George Byron is a famous English poet of the first half of the 19th century. His work went beyond the boundaries of English literature and had a huge influence on world poetry. He belonged to the generation of so-called younger romantics. The peak of development of this literary movement is associated with his name. The poet's poetry was extremely popular in Russia in the 1820s, influencing many authors, including A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov and many others.

Youth

George Byron was born in 1788 into an impoverished noble family. By the time he was born, the family had almost no property. Nevertheless, as a teenager, the future famous poet received the title of lord and an estate from his distant relative. He studied at a classical gymnasium, then at the prestigious Cambridge University.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, George Byron was not interested in his studies, he did not study very well, but he was interested in English classical literature. He loved to read and became familiar with the works of all the famous authors of that time. George Byron had an extremely impressionable character, was extremely amorous and sociable. Interesting facts from his biography include the wish he once expressed to his friends to contract consumption, since it made people pale, which was the case at the time of the dominance of romanticism in fashion.

In 1807, he published his first essay, Leisure Hours, which was severely criticized. This was a hard blow for the young author. Nevertheless, two years later he published his answer, “The English Bards and the Scottish Critics,” which brought him fame and popularity.

Travel and first success

George Byron traveled a lot. In 1809, he visited many European countries, as well as Asia Minor. He embodied his impressions from this trip in his famous poem about Childe Harold.

Many critics see autobiographical themes in this work, although the author himself denied this. Nevertheless, this work, the first parts of which were published in 1812, was a resounding success. The poet himself did not expect such ardent and sympathetic interest in his book.

George Byron initially conceived his work as a narrative in verse about the wanderings of a hero, disillusioned with social life, satiated with pleasures and entertainment. And indeed, at first the young aristocrat, who is tired of the empty fuss of high society, sets out on a journey. At the same time, the author does not skimp on dark colors when depicting his character. Under the poet's pen, Childe Harold appears as a gloomy, thoughtful and even somewhat cynical young man.

However, gradually his image recedes into the background, and the author’s attention concentrates on the depiction of those countries that his hero visited. The poet describes the nature, customs, and morals of various peoples.

Ideas

Byron George Gordon became known throughout the world as an author who glorified the people's struggle for freedom and independence. It is this theme that runs like a red thread throughout the entire poem about Childe Harold. The poet focuses on the wars of the Spaniards and Greeks against their enslavers. This topic sets the tone for descriptions of nature and types of people. The author draws a contrast between the gloomy, disillusioned protagonist and the pictures of the reality around him. The work had a great influence on Russian literature. Echoes of the poem can be found in the novels “Eugene Onegin” and “Hero of Our Time”. In the first half of the century, many young people were seriously interested in the poet’s work.

"Eastern Poems"

Byron George Gordon immediately became famous after the publication of his work about Childe Harold. He made acquaintances, including the famous songwriter and ballad writer T. Moore. He began to lead a social life. This period became one of the most fruitful in his career. In 1813-1816, several of his works were published, the action of which takes place in the East. These works are united by the fact that their main character is a rebel man, a social renegade who challenges the world around him.

The action takes place against the backdrop of the sea or exotic eastern nature, which the author described based on his travels in Greece, Turkey, and Albania. Another characteristic feature of the poems is that their action is somewhat fragmentary. As a rule, the author takes as the basis of the plot some expressive colorful episode of the struggle, without explaining either the motives or the reasons for what happened. Nevertheless, despite these omissions, the audience was delighted with the poet’s oriental songs.

New type of hero

George Byron, whose works opened a new stage in the development of romanticism, created a special character - a rebel and rebel. As a rule, the author did not reveal his biography to the reader and did not say anything about his past.

Such, for example, is Conrad, the main character of the famous poem “The Corsair”. The author endowed him with such charisma that readers did not even think about these questions. The hero fought against society with such passion and strength, overcame obstacles with such tenacity and bitterness that all the attention of the story was concentrated exclusively around him alone.

