George Byron works and ideas. George Byron: biography, works and interesting facts

George Noel Gordon Byron, often referred to as Lord Byron, a poet famous throughout the world for his romantic works, was born in London on January 22, 1788, into the family of an aristocrat who squandered his fortune. When he was little, he ended up in Scotland, in Aberdeen, his mother’s homeland, where she and her son went away from her adventurer husband. Byron was born with a physical disability, limping, and this left an imprint on his entire future life. The difficult, hysterical character of his mother, aggravated by poverty, influenced his formation as a person.

When George was 10 years old, in 1798, their small family returned to England, to the family estate of Newstead, which, along with the title, was inherited from his deceased great-uncle. In 1799, he studied at a private school for two years, but did not study as much as he received treatment and read books. From 1801, he continued his education at Garrow College, where his intellectual baggage was significantly expanded. In 1805 he became a student at Cambridge, but he was attracted no less, or even more, to studying science by other aspects of life, he had fun: he drank and played cards at friendly parties, mastered the art of horse riding, boxing, and swimming. All this required a lot of money, and the young rake’s debts grew like a snowball. Byron never graduated from the university, and his main acquisition at that time was his strong friendship with D.K. Hobhouse, which lasted until his death.

In 1806, Byron's first book, published under someone else's name, “Poems for Various Occasions,” was published. Having added more than a hundred poems to the first collection, a year later he released, this time under his own name, the second, “Leisure Hours,” about which opinions were diametrically opposed. His satirical rebuke to critics, “English Bards and Scottish Reviewers” ​​(1809), received a wide response and became a kind of compensation for the blow to pride.

In June 1809, Byron, along with his faithful Hobhouse, left England - not least because the amount of his debt to creditors was growing catastrophically. He visited Spain, Albania, Greece, Asia Minor, Constantinople - the journey lasted two years. It was during this period that the poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” was begun, the hero of which was largely identified by the public with the author. The publication of this particular work in March 1812 (Byron returned from his trip in July 1811) became a turning point in his biography: the poet woke up famous overnight. The poem became famous throughout Europe and gave birth to a new type of literary hero. Byron was introduced into high society, and he plunged into social life, not without pleasure, although he could not get rid of the feeling of awkwardness due to a physical flaw, hiding it behind arrogance. His creative life was also very eventful: The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair (1813), Jewish Melodies (1814), and Lara (1814) were released.

In January 1815, Byron married Annabella Milbank, in December they had a daughter, but family life did not work out, the couple divorced. The reasons for the divorce were surrounded by rumors that had a bad impact on the poet’s reputation; public opinion was not in his favor. In April 1816, Lord Byron left his homeland never to return there again. He lived in Geneva for the summer, and in the fall he moved to Venice, and his lifestyle there was considered immoral by many. Nevertheless, the poet continued to write a lot (4th canto of Childe Harold, Beppo, Ode to Venice, 1st and 2nd canto of Don Juan).

April 1819 gave him a meeting with Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who was his beloved woman until the end of his life. Circumstances forced them to periodically change their place of residence, including Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and go through many events, but Byron was still very active creatively. During this period he wrote, for example, “The Prophecy of Dante”, “The First Song of Morgante Maggiora” - 1820, “Cain”, “Vision of the Last Judgment” (1821), “Sardanapalus” (1821), “The Bronze Age” (1823 ), songs of “Don Juan”, etc. were written one after another.

Byron, who never knew the limits of his desires, sought to get as much as possible from life, satiated with available benefits, was looking for new adventures and impressions, trying to get rid of deep spiritual melancholy and anxiety. In 1820 he joined the Italian Carbonari movement, in 1821 he unsuccessfully tried to publish the Liberal magazine in England, and in July 1823 he enthusiastically seized the opportunity to go to Greece to participate in the liberation struggle. To help the local population throw off the Ottoman yoke, Byron spared no effort, no money (he sold all his property in England), no talent. In December 1923, he fell ill with a fever, and on April 19, 1824, a debilitating illness put an end to his biography. The poet, whose soul never knew peace, was buried in Newstead, the family estate.

George Gordon Noel Byron, from 1798 6th Baron Byron (eng. George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron; January 22, 1788, Dover - April 19, 1824, Missolungi, Ottoman Greece), usually referred to simply as Lord Byron (Lord Byron) - English poet a romantic who captivated the imagination of all Europe with his “dark selfishness.” Along with P.B. Shelley and J. Keats, he represents the younger generation of English romantics. His alter ego Childe Harold became the prototype for countless Byronic heroes in various European literatures. The fashion for Byronism continued after Byron’s death, even though by the end of his life, in the poetic novel “Don Juan” and the comic poem “Beppo”, Byron himself switched to satirical realism based on the legacy of A. Pope. The poet took part in the Greek Revolution and is therefore considered a national hero of Greece.

Name
Gordon is Byron's second personal name, given to him at baptism and coinciding with his mother's maiden name. Byron's father, however, in laying claim to his father-in-law's Scottish possessions, used "Gordon" as the second part of his surname (Byron-Gordon), and George himself was enrolled at school under the same double surname. At the age of 10, after the death of his great-uncle, George became a peer of England and received the title “Baron Byron”, after which, as is customary among peers of this rank, his usual everyday name became “Lord Byron” or simply “Byron”. Subsequently, Byron's mother-in-law bequeathed property to the poet with the condition that he bear her surname - Noel, and by royal patent Lord Byron was allowed, as an exception, to bear the surname Noel before his title, which he did, sometimes signing "Noel-Byron". Therefore, in some sources his full name may look like George Gordon Noel Byron, although he never signed all of these names and surnames at the same time.

Origin
His ancestors, natives of Normandy, came to England with William the Conqueror and, after the Battle of Hastings, were awarded rich estates taken from the Saxons. The original name of the Byrons is Burun. This name is often found in the knightly chronicles of the Middle Ages. One of the descendants of this family, already under Henry II, changed his surname to the surname Byron, in accordance with the reprimand. The Byrons especially rose to prominence under Henry VIII, who, during the abolition of the Catholic monasteries, endowed Sir Byron, nicknamed “Sir John the little with the Great Beard,” with the estates of the wealthy Newstead Abbey in Nottingham County.
During the reign of Elizabeth, the Byron family died out, but the surname passed to the illegitimate son of one of them. Subsequently, during the English Revolution, the Byrons distinguished themselves by their unwavering devotion to the House of Stuart, for which Charles I raised a representative of this family to the rank of peerage with the title of Baron Rochdel. One of the most famous representatives of this family was Admiral John Byron, famous for his extraordinary adventures and wanderings across the Pacific Ocean; the sailors who loved him but considered him unlucky nicknamed him “Foulweather Jack.”
The eldest son of Admiral Byron, also an admiral, was a cruel man who disgraced his name: while drunk, in a tavern, he killed his relative Chaworth in a duel (1765); he was imprisoned in the Tower, convicted of manslaughter, but escaped punishment thanks to the privilege of the peerage. This William Byron's brother, John, was a reveler and a spendthrift. Captain John Byron (1756-1791) married the former Marchioness of Comartin in 1778. She died in 1784, leaving John a daughter, Augusta (later Mrs. Lee), who was later raised by her mother's relatives.
After the death of his first wife, Captain Byron remarried, out of convenience, to Catherine Gordon, the only heiress of the wealthy George Gordon, Esquire. She came from the famous Scottish family of Gordons, in whose veins flowed the blood of Scottish kings (through Annabella Stewart). From this second marriage, the future poet was born in 1788.

