Brush up your Byron: featuring satire, politics and Lucifer/Michael slash

[selenak]

So here I was, reading something looking back on the Bush years, when a quote from Byron about George III. nagged in my mind, which I always thought to be the best summary of W. I looked up The Vision of Judgment, and there indeed it was. It also reminded me of something else, namely, how immensely readable much of Byron's work is still today, and

Comments

[counteragent]

Thanks! That was interesting!

[selenak]

You're very welcome.

[lilacsigil]

This was where I first saw the word "spavined" and for some reason it utterly fascinated me - so there's at least one person who met Byron the satirist before Byron the Byronic!

[selenak]

I was lucky; the first thing I read was Don Juan, so I started at the top, so to speak. Mind you, while I think Childe Harold in its entirety doesn't hold up today (and I would never recommend it to someone as an entry into Byron's work), there are some great passages there as well, the Italy and Greece descriptions and my all time favourite poetic description of what it means to write:

'Tis to create, and in creating live
a being more intense, that we endow
with form our fancy, gaining as we give
the life we image - as I do even now.

So hooray for the satire as a whole, and the gloomy work in excerpts.

[trobadora]

Heh. Yes, that's one of the most frequently quoted passages for a reason! And Byron can be fabulous when he's lyrical just as much as when he's satirical.

[bwinter]

I love the off-hand dig at St Paul there, too :)

[selenak]

Ha, yes. Clearly Byron was not a fan. :)

[fallingtowers]

I can't help but think that describing Southey as big ol' bore was an ever greater insult than the epithet of "dry Bob" (i.e. masturbation without ejaculation) that Byron slipped into the Introduction of Don Juan. Although it's kind of hilarious that he basically accuses Southey of having no creative mojo, to put it into Austin Powers speak.

I'd disagree with your reading of the harem episode in DJ IV, though. The whole gender ambiguity of Juan(a)'s appearance and his/her attractions really seem to be subsumed into the male fantasy aspect -- first, the titillation of the harem ladies longing for a bit of girl-on-girl action and Dudu then enjoys her "the stinging bee hidden in the apple" 'dream' a bit too much,if you know what I mean.

[fallingtowers]

Er, of course I mean canto VI.

[selenak]

I agree that girl on girl action is very much male fantasy today (well I suppose it was then, too, only the guys didn't write about it in above the desk sold epics), but Juan's gender ambiguity isn't limited to the harem episode; he's given the conventionally "feminine" role of object of desire, damsel and object of seduction (instead of aggressive seducer) throughout, and the emphasis on his boyish beardless looks is ongoing, too. If you consider that for Byron's audience/readers the most recent version of the Don Juan archetype would have been the da Ponte/Mozart Don Giovanni, the difference is especially marked. Then there's the fact Juan is called and referred to as Juana throughout the harem scenes. Basically Byron took an archetype of hyper masculinity and at the very least androgynized him.

I can't help but think that describing Southey as big ol' bore was an ever greater insult than the epithet of "dry Bob" (i.e. masturbation without ejaculation) that Byron slipped into the Introduction of Don Juan. Although it's kind of

[rozk]

I've always loved the satirical Byron too - so much more interesting than the gloom-bucket author of endless verse tales. Part of the particular animus between him and Southey has to have derived from the fact that some of the time they were working for the same market, though Byron's narrative poetry is far better than Southey's. ( I speak as someone who has actually read, though mostly forgotten, at least two of the Southey ones The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba the Destroyer. They are like Conan without the jokes - the only line I can remember comes from when one or other of his heroes is lost in the desert and cries out 'Oh for the sight of a vulture! Which haunts man as its prey!', a line so bad that it leaves the worst of Wordsworth in the dust.)

A propos of the harem sequence in Don Juan, is this the first time forced transvestism is used as an erotic trope in the way it is - almost as a cliche - in later pornography? Earlier situationally forced transvestism, in Sydney's Arcadia or the drama and opera, may have emotional

[selenak]

I admit I only read some of Southey's letters, so I couldn't say anything about his poetic work myself. Re: Byron's gloomy verse tales - as I said to another commentator, I don't they hold up in their entirety today, and I'd never recommend them to anyone as an entree, but there are individual passages which I love. Still, the best thing that ever happened to Byron as a writer was exile and writing more and more satire and less and less brooding.

(Works of Byron entirely without satire which still work as a whole: The Prisoner of Chillon and Darkness, I think, both of which are longer poems rather than verse tales. I once heard an actor recite The Prisoner of Chillon and was struck by how genuinenly moving and sans posture it came across.)

A propos of the harem sequence in Don Juan, is this the first time forced transvestism is used as an erotic trope

Hm, doesn't that depend on how you read the Elizabethan boys-playing-girls-playing-boys stuff Shakespeare & Co were so fond of? Especially Twelth Night ; I suppose it depends on

[diotimah]

Well, maybe Southey wasn't the greatest poet of all times (and lived in an age when there was fierce competition), but he certainly was a storyteller. This guy using the curse he's under for his own advantage - that's a great plot device, and a nice subversive twist, which I'd expect to find in a modern fantasy novel rather than a Romantic epic poem.

And I agree, the issues between Southey and Byron can partly be explained by the fact that Byron took a market by storm in which Southey had been quite successful before. Walter Scott stopped writing verse epics for the same reason, and turned to historical novels which were much more his forte.

As for 'Juana' in the Harem - Byron used that motif to great effect, but I'm sure it must be older. Achilles, anyone? *g*

[rozk]

Yes, but Byron eroticizes it. And not just the disguise but the forced disguise.