George Noel Gordon Byron made the theme of revenge the main leitmotif of his works. This is the basis of the plot of his other work from the cycle “The Bride of Abydos”.

Marriage and divorce

In 1815, the poet married Anna Milbank, the granddaughter of a wealthy and influential English baronet. It was a brilliant game, which was considered very successful in secular society. The couple lived happily together for one year and had a daughter, Ada. However, unexpectedly, the poet’s wife left him, after which a strange divorce followed, the reasons for which still remain unknown.

George Gordon Byron, whose biography calls this period in his life the most unsuccessful, had a hard time with the departure of his wife and the divorce, which was accompanied by a public scandal. He wrote a farewell poem and dedicated it to his ex-wife. Published without the poet’s knowledge, it strengthened the negative attitude of society towards him, so that he was forced to leave England.

New journey

In 1816, the poet settled in Switzerland. Here he wrote the third song about the wanderings of Childe Harold. Inspired by the magnificent views of nature, he conceives new romantic poems.

The following year he already lives in Italy, where he leads a rather carefree social life, which, however, did not affect his work. In 1817-1818, George Byron wrote new poems one after another. A short biography of the poet must necessarily include a point stating that his travels had a great influence on his works. During the period under review, he wrote a new song about Childe Harold, the poems “Beppo”, “Don Juan” and others.

Life in 1819-1821

This period of time was very eventful for the poet. The impetus for a new creative upsurge was the love of the famous author for Countess Griccioli. It was during the period of acquaintance with her that he wrote many works. From his pen come songs and poems on historical, adventure, and adventurous themes. George Byron, whose biography is full of various events, was an extremely emotional and impressionable person, but he could not enjoy a calm and serene life for long: he soon decided to leave for Greece, where at the time in question there was a war of independence.

Participation in the uprising

An interesting fact in the poet’s biography is undoubtedly his trip to Greece to help the rebels. He built a ship at his own expense and set off for this country. The poet sold all his property in England, and donated the proceeds to the rebels for their struggle against Turkish rule. George Gordon Byron did a lot to reconcile the conflicting interests of uncoordinated groups. The poet's poems reflect his freedom-loving aspirations and also glorify freedom.

During this period, he wrote a number of works on the theme of the Greek people's struggle for freedom. One of them is “Last words about Greece.” In this poem, the author confesses his love for this country and speaks of his readiness to die for it. He also translated the “Song of the Greek Rebels” by the poet Constantine Rigas, who also participated in the uprising, was captured by the Turks and was executed.

Death

George Byron, whose poems are distinguished by freedom-loving motives and some pathos, devoted all his strength and capabilities to the cause of the rebels. At this time he fell ill with a fever. In addition, he was worried about the painful condition of his daughter Ada. During one of his walks, the poet caught a cold, and this led to a complication of the illness. In the spring of 1924, the poet died. He was only 37 years old.

After the autopsy, doctors removed the poet’s organs and embalmed them. They decided to place the larynx and lungs in the Church of St. Spyridon, but they were stolen from there. In July 1924, Byron's embalmed body arrived in England, where it was buried in the family crypt in Nottinghamshire.

Features of creativity

The author's works were based on his personal impressions. Travel often served as a source of inspiration for him. He described the nature, customs and history of the countries he visited. Oriental themes were of particular importance to him. The pathos of freedom and struggle permeates all of his works, especially the aforementioned poem by George Byron “The Corsair”, which is considered one of the best works of the Romantic era. In addition to rebellious works, the poet also wrote a lot on political topics. Being a man of his time and acutely reacting to the events taking place around him, he spoke out sharply in defense of the weak and oppressed.

The poet, sitting in the House of Lords, often made heated speeches in which he denounced the policies of the rich classes, which lead to the ruin of the common people. This theme is reflected in his poems. For example, his “Song to the Luddites” is famous. In many of his poems, he ridiculed famous politicians and legislators. So, the poet’s work was multifaceted: he wrote in a variety of genres and on various topics, which testifies to the extraordinary nature of his talent.