Biography
The poverty into which Byron was born, and from which the title of lord did not relieve him, gave direction to his future career. When he was born (on Hall Street in London, January 22, 1788), his father had already spent his entire fortune, and his mother returned from Europe with small remnants of her fortune. Lady Byron settled in Aberdeen, and her “lame boy,” as she called her son, was sent to a private school for a year, then transferred to a classical grammar school. Many stories are told about Byron's childhood antics. The Gray sisters, who nursed little Byron, found that with affection they could do anything with him, but his mother always lost her temper at his disobedience and threw anything at the boy. He often responded to his mother’s outbursts with ridicule, but one day he he himself says that the knife with which he wanted to stab himself was taken away. He studied poorly at the gymnasium, and Mary Gray, who read psalms and the Bible to him, brought him more benefit than the gymnasium teachers. When George was 10 years old, his great-uncle died, and the boy inherited the title of lord and the Byron family estate - Newstead Abbey. Ten-year-old Byron fell so deeply in love with his cousin Mary Duff that, upon hearing of her engagement, he fell into a hysterical fit. In 1799, he entered Dr. Gleny's school, where he stayed for two years and spent the entire time treating his sore leg, after which he recovered enough to put on boots. During these two years he studied very little, but he read the entire rich library of the doctor. Before leaving for school at Harrow, Byron fell in love again - with another cousin, Marguerite Parker.
In 1801 he went to Harrow; dead languages ​​and antiquity did not attract him at all, but he read all the English classics with great interest and left school with great knowledge. At school, he was famous for his chivalrous attitude towards his comrades and the fact that he always stood up for the younger ones. During the holidays of 1803, he fell in love again, but this time much more seriously than before, with Miss Chaworth, a girl whose father was killed by the “bad Lord Byron.” In the sad moments of his life, he often regretted that she had rejected him.

Youth and the beginning of creativity
At Cambridge University, Byron deepened his scientific knowledge. But he distinguished himself more by the art of swimming, riding, boxing, drinking, playing cards, etc., so the lord constantly needed money and, as a result, “got into debt.” At Harrow, Byron wrote several poems, and in 1807 his first book, Hours of Idleness, appeared in print. This collection of poems decided his fate: having published the collection, Byron became a completely different person. Ruthless criticism of Leisure Hours appeared in the Edinburgh Review only a year later, during which the poet

Autograph

wrote a large number of poems. If this criticism had appeared immediately after the book was published, Byron might have completely abandoned poetry. “Six months before the appearance of merciless criticism, I composed 214 pages of a novel, a poem of 380 verses, 660 lines of “Bosworth Field” and many small poems,” he wrote to Miss Fagot, with whose family he was friends. “The poem I have prepared for publication is a satire.” He responded to the Edinburgh Review with this satire. The criticism of the first book terribly upset Byron, but he published his answer - “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” ​​- only in the spring of 1809. The success of the satire was enormous and was able to satisfy the wounded poet.

First trip
In June 1809, Byron went on a trip. He visited Spain, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor, where he swam across the Dardanelles Strait, which he was later very proud of. One might assume that the young poet, having won a brilliant victory over his literary enemies, went abroad contented and happy, but this was not so. Byron left England in a terribly depressed state of mind, and returned even more depressed. Many, identifying him with Childe Harold, assumed that abroad, like his hero, he led a too immoderate life, but Byron protested against this both in print and orally, emphasizing that Childe Harold was only a figment of the imagination. Thomas Moore argued in Byron's defense that he was too poor to maintain a harem. In addition, Byron was worried not only about financial difficulties. At this time he lost his mother, and although he never got along with her, he nevertheless grieved greatly.

"Childe Harold". Glory
On February 27, 1812, Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords, which was a great success: “Is there not enough blood [of rebels] on your criminal code that you need to shed more of it so that it cries to heaven and testifies against you?” "The dark race from the banks of the Ganges will shake your empire of tyrants to its foundations."
Two days after this performance, Childe Harold's first two songs appeared. The poem was a fabulous success, and 14,000 copies were sold in one day, which immediately placed the author among the first literary celebrities. “After reading Childe Harold,” he says, “no one will want to listen to my prose, just as I myself will not want to.” Why Childe Harold was so successful, Byron himself did not know and only said: “One morning I woke up and saw myself famous.”
Childe Harold's journey captivated not only England, but the whole of Europe. The poet touched upon the general struggle of that time, speaks with sympathy about the Spanish peasants, about the heroism of women, and his hot cry for freedom spread far, despite the seemingly cynical tone of the poem. At this difficult moment of general tension, he also recalled the lost greatness of Greece.

Savor
He met Moore. Until this time, he had never been in great society and now indulged himself with enthusiasm in the whirlwind of social life. One evening, Dallas even found him in court dress, although Byron did not go to court. In the big world, the lame Byron (his knee was slightly cramped) never felt free and tried to cover up his awkwardness with arrogance.
In March 1813, he published the satire “Waltz” without a signature, and in May he published a story from Turkish life, “The Gyaur,” inspired by his travels through the Levant. The public enthusiastically accepted this story of love and vengeance and greeted with even greater delight the poems “The Bride of Abydos” and “The Corsair”, published in the same year. In 1814, he published “Jewish Melodies,” which had enormous success and was translated many times into all European languages, as well as the poem “Lara” (1814).

Marriage, divorce and scandal
In November 1813, Byron proposed to Miss Anna Isabella Milbank, daughter of Ralph Milbank, a wealthy baronet, granddaughter and heiress of Lord Wentworth. “A brilliant match,” Byron wrote to Moore, “although this was not the reason I made the offer.” He was refused, but Miss Milbank expressed a desire to enter into correspondence with him. In September 1814, Byron renewed his proposal, which was accepted, and they were married in January 1815.
In December, Byron had a daughter named Ada, and the next month Lady Byron left her husband in London and went to her father's estate. While on the road, she wrote her husband an affectionate letter, beginning with the words: “Dear Dick,” and signed: “Yours Poppin.” A few days later, Byron learned from her father that she had decided never to return to him again, and after that Lady Byron herself informed him of this. A month later, a formal divorce took place. Byron suspected that his wife separated from him under the influence of her mother. Lady Byron took full responsibility upon herself. Before her departure, she called Dr. Bolly for a consultation and asked him if her husband had gone crazy. Bolly assured her that it was only her imagination. After this, she told her family that she wanted a divorce. The reasons for the divorce were expressed by Lady Byron's mother to Dr. Lashington, and he wrote that these reasons justified the divorce, but at the same time advised the spouses to reconcile. After this, Lady Byron herself visited Dr. Lashington and told him the facts, after which he also no longer found reconciliation possible.
The true reasons for the Byron couple's divorce forever remained mysterious, although Byron said that “they are too simple, and therefore they are not noticed.” The public did not want to explain the divorce by the simple reason that people did not get along in character. Lady Byron refused to tell the reasons for the divorce, and therefore these reasons turned into something fantastic in the public’s imagination, and everyone vied with each other to see the divorce as a crime, one more terrible than the other (there were rumors about the poet’s bisexual orientation and his incestuous relationship with his sister). The publication of the poem “Farewell to Lady Byron,” published by one indiscreet friend of the poet, raised a whole pack of ill-wishers against him. But not everyone condemned Byron. One Kurier employee stated in print that if her husband had written such a “Farewell” to her, she would have immediately rushed into his arms. In April 1816, Byron finally said goodbye to England, where public opinion, in the person of the “lake poets,” was strongly incited against him.

