My Recollections of Lord Byron
occasionally encourage such a supposition, for connecting him personally
with the groundwork or incidents of the stories."
To analyze the analogies and differences which existed between the
personal character of Byron and that of the poet would form a very
curious psychological study. It would be even an act of justice toward
his memory, but one which would prove too long, and would ill suit these
pages. Let us merely declare, that both analogies and differences have
existed, and that if the same can not be said of him as has been said of
men of less renown, "the poet is different from the man," it must be
allowed that in Byron the two characters were associated without being
coupled. This association did not exist between himself and the
creatures of his fancy, but merely with the principal features of his
poetry, their energy and sensitiveness. As to certain analogies between
his heroes, or between them and himself, when they really exist, they
should be pointed out; the duty of criticism being to discern and to
point to the nature and limits of these analogies.
When Byron began his travels, his genius ever sought an outlet. Too
young to have as yet much experience, he had only made known what were
his tendencies.
The education of his genius began in his childhood, on the romantic
banks of the Dee and on the shores of the ocean; in the midst of the
Scottish firs, in the house of his mother, which was peopled with
relics of the past; and at Newstead Abbey, situated in the heart of the
romantic forest of Sherwood, which is surrounded by the ruins of the
great Norman abbeys, and teems with traditional recollections of Robin
Hood. The character of that sympathetic chief of the outlaws, who was a
nobleman by birth, and who was always followed by the lovely Marian,
dressed up as a page; his generosity, his courage, his cleverness, his
mixture of virtue and vice, his pride, his buoyant and chivalrous
nature, his death even, which was so touching, must, to our mind, have
produced a powerful impression upon one who, like Byron, was gifted with
as much heart as imagination. At least the poet's fancy, if not the acts
of the man himself, must have been influenced by these early
impressions; and, no doubt, Conrad, and other heroes of his early poems,
must have sprung from the poet's recollections of the legendary stories
in the midst of which he had been nursed. In any case, however, the
impressions which he had received did not affect his nature.
He had, notwithstanding his youthful years, been able to show the
measure, not the tendency of his genius, as well as his aversion for all
that is artificial, superficial, insipid, and effeminate; and he had
proved that the two great characteristics of his nature were energy and
sensitiveness.
An education thus begun was to be continued and matured during his first
voyage among scenes the most poetical and romantic in the world; in the
glorious East, where there exists a perpetual contrast between the
passionate nature of man and the soft hue of the heavens under the
canopy of which he lives.
The manners, character, ideas, and singular passions of those races,
which civilization has not yet tamed down; their energy, which often
betrays itself in the perpetration of the greatest crimes, and as
frequently in the practice of the finest qualities; and the life which
Byron was forced to lead among them, all produced a great impression
upon his mind, and became precious materials to help the development of
his intellect. In the same way that, as it has been said, Salvator
Rosa's encounters with bandits contributed to the development of his
talent, so did the adventures of Lord Byron during this first journey
contribute to form his particular taste. Had he always remained in the
midst of extremely civilized nations, in which poetry and the great
passions are lost, and the heart too often becomes cold, his mind might
have developed itself in a less brilliant and original manner.
It was this extraordinary union of energy and sensitiveness in Byron
which was to determine the choice of subjects. No doubt the desire to
produce an effect had a part in the selection, especially at the dawn of
his genius; and this would seem evident in the picture of satiated
pleasure as represented by Childe Harold, and in the strange nature of
Manfred. But this is only a portion of the reality. His principal
qualities were the real arbiters in the selection of subjects which he
made. God has not given to us all the same voice. The largest trees--the
oaks--require the help of storms to make their voices heard, while the
reed only needs the help of the summer breeze.
Byron's attention was ever directed to what was uncommon, either in
nature or in the human heart; either in good or in evil, either in the
ordinary course of things or beyond its limits. To the study of placid
nature he preferred that of that soul which, though less well regulated,
yet rises superior to fortune by its energy and will.
The spark which lit up his genius could not live in that goodness which
constituted the groundwork of his nature, but in passion, called forth
by the sight of great misfortunes, great faults, great crimes, in fact,
by the sight of all which attracted or repelled him, which was most in
harmony with his energetic character, or at greatest variance with his
sensitive nature. One of the motives which actuated his mind was
sympathy--the other, antipathy; which exercised over him the same kind
of fascination which the bird feels whom the serpent's glance has
fascinated, or like the unaccountable impulse which causes a man to
throw himself down the precipice on the verge of which he stands.
The various aspects of nature exercised a similar influence over him.
With his exquisite sense of their beauties, Byron no doubt often
described the enchanting climates in the midst of which he placed the
action of his poems; but his pen had always a manly action, with a
mixture of grace and vigor in it quite inimitable. His descriptions,
however, always appeared to be secondary objects in his mind, and rather
constituted the frames which encircled the man whom he wished to depict.