Poems about freedom

In 1817, the poet wrote two works that can be considered programmatic in his work. One of them is called “The Prisoner of Chillon”. In this work, the author, through the mouth of his hero, reflects on the relationship between will and captivity and leads the reader to an unexpected conclusion: his character considers being in prison better than freedom, which seems unknown to him. Another work, “Don Juan,” is interesting because in it the poet for the first time moved away from his usual gloomy style and allowed himself to be cheerful. His hero is distinguished by ease and spontaneity, he is funny and considers himself right in everything. His work is very different from the small tragedy of the same name by A. Pushkin, which is more serious and dramatic.

Historical topics

In 1818, the author published the poem "Mazeppa". In it he presented a romantic image of the Ukrainian hetman. The details of his biography were greatly changed by him under the influence of the work of the French educator. A. Pushkin, who also addressed the events of this period, noted in his comments that the poet greatly embellished the events, but did it so talentedly and expressively that his work can be considered one of the best in romantic literature. The poem was subsequently freely translated by Lermontov.

Sentimental lyrics

The author united works on this topic into a well-known cycle called “Jewish Melodies.” The poems are distinguished by their special insight and subtle lyricism. If the poems are permeated with a dramatic spirit, the pathos of struggle, then these works of the author, on the contrary, are written in a very restrained tone, which gives the author’s lyrics a special sincerity. The poet paid much attention to pictures of nature. But this time he does not describe majestic landscapes, but recreates peaceful and quiet sketches of the reality around him. One of the best poems in this cycle is the composition “Sun of the Sleepless.” In it, the poet describes the night and the moon.

Influence on world literature

Byron's works were of great importance for the further development of art. In fact, his writings set the tone in world prose and poetry for several decades, and even after the fashion for “Byronism” passed, his poems and poems remained the standard of elegant language and impeccable taste.

Byron's work was very well known in Russia. He was imitated not only by famous poets (Pushkin, Lermontov), ​​but also by many representatives of the intelligentsia. Based on his work, P. Tchaikovsky wrote his famous symphonic poem. Byron was very popular in Western Europe. The term “Byronic hero” even appeared in the literature of that time. The famous French novelist A. Dumas referred to it. So, the poet’s works had a huge influence on European and Russian culture.

D. G. BYRON

George Noel Gordon Byron(1788-1824) was born in London on January 22, 1788. He belonged to an old aristocratic family.

After graduating from university and reaching adulthood, Byron decided to take a long trip through the countries of the Mediterranean basin (Portugal * Spain, Greece, Albania and Turkey). Byron recorded the rich impressions he received during the journey in a poetic diary, which served as the basis for his poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” After returning home, Byron began to take an active part in the political life of his country. He made two speeches in the House of Lords in which he condemned the anti-people policies of the ruling Tory party. In his first speech, he protested against the death penalty for the Luddites, threatening the ruling class with punishment for their inhuman cruelty towards people “whose whole guilt is that they want work and bread for their families.” In the second speech, Byron defended the Irish Catholic peasants, reduced to abject poverty by centuries of colonial oppression. Byron demanded independence for Ireland. Both of Byron's speeches made a strong impression in parliament, but had no practical result.

In 1815, Byron married Annabella Milbank, who seemed to him the embodiment of female beauty, charm and high spiritual qualities. Soon, however, it turned out that Annabella was unable to understand her husband's aspirations. Believing the slander about Byron's allegedly immoral behavior spread about him by secular gossips, a year after the wedding she demanded a divorce.

The ruling circles used this incident to accuse Byron of “immorality”, of “desecrating the sanctity of the family hearth”, etc.; A vicious campaign of slander was organized against the poet. Soon the persecution became so unbearable that Byron was forced to leave England forever.

Byron spent 1816 in Switzerland, near Lake Geneva. Here he met another genius of English poetry - Shelley. In October 1816, the poet left Geneva and arrived in Venice a few days later. The most fruitful period of his work begins in Italy.

In April 1819, Byron met Countess Teresa Guiccioli, whose brother and father (the Counts of Gamba) were members of the secret political society of the Carbonari. Through them, Byron penetrates the secret organizations of this society, which was then preparing for an armed struggle for the freedom of Italy, which suffered under the yoke of the Austrian occupiers.

Byron's house in Ravenna became a secret weapons warehouse and the underground headquarters of the conspirators. The poet systematically transferred considerable sums of money earned through literary work to the Carbonari organization. The heyday of Byron's work coincides with the years of the highest activity of the Carbonari movement. The poet was inspired by the victories of the Neapolitan revolutionaries, who overthrew their king in 1820 and proclaimed a democratic republic; he had high hopes for the uprisings in the papal states (1820) and the revolution in Piedmont (1821). However, these revolutions ended in defeat. Repression followed from the Austrian occupation authorities and the papal administration. Byron had to leave Ravenna.

After the defeat of the Carbonari movement, Byron, together with Shelley and journalist Leigh Hunt, is preparing the publication of a radical magazine. This magazine was published only after Shelley's death. It contained Byron's most acute satirical works - "The Vision of Judgment" and "The Bronze Age".

In 1823, Byron arrived in Missolonghi. The vigorous activity of Byron begins - military leader, diplomat, tribune. In the last months of his life, the poet, due to lack of time, writes little, but the few lines that were created by him are imbued with high civic pathos.

Suddenly the poet was struck down by illness: he caught a cold during a trip to the mountains. On April 19, 1824 he died. Byron's heart was buried in Greece, and his ashes were transported to his homeland and buried near his beloved Newstead Abbey. Greece honored Byron's memory with national mourning; all progressive people in England and throughout the world responded to this bereavement. Goethe dedicated beautiful poems to him in the second part of Faust; Ryleev, Kuchelbecker and Pushkin wrote heartfelt lines on the occasion of his death.

Byron's creativity, based on the nature of the works he created in different years of his life, can be divided into two periods: 1807-1816. and 1817-1824 In the first period of his creativity, Byron was still under the influence of English classicist poetry. In the second period, he appears as a completely original romantic poet. However, the features of classicism in Byron's work persisted throughout his life.

Byron is one of the greatest lyric poets in world literature. The national liberation movements of the peoples of Ireland, Spain, Italy, Greece and Albania, as well as the first mass actions of English workers, are the soil on which his rebellious art grows.

At the same time, there are paradoxical contradictions in Byron's worldview and creativity.

Along with angry satirical denunciations of the vices of the ruling classes and calls for revolutionary struggle, Byron’s poetry contains motifs of disappointment and “world sorrow.”

The combination of such contradictory moments in the work of the great poet should be explained based on the specific historical conditions in which he lived and worked. V. G. Belinsky deeply appreciated the significance of Byron’s work, pointing out the complexity and ambiguity of the position of Byron the romantic and Byron the thinker, who became a symbol of all romantic art.

The collection of poems "Leisure Hours" (1807) is Byron's first literary experience. In this collection, the young poet is still influenced by his favorite images of English poetry of the 18th century. Either he imitates the elegies of Gray (the poem “Lines written under an elm tree in the cemetery in Garrow”), then the poetry of Burns (“I want to be a free child ...”), but the influence of the didactic poetry of the classicists is especially strongly felt in Byron’s early works (the poem “To the Death of Mr. Fox”, etc.). At the same time, in some other early poems the poetic individuality of the future creator of “Cain” and “Prometheus” is already beginning to show itself. This is evidenced by the sometimes manifested passion and deep lyricism of some lines. The author of “Leisure Hours” speaks contemptuously of the “secular mob”, of “swaggering nobility” and wealth.

