Byron's Influence on Poe

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - My name is George Bartley, and this is Episode 245 - Byron’s Influences on Poe.  This episode is the third - and final - for now - episode about Lord Byron, and does not deal as much with Byron’s escapades in Europe, but how he influenced Edgar Poe.  The episode delves into the young Edgar Poe as an imitator of Byron, and introduces the important concept of how Poe gradually developed his own voice.

Transcript

George - plain text
Ghost of Edgar Poe - italics

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - My name is George Bartley, and this is Episode 245 - Byron’s Influences on Poe.  This episode is the third - and final - for now episode about Lord Byron and does not deal as much with Byron’s escapades in Europe, but how he influenced Edgar Poe.  And to ask Mr. Poe about the influences of Lord Byron, I have the ghost of the poet right here.

Greetings, Mr. Bartley -

Hello, Mr. Poe.  I will get directly to the point.  How did Lord Byron influence your works?

Mr. Bartley, To answer your question, the great Byron was definitely a major influence on my literary philosophy - especially at first.  One only needs to read my early poetry - specifically my Lord Byron had a significant influence on first book Tamerlane and Other Poems.

Various scholars who have studied my life write that I took inspiration for the poem to express regret that Lord Byron earlier felt over his lost love Mary Chaworth marrying John Musters.  It was in reaction to Lord Byron’s  that I wrote “To One in Paradise,”

Could you tell us a little about its publication history.

Certainly - "To One in Paradise" was first published without a title as part of the short story "The Visionary" (later renamed "The Assignation"). It evolved into "To Ianthe in Heaven" and then into "To One Beloved" before being named "To One in Paradise" in the February 25, 1843 Saturday Museum.   Oh, and by the way, the word Ianthe means violet flower and is of Gree k origin.

Would you favor us with that poem - it is only a few verses.

Certainly, Mr. Bartley.

To One in Paradise

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

That is a beautiful poem - and very much unlike the tales of horror that we have come to associate with you - the attitude of far too many people is that you only wrote regarding dark subjects.

Thank you Mr. Bartley, but be that as it may,

Lord Byron had a significant influence on my early poetry, particularly in my debut book Tamerlane and Other Poems  of 1827. Scholars have written that the key aspects of Byron's influence on my poetry include several areas:
For example, there is the Byronic hero: The title character of Tamerlane is modeled after Byron's brooding, melancholic heroes like Childe Harold. The poem depicts Tamerlane as a restless wanderer and conqueror dissatisfied with his achievements.

And I directly utilized themes from Byron's works like Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in Tamerlane.  In one passage, I wrote:

And now what has he? what! a name.
The sound of revelry by night
Comes o’er me, with the mingled voice
Of many with a breast as light,
As if ’twere not the dying hour
Of one, in whom they did rejoice —
As in a leader, haply — Power
Its venom secretly imparts;
Nothing have I with human hearts.

Now I must admit that I borrowed - or as you might say - lifted the line The sound of revelry by night directly from a stanza written by Lord Byron’s Child Harold’s Pilgrimage -

There was a sound of revelry by night,
   And Belgium's capital had gathered then
   Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
   The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
   A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
   Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
   Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
   And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Yes, it does sound like you lifted that line!

Nevertheless, I believe that the pervasive tone of melancholy, world-weariness and disillusionment in Tamerlane reflects the Romantic sensibilities of Byron's poetry.  In fact, some have said that the titular character of Tamerlane in my poem is modeled after Byron's brooding, melancholic heroes like Childe Harold - a restless wanderer and conqueror dissatisfied with his achievements.

And would you care to comment on your use of the character name, Ada.  I think you know what I mean.

Are you referring to my use of Ada?

Exactly, Mr. Poe

The heroine of my work "Tamerlane" is named Ada.  Some have said that this was  likely borrowed from Lord Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace.
However, I would like to think that as I matured, I consciously distanced myself from merely imitating Byron. The 1829 revised version of "Tamerlane" excised much of the overt Byronic elements as I  developed my own unique poetic voice and aesthetic principles.

So would you say that Lord Byron was an early influence on your writing?

Definitely - Lord Byron was a formative early influence that shaped my Romantic sentiments and poetic style, However, I firmly believe that I transcended Lord Byron to forge my own innovative path in poetry and short fiction.

I admire how you can look back at your works in a critical manner.

Ah, I was to later write an essay "The Poetic Principle" near the end of my life and published posthumously in 1850.

That would be the year after your death.  But I don’t recall you writing about Lord Byron then.

Ah, Mr. Bartley, bear with me.  I will definitely discuss The Poetic Principle later with you in more detail, but today I would like to introduce the subject and point out the relevancy of the subject to Lord Byron.

That’s fair.

Now the Poetic Principle is a work of literary criticism, in which I presented my literary theory. The essay argues that a poem should be written "for a poem's sake" and that the ultimate goal of art is aesthetic. I  also argued against the concept of a long poem, saying that an epic, if it is to be worth anything, must instead be structured as a collection of shorter pieces, each of which is not too long to be read in a single sitting.

Yes, Mr. Poe - hopefully this podcast has pointed that concept out - say - comparing the longer works of Shakespeare to works like The Raven or The Tell Tale Heart that can be read at one sitting.

Yes, Mr. Bartley - but I digress … my essay critiques, sometimes rather sharply, the works of other poets of my time.  My most common complaint was against didacticism, which I believe to be a heresy.

Mr. Poe - don’t you think you are being a bit negative?

Ah, no - Mr. Bartley - in my essay, I use the example of a minor poem by Lord Byron to illustrate a work of literary art that is most laudable -

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron, is one which has never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves: —

“Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

 “Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me, [page 26:]
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.

 “Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain — it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn —
They may torture, but shall not subdue me —
’Tis of thee that I think — not of them.

 “Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, —
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.

 “Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one —
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
’Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

 “From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that which I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.”

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman.

That is most intriguing, Mr. Poe. 

Yes, Mr. Bartley - Also, at some point between 1827 and 1829, I gave up the imitation of Lord Byron to begin the serious business of growing into myself, self-consciously writing to my father , ‘‘I have long given up Byron as a model.”

But weren’t you mostly referring - at that time - to changes in your personal behavior.

Yes, but some scholars believe that those changes were linked to profound alterations in my poetry, alterations which can be seen by comparing the 1827 “Tamerlane,” my first published poem, with its revised 1829 version.

Mr. Poe - I would say that the differences - in writing a Tamerlane that is less Byron-like

You mean Byronesque

I stand corrected - the differences - in writing a Tamerlane that is less Byronesque give “Tamerlane” an importance that goes far beyond its value as a poem.

Why do you say that?

The differences show you in the midst of a dramatic and crucial transition, discovering and coming to grips for the first time with a theme that was to return in much of your mature work, the conflict of mortality with the ideal.

In other words, to use a comparison by Dwayne Thorpe of Washington and Jefferson College , you ceased to be a mere page trying on the emperor’s robes and began to trace your own lineaments.

That is a most fascinating insight.

Mr. Poe - in a future episode called The 10,000 hour rule - marking basically the half-way point of Celebrate Poe - I plan to delve into this period of the time you paid your dues or spent learning your craft and how you developed into  one of the world’s greatest writers.

I look forward to that episode - but for now I must take my leave.

GHOST LEAVES

In summary, while Byron was a formative early influence that shaped Poe's Romantic sentiments and poetic style, Poe eventually transcended it to forge his own innovative path in poetry and short fiction.

Sources include Dwayne Thorpe, “Poe and the Revision of “Tamerlane”,” Poe Studies, June 1985, 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,  and Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn.