Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron (London, January 22, 1788 - Mesolongi, April 19, 1824), known as Lord Byron, was a revolutionary and poet of the movement of British romanticism, antecedent of the figure of the cursed poet. Due to his poetic talent, his personality, his physical attractiveness and his life of scandals, he was a celebrity of his time. He was 6th Baron Byron.
Biographical information
Family
Byron was the son of Captain John Byron "Mad Jack" and his second wife, lady Catherine Gordon. His grandfather was John Byron, also called "Foulweather" ('Bad weather'), British vice admiral who sailed around the world. His father, John Byron, died in 1791 in the town of Valenciennes (France) when George was three years old. John's death took place in a small residence owned by his sister, where he had fled long ago from his creditors and the terrible temper of his wife. During his stay there, his father supported several mistresses and squandered at his whim what was left of the family's money. Thus, at that age and in the company of his mother in Aberdeen, George inherited from his mother little more than debts and his funeral expenses. However, if the father's material inheritance was little more than a displeasure for the son, the same cannot be said of the spiritual inheritance, since the young man would retain his love of beauty, the cult of gallantry, and his inclination towards the licentious life. From her mother, on the other hand, he would inherit the sweetness and affection that she offered him, but also her atrocious temperament.
Byron was born with a deformity in his right foot, which was clubbed. He was cleavage, which means he had his toes turned in. Byron always bet that such a deformation had been due to the prudishness of his mother, who refused medical assistance in childbirth. Due to this anomaly, his father said that he would never walk. But little Byron, who had to wear an orthopedic shoe all his childhood, rebelled against his father's belief and learned to run before he could walk, and even when he walked with a limp, he boasted of walking faster than many.. Upon reaching youth, his manners and manners served to hide his limp, making it appear an eccentric and at the same time distinguished walk.
Byron had to endure much ridicule and rejection for his limp. However, over time he learned to defend himself under the maxim that "when a member weakens there is always another that makes up for it", words that he would always honor in his life. In addition to the limp, he suffered a lot from the cold, since his bones were always fragile, something that caused him great discomfort.
Childhood
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The relationship of his parents, which marked Byron in an important way, could be defined as stormy. Although Byron could never consider her father as a true lover of her mother, her mother, despite her rancor for the wrongfulness of her husband's life, became sad and inconsolable. after her loss. Byron would describe the relationship he lived with his mother Catherine as a kiss-and-hit affair. Catherine often called little Byron the lame knave or little devil, while he called her old woman or the widow. Despite this love-hate relationship, Byron would later say that his mother was the only one who understood him.
When he was nine years old, his mother placed him in the care of a young Scottish governess and nurse, a devout Calvinist, named Mary Gray. She initiated him in reading the Bible and in sex, since at that time, despite his young age, he had his first sexual relations with Mary. With her he spent the summer in the valley of the Dee, in a country house near Abergeldie, and contemplated the alcoholic and orgiastic hobbies of Mary Gray. From that time, in addition to the world that was revealed to him through sexuality with the young Mary Gray, whom he would keep forever in his memory, Byron also remembered the beauty of the northern Scottish mountains, which he admired during his stay. and he inquired into its recesses daily in his continuous escapades, despite his latent limp.
Byron did not keep bitter memories of those first sexual relations and religious readings, nor did he say that they had harmed him in any way. On the contrary, he stated that his experience in the Dee Valley helped him mature and understand the feeling of melancholy early.
This occurred while living in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, where he was introduced to Latin and history with the help of a Presbyterian tutor until he entered Aberdeen Grammar School. While in fourth grade at the historic school, he was required to be in England due to the death of his great-uncle Lord William Byron, 5th Baron Byron.
Once there, with the death of his great-uncle, his aristocracy was recognized, and although he never had excessive appreciation for the title that corresponded to him, the experience made him broaden his horizons and he thought he grew up suddenly when he imagined himself in a future in the House of Lords. Mother, son, and governess came to live at the newly inherited Newstead Abbey, which, to her surprise, in the face of her aspirations for new wealth, was saddled with debt and in a state of disrepair. Her mother hired the London lawyer John Hanson for management and administration of assets, who would take care of family affairs until little George was old enough. Byron would fondly recall that this was the best residence he ever had. There he met and fell in love with her cousin Mary Duff, who rejected him for being too young for her. This fact left him devastated and encouraged him to make his first compositions.
It is fair to say that George's great-uncle had spent the last years of his life living almost like a hermit, an attitude that was not in keeping with the years he lived before his imprisonment. It is remembered from those years that he was called the Villain and that he also lived them in a rather licentious way. Among her actions, the attempted murder of her wife, throwing her into a lake after a domestic argument, stands out. From this man George inherited his family title and his debts.
Little Byron was sent to Dr. Glennie's College in Dulwich. There his studies were constantly interrupted by the manias of his affected mother, who continually broke into his room to take him with her for long periods. It was during this time that Byron read one of his favorite works, The Thousand and One Nights. He was already an avid reader for years.
But in 1801, thanks in part to a pension of three hundred pounds the young man's mother had received from the king, Byron was admitted to Harrow, where he would complete his primary studies.
In 1803 he had his first romantic tragedy when his cousin Margaret Parker died, with whom he was also in love.
Youth
In 1805 he transferred to the University of Cambridge. Here, in addition to being a brilliant student, he would stand out for his extravagant costumes and his licentious and wasteful life. Since cats and dogs were not allowed at school, he, an animal lover, decided to have a bear as a pet. Despite this, he earned the nickname of good boy and had great friends, such as Lord Broughton and John Hobhouse, who would be leader of the Liberal Party. Byron was already a great fan of writing verses at this time and learned boxing and fencing, becoming a great expert in both fighting arts thanks to his friends Jackson and Angelo. He would drop out of university due to lack of money and move to 16 Picadilly Street in London, where he was the lover of a prostitute. Then, penniless, he would return with his mother to Southwell and devote himself body and soul to poetry. That year he published his first book of poetry entitled Fleeting Compositions , thanks to a friend of his, Elisabeth Pigot, who handed over his writings to her and edited them. However, the parish priest of the area did not let it go on sale and burned it because in one of the poems a certain Mary was badly off.
In 1807 his book of poems Hours of Leisure was published in the prestigious magazine Edinburgh Review, which aroused differing opinions. In the face of criticism he always responded combatively or by writing a new work. In 1809 he took a seat in the House of Lords, wrote the satire English Bards and Scottish Critics, and undertook a two-year tour of various countries in Europe. He began his trip to Spain, where he was captivated by the beauty of Spanish women (he wrote the poem The girl from Cádiz ) and had an interview with General Castaños during the War of Independence. He also traveled through Portugal, Albania, Malta and Greece, where he swam across the Hellespont, together with his friend Hobhouse, and where he wrote the satires Hints from Horace and The Curse of Minerva. He was also in Turkey, where he tried to discover Troy. During these trips he had various relationships, both with women and with men. In 1811 his mother and two of his friends died in just one month. These losses greatly influenced his mood, since he became obsessed with death. Around this time he took refuge in her half-sister Augusta Leigh of hers, maintaining a relationship with her. As a consequence he was accused of incest (she was married and in the spring of 1814 she gave birth to her third daughter, Medora, rumored to be Byron's and not her husband's).
Maturity
The publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of The Pilgrimages of Childe Harold, poems recounting his travels through Europe, brought him fame. In addition, he produced another series of works such as El Giaour , The Bride of Abydos , The Corsair and Lara , establishing what was called Byron's hero. Around this time he met his later biographer Thomas Moore. Also famous was his affair with the aristocratic Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron was little liked by the other components of the nobility due to his continuous love affairs and criticism (such as the Duke of Wellington). He was even publicly insulted in the House of Lords for having defended Luddism and Catholics. But he really cared very little and even liked being hated because, in his opinion, they also feared him. In 1815, the year he published Hebrew Melodies , he married Anna Isabella Noel Byron, to whom he told on their wedding night: "You will regret having married the devil." On their honeymoon, when they passed through a town, the bells rang for a deceased, to which Byron said: "Surely those bells ring for us", hinting at the little future of the relationship as they are not very similar personalities. After learning that Byron was not faithful to her, Anna Isabella abandoned him in 1816 after giving birth to the poet's only legitimate daughter, the brilliant mathematician Augusta Ada. Rumors about his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta (with whom he was rumored to have a daughter, Medora), his unpatriotic poems, his accusation of sodomy, and doubts about his sanity led to his ostracism. social of him Deeply embittered, Byron left England in 1816 and never returned.
