, northeast of Athens, where the army of Miltiades heroically defeated the Persian hordes. 707. A king: Xerxes, King of Persia, whose fleet was defeated by the Greeks between Attica and the island of Salamis. 730. Thermopyla: at the pass of Thermopyla three hundred Spartans made their immortal stand against the army of Xerxes. 738. Samian wine: Anacreon, the great lyric poet who sang the praises of love and wine, lived at the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, an island in the Ægean. 743-744. the Pyrrhic dance the Pyrrhic phalanx: The former is an ancient war dance, the latter a military formation used by the Greek general Pyrrhus. 747. the letters Cadmus gave: Cadmus, a legendary Greek hero, was credited with having introduced into Greece from Phoenicia or Egypt an alphabet of sixteen letters. 751. Anacreon's song: See the note to line 738, above. (168.) 762. Suli's rock, and Parga's shore: places in Albania, the home of a rugged people who took part in the struggle against Turkey which led to Byron's death. Byron holds them to be heroic, "Heracleidan," as if they were of the race of Heracles (Hercules), the mythical national hero of the ancient Greeks. 813. what whist owes to Hoyle: Edmund Hoyle, whose treatise on whist (1742) made him "famous." 821. his life falling into Johnson's way: Dr. Johnson's life of Milton does justice neither to himself nor to "this great high priest" of the Muses. (169.) 833-840. All are not moralists etc.: Heroes such as those named in the preceding stanza, says Byron with jocular irony, were not moralistic in their youth like Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, who as young men advocated democracy. See the note on Wordsworth's "Protest Against the Ballot" (page 666, above), and on Southey's "Battle of Blenheim" (page 671, above). After meeting Wordsworth at a dinner, Byron remarked: "To tell the truth, I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the end, and that was reverence." 842. Botany Bay: an Australian settlement for criminals. 852. Joanna Southcote's Shiloh: A certain Joanna Southcote announced prophetically that on a specified day in the year 1814 she would give birth to a second Shiloh (Messiah). The miracle was beyond her powers; she presently died of dropsy. 865. "longueurs": things that are dull and long-winded. 871. epopee: epic poem. 876. "Waggoners": Wordsworth's poem "The Waggoner," published in 1819, is anything but exciting. Its scene is the Lake country that the poet loved in its every feature. (170.) 877. He wishes for "a boat": "Peter Bell," published in 1819, begins: "There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like the crescent-moon." 883. Charles's Wain: the heavenly constellation also known as the Great Bear or Dipper. THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE The author explains his frame of mind. also in a well known passage in the first Canto of the poem, stanzas CCXII ff. 5. Lucifer: Satan. He appears in Byron's drama "Cain," which, published a few months after this Canto, delighted Goethe with its forcefulness, but shocked many readers with its unorthodoxy, like certain parts of "Don Juan;" see lines 3334 (page 171). In his note on the previous poem, Paul Elmer More says: "The pathos and sincerity of these verses are echoed in Mangan's 'The Nameless One,' though the spirit of the two poems is not the same" (Cambridge edition of Byron). James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) was a gifted Irish poet, of pure but too vehement spirit, to some extent influenced by Byron's work. His Oriental poem "The Karamanian Exile" suggested the metre of J. R. Randall's "Maryland, My Maryland." His "Dark Rosaleen" is one of the best lyrics written for the Irish national cause. (172.) 33. dreeing: enduring. He left school while very young and labored at uncongenial work to support his parents. 38. Maginn: William Maginn (1793-1842), Irish author; given to intemperance. - Mangan himself, in the way he here describes, became addicted to rum and opium. His sufferings were aggra |