Life in Switzerland and Italy
Before leaving abroad, he sold his Newstead estate, and this gave Byron the opportunity not to be burdened by constant lack of money. Now he could indulge in the solitude he so craved. Abroad, he settled in the Villa Diodati on the Geneva Riviera. Byron spent the summer at the villa, making two small excursions around Switzerland: one with Hobhaus, the other with the poet Shelley. In the third song of Childe Harold (May-June 1816), he describes his trip to the fields of Waterloo. The idea of ​​writing “Manfred” came to him when, on his way back to Geneva, he saw Jungfrau.
In November 1816, Byron moved to Venice, where, according to his ill-wishers, he led the most depraved life, which, however, did not prevent him from creating a large number of poetic works. In June 1817, the poet wrote the fourth song of “Childe Harold”, in October 1817 - “Beppo”, in July 1818 - “Ode to Venice”, in September 1818 - the first song of “Don Juan”, in October 1818 - “ Mazepa", in December 1818 - the second song of "Don Juan", and in November 1819 - 3-4 songs of "Don Juan".
In April 1819 he met Countess Guiccioli and they fell in love. The Countess was forced to leave with her husband for Ravenna, where Byron followed her. Two years later, the Countess's father and brother, Counts Gamba, involved in a political scandal, had to leave Ravenna together with Countess Guiccioli, who was already divorced at that time. Byron followed them to Pisa, where he continued to live under the same roof with the countess. At this time, Byron was grieving the loss of his friend Shelley, who drowned in the Gulf of Spice. In September 1822, the Tuscan government ordered the Counts of Gamba to leave Pisa, and Byron followed them to Genoa.
Byron lived with the Countess until his departure to Greece and wrote a lot during this time. During this happy period of Byron's life, his following works appeared: “The First Song of Morgante Maggiora” (1820); "Dante's Prophecy" (1820) and trans. “Francesca da Rimini” (1820), “Marino Faliero” (1820), the fifth canto of “Don Giovanni” (1820), “Sardanapalus” (1821), “Letters to Bauls” (1821), “The Two Foscari” (1821 ), “Cain” (1821), “Vision of the Last Judgment” (1821), “Heaven and Earth” (1821), “Werner” (1821), the sixth, seventh and eighth songs of “Don Juan” (in February 1822) ; the ninth, tenth and eleventh songs of Don Juan (in August 1822); “The Bronze Age” (1823), “The Island” (1823), the twelfth and thirteenth songs of “Don Juan” (1824).

Trip to Greece and death
A calm, family life, however, did not save Byron from melancholy and anxiety. He enjoyed all the pleasures and fame he received too greedily. Soon satiety set in. Byron assumed that he had been forgotten in England, and at the end of 1821 he negotiated with Mary Shelley about the joint publication of the English magazine Liberal. However, only three issues were published. However, Byron really began to lose his former popularity. But at this time a Greek uprising broke out. Byron, after preliminary negotiations with the Philhellen committee formed in England to help Greece, decided to go there and began to prepare for his departure with passionate impatience. Using his own funds, he bought an English brig, supplies, weapons and equipped half a thousand soldiers, with whom he sailed to Greece on July 14, 1823. Nothing was ready there, and the leaders of the movement did not get along very well with each other. Meanwhile, costs grew, and Byron ordered the sale of all his property in England, and donated the money to the just cause of the rebel movement. Of great importance in the struggle for Greek freedom was Byron's talent in uniting uncoordinated groups of Greek rebels.
In Missolonghi, Byron fell ill with a fever, continuing to devote all his strength to the fight for the freedom of the country. On January 19, 1824, he wrote to Hancop: “We are preparing for an expedition,” and on January 22, his birthday, he entered Colonel Stanhope’s room, where there were several guests, and said cheerfully: “You reproach me for not writing poems, but I just wrote a poem.” And Byron read: “Today I turned 36 years old.” Byron, who was constantly ill, was very worried about the illness of his daughter Ada. Having received a letter with good news about her recovery, he wanted to go for a walk with Count Gamba. During the walk, it began to rain terribly, and Byron completely fell ill. His last words were fragmentary phrases: “My sister! my child!.. poor Greece!.. I gave her time, fortune, health!.. now I give her my life!” On April 19, 1824, the poet died. Doctors performed an autopsy, removed the organs and placed them in urns for embalming. They decided to leave the lungs and larynx in the Church of St. Spyridon, but they were soon stolen from there. The body was embalmed and sent to England, where it arrived in July 1824. Byron was buried in the family crypt at Hunkell Torquard Church near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

Pansexuality
The intimate life of Lord Byron caused a lot of gossip among his contemporaries. He left his native country amid rumors about his inappropriately close relationship with his half-sister Augusta. When Countess Guiccioli’s book about Lord Byron appeared in 1860, Mrs. Beecher Stowe came out in defense of the memory of his wife with her “True History of the Life of Lady Byron,” based on the deceased’s story, allegedly conveyed to her in secret, that Byron allegedly was in “criminal relationship” with his sister. However, such stories were fully in keeping with the spirit of the era: for example, they form the main content of Chateaubriand’s autobiographical story “Rene” (1802).
Byron's diaries, published in the 20th century, reveal a truly pansexual picture of sex life. Thus, the poet described the port town of Falmouth as a “lovely place” offering “Plen. and optabil. Coit." (“numerous and varied sexual intercourse”): “We are surrounded by Hyacinths and other flowers of the most fragrant nature, and I intend to put together an elegant bouquet to compare with the exoticism that we hope to find in Asia. I’ll even take one sample with me.” This model turned out to be the handsome young Robert Rushton, who “was Byron’s page, like Hyacinth was Apollo’s” (P. Weil). In Athens, the poet took a liking to a new favorite - fifteen-year-old Nicolo Giro. Byron described the Turkish baths as “a marble paradise of sherbet and sodomy.”
After Byron's death, the erotic poem "Don Leon", which tells about the same-sex relationships of the lyrical hero, in which Byron was easily guessed, began to diverge in the lists. The publisher William Dugdale spread a rumor that this was an unpublished work by Byron and, under the threat of publishing the poem, tried to extort money from his relatives. Modern literary scholars call the real author of this “freethinking” work George Colman.

The fate of Byron's family

The poet's widow, Lady Anne Isabella Byron, spent the rest of her long life in solitude, engaged in charity work - completely forgotten in the big world. Only the news of her death, on May 16, 1860, awakened memories of her.
Lord Byron's legitimate daughter Ada, married Earl William Lovelace in 1835 and died on November 27, 1852, leaving two sons and a daughter. She is known as a mathematician, one of the first creators of computer technology, and a collaborator of Charles Babbage. According to a well-known legend, she proposed several fundamental principles of computer programming and is considered the first programmer.
Lord Byron's eldest grandson, Noel, was born on May 12, 1836, served briefly in the English navy, and after a wild and disorderly life, died on October 1, 1862, as a laborer in one of the London docks. The second grandson, Ralph Gordon Noel Milbank, was born on July 2, 1839, and after the death of his brother, who shortly before his death inherited the barony of Wintworth from his grandmother, became Lord Wentworth.

Nature of creativity and influence
Byron's poems are more autobiographical than the works of other English romantics. He felt more acutely than many others the hopeless discrepancy between romantic ideals and reality. The awareness of this discrepancy did not always plunge him into melancholy and despondency; in his latest works, the removal of masks from people and phenomena evokes nothing but an ironic smile. Unlike most romantics, Byron respected the heritage of English classicism, puns and caustic satire in the spirit of Pope. His favorite octave predisposed him to lyrical digressions and games with the reader.
In Victorian England, Lord Byron was all but forgotten; his popularity was in no way comparable to the posthumous success of Keats and Shelley. “Who reads Byron these days? Even in England! - Flaubert exclaimed in 1864. In continental Europe, including Russia, the peak of Byronism occurred in the 1820s, but by the middle of the 19th century, the Byronic hero was reduced and became the property of predominantly mass and adventure literature.
Everyone started talking about Byron, and Byronism became a point of insanity for beautiful souls. It was from this time that little great people began to appear among us in crowds with the seal of a curse on their foreheads, with despair in their souls, with disappointment in their hearts, with deep contempt for the “insignificant crowd.” Heroes suddenly became very cheap. Every boy whom the teacher left without lunch for not knowing the lesson consoled himself in grief with phrases about the fate pursuing him and about the inflexibility of his soul, struck but not defeated.
- V. Belinsky.

Material taken from the site http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron,_George_Gordon

Books

Selected works
volume 1
volume 2
Dyakonova N.Ya. Lyric poetry of Byron (From the history of world culture) - 1975
The Collected Works of Byron (1904). Volumes I-II
volume 1
volume 2

Born January 22, 1788 in London. His mother, Catherine Gordon, a Scot, was the second wife of Captain D. Byron, whose first wife died, leaving him a daughter, Augusta. The captain died in 1791, having squandered most of his wife’s fortune. George Gordon was born with a mutilated foot, which is why he developed morbid impressionability from early childhood, aggravated by the hysterical temper of his mother, who raised him in Aberdeen on modest means. In 1798, the boy inherited from his great-uncle the title of baron and the family estate of Newstead Abbey near Nottingham, where he moved with his mother. The boy studied with a home teacher, then he was sent to a private school in Dulwich, and in 1801 - to Harrow.