Starting in 1816, he began a kind of journey throughout almost all of Europe that would not end until his death. In 1816 he came to visit Waterloo, a tourist spot par excellence at that time, when it had only been a year since the famous battle took place there.
In the year 1816 he moved to Switzerland and lived for some time with Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and his personal physician John William Polidori (Byron was very prone to illness and was another cause of his depressions). On a stormy summer night in 1816, the four of them met at Villa Diodati, rented by Byron, and decided to write horror stories worthy of that gloomy night. Both inspired by Byron's personality, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and Polidori told her about him The Vampire . While in Switzerland, Byron wrote The Prisoner of Squeaky, The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, The Dream and Stays in Augusta.
From 1817 to 1822 he traveled throughout Italy, visiting cities such as Pisa, Genoa and Rome, where he had an affair with Margarita Cogni and lived in the Nani-Mocenigo palace. The residence was almost a harem for him and he attended gatherings with the Countess Benzoni and Albrizzi. In 1821 he participated in the revolt of the Carbonari in Ravenna and joined the movements against the pope (he published his critical work Dante's Prophecy ) and against Austria. He also came to live for a time in Venice, where he boasted he had 250 sexual relations with women, and where he lived with Countess Teresa Guiccioli, recently separated from her elderly husband. Edgar Allan Poe, the American writer, drew on that relationship to write 'The Appointment', a gothic tale from 1834.
She fell in love with reading Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a writer whom she admired and with whom she corresponded several times. This admiration was mutual, as Goethe wrote that Byron was "the poet of the present." At the end of 1821 he wrote Manfredo, influenced by Goethe's Faust and the mountainous landscapes of Switzerland; he finished several songs of his Don Juan and created a newspaper with Percy Shelley called The Liberal. Lord Byron admired Generals Páez and Bolívar (he called a schooner of his "Bolívar") and was about to enlist in one of the many contracts that were made in London to go fight in the Venezuelan war of independence.< sup>[citation required] Surely Lord Byron knew the exploits of these seasoned soldiers from the mouths of the expedition members who returned to Europe, from their writings, narrations or from comments in the press of the era.[citation required]
In April 1822, his illegitimate daughter Allegra (born of his relationship with Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley's half-sister) died when she was barely five years old and was dear to Byron. In addition, while he was on a trip with his great friend Percy Shelley on a schooner (Byron's was called "Bolívar" and Shelley's "Don Juan"), the latter died in a shipwreck that occurred on July 8 along with his friend, Captain Williams. In September he settled in Genoa, since he wanted to dedicate himself to politics without success.
Adventure in Greece and death
In March 1823 he was appointed a member of the London Committee for the independence of Greece, and he left there in 1824 from Genoa on the schooner Hercules to fight for the independence of the country, then part of the ottoman empire. There he wrote his last composition At my thirty-six years ; he gave 4,000 pounds and was appointed a regiment; he contacted the Suliotas bandits; He was greeted as a hero by the Greeks, who wanted to make him a commander, and planned an attack together with Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos, but was soon discouraged upon discovering the power struggles of the various Greek groups. Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto (Naupactos), at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a firemaster to prepare the artillery and was part of the rebel army under his own command, despite his lack of military experience. Before the expedition could set sail, on February 15, 1824, he fell ill and was further weakened by bloodletting. He made a partial recovery, but on April 10, 1824, he suffered an epileptic fit and fell ill with a cold. violent, which the therapeutic bleeding, done at the insistence of his doctors, only aggravated. The doctors prescribed some bleeding, which he refused. Days later, exhausted by the disease and calling them murderers, he allowed the doctors to draw as much blood as they wanted. On April 16 they practiced the first one without good results. The next day they made two more. This treatment, carried out with non-sterile medical instruments, could have caused sepsis. He contracted a violent fever and died in Missolonghi on April 19 without having fulfilled his dream of Greek independence. Eyewitnesses assured that, in total, they had extracted about two liters of blood, approximately.
Goethe wrote to the news of his death: «Rest in peace, my friend; your heart and your life have been big and beautiful.
A suburb of Athens was named Vyronia in his honor.