Byron's poems were noticed by the public. However, a literary critic from the Edinburgh Review, an influential liberal magazine, gave them a negative review. The poet responded to it with the satire “English Bards and Scottish Observers” (1809), which is considered to be Byron’s first mature work, although not entirely free from imitation of classicist poetics. This satire was also a literary manifesto of English romanticism. Byron sharply criticized all recognized literary authorities in it. He ridiculed the older romantics - Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the author of Gothic novels Lewis, etc. However, Byron spoke not only with an assessment of contemporary English literature; he spoke with praise of Sheridan (the creator of a wonderful satirical and everyday comedy), of the democratic poets Rogers and Campbell (for their loyalty to the civic ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment), as well as of the realist poet Crabbe.

Byron believed that a writer should be “closer to life” and must overcome antisocial, religious and mystical sentiments that cover only “naked selfishness and tyranny.” Byron called for creative use of folk poetry, speaking in a language understandable to ordinary people.

In 1812, the first two songs of the lyric-epic poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” appeared, which was created over several years. However, we will look at all four of her songs at once, written at different times, since both thematically and in their genre characteristics they form one inextricable whole.

The poem "Childe Harold" made a huge impression not only on the English reading public, but also on all the progressive people of Europe. In 1812 alone, it went through five editions, which was an exceptional phenomenon at that time.

The secret of the poem’s enormous success among his contemporaries was that the poet touched upon the most “thorny issues of the time” and in a highly poetic form reflected the mood of disappointment that spread widely after the collapse of the freedom-loving ideals of the French Revolution. “Why rejoice that the lion was killed,” we read in the third song of the poem regarding Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, “if we have once again become prey to wolves?” The slogans of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, inscribed on the banners of the Great French Revolution, in practice resulted in the suppression of the individual, the era of political reaction and the Napoleonic wars. "Childe Harold" reflected an entire era in the spiritual life of English and European society.

In the first song of the poem, Byron, after a series of abstract discussions about human nature, approaches the same point of view on which the French enlighteners themselves stood: he sees the only reason for the unreasonableness and injustice of social relations in European post-revolutionary society in the ignorance, cruelty, and cowardice that prevail everywhere , slavish obedience.

Like the Enlightenment, Byron argues in the first song that people can rationally transform outdated public institutions.

However, little by little (in the second, and then more definitely in the third canto of the poem) he comes to the conclusion that moral depravity cannot be the main cause of poverty and degradation of the poorest classes of European nations. In the end, the poet comes to deny the teachings of the Enlightenment that everything comes down to the conscious activity of the individual in state life; he argues that the fate of individual people and entire nations also depends on some objective pattern, which he calls “harsh fate” * .

[* See: Kurginyan M. S. George Byron. M., 1958.]

Unable to explain or predict the pattern with which this fate manifests itself, Byron announces in the third song about its hostility to the human race: gloomy and tragic notes of doom appear in the poem. However, the poet does not even think of preaching submission, apathy, or non-resistance. Once again overcoming despondency and despair, he calls for a fight against all manifestations of political tyranny and social oppression.

In the fourth song, the poet expresses his optimistic confidence that the laws of history work for the benefit of peoples.

Inspired by the revolutionary sentiments that dominated Italian society in the early 20s, Byron expresses the hope that “good changes” will soon occur in the world, and that the collapse of the bloc of police states - the Holy Alliance - is inevitable.

From the first lines, the reader is presented with the image of a young man who has lost faith in life and people. It is characterized by spiritual emptiness, disappointment, anxiety and a painful desire for endless wanderings. Under the feigned guise of cold indifference hides a “fatal and fiery play of passions.”