In the autumn of 1805, Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he met D.C. Hobhouse (1786-1869), his closest friend until the end of his life. In 1806, Byron published the book Fugitive Pieces for a narrow circle. Hours of Idleness followed a year later; Along with imitative ones, the collection also contained promising poems. In 1808, the Edinburgh Review ridiculed the author's rather presumptuous preface to the collection, to which Byron responded with poisonous lines in the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809).

In London, Byron incurred debts of several thousand pounds. Fleeing from creditors, and also, probably, in search of new experiences, on July 2, 1809, he set off with Hobhouse on a long journey. They sailed to Lisbon, crossed Spain, from Gibraltar by sea they reached Albania, where they paid a visit to the Turkish despot Ali Pasha Tepelensky, and proceeded to Athens. There they spent the winter in the house of a widow, whose daughter, Teresa Macri, Byron sang in the image of the Virgin of Athens. In the spring of 1809, on his way to Constantinople, Byron swam across the Dardanelles, which he subsequently boasted of more than once. He spent the next winter in Athens again.

Byron returned to England in July 1811; He brought with him the manuscript of an autobiographical poem written in Spencerian stanzas, telling the story of a sad wanderer who is destined to experience disappointment in the sweet hopes and ambitious hopes of his youth and in the journey itself. Child Harold's Pilgrimage, published in March of the following year, instantly glorified Byron's name. His mother did not live to see this - she died on August 1, 1811, and a few weeks later news came of the death of three close friends. 27 February 1812 Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords - against the Tory bill on the death penalty for weavers who deliberately broke the newly invented knitting machines. Childe Harold's success provided Byron with a warm welcome in Whig circles. He made acquaintance with T. Moore and S. Rogers and was introduced to Lord Melbourne’s daughter-in-law, Lady Caroline Lamb, who became the poet’s mistress and did not hide it at all.

In the footsteps of Childe Harold, Byron created a cycle of “Eastern Poems”: The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos - in 1813, The Corsair and Lara - in 1814. The poems were replete with veiled hints of an autobiographical nature . They rushed to identify the hero Giaour with the author, saying that in the East Byron was engaged in piracy for some time.

Anabella Milbanke, Lady Melbourne's niece, and Byron occasionally exchanged letters; in September 1814 he proposed to her, and it was accepted. After the wedding on January 2, 1815 and a honeymoon in Yorkshire, the newlyweds, clearly not meant for each other, settled in London. In the spring, Byron met W. Scott, whom he had long admired, and, together with his friend D. Kinnard, joined the subcommittee of the board of the Drury Lane Theater.

Desperate to sell Newstead Abbey to get out of debts that reached almost 30,000 pounds, Byron became embittered and sought oblivion by going to theaters and drinking. Frightened by his wild antics and transparent hints of a relationship with his half-sister Augusta - she came to London to keep her company - Lady Byron innocently decided that he had fallen into madness. On December 10, 1815, she gave birth to Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada, and on January 15, 1816, taking the baby with her, she went to Leicestershire to visit her parents. A few weeks later, she announced that she would not return to her husband. Apparently, her suspicions about Byron's incest and homosexual relationships before his marriage were confirmed. Byron agreed to a court-ordered separation and sailed for Europe on April 25. For the summer he rented Villa Diodati in Geneva, where P.B. Shelley was his frequent guest. Here Byron completed Childe Harold's third song, which developed already familiar motifs - the futility of aspirations, the fleetingness of love, the vain search for perfection; wrote The Prisoner of Chillon and began Manfred. Byron had a short relationship with W. Godwin's adopted daughter Claire Clairmont, who lived with the Shelley family; on January 12, 1817, their daughter Allegra was born.

On September 5, 1816, Byron and Hobhouse set off for Italy. In Venice, Byron studied the Armenian language, visited the Countess Albrizzi's theater and her salon, and in the spring of 1817 he reunited with Hobhouse in Rome, examined ancient ruins and completed Manfred, a drama in verse on a Faustian theme, in which his disappointment takes on universal proportions. Returning to Venice, he, based on his impressions from a trip to Rome, wrote the fourth song of Childe Harold - a piercing embodiment of the utmost romantic melancholy. In the summer he met the “gentle tigress” Margarita Konya, the baker’s wife. Byron returned to Venice in November, having already written Beppo, a brilliant, comical satire on Venetian morals in Italian octaves. In June of the following year he moved to the Palazzo Mosenido on the Grand Canal; there the ardent Margarita Konya settled as a housekeeper. Soon Byron took little Allegra under his wing and began a new satire in the spirit of Beppo called Don Juan.

The sale of Newstead in the autumn of 1818 for £94,500 helped Byron get out of debt. Immersed in sensual pleasures, getting fatter, having grown long hair, in which gray was showing through - this is how he appeared before the guests of the house. His love for the young Countess Teresa Guiccioli saved him from debauchery. In June 1819 he followed her to Ravenna, and at the end of the summer they arrived in Venice. In the end, Teresa was persuaded to return to her aging husband, but her pleas again brought Byron to Ravenna in January 1820. He settled in the Palazzo Guiccioli, where he brought Allegra. Teresa's father, Count Gamba, obtained permission from the Pope for his daughter to live separately from her husband.

His stay in Ravenna was unparalleledly fruitful for Byron: he wrote new songs of Don Juan, The Prophecy of Dante, a historical drama in verse by Marino Faliero, and translated L. Pulci's poem La Grande Morgante. Through the medium of Count Gamba and his son Pietro, he actively participated during the autumn and winter in the conspiracy of the Carbonari, members of a secret political movement against Austrian tyranny. At the height of the conspiracy, Byron created a drama in verse, Sardanapalus, about an idle sensualist who is driven by circumstances to a noble deed. The threat of political upheaval was one of the reasons that forced him to place Allegra in a monastery school in Bagnacavallo on March 1, 1821.

After the defeat of the uprising, father and son Gamba were expelled from Ravenna. In July, Teresa had to follow them to Florence. Shelley persuaded Byron to come to him and Gamba in Pisa. Before leaving Ravenna (in October), Byron wrote his most evil and unusual satire, The Vision of Judgment, a parody of the poet laureate R. Southey's poem glorifying King George III. Byron also completed the verse drama Cain, which embodied his skeptical interpretation of biblical stories.

In Pisa, a circle of Shelley's friends gathered at Byron's Casa Lafranchi. In January 1822, Byron's mother-in-law, Lady Noel, died, leaving him £6,000 in her will on the condition that he take the name Noel. The death of Allegra in April was a heavy blow for him. A fight with a dragoon, in which he and his Pisan friends were unwittingly involved, forced the Tuscan authorities to deprive Gamba of political asylum. In May, Byron moved with them and Teresa to a villa near Livorno.

On July 1, L. Hunt joined Byron and Shelley to edit the short-lived Liberal magazine. A few days later, Shelley drowned, leaving Byron in the care of Hunt, his sick wife and six unruly children. In September, Byron moved to Genoa and lived in the same house with both Gambas. The Khanty came next and settled with Mary Shelley. Byron returned to work on Don Juan and by May 1823 completed the 16th canto. He chose the legendary seducer as his hero and turned him into an innocent simpleton who is harassed by women; but even hardened by life experience, by his character, worldview and actions he still remains a normal, reasonable person in an absurd, crazy world. Byron consistently takes John through a series of adventures, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, - from the “platonic” seduction of the hero in Spain to idyll love on a Greek island, from a slave state in a harem to the position of the favorite of Catherine the Great, and leaves him entangled in the networks of love intrigue in an English country house. Byron cherished the ambitious plan to bring his picaresque novel in verse to 50, if not more songs, but managed to complete only 16 and fourteen stanzas of song 17. Don Juan recreates the full range of feelings; sparkling, cynical, sometimes bitter satire tears off the masks of hypocrisy and pretense.

Tired of an aimless existence, yearning for active work, Byron seized on the offer of the London Greek Committee to help Greece in the War of Independence. On July 15, 1823, he left Genoa with P. Gamba and E. J. Trelawny. He spent about four months on the island of Cephalonia, awaiting instructions from the Committee. Byron gave money to equip the Greek fleet and in early January 1824 joined Prince Mavrokordatos in Missolonghi. He took under his command a detachment of Souliots (Greco-Albanians), to whom he paid cash allowances. Sobered by the strife among the Greeks and their greed, exhausted by illness, Byron died of a fever on April 19, 1824.

The greatest poet of England was Lord George Gordon (1788-1824), who, like a brilliant meteor, flew over the horizon, darkening all other luminaries. Fans of the “throne and altar” with Southey and the guards of the Anglican Zion at their head looked with horror at such titanic natures as Byron, Shelley, Keats, who so boldly pushed the boundaries of the traditional worldview of old England; These poets were called members of the “Satanic school,” but they surpassed all modern poets in their high flight of imagination, the greatness of their plans, and the fecundity of their creative power. In particular, Byron aroused surprise both by the versatility and creative power of his genius, and by his life full of various adventures, which resembled a novel with a heroic-romantic ending. In addition to the great poems “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and “Don Juan”, in which he inserted his own adventures and impressions, feelings and ideas into the framework of the newest epic, Byron wrote romantic stories and ballads with fascinating presentation and perfection of external form, such as: “The Giaour”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “The Corsair”, “Lara”, “Mazeppa”, the drama “Manfred” (which concerns the deepest secrets of human existence and is reminiscent of “Faust”), “Marino Faliero”, “The Two Foscari”, “ Sardanapalus" and the religious and philosophical mystery "Cain". Byron delighted both his contemporaries and his descendants with his charming lyrics that capture the soul, especially in his “Hebrew Melodies.”

George Gordon Byron

George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron was born in London on January 22, 1788. His father, a captain who went bankrupt as a result of extravagance, died three years after the birth of his son; then his mother moved to Banff, Scotland. There, the air of mountainous Scotland so strengthened the boy's weak body that, despite his lameness, he began to be distinguished by his dexterity in all bodily exercises - swimming, horse riding, fencing, shooting. Byron hoped in this way to get rid of his physical defect, which forced him throughout his life to complain bitterly about the fate that “pushed him into this world so half-prepared.” When he was ten years old, the death of his great-uncle brought him a rich inheritance, together with the titles of lord and peerage; then his mother returned to England to give her son an academic education. After a five-year stay at school in Garrow, where George Byron had already begun to write poetry and described his first unhappy youthful love for Mary Cheworth in the melancholy poem “The Dream,” he entered Cambridge University and surrendered himself to the bustling student life there. Byron's first collection of poems, published in 1807 under the title Hours of Idleness, was very disapprovingly reviewed in the Edinburgh Review; for this insult the brilliant poet repaid the mercilessly caustic satire English bards and Scotch reviewers (“English bards and Scotch reviewers”, 1809), filled with insulting attacks even on such magazine employees as Moore, Scott, Lord Holland, with whom he was subsequently on friendly terms .

From 1809 to 1811, George Gordon Byron traveled, along with his friend Gobgoes, through Greece, Albania and Turkey; During this journey, he sailed across the Hellespont (Dardanelles) between Sestus and Abydos and visited all the places along the way, glorified by history and legends. From the poems he wrote at that time, it is clear what a strong impression this new world made on him. In 1812, shortly after Byron made his first speech in the Upper House, the first two songs of his Childe Harold appeared in print, which had enormous success; the following year he published a story from Turkish life, “The Gyaur,” which was the result of his trip to the east. “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” is a poetic diary of a traveler, conveying in excellent verse the impressions and memories taken from the Iberian Peninsula and the Levant, and bringing descriptive poetry to the highest lyricism. Under the mask of a wanderer, it is not difficult to recognize the characteristic features of Byron himself, who has since become the hero of the day.

The subsequent poetic stories of George Gordon Byron, “The Bride of Abydos” (1813), “The Corsair” (1814), and the gloomy and mysterious “Lara” (1814), which served as the continuation and ending of “The Corsair,” are also distinguished by no less merit. In 1814, “Jewish Melodies” was published, adapted to the ancient songs of the Israelites and setting out in elegiac descriptions some events from Jewish history or expressing in unusually sincere sounds the sadness of the unfortunate people about their past and present. In 1815, at the beginning of which Byron married Anna Isabella Milbank, The Siege of Corinth and Parisina were published. After his wife, who bore him a daughter, left him and then finally divorced him, Byron sold his ancestral estate and left England, never to return.

George Gordon Byron spent the rest of his life abroad as an exile and outcast. While sailing along the Rhine, he began the third canto of Childe Harold, and on the lovely shores of Lake Geneva, where he spent the whole summer (1816) with Shelley, he wrote the poetic story "The Prisoner of Chillon" and began to write the metaphysical drama "Manfred", in which he portrayed a highly gifted nature, which was oppressed by the consciousness of terrible guilt and surrendered to the forces of hell; there are many excellent descriptions of the Alpine mountains and there are places reminiscent of Goethe's Faust and Shakespeare's Macbeth. In the autumn, Byron went to Venice, which he chose as his permanent residence; there he completely indulged in pleasures, voluptuousness and secular pleasures, but this did not weaken his poetic creative power at all. There he completed the fourth canto of Childe Harold, the most elegant and most fascinating of all poetic works that the beauty of Italian nature has ever inspired poets to write. There, George Gordon Byron wrote the humorous story “Beppo”, the epic painting “Mazeppa”, blazing with a passionate love of freedom, “Ode to Venice” and began the most brilliant of his works - the epic poem “Don Juan”, written in eight-line stanzas in sixteen songs.

In this wonderfully beautiful poem, which was never completed, the poet’s talent knows no bounds; With the irony of Ariosto, he describes all the passions, feelings and moods of minds, both the most noble and sublime, and the most base and wicked, moving in leaps and bounds from one to another. Byron reveals an astonishing wealth of imagination, an inexhaustible supply of wit and mockery, and a masterful command of language and poetic meter. This poem is dominated by something all-encompassing, capable of mastering all the tones of emotional moods and feeling at home in every abyss and at every height. Here Byron depicted both the highest soaring of the mind and the highest degree of its exhaustion; he proved that he knew everything that is great and sublime in the world, and with this knowledge he rushed into the abyss of destruction. The irony of world sorrow, despair, satiety with life, visible even from the most fascinating descriptions, from the most sublime ideas, arouses a feeling of fear, despite the pleasure delivered by the beauty of the poem.

In 1820, Byron settled in Ravenna, where he spent the happiest year of his life with the lovely Countess Teresa Guiccioli, divorced from her husband, in the company of her relatives and her brother Count Gamba. There he loved and was loved, and his influence was beneficial in every way. There Byron wrote, among other things, the tragedy “Marino Faliero” (1820); The tragedy “Sardanapalus”, published by him the following year (1821), with the excellently depicted personality of the Ionian woman Mirra, was dedicated to the “famous Goethe.” Following this tragedy, Byron published: the tragedy “The Two Foscari” (1821), written on a plot from Venetian history, and the thoughtful poem “Cain” (1821), which he called a mystery, following the example of medieval church dramas. Cain, who resembles Prometheus, and the satanic personality of Lucifer can be compared with the heroes of the poems of Goethe and Milton, although adherents of the English high church protested against this. In response to the court poet Southey, who hotly attacked him and his friends in A Vision of Judgment, Byron responded (1821) with a caustic satire bearing the same title.

The aspirations for freedom, which at that time gave political activity a poetic shine throughout the entire space from the Andes to Athos, made the strongest impression on George Gordon Byron and inspired him with the desire to defend the interests of oppressed peoples not only with the pen, but also with the sword. Only in one poetic story written at that time, the story “Island,” is a noticeably calmer, artistic mood of mind.