Her body was removed by Edward Trelawny, also implicated in the Greek cause, and buried in St Mary Magdalene Church in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire (near Newstead Abbey), next to her mother. In Westminster Abbey, in the so-called Poets' Corner, there is only a commemorative monument inaugurated in 1969, since at the time of Byron's death his burial was not allowed in the abbey due to his dubious morality. Opening his coffin in 1938, the good general condition of the body, originally embalmed and originally taken to England in a vat of cognac, was verified, with only the extremities showing signs of decomposition. His perfectly preserved face, his countenance frozen in a serene smile, recognizably reflected his features depicted in dozens of paintings and prints, and his hair showed a grayish color as the only sign of the passage of time.
Poetic work
Byron was a prolific writer. In 1833 his publisher John Murray published 17 volumes on all of his works, including the biography of Thomas Moore. His great work, Don Juan, a 17-song poem written in ottava rima, was one of the most important long poems published in England, since Paradise Lost by John Milton. Don Juan includes satirical, polemical elements and deep philosophical reflections and had an influence on a social, political, literary and ideological level. The reception of him was controversial, since he was accused of immorality. The poem, like The Pilgrimages of Childe Harold, is characterized by the charismatic personality of the narrator, who brings the text together and often resorts to digressions. Don Juan served as an inspiration for Victorian authors and remained unfinished due to Byron's untimely death.
Influenced romantic authors of the 19th century, especially through their heroes or anti-heroes (see: Byron's hero). His characters present an idealized but flawed character whose attributes included:
- Great talent.
- Great show of passion.
- Aversion for society and social institutions.
- Frustration for an impossible love due to the limits imposed by society or death.
- Rebellion.
- Exile.
- Dark past.
- Self-destructive behavior.
The works The Pilgrimages of Childe Harold, Lara, Manfredo and Don Juan contain certain aspects and references autobiographical.[citation required]
He also wrote short poems such as Darkness, which has an apocalyptic tone inspired by the aftermath of an eruption of the Tamora volcano; lyric poems such as She Walks in Beauty; small narrative poems such as The Prisoner of Chillon; and other longer ones with obvious polemical content such as The Vision of Judgment , a text in which he caricatures and harshly criticizes Robert Southey.
In the absolutist Spain of King Ferdinand VII and in a Hispanic America that was fighting for its emancipation, Byron's life and work had a great influence and served as an inspiration to the poets of Romanticism.
He was an author admired by many of his contemporaries, such as Goethe, Alphonse de Lamartine, Jan Potocki, and by others of immediate generations, such as Edgar Allan Poe (who based many of his Extraordinary Narratives on Byron's characters), Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Mijaíl Lermontov, Alejandro Pushkin, José Mármol, Víctor Hugo, Alejandro Dumas and Charles Nodier.
Character
Lord Byron had a particular personal magnetism. He got a reputation for being unconventional, eccentric, contentious, flashy and controversial. Many have attributed his extraordinary abilities to bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive syndrome. He was always acid and cruel. He favored the disinherited, the outcasts, the wretched as privateers and Cossacks, and everything else was hypocrisy: nobility, society, etc. He always defended the weakest and the oppressed, which is why he supported Spain against the Napoleonic invasion, the independence of the South American nations and, of course, the freedom of his beloved Greece. He was a great admirer of Rousseau. He had a great fondness for the company of animals, such as his Newfoundland dog "Boatswain", on whose grave he wrote:
Here rest
the remains of a creature
that was beautiful without vanity
strong without insolence,
brave without ferocity
and had many of the virtues of man
and none of his flaws.
Byron, while studying at Cambridge, kept a bear in an institution where pets were prohibited. At other times in his life he kept company with a fox, monkeys, parrots, cats, an eagle, a hawk, guinea fowl, a crow, a badger, geese, an Egyptian crane, and a heron.
Legacy and influence
Byron is considered the first celebrity as the term is modernly conceived. His image as a hero fascinated the public, and his own wife Annabella coined the term byromanía to refer to the expectation and commotion he caused wherever he went, similar to that caused by pop stars. or current rock. The self-awareness of his personal image and his capacity for self-promotion led him, for example, to instruct the artists who portrayed him never to represent him in a sedentary or passive attitude, with a pen or a book in his hand (which was the image typical of writers), but as a man of action. Over time, Byron attempted to withdraw from his public exposure, which he had promoted so much in his early days.
The burning of Byron's memoirs in the offices of his publisher John Murray a month after his death, and the suppression of details of Byron's bisexuality in documents alluding to him, made his later biographies paint a picture distorted character. It was not until as late as 1950 that the academic Leslie Marchard was allowed to give details of Byron's homosexual relationships.