He “throws away his ancestral castle,” boards a ship and leaves his homeland; he is drawn to the East, to the wonderful shores of the Mediterranean Sea, to the magical southern countries. Childe Harold's "farewell" to his homeland is one of the most moving parts of the poem. Here the deep spiritual drama of the hero is revealed with enormous lyrical power:

I trust the wind and the wave,

I'm alone in the world.

Who can remember me

Who could I remember?

(Translated by V. Levik)

Ordinary prosaic reality did not satisfy the hero, but, faced with a new experience - the events of the liberation war unfolding before his eyes in Spain, Harold can perceive it only as an observer. Proud loneliness, melancholy - this is the bitter lot. Sometimes a turning point in Harold’s consciousness is only outlined:

But Childe carried away a dull pain in his heart,

And his thirst for pleasure has cooled,

And often the shine of his sudden tears

Only indignant pride extinguished.

(Translated by Levika)

And yet, individualism is Harold’s main distinguishing feature, which is especially emphasized by Byron in the third song of the poem, written during a period of creativity when the poet was already definitely questioning the “heroism” of his romantic character.

The positive in the image of Harold is his irreconcilable protest against any oppression, deep disappointment in the ideals prepared for him, a constant spirit of search and a desire to rush towards the unknown, a desire to know himself and the world around him. This is a gloomy nature. His troubled soul is just beginning to open up to the world.

In the image of Childe Harold, his creator gave a great artistic generalization. Harold is a “hero of his time,” a thinking and suffering hero. Harold became the ancestor of many romantic heroes of the early 19th century, and he inspired many imitations.

The image of Harold is the main organizing component in the construction of the poem. However, its theme is by no means limited to revealing the spiritual world of the protagonist; the poem reflected the main events of European life in the first third of the 19th century. - the national liberation struggle of peoples against the aggressive aspirations of Napoleon I and the oppression of the Turkish Sultan. The description of Harold's journey allows us to connect a huge number of facts from the life of the peoples of Spain, Greece, Albania, and compare national types and characters.

Forgetting about his hero, the poet constantly makes digressions; he evaluates the events of political life and the actions of individual historical figures. He calls for the struggle for freedom, condemns or approves, advises or condemns, rejoices or mourns. Thus, another character in the poem often comes to the fore: the lyrical hero, expressing the thoughts and experiences of the author, giving an assessment of certain events, so that sometimes it is difficult to understand where Harold speaks and acts, and where the lyrical hero of the poem expresses his feelings , for Byron often forgets about Harold; sometimes after 10-15 stanzas, as if having come to his senses, he makes a reservation: “that’s what Harold thought,” “that’s what Childe reasoned,” etc.

The action of the romantic poems and lyrical dramas of the English romantics unfolds either against the backdrop of the entire universe, or across vast geographical expanses; grandiose social upheavals, the meaning of which was often not entirely clear to the romantics, are depicted by them with the help of symbols and metaphorical images of titans entering into single combat with each other. This is Byron’s depiction of the struggle of the champion of the rights of oppressed humanity, Prometheus. This is also the depiction of the sinister forces of conquest in Childe Harold, which are personified by the Bloody Giant, a gigantic image of death.

The technique of contrast is often used in the poem: the beauty of the luxurious southern nature, the spiritual greatness of the ordinary people of heroic Spain and Albania are contrasted with the hypocrisy and lack of spirituality of the English bourgeois-aristocratic society. This is achieved by constantly introducing hints about the way of life of English ordinary people, and ironic remarks addressed to English politicians. The contrast between the moral character of the “noble nobility” and the ordinary people of Spain is also striking. The first turn out to be traitors to the fatherland, the second - its saviors.

The genre of lyric-epic poem, introduced by Byron into literature, significantly expanded the possibilities of artistic depiction of life. This was primarily expressed in a more in-depth display of the spiritual world of people, in the depiction of the powerful passions and experiences of the heroes, in lyrical reflections on the fate of humanity and peoples.