Since Byron was privy to the plans Carbonari, then, after the suppression of the Italian revolution, he did not consider his stay in Ravenna safe; he moved with his beloved first to Pisa (1821), where he lost his friend Shelley, and then to Genoa. The heated antics that he allowed himself in “The Bronze Age” (1823) and in other polemical poems testified to his deep indignation at the policy of the congresses, which smacked of hypocrisy.

In the summer of 1823, George Gordon Byron went to Greece to help, with his fortune and his blood, during the Greek uprising, to acquire the freedom that he sang in poetry. He took command of the brigade of 500 Souliots he organized, but, before he had time to launch the planned attack on Lepanto, he fell ill from feverish excitement and from the influence of the climate and died on April 19, 1824 at the thirty-sixth year of birth. Since the English clergy would not allow Byron to be buried in Westminster Abbey, he was buried in the village church near Newstedt Abbey, which had once been his favorite residence.

Byron. The last lifetime portrait (1824). Artist T. Phillips

George Gordon Byron had such a poetic power that overcame everything, and such a comprehensive mind that was able to penetrate into all mental movements, into all the convolutions of the human heart, into all passions and secret aspirations, and knew how to express them in words. Since he wandered aimlessly around the world, he was tired of life, and this spiritual mood forms the gloomy lining of most of his poetic works. People did not know how to appreciate Byron and slandered him. He also began to hate and despise high society, began to shower it with contemptuous ridicule; fed up with sensual pleasures, he sadly recalled his past happiness and expressed in melancholic complaints his spiritual melancholy, which has since become the main tone of the newest poetry of world sorrow. Not sympathizing with either the interests of his time or the interests of the society in which he was born, Byron sought healing for his sick soul among those peoples who were not yet familiar with the culture and whose nature and passions were not yet subject to any external oppression.

But despite the spiritual sorrow reflected in all the works of George Gordon Byron, his imagination was rich and creative enough to perceive and put into poetic form everything sublime, noble and ideal. The absence of religious beliefs did not prevent him from describing the most tender feelings of a pious heart and the peace of mind of those who live by faith and piety. Living in an unhappy marriage and abundantly enjoying temporary, sensual love, Byron knew how to depict noble female characters with captivating charm, knew how to depict the happiness of pure love and unchanging fidelity in all its greatness and beauty. Fortune showered him with its gifts in abundance - she gave him beauty, the title of an English peer, first-class poetic talents. But it was as if some evil fairy had added her curse to these gifts; uncontrollable passions, like a worm, undermined brilliant talents that were not combined with self-control. Byron suffered from lameness, from the disorder of his condition, and from the disorder of his family relationships; he lived in discord with morals and laws and beliefs. Dreaming of the liberation of oppressed peoples, George Gordon Byron took advantage of the Greek uprising to express his hatred of tyranny and his love of freedom in charming songs and stories, and that his words flowed directly from his heart is proven by his personal participation in the bloody struggle.

This is precisely the strength of Byron's poetry, that we are constantly under the impression of his own state of mind, that all his poetic works express his own ideas, feelings and aspirations, that everything that constitutes the essence of his character is reflected in his works. George Gordon Byron was such a subjective poet that even his artistic skill seems to be an innate poetic talent. That is why his poetry made such an irresistibly strong impression on both his contemporaries and subsequent generations. Even the most pompous of Byron’s poetic works, says the famous German literary critic of the 19th century, Gervinus, are distinguished by either soft flexibility or sharp boldness of expression and therefore achieve such a technical perfection of form that we do not find to the same extent in any of the English poets. Byron's personal feelings dominated everything he wrote to such an extent that he often violated the fundamental laws of aesthetics and art; therefore, his poetic greatness is found mainly in the lyrics. Even Byron's epic and dramatic works resonate with lyricism.



