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Jun. 6th, 2010 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionReading Don Juan, with the intention of getting through it, which I last did on a trip across the country in I believe '97. But I've reread Canto 1 twice or thrice since, and that's as far as I've gotten today. Funniest thing so far was actually the Preface, or anyway this kernel of the Preface, making fun of Wordsworth's bizarre note on "The Thorn" (and through it the general Romantic habit of using prose to set up poems), funniness through overkill which Byron rather ruins in context with ancillary overoverkill anti-Southey ranting:
In a note or preface (I forget which) by Mr. W. Wordsworth to a poem, the Subject of which, as far as it is intelligible, is the remorse of an unnatural mother for the destruction of a natural child, the courteous Reader is desired to extend his usual courtesy so far as to suppose that the narrative is narrated by the Captain of a Merchantman or small trading vessel, lately retired upon a small annuity to some inland town, etc., etc.' I quote from memory, but conceive the above to be the sense, as far as there is Sense, of the note or preface to the aforesaid poem — as far as it is a poem. [...]
The Reader, who has acquiesced in Mr. W. Wordsworth's supposition that his 'Misery oh Misery' is related by the 'Captain of a small, etc.,' is requested to suppose, by a like exertion of Imagination, that the following epic Narrative is told by a Spanish Gentleman in a village in the Sierra Morena in the road between Monasterio and Seville, sitting at the door of a Posada, with the Curate of the hamlet on his right hand, a Segar in his mouth, a Jug of Malaga, or perhaps 'right Sherris,' before him on a small table containing the relics of an Olla Podrida: the time, Sunset: at some distance, a groupe of black-eyed peasantry are dancing to the sound of the flute of a Portuguese servant belonging to two foreign travellers, who have, an hour ago, dismounted from their horses to spend the night on their way to the Capital of Andalusia. Of these, one is attending to the story; and the other, having sauntered further, is watching the beautiful movements of a tall peasant Girl, whose whole Soul is in her eyes and her heart in the dance, of which she is the Magnet to ten thousand feelings that vibrate with her own. Not far off a knot of French prisoners are contending with each other, at the grated lattice of their temporary confinement, for a view of the twilight festival. The two foremost are a couple of hussars, one of whom has a bandage on his forehead yet stained with the blood of a Sabre cut, received in the recent skirmish which deprived him of his lawless freedom: his eyes sparkle in unison, and his fingers beat time against the bars of his prison to the sound of the Fandango which is fleeting before him. [...]
In a note or preface (I forget which) by Mr. W. Wordsworth to a poem, the Subject of which, as far as it is intelligible, is the remorse of an unnatural mother for the destruction of a natural child, the courteous Reader is desired to extend his usual courtesy so far as to suppose that the narrative is narrated by the Captain of a Merchantman or small trading vessel, lately retired upon a small annuity to some inland town, etc., etc.' I quote from memory, but conceive the above to be the sense, as far as there is Sense, of the note or preface to the aforesaid poem — as far as it is a poem. [...]
The Reader, who has acquiesced in Mr. W. Wordsworth's supposition that his 'Misery oh Misery' is related by the 'Captain of a small, etc.,' is requested to suppose, by a like exertion of Imagination, that the following epic Narrative is told by a Spanish Gentleman in a village in the Sierra Morena in the road between Monasterio and Seville, sitting at the door of a Posada, with the Curate of the hamlet on his right hand, a Segar in his mouth, a Jug of Malaga, or perhaps 'right Sherris,' before him on a small table containing the relics of an Olla Podrida: the time, Sunset: at some distance, a groupe of black-eyed peasantry are dancing to the sound of the flute of a Portuguese servant belonging to two foreign travellers, who have, an hour ago, dismounted from their horses to spend the night on their way to the Capital of Andalusia. Of these, one is attending to the story; and the other, having sauntered further, is watching the beautiful movements of a tall peasant Girl, whose whole Soul is in her eyes and her heart in the dance, of which she is the Magnet to ten thousand feelings that vibrate with her own. Not far off a knot of French prisoners are contending with each other, at the grated lattice of their temporary confinement, for a view of the twilight festival. The two foremost are a couple of hussars, one of whom has a bandage on his forehead yet stained with the blood of a Sabre cut, received in the recent skirmish which deprived him of his lawless freedom: his eyes sparkle in unison, and his fingers beat time against the bars of his prison to the sound of the Fandango which is fleeting before him. [...]