The first song of the poem tells how Childe Harold travels through Portugal and Spain. The description of this journey is based on a typically romantic contrast. Harold is amazed by the magnificence of the beautiful sea landscapes, fragrant lemon groves and gardens, and majestic mountain ranges.

But he sees that this flourishing land does not know peace and quiet: a war is raging in Spain; An army of French invaders invaded it from the north, the British government, under the “plausible” pretext that it wanted to restore the “legitimate” feudal monarchy overthrown by Napoleon, landed troops in Cadiz. Byron paints wars of conquest in their true, unsightly light; he deprives them of the aura of false heroism.

Giving in the first song sketches of the life, customs, character traits of the inhabitants of Zaragoza, Seville, Madrid, etc., Byron at the same time shows the massive heroism of the people of Spain, who rose to fight for their independence: a girl from Zaragoza, leaving castanets, fearlessly follows lover in battle and bandages his wounds, and when her beloved dies, she herself leads her compatriots into battle:

Her beloved is wounded - she sheds no tears,

The captain has fallen - she leads the squad,

Her people are running - she shouts: “Forward!”

And the new onslaught swept away the enemies in an avalanche!

Who will make it easier for the slain to die?

Who will take revenge when the best warrior has fallen?

Who will inspire a man with courage?

That's all, that's all!..

(Translated by V. Leechka)

A simple peasant left peaceful labor to exchange his sickle for a sword; the townspeople are trained in military affairs in order to repel the enemy, etc. The poet praises the courage of the people, calls on them to remember the heroic spirit of their ancestors, to become a thunderstorm for foreign invaders.

Byron was one of the first European writers to convincingly show that the people are able to stand up for their rights themselves.

In the second song of “Childe Harold,” Harold visits Greece, whose people did not yet have the opportunity to take up arms against their enslavers, the Turks. Byron shrewdly predicted to the people of Greece that they could win their freedom only through their own efforts. He warned the patriots that no foreign ally would help them free themselves from the Turkish yoke unless they themselves took up arms.

During his travels, Harold also visited Albania. Describing the harsh nature of this country, Byron created a moving image of an Albanian patriot, in which the “heroic spirit of Iskander”, the hero of the Albanian people who led the national liberation movement against the Turks, is alive.

Having carefully read the first two songs of the poem, one cannot help but notice that the image of Harold is, as it were, constantly overshadowed and pushed into the background by another hero of the poem - a collective image of the people of those countries through which Childe Harold travels - images of Spanish partisans (Guerillas), Albanian patriots, freedom-loving Greeks. Byron's creation of these images was an ideological and artistic innovation for that time; The English poet was able to emphasize the enormous importance of people's liberation movements for the destinies of European society in the early 1910s. This was reflected in the artistic and philosophical generalization of the experience of popular movements over an entire historical era, starting with the War of Independence in North America (1775-1783) and the French Revolution of 1789-1794. right up to the beginning of the 10s of the 19th century.

It should be noted that in the third and fourth songs of the poem, Byron's dissatisfaction with his hero becomes more and more clear; he does not like his role as a passive observer, so the image of Harold completely disappears in the fourth song, giving way to the lyrical hero of the poem. Besides, Harold's personal experience is too narrow. He cannot comprehend the meaning and scale of the events taking place.

The third canto was completed after Byron's expulsion from England (1817). The spiritual drama of the great English poet was expressed in it. In addition, his personal life failures were also reflected in it. The third song begins and ends with an appeal to Byron's little daughter Ada, whom he was never destined to see. The lines, full of deep tragedy, seem to introduce us to the overall minor key of the work. Describing Harold's travels through Belgium, Byron indulges in painful thought about the future of humanity. Contrary to the official point of view, he regards the Allied victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 as one of the tragedies of world history. The sacrifices made by nations in order to crush the despotism of Napoleon were, in his opinion, in vain: Waterloo not only did not ease the situation of the peoples of Europe, but led to the restoration of the Bourbons in France.