Byron

Byron

BYRON George Gordon, Lord (George Gordon Byron, 1788–1824) - English poet. R. in London, came from an ancient noble, impoverished and degenerate family, studied at an aristocratic school in Garrow, then at Cambridge University; in 1806 he anonymously published a book of light poetry, “Fuggitive Pieces,” which he burned, on the advice of a friend; in 1807 he published under his own name a collection of poems, Hours of Idleness, which drew sharp criticism from journals. "Edinburgh Review" (author - future Liberal minister Broome). B. responded with the satire “English Bards and Scottish Observers” and went to travel (Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, Turkey); On the way, he kept a poetic diary, which upon his return (1812), he published in a revised form under the title “Child-Harold’s Pilgrimage” (Child-Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1 and 2 parts). The poem immediately made him a “celebrity.” In the same year, he made two political speeches in the House of Lords, one of which was devoted to criticism of the law directed against workers guilty of destroying machines. Literary creativity and politics. activities are combined with the absent-minded lifestyle of a secular dandy (the longest relationship is with Caroline Lam-Noel, who portrayed him very tendentiously in her novel “Glenarvon”). In the period from 1812–1815, B. created a number of poems (“The Giaour”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “The Corsair”, “Lara” - “Lara”) . In 1815 he married Miss Milbank, from whom he separated the following year; her tendentious data about B. served for the American writer Beecher Stowe (q.v.) as material for her book against B. Completing the cycle of poems “The Siege of Corinth” and “Parisina”, B. leaves England forever, where he the break with his wife caused the indignation of the hypocritical secular and bourgeois society. He settled (1816) in Switzerland, where he became friends with Shelley (q.v.) and wrote poems: “The Dream”, “Prometheus”, “The Prisoner of Chillon”, “The Darkness” ), Part III of Childe Harold and the first acts of Manfred. In 1818, B. moved to Venice, where he created the last act of Manfred, Part IV of Childe Harold, The Lament of Tasso, Mazepa, Beppo and the first songs of Don Juan " In 1819 he met Count. Teresa Guiccioli (who served as the original for Mirra in his tragedy “Sardanapalus”), under the influence of Roy, studied Italian history and poetry, wrote “The Prophecy of Dante” and the plays: “Marino Falieri” and “Two Foscari” (Two Foscari). In 1820 in Ravenna he joined the revolutionary Carbonari movement; written here: the mystery "Cain", a satire against Southey, "Vision of the Judgment" and "Heaven and Earth". In 1821 he moved to Pisa, where, together with Ghent (Leigh Hunt), he published the political magazine Liberal (originally Carbonari), continuing work on Don Juan. In 1822 he settled in Genoa, where he wrote the drama Werner, the dramatic poem The Deformed Transformed and the poems The Age of Bronze and The Island. In 1823 he went to Greece to participate in the national liberation war against Turkey, fell ill and died on April 19, 1824. Shortly before his death, he wrote the poem “Today I have turned 35 years old,” where he expressed the hope (unfulfilled) of dying on the battlefield. B.'s death caused a feeling of sadness on the continent in the liberal part of society and was mourned by Goethe (in Part II of Faust in the image of the young Euphorion dying after a miraculous takeoff), in our country by Pushkin (“To the Sea”), Ryleev (“On death of B.").
A descendant of the old feudal nobility, B. lived and worked in an era when bourgeois urban civilization firmly reigned in England. He saw how the capitalist became the master of life: “his possessions have no end in sight,” “rich gifts are brought to him from India, Ceylon and China,” “whole worlds are subject to him,” “only for him does the golden harvest ripen everywhere.” The true “monarchs” are the “bankers”, “whose capital gives us laws”, “they sometimes strengthen nations, sometimes they shake old thrones.” For B., these new masters and monarchs were embodied in the image of the Jew (“Jew”) Rothschild (“Don Juan”). B. also resolutely rejected the urban structure of life. When he had to depict London in Don Juan, he brushed off the task with a few disparaging words. Following the poet, Cooper B. liked to repeat: “God created nature, and mortals created cities.” In the poem about Don Juan, the city where people, “constraining themselves, crowd each other”, where “frail and frail generations” live, who “quarrel and fight over trifles” (because of profit), is contrasted with the American a colony in the forests, where “the air is cleaner”, where there is “space”; here, “knowing no worries, slender and strong,” the colonists, “free from malice,” “children of nature” - “thrived in a free country.” Starting from the modern bourgeois-urban situation, B. went to countries where the feudal-natural way of life was still strong (oriental poems) or in the Middle Ages (“Lara”), to aristocratic Venice (“Foscari”, “Marino Falieri”), to the landowner-knightly Germany (“Werner”), or to the “gallant” aristocratic XVIII century. on the eve of the Great French Revolution (“Don Juan”). The central image of B.'s poetry is a declassed aristocrat surrounded by a bourgeois environment. He either once owned an estate and, having lost it, was plunged into poverty (“Werner”) or, at best, still owns a castle, which, however, is nothing more than a painted decorative background (“Manfred”). B.'s heroes are homeless people, restless and groundless wanderers. They wander around the world, like Childe Harold, or travel across the seas, like Conrad, or rush around the world, the playground of fate, like Don Juan. Having outlived their class and not merged with any other, they live a separate and lonely life, hermits, like Childe Harold (“the mountains were his friends, the proud ocean was his homeland,” “like a magician he watched the stars, filling them with a wondrous world , and the globe with its troubles disappeared before him forever"), or like Manfred, with a curse on his lips, he left people for the Alpine mountains, where he lives alone, like a “lion,” watching the running of the stars, the flash of lightning and the fall of autumn leaves. Strangers in modernity, they love to go into contemplation of the ruins of past greatness, like Childe Harold and Manfred, reflecting over the ruins of Rome on the frailty of all earthly things. Pessimists, like B. himself, who do not believe in either religion or science, who consider the only thing undeniable and immutable to be death, they at the same time inherited from their aristocratic ancestors the cult of “love-passion,” opposite to the bourgeois the ideal of marriage and family. Childe Harold, who spends his leisure time among beauties and feasts, and Conrad, who was “born for gentle and peaceful pleasures,” turn into B.’s favorite, into Don Juan. His ancestors go back to the aristocratic 17th century, to the era of courtly absolutist culture, when from exploiters of serf labor they degenerated into predators of love, and to the “gallant” 18th century, when they played out their erotic bacchanalia to the end. Don Juan B. is the same son of the “gallant age”, the same eroticist, but of a decadent type, who has lost the aggressiveness and activity of his predatory ancestors, a passive lover of “peaceful pleasures”, who does not attack a woman, but is himself an object her attacks (Don Juan - the lover of Dona Julia and Catherine II) or the victim of a chance meeting (Don Juan and Haide, Don Juan in the Sultan's harem). The same eroticist, a fan of “bliss,” in the person of Sardanapalus, sits on the throne and, when forced to become active (defending the state from the enemy), prefers to die passively. And from the same angle of the cult of love-passion characteristic of the hero B., the female images of B. are arranged. His women and girls live only for passion, recognize themselves only as lovers and, if sometimes they go beyond the boundaries of “pleasures and pleasures,” they turn their activity perhaps only for the task of moral regeneration of a beloved man, like the Greek Myrrha, never rising to the role of a social and revolutionary activist, like many female images of his friend, the poet Shelley. The central character B., however, is not only a wanderer, a loner, a pessimist and an eroticist, but also a rebel. Driven out of the arena of life by the new class, he declares war on the entire society. At first his rebellion is spontaneous, anarchic, a revolt of revenge. How in a feudal society, already extinct, he becomes a robber at sea, like the pirate Conrad, and on land, like the son of Werner, the chieftain of the forest gang, the “black gang,” after his father was deprived of his estate and the old man, having committed theft out of necessity, tainted honor of the ancient knightly coat of arms. Rebelling against the social order, which put him outside of life, the robber then turns into the God-fighter Cain and declares war not on people, but on God. Expelled by the creator from paradise not for his fault, offended by God, Cain also rebels against him spontaneously and anarchically, killing his brother, and, guided by Lucifer, the critical mind, declares the entire world order created by the deity, where labor, destruction and death reign, as unjustly cruel as B.'s rebels declared public order.
A wanderer, a loner, a pessimist, an eroticist, a rebel and a fighter against God - all these features form, however, only one side of the face of the central image of B. Driven out of the arena of life by the new bourgeois class, Byron's aristocrat suddenly becomes a fighter for the interests and ideals of this class hostile to him. He becomes this fighter both in the field of thinking and in the field of action. With his rebellion against the creator God and faith in the power of critical reason, Cain clears the ground for scientific research, free from religious-church fetishes and shackles, the ground for a new positive worldview of the reigning bourgeoisie. So in the sphere of socio-political action, the hero B., willingly or unwillingly, goes to the service of the winner of the old aristocracy. Childe Harold turns from a secular dandy into a traveling agitator, calling on nations oppressed by strangers and their enslavers to armed self-determination and self-liberation: the Italians, who have worshiped art for too long and strived too little for freedom, rousing them to fight against Austria, like the Greeks, the descendants of marathon fighters, - to fight against Turkey. The hater of bourgeois society becomes the herald of the idea of ​​national freedom and independence, that is, the rule of the liberal national bourgeoisie. In the “Bronze Age”, the protest against the feudal-landowner reaction, which objectively retarded the development of bourgeois relations, is clothed in a magnificent, formidable and destructive satire (in particular on Alexander I: “here is a dandy ruler, a faithful paladin of war and waltzes, a Cossack in mind, with Kalmyk beauty, generous - just not in winter (1812); in the warmth he is gentle, semi-liberal; he would not mind respecting freedom where the world does not need to be liberated,” etc.). Sarcasms about the feudal-monarchical reaction, about the “Holy Alliance” are combined with grief over the death of the European free republics that arose under the wind of the great revolution, and with faith in the power and future of the “new world” - America: “there is a distant land, free and happy”, “the mighty ocean protects his people” (“Ode to Venice”). The attacks against the feudal-monarchical regime scattered throughout B.'s many works are then concentrated in the poem about Don Juan, where the calm narrative of the hero's love adventures is now and then interrupted by the angry debunking of feudal-autocratic militarism in the name of peaceful cooperation of peoples (regarding the capture by Catherine's troops Izmail fortress), then passionate calls for revolution (“People, wake up... go forward. .. Fight evil, loving your rights"), and where, in the stream of motley events that transport the reader from a high-society boudoir to the battlefield, from an eastern harem to the court of the Russian queen, a clearly audible song is heard, “that freedom has come to the world.” And it is not without reason - although this does not fit with the image of a seeker of “pleasures and peaceful pleasures” - that Don Juan, according to a plan that was not fulfilled due to the death of his creator, had to end his erotic career in Paris, shaken by the revolution that cleared the way for bourgeois society - and, moreover, in the ranks of the rebel people. And yet, until the end of B.’s life, this political liberalism of a radical shade coexisted in him with the consciousness of the feudal lord, hostile to the bourgeoisie. In his last poem, in his “swan song” - “Island” - B. is mentally transported to an island lost far from the cities of England, in the ocean, where there is no private ownership of land, where the use of gold is unknown, where people are children of nature - they live like in paradise. The “Golden Age”, which did not know gold, is only a projection of feudal socialism clothed in the veil of Rousseauism.
The same contradiction, which bifurcates the figuratively (and sometimes not figuratively) expressed ideology of B., also permeates the form in which this ideology is expressed. On the one hand, B. continues and restores the poetic genres of the aristocratic past. He begins his poetic activity with a burned book of light secular poems, so common in the aristocratic society of the 18th century, in order to later revive the poem of the Elizabethan era with its strophic and poetic construction (“Childe Harold”, “Beppo”, “Don Juan”), or he, competing with novels of “secrets and horrors”, borrowing motives and moods from there, clothes them in the aristocratic cover of a “nightmare” poem (eastern poems - “The Giaour”, “The Bride of Abydos”, especially “The Siege of Corinth” and “Parisina” "). B.'s commitment to aristocratic forms was clearly reflected in his dramatic work, in the classical construction and design of his dramas from Italian life ("Foscari", "Marino Falieri"). Finally, his largest work, “Don Juan,” is nothing more than a love-adventure novel in the style of a gallant century, expressed in poetic form, if we discard lyrical digressions of philosophical or political content. And along with these aristocratic and classical genres, in his work there are features that are opposite to aristocratic and classical aesthetics - in the form of lyrical individualism, which rapidly decomposes the canonical form, landscape painting, melancholic paintings that go back to “cemetery” poetry, paintings of destruction, oriental exoticism, and later realistic painting. everyday techniques - features that entered, albeit in a modified form, into the secular-classical poetry of B. from the poetry that developed already in the 18th century. romanticism. Finally, as B.’s poetic creativity develops, his initially heroic images, raised on a pedestal, surrounded by spectacular decorations (“Childe Harold”, “Corsair”, “Manfred”, etc.), are noticeably reduced, lose their “superhuman” singularity and exclusivity and, acting in an everyday environment, they themselves become everyday characters (“Beppo”, “Don Juan”), “bourgeois” heroes. In the further development of English society and literature, the hero B. declines even more, turning under the pen of Bulwer (q.v.) into Pelham, a secular dandy, forced to study political economy in order to make a career, and happily ending it as a minister, and then under the pen Disraeli-Beaconsfield (see) - into his secular heroes (Contarini Fleming, Viviani Gray), turning into the creators of the New Tory party with an imperialist program (Konigsby, Tancred), so that at the end of the 19th century. experience another metamorphosis and appear before the public in the image of the last dandy, esthete, eroticist, immoralist, alien to all social and political aspirations of the decadent Dorian Gray O. Wilde (see). While B. in his homeland, as the head of the “satanic” (the expression of the poet Southey), i.e., revolutionary, “school” of poetry, did not enjoy popularity either during his lifetime, or even at the present time does not enjoy it, on the continent his work found a significant echo in the era of the so-called. "romanticism". In individual countries, depending on their specific situation and the class nature of the writers, separate isolated motives were cultivated from the general complex of B.'s creativity: sometimes wandering, loneliness, disappointment (the "Byronic" poems of Pushkin, Lermontov, A. de Vigny, A. de Musset) and sometimes fight against God (Lenau), sometimes political liberalism (our Decembrists; Repetilov’s monologue in “Woe from Wit”, Ryleev), sometimes the idea of ​​national liberation and struggle (Polish romantics - Mickiewicz, Slovacki, Krasinski; Italians of the first half of the 19th century. - Monti, Foscolo, Niccolini). What was usually previously united under the name of “Byronism” and interpreted as B.’s influence, in fact represents local literary phenomena related to B.’s work, similar in similarity to his name, which does not exclude the acquaintance of these writers with B.’s works. Bibliography:

