Darkness

This is Episode 244 of Celebrate Poe - Darkness - the second of three episodes about Lord Byron

Where we left off, it is said that Lord Byron awoke one morning and found himself famous. The first run of his latest book of 500 copies sold out in three days.  Pretty impressive for the time!

This episode also takes a deep dive into Byron's apocalyptic poem - Darkness, as well as a look at the concept of the Byronic hero.

Transcript

George  - plain text
Lord Byron - bold text

Welcome to Celebrate Poe.  This is Episode 244  Darkness - the second of three episodes about Lord Byron.

Welcome back, Lord Byron.  Where we left off, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage had just been published.  You said that you  awoke one morning and found yourself famous. The first run of 500 copies sold out in three days.  Pretty impressive!

Yes, Mr. Bartley, the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage changed my life. I rapidly became the most brilliant star in all of London.  Every society gathering wanted me, I was elected to the most exclusive organizations, and became familiar with the city’s most exclusive drawing-rooms.  

Oh yes, I was fortunate enough - or should I say unfortunate enough, depending on my mood - to become involved in an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb - she was the one who wrote that I was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”  - tho one must remember then when she became angry, Lady Caroline Lamb was the angry lover from hell.

Then financial situations arose where it became imperative that I seek a suitable marriage. 

in other words, you were broke.

This is one way of perceiving the problem - though it is painful to hear one use the vernacular of the common person.

You were heavily in debt, and needed to marry someone who was rich to save your snobbish BEEP

Mr. Barkley, you have communicated your observation!

One of the many women I considered - and I can assure you there were many - was a lady by the name of Annabella Millbanke.  But during this period, for the first time in 4 years, I became reacquainted with my half-sister, Augusta Leigh.  Many people felt that we were becoming quite close - and Augusta was to have a daughter that she named Medora.  Many of those in society felt that Medora, was my daughter - that Augusta and I had engaged in incest.

So what did you do?

I had to do SOMETHING!  My financial situation was becoming more and more desperate, and society was abuzz with with rumors blaming my half sister Augusta and I with having an incesteous affair. It was almost more than I could withstand.   My financial state, along with the pressures of polite society, forced me to marry Annabella - you know she was said to be the heiress to a very significant fortune.
We married In January of 1815, and that December had a wonderful daughter named Ada.  But it soon became apparent that Annabelle and I were not - as you say - remotely compatible.  I referred to her - somewhat mockingly - as the Princess of Parrellograms,

Annabelle left me, took our daughter, and initiated proceedings for a legal separation.  I certainly desired to conduct matters properly and in as private a manner as possible. We therefore began proceedings for a legal separation - a separation that was made legal in March of 1816.  The combination of the rumors about Augusta, the scandal surrounding the separation, and my ever-present debts left me with no choice but to leave my beloved England in April of 1816.

Did you ever return to England.

No, my interests were to manifest themselves in other places.  I traveled through Belgium, and the beautiful Rhine River.  Than in the summer of 1816, I settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland with John Polidori, my personal physician. The countryside was beautiful, and we planned on spending time outside basking in the sun and enjoying the lake, but the weather was horrible!  But the weather was rainy and constantly storming because of the volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora.

I had never known air as dank and frigid - an atmosphere that seized one with complete terror - a darkness that seemed like it would last forever. During that summer, I wrote about my fears for the future of the entire human race.

I called my poem Darkness

I begin by saying that I have “…had a dream” that was not entirely a dream. The dream can either be brushed off as only that, or considered as a premonition with a message to share about the state of  all living things.  And all of this revolves around one central concept - the idea of darkness - in a cold and silent earth.  There is no light, no moon or stars, no sun, and the earth is swinging out of control.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

The day does not bring light because the sun has been put out.  Men are so afraid of this desolation that they have forgotten their passions.  There is nothing to live for except the dread of darkness.  All hearts of this world are frozen.  Men and women pray for light - hoping that life will be as it was before.  All homes have been destroyed, and the apocalypse has had the effect of leveling palaces to huts and kings to peasants.

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

Some of the men, with their eyes turned to the sky, imagine a shadow of what was.  Even wild birds are terrified, and cannot fly.  Vipers hiss, but do not bite, and are slain for food by men.

The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.

All humans and animals were united in their struggle against the darkness, but that moment of peace.  Humans know that they may soon die, and there is no one left to bury them.  Their entire bodies are tombs.

And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The crowd in the next portion of the poem - and by this - I mean those who have remained - are famish’d by degrees.  They left the world at different times.  Only two men survived, and became enemies.

These two men were naturally desperate, and tried to find comfort.  The world had been destroyed, and men only returned to religion when they are most desperate.  The two men create a small fire from the ashes and can see each other better in the light.   They are horrified at the other’s appearance - or perhaps they realize they are facing another being in the same, pitiful condition - and they die.

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—

The world was now without life as all the populous and the powerful are degraded to a lump.  There are no seasons, plants, men, or life of any kind.   The world is described as “a lump of death - a chaos of hard clay.”  Nothing moves or stirs in the “rivers, lakes, and oceans.”

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;

The poem ends with a description of how the ships were rotting.
Their masts fell down and broke to pieces, but they do not float away. They “slept on the abyss without a surge.”  There were no more waves or tides or clouds.  Darkness has become the entire universe.

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Lord Byron, I can almost see why it would feel like it was the end of the world.  The incessant rain preventing you from doing almost anything. 

