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Jun. 12th, 2010 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionI've reached the second of Don Juan's two Prefaces, the one for cantos 6-8, and suspect he's talking about Shelley under cover of defending Voltaire, somewhat like Shelley veils Wordsworth as Rousseau in "Triumph of Life"--it's a tribute, of the sort I collected here a while back, though with no mention of the cemetery, since for Byron and a few others Shelley's monument was a pyre on a beach:
With regard to the objections which have been made on another score to the already published cantos of this poem, I shall content myself with two quotations from Voltaire: La pudeur s'est enfuite des coeurs, et s'est refugiée sur les lèvres. Plus les moeurs sont dépravés, plus les expressions deviennent mesurées; on croit regagner en langage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu.
This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve. The hackneyed and lavished title of Blasphemer - which, with Radical, Liberal, Jacobin, Reformer, etc., are the changes which the hirelings are daily ringing in the ears of those who will listen - should be welcome to all who recollect on whom it was
originally bestowed. Socrates and Jesus Christ were put to death publicly as blasphemers, and so have been and may be many who dare to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind of man. But persecution is not refutation, nor even triumph: the "wretched infidel," as he is called, is probably happier in his prison than the proudest of his assailants. With his opinions I have nothing to do - they may be right or wrong - but he has suffered for them, and that very suffering for conscience' sake will make more proselytes to Deism than the example of heterodox prelates to Christianity, suicide statesmen to oppression, or overpensioned homicides to the impious alliance which insults the world with the name of "Holy!" I have no wish to trample on the dishonoured or the dead; but it would be well if the adherents to the classes from whence those persons sprung should abate a little of the cant which is the crying sin of this double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers, and - but enough for the present.
There's a tonally similar defense of Shelley's character--also paired to a shunning of his religious stance--in a letter to Thomas Moore a few months before the drowning:
As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world, he is, to my knowledge, the least selfish and the mildest of men - a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.
"With his opinions I have nothing to do" vs. "With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common"...
Also fascinating is the Jesus and Socrates reference. I wonder if Byron read "Triumph of Life", where they're essentially the only two people who beat Life, basically by actively valuing their conceptions over their earthly existence, and assimilated Shelley to them (he finished the last canto in the group shortly after Shelley's death, so he would have been on his mind). Trelawney's book about the two poets is a sort of gospel or Platonic dialogue starring Shelley--where Byron himself is usually the foil, the Sophist or Pharisee. But that might be unfair, since this seems to be a buried tribute of a very moving kind. Byron tended to bury his tributes to Shelley--Bloom points out that he never brought himself to mention his closest poetic associate's name in print--but he did make them.
With regard to the objections which have been made on another score to the already published cantos of this poem, I shall content myself with two quotations from Voltaire: La pudeur s'est enfuite des coeurs, et s'est refugiée sur les lèvres. Plus les moeurs sont dépravés, plus les expressions deviennent mesurées; on croit regagner en langage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu.
This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve. The hackneyed and lavished title of Blasphemer - which, with Radical, Liberal, Jacobin, Reformer, etc., are the changes which the hirelings are daily ringing in the ears of those who will listen - should be welcome to all who recollect on whom it was
originally bestowed. Socrates and Jesus Christ were put to death publicly as blasphemers, and so have been and may be many who dare to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind of man. But persecution is not refutation, nor even triumph: the "wretched infidel," as he is called, is probably happier in his prison than the proudest of his assailants. With his opinions I have nothing to do - they may be right or wrong - but he has suffered for them, and that very suffering for conscience' sake will make more proselytes to Deism than the example of heterodox prelates to Christianity, suicide statesmen to oppression, or overpensioned homicides to the impious alliance which insults the world with the name of "Holy!" I have no wish to trample on the dishonoured or the dead; but it would be well if the adherents to the classes from whence those persons sprung should abate a little of the cant which is the crying sin of this double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers, and - but enough for the present.
There's a tonally similar defense of Shelley's character--also paired to a shunning of his religious stance--in a letter to Thomas Moore a few months before the drowning:
As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world, he is, to my knowledge, the least selfish and the mildest of men - a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.
"With his opinions I have nothing to do" vs. "With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common"...
Also fascinating is the Jesus and Socrates reference. I wonder if Byron read "Triumph of Life", where they're essentially the only two people who beat Life, basically by actively valuing their conceptions over their earthly existence, and assimilated Shelley to them (he finished the last canto in the group shortly after Shelley's death, so he would have been on his mind). Trelawney's book about the two poets is a sort of gospel or Platonic dialogue starring Shelley--where Byron himself is usually the foil, the Sophist or Pharisee. But that might be unfair, since this seems to be a buried tribute of a very moving kind. Byron tended to bury his tributes to Shelley--Bloom points out that he never brought himself to mention his closest poetic associate's name in print--but he did make them.
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Date: 2010-06-12 03:46 pm (UTC)Where does Byron rank in Bloom's scheme? I can't remember for some reason. On the same level as Shelley and Keats?
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Date: 2010-06-13 01:36 am (UTC)Bloom ranked him 6 out of 6 among the Romantics in his early years; then last year he wrote this:
Shelley, a superb literary critic, considered Byron's Don Juan to be the great poem of the age, surpassing even Goethe and Wordsworth. Once I would not have agreed with Shelley, but moving toward the age of seventy-nine and having just reread Don Juan, I am persuaded. Unfinished and unfinishable, Byron's masterwork ought to be his monument. It is almost as large-minded and various as its outrageous creator, but will continue to be overshadowed by his legend.
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Date: 2010-06-13 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-13 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-13 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 01:45 am (UTC)