The re-founding of the Byron Society in 1971 reflected the continuing fascination with Byron and his work. The society organized numerous activities and published an annual magazine. Soon the number of Byronic societies reached 36, spread all over the planet. Every year they organize an annual conference where they meet.
Byron was a major influence on literature and art. At the time he was considered the most important poet in the world and his reputation and importance is maintained. His personality and his writings also inspired numerous composers: there are more than forty operas inspired by his works and at least three operas with Byron himself as the main character (one of them Lord Byron by Virgil Thomson). Byron's verses were set to music by romantic composers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Carl Loewe and Robert Schumann. One of his greatest admirers was Hector Berlioz, whose music reflects the influence of Byron, especially his symphony with solo viola Harold in Italy , a work based on The Pilgrimages of Childe Harold .
Lord Byron in literature and cinema
Literature
The first book in which Byron appears as a fictional character was in a novel written by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb, titled Glenarvon and published in 1816.
The Spanish poet Gaspar Núñez de Arce published a lengthy poem in 1879 entitled The Last Lamentation of Lord Byron.
Manly Wade Wellman's short story The Black Drama, originally published in Weird Tales magazine, tells of the rediscovery of a lost work by Lord Byron which, according to this fiction, was plagiarized by Polidori in El Vampiro.
Byron is one of the characters in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004) by Susanna Clarke.
He is one of the main characters in the novel The Fire by Katherine Neville (2008).
She appears as a vampire, antagonistic to Jane Austen (herself recreated as a vampire) in the novel Jane Bites Back (Ballantine Books, 2009) by Michael Thomas Ford.
The story Leche (2016) by Óscar Esquivias evokes Byron and Polidori's stay at Villa Diodati.
Cinema
The love affair between Byron and lady Caroline Lamb was recreated in the film Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), in which the role of Byron was played by Richard Chamberlain. The film was directed by Robert Bolt.
In 1986, Gabriel Byrne plays Byron in the film Gothic, based on the meeting with Percy and Mary Shelley, Polidori and Claire in the summer of 1816 at Villa Diodati.
In 1988, the Spanish film Remando al viento was released, directed by Gonzalo Suárez and with the British actor Hugh Grant in the role of Byron.
Greek director Nikos Koundouros directed Byron, balanta gia enan daimonismeno (Byron, ballad for a possessed man, 1992).
In 2017, the film Mary Shelley was released, about the life of the author of Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, and in which the role of Byron is played by English actor Tom Sturridge.
Work
- Idle hours (1807).
- English bards, Scottish critics (1809).
- The pilgrimages of Childe Harold (1812-18).
- Abidos's girlfriend (1813).
- El Giaour (1813).
- The courtier (1814).
- Lara (1814).
- Hebrew melodies (1815).
- The Corinthian site (poem) (1816).
- Parisina (1816).
- The prisoner of Chillon (1816).
- The dream (poem) (1816).
- Prometheus (1816).
- Darkness (1816).
- Manfredo (1817).
- Lament for the Tasso (1817).
- Beppo (1817).
- Mazeppa (1818).
- Dante's prophecy (1819).
- Marino Faliero (1820).
- Sardanápalo (1821).
- The two Foscari (1821).
- Cain (1821).
- The Vision of Judgment (1821).
- Heaven and earth (1821).
- Werner (1822).
- The transformed deformation (1821).
- The Bronze Age (1823).
- The island (1823).
- At my thirty-six years (1824).
- Don Juan (1819–1824), incomplete because of his death.
Filmography
- Gavin Gordon plays the poet in the film Frankenstein's girlfriend. (1935).
- Peter Bowles plays the poet in the film Shelley (1972).
- Gabriel Byrne plays the poet in the film Gothic (1986).
- Hugh Grant interprets the poet in the film Remaining to the wind (1987).
- Philip Anglim plays the poet in the film Tormented summer (1988).
- Jason Patric plays the poet in the film Frankenstein lost in time (1990).
- Jonny Lee Miller plays the poet in a BBC miniserie Byron (2003).
- Stephen Mangan plays the poet in the TV movie Frankenstein: The Birth of a Monster (2003).
- Matthew Rhys plays Byron in the movie Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (2006).
- Rob Heaps interprets the poet in the media film for television Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night (2014).
- Howy Bratherton plays the poet in the film Chronology (2014).
- Tom Sturridge plays the poet in the film Mary Shelley (2017).
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