Yes, Mr. Barley, I do agree with you regarding that observation - it was a constantly wet, ungenial summer for the five of us - and that included Percy Shelley and his wife Mary, my personal physician, Polidori, and Claire Claireborne. Clarie was Mary’s half sister and Claire thought she was in the process of carrying on an affair with me  - but to be honest, I had tired of her.  To assuage the boredom, we began reading German horror stories, and then came up with the capital idea of writing our own stories in a competition.  The winner of that competition was Mary Shelley for a literary creation by the name of Frankenstein.

Later I moved to Venice and fell in with Marianna Seagate.  She was promptly replaced by 22-year old Margarita Cogni - both women were married.  Poor Cogni was extremely attractive, but could not read or write.  But she left her husband to move into my Venice home. I must admit we often fought, and I slept in my gondola more than once.  The story is told that when I found that she was learning to read and write, we argued, I demanded she leave the house, and Margaria threw herself into the Venetian canal.

I moved to Genoa and became bored with my life there.

I then became fascinated and  seriously involved in supporting the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. 

 I eventually sold my estate Rochdale Manor in England to raise money for the Greek revolution. Not surprisingly, I fell in love with several people of both sexes - individuals who were only interested in my money.  Some have said that I was basically a failure in Greece because I was unable to persuade the rival Greek factions to unite and won no victories.  To be honest, I was successful only in the humanitarian sphere, using my considerable wealth - especially by Greek standards - to assist  the both Muslim and Christian victims of the war, but this did not affect the outcome of the Greek struggle for independence at all.

I left this earthly life on April 19, 1824, at 36 in Greece.  I had contracted a fever during a rain-soaked horseback ride though the Greek countryside.  The doctors affixed twelve leeches to my temples in an attempt to “draw out” the cause of my high temperature.  The They fed me castor oil to cause diarrhea - an insane practice!  The leeches sapped more than four pounds of blood from my system.  Note that was already weakened by fever.  Soon I became delirious, and finally closed my eyes and never awoke again.  I was deeply mourned in England, and even became a hero in Greece.  My body was brought back to Westminister Abbey, but the English clergy refused to bury me due to what they considered my scandalous nature.  Instead my body was buried in the family vault near Newstea

Mr. Bartley, I was somewhat bemused that after my earthly life, my memoirs were considered so scandalous that they were burned about a month after I died.  Perhaps the gentlemen of the club were afraid of what they would find - that they might find evidence of what was considered unhealthy attractions.

But scholars over the years have found plenty of evidence that I also loved men - a fact that would be unimaginable to polite London society.  One must realize that this was a time when a young boy could be hanged for just the suspicion of engaging in homosexual acts. 

But one need not look at my memoirs to find written evidence of my attractions -  Of a fellow student at Trinity College, John Edleston, I wrote, “I certainly love him more than any human being.” Of young Lord Clare: I wrote “I never hear the word ‘Clare’ without a beating of the heart even now.” And of French-Greek youth Nicolo Giraud: I wrote “[he is] the most beautiful being I have ever beheld.”

And in a letter to John Cam Hobhouse about Giraud, on August 23rd, 1810, I wrote, ““It is about two hours since, that, after informing me he was most desirous to follow him (that is me) over the world, he concluded by telling me it was proper for us not only to live, but to die together. The latter I hope to avoid—as much of the former as he pleases.”

I like to think that I was a man of action with a prodigious sexual appetite. My lovers included young Lords Clare and Dorset while at school, and youthful valets and handsome fifteen-year-old Greek boys later in life. Much of my early poetry was inspired by his love for these boys.”

Lord Byron, if you will excuse me, I need to express my opinion - I am certainly not a prude, but there are certainly lines that should not be crossed - and being cruel and taking advantage of children is a bridge too far.  For all your genius, I believe that you were a sad manipulator.

Conversely, just when I think I have formed a definite opinion regarding you,Lord Byron, I come across something that makes me think differently - that you were an extremely complicated individual.  I tend to vacillate between the image of you as a cruel talent only concerned with your own pleasure to someone noble who achieved everything he could have wished.  Your life and death in Greece resulted in not just the attention of sympathetic nations, but their active participation.  In England it seemed that you worked hard (always appearing to be effortless about it) to attract the attention of those around you in order to increase your personal fame. But in Greece you were drawing attention to something greater than yourself - the welfare of an entire nation.  Lord Byron - you are remembered as a poet of genius not only because of your colorful life, but despite your colorful life.  In Greece especially, you are not seen as a bothersome outsider, but are still held in high esteem as a national hero.

The Romantics, especially Lord Byron, could be called the rock stars of their day.  But that comparison only goes so far.  Lord Byron, you were not a performer - at least not in the sense that people pay to see you act or hear you sing - but because you were a writer - someone who originated ideas.  And you seemed to promote your outrageous persona - even though you claimed differently - you did not know the pressures of appearing in front of a mass public at a concert.  I mentioned earlier that Lord Byron was known as much for his behavior and personality than his works.  Today many characters in literature, television, and media are often referred to as Byronic heroes - the person who has something dark or secret in their past that makes them that more interesting.  Jon Snow, in Game of Thrones, - especially when he is brooding, and his behavior seems dark is a good example.  Many rock singers, such as Mick Jagger, cultivate a bad boy image. But Lord Byron cultivated his image to advance his career so carefully, that he is often referred to as the first superstar.

Join Celebrate Poe for the final episode regarding Byron in the series - episode 245 - Byron’s Influence on Poe.

Sources include: Byron in Love: by Edna O’Brien, The Life of Lord Byron by John Galt, The Complete Works of Lord Byron by George Gordon Lord Byron,  Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, Secret Lives of Great Authors, and the book and CD, Accents: A Manual for Actors by Robert Blumenfeld.  

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.