One would say that the soft beauties of a landscape and the playful
zephyrs which caress the crests of little waves were too effeminate
subjects for him to dwell upon. His preferences evidently point to the
savage side of nature, to the struggles between physical forces, to the
sublimities of the tempest, and almost, I would say, to a certain
disorganization of nature; provided, of course, all is restored to order
the moment such a disorganization threatens the existence of beauty in
art or in the moral world.
At that time, what Byron could not find in his real and historical
subject, he took from another reality, which was himself,--that is, his
own qualities, the circumstances of his life, his tastes; without ever
inquiring whether Conrad's fear at the sight of the mysterious drop of
blood on Gulnare's forehead was that of Byron, whether the Venetian
renegade Alp could really experience the horror which Byron did at
Constantinople at the sight of dogs feasting upon human carcasses; or
whether the association of the qualities with which he idealized his
heroes would not induce psychologists to accuse him of sinning against
truth, of destroying the unity of a Corsair's nature.
In this Lord Byron confided in his powers. He felt that the love of
truth, and of what is beautiful, was too strong in him ever to depart
from or cause him to violate the essential rules of art; but he wished
to remain a poet while trusting in reality.
When he went to the East, and found himself there in contact with
outward circumstances so in harmony with the natural bent of his views,
and in presence of men like Ali Pasha, of whose victims he could almost
hear the moans and the screams "in the clime"
"Where all save the spirit of man is divine;
Where wild as the accents of lovers' farewell
Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell,"
he felt that he was at last in the land most likely to fire his natural
genius, and to permit of his satisfying the imperious want which his
observing mind constantly experienced of resting upon reality and upon
truth. The terrible Ali Pasha of Yanina was especially the type which
attracted his notice. "Ali Pasha," says Galt, "is at the bottom of all
his Oriental heroes. His 'Corsair' is almost the history of Ali Pasha."
In the "Bride of Abydos" the old Giaffir is again Ali. As for "Lara," it
is thought that Byron conceived him on being very strongly impressed by
the sight of a nobleman who was accused of murder, and who was pointed
out to him at the Cagliari theatre. "I always thought," says Galt, who
was present on the occasion, "that this incident had a share in the
conception of 'Lara,' so small are the germs which fructify genius." The
"Giaour" is due to a personal adventure of Byron's, in which he played,
as was his wont, a most energetic and generous part. The origin of
"Manfred" lies in the midst of sublime Alpine scenery, where, on a rock,
Byron discovered an inscription bearing the names of two brothers, one
of whom had murdered the other at that spot. The history of Venice
inspired him with Alp the renegade, who, disgusted with the unjust
severities of his countrymen, turned Mohammedan and swore vengeance
against the land of his birth.
It is, however, indispensable to remark, that in each of these
characters there are two distinct realities. The one tries, by a display
of too much energy, to overstep the limits of the natural; the other
brings the subject back to its true proportions by idealizing it. The
first is the result of the poet's observations of men and their customs,
or of his study of history; the other, by the impossibility which he
knows to exist in him of departing from the rules of art by pushing
reality to the point of making of it a positive suffering. In the first
case his heroes are like one another by their analogy in the use and
abuse of strength; in the other they are like Byron, because he has
almost instilled a portion of his own life into them, in order to
idealize them.
Conrad is the real pirate of the AEgean Sea: independent, haughty,
terrible in battle, full of energy and daring such as becomes the chief
of corsairs, and such as Byron's study of the country where the action
lies pointed out to him that such a man should be placed. But the poet
describes himself when he makes Conrad, at the risk of his own life,
save women from a harem, or shudder at the sight of a drop of blood on
the brow of a lovely maiden. The spot on Gulnare's forehead, while
causing him to suspect some crime, banishes all her charms in his eyes,
and inspires him with the greater horror from the fact that the love
which she had sworn him probably inspired her with the foul act, to save
his life and restore him to liberty. He accuses himself with having been
the involuntary cause of it, and feels that his gratitude will be a
torture; his former love for Gulnare an impossibility. We find Byron's
own nature again in the ascetic rule of life to which Conrad has
subjected himself, and in his passionate and ideal tenderness for
Medora, whose love, in his eyes, surpasses all the happiness of this
world, and whose death plunges him into irretrievable despair.
In the "Siege of Corinth," Alp is the real type of the historical
Venetian renegade, who is incapable of forgiveness, and who makes use of
all his energies to gratify his revenge. But he represents Byron when he
speaks of the impressions which he felt under the starry canopy of
heaven the night before the battle, when his imagination, taking him
back to the happy, innocent days of his childhood, he contrasts them