I. Best English ed. composition B.: Works of Lord B., new, revised and enlarged edition, 13 v., L., 1898–1904 (Prothera G. and Coleridge E.). Russian ed., 3 vols., St. Petersburg, 1904–1905 (Brockhaus-Efron, Edited by S. Vengerov).

II. Biographies: Veselovsky A.N., B., M., 1902; Elze K., Lord B., Berlin, 1886; Ackermann, B., Heidelb., 1901. About the poetry of B. Ten I. The development of political and civil freedom in England in connection with the development of literature, vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1871; Brandes G., Main trends in the literature of the 19th century, M., 1881; De La Bart F., Critical articles on the history of romanticism, Kyiv, 1908; Rozanov M. N., History of English literature of the 19th century, M., 1910–1911; Kogan, P. S., Essays on the history of Western Europe. literature, vol. I, M, 1922; Zhirmunsky V.M., B. and Pushkin, L., 1924; Collection "B. 1824–1924", L., 1924; Volgin V.P., Essays on Socialist Ideas, Guise, 1928. Enter. articles for translations in the publication. Brockhaus and Efron. Donner, B.'s Weltanschauung, Helsingfors, 1897; Kraeger, Der B-sche Heldentypus, München, 1898; Eimer, B. und der Kosmos, Heidelberg, 1912. Robertson, Goethe and B., 1925, Brecknock A., B., A study of the Poesy in the Light of new discoveries, 1926. On Byronism: the works of Spasovich (op. , vols. I and II), Veselovsky A., (“Sketches and Characteristics”, article “School of B.”, etc.), Kotlyarevsky N. (World Sorrow, etc.); Zdriehowsi, B. i jego wiek; Weddigen, B.’s Einfluss auf die europäischen Literaturen.

Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .

Byron

(byron) George Noel Gordon (1788, London - 1824, Missolungi, Greece), English poet, one of the leading representatives romanticism. Childhood and youth were marred by poverty and illness (congenital lameness). However, the young man managed to overcome his physical handicap and became an excellent athlete: he fenced, boxed, swam and rode horseback. In 1798, Byron inherited the title of lord and estate, three years later he entered a private school (where he began writing poetry), and in 1805 he entered the University of Cambridge. Since 1809, Byron has been a member of the House of Lords. His 1812 speech in defense of the Luddites (English workers who broke machines that deprived them of their income) is recognized as one of the best examples of oratory. At the same time, he wrote “Ode to the Authors of the Bill against the Destroyers of Machine Tools.” Byron began writing poetry at the age of 13; his first poetry collection, “Leisure Hours” (1807), aroused criticism from the Edinburgh Review magazine, but the young poet did not show the expected timidity and responded with the satirical poem “English Bards and Scottish Reviewers” ​​(1809), in in which he spoke out against literature that takes the reader into the past, and against the mediocre and vulgar plays that were performed in English theaters, and entered into polemics with poets " lake school" and W. Scott. In 1809–11 Byron travels to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey, and Greece. The amazing nature of these countries, their eventful history (and their poverty in the present) shocked the poet. Returning to England, along with lyrical works, he composed political poems in which he denounced the tyranny and arbitrariness of the rulers. At the same time, he wrote romantic “oriental poems”: “The Giaour”, “The Bride of Abydos” (both 1813), “Corsair”, “Lara” (both 1814), which brought him pan-European fame and developed the theme of the romantic hero. The indispensable motive of these poems was tragic love. At first, giving the hero hope of overcoming loneliness, it ended either in betrayal or in the death of his beloved, which further aggravated the loneliness and caused the hero inhuman suffering. At the center of these poems is a strong, strong-willed personality, endowed with powerful passions and in a state of war with society. The image of the “Byronic hero” - a disappointed, alien sufferer who challenged the world around him, was further developed in the poems “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812-18), “The Prisoner of Chillon” (1816). The hero of Byron's poems is always an outcast, violating the laws of public morality, a victim of society and at the same time an avenger, a hero and a criminal at the same time. Childe Harold, whose name became a household name,

... the society was gloomy and gloomy,

At least he had no enmity towards him. It happened

And the song will be sung and the tour will dance,

But he took little part in it with his heart,

His face only expressed boredom.

(Translation by V.V. Levik)
The image of Childe Harold had a great influence on the literature of Europe and Russia (including the work of A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov).

In 1816, due to family troubles (an unsuccessful marriage and protracted divorce proceedings) and political persecution, Byron left England. He goes to Switzerland, where he meets P. B. Shelley, who becomes his friend and political associate. Then he moves to Italy and joins the ranks of the fighters for its independence - the Carbonari (by his own admission, “sympathizing with the national cause of the Italians more than any other”). In 1824, the poet died of fever in Greece, where he was a participant in the struggle of the Greek people for liberation from the Turkish yoke.

Byron lived in a world in which old foundations were collapsing, ideals were changing, and this is largely associated with the pessimism and disappointment that marked the poet’s works. The rejection of evil in all its manifestations and the defense of individual freedom in the poem “The Bronze Age” (1823) turns into satire and direct political protest in the novel in verse “Don Juan” (1818-24, unfinished). The words of the hero of this work can serve as an epigraph to Byron’s entire life and work:

I will forever wage war

In words - and it will happen in deeds -

With the enemies of thought. I'm not on my way

With tyrants. Enmity holy flame