The enormous social disasters that gave rise to the era of many years of war, which ended with the restoration of reactionary regimes throughout Europe, give rise to motives for gloomy disappointment in the poet’s work; Byron mourns the "suffering millions"; he curses the tormentors of the people - monarchs and gendarmes. However, the poet’s pessimism is replaced by confidence in the inevitability of change.

He glorifies the great freedom-lover Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who preached democracy; he recalls the murderous irony of Voltaire, about whom he writes:

Direct, insidious, kind, evil, crafty,

Scourging fools, shaking powers.

(Translated by Levshakh)

Seeing no glimmer of freedom in the present, Byron turns to the heroic deeds of days past. In his imagination, the sword of the ancient Greek hero, the regicide Harmodius, entwined with laurels, appears in his imagination, the battlefield of Marathon (490 BC), where a small Greek army defeated huge hordes of Persians and defended the independence of Athens.

The fourth song of the poem, written in Venice, is dedicated to Italy, its great art, its freedom-loving, talented people. This entire part of the poem is permeated by a joyful anticipation of future events. The situation in Italy at that time was difficult. The country was humiliated and tormented, the double oppression - of the Austrian and its own feudal lords - weighed heavily on the Italian people. However, decisive events in the history of Italy were brewing.

With the instinct of a brilliant artist, Byron had long been able to discern freedom-loving trends that were not yet clear. At this time, he acts as a fiery prophet of future events. He reminds Italians of the glory of their great ancestors - the immortal Dante, the great national poets Petrarch and Tasso, Cola di Rienza - the people's tribune, who headed in the 14th century. an uprising whose goal was to create the Roman Republic.

In conditions of police terror, when in the cities of Italy Austrian gendarmes seized people for saying the word “tyrant” out loud, the fourth song of the poem sounded a call to fight for freedom.

Man up, Freedom! Punched with cannonballs

Your banner is raised against the winds;

The sad sound of your broken pipe

We can still hear it through the hurricane.

(Translated by S. Ilyin)

No wonder the reactionary Austrian government banned the publication of this song in Italy.

Much has been written about Byron both in the poet’s homeland and in our country. Soviet science paid more attention to the content side of Byron's poems; least of all, they were analyzed in a theoretical aspect, in the context of the development of the poet and the era to which he belonged. The poem “Childe Harold” was created over a number of years and reflected not only Byron’s search for a hero who most vividly embodied the times, but also the evolution of the narrative, descriptive poem in English literature, with the traditions of which not a single major lyric poet broke. Byron's lyric-epic poem, which stood at the origins of not only English romanticism, but also world literature of the romantic era, starting from Pope's educational descriptive poem, differed significantly from it. Byron's experience in the genre of satirical and didactic poems was very diverse.

It was in 1811-1813. he created “The Curse of Minerva”, “The Devil’s Ride”, “Waltz”, where he tried to free himself from the didactics that restrained the revealing pathos and diversify the functionality of the confessional-lyrical intonation.

Interesting in this regard are the judgments of I. G. Neupokoeva about the specifics of the genre of lyric-epic poem created by Byron. Spencer's stanza, in which the poem is written, makes it possible to reveal the distance between the hero and the author, to refute the opinion of critics - Byron's contemporaries that Byron and Childe Harold are the same person. According to the poet's plan, Harold unites the disparate episodes of the poem. This figure is conventional and embodies some of the features of a young man contemporary to Byron.

Another Soviet critic M. Kurginyan points out the connection between Byron's poems and the English ballad tradition. The emphatically old form of the verse contains elements of irony, especially since the somewhat archaic hero ends up in Europe during the Napoleonic wars. Both critics note the complex relationship between hero and author. M. Kurginyan writes that “... in the process of creating Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the poet outgrows the stage of life and spiritual experience at which her hero remains.”*

The hero and the author have common features - dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality, the desire to get to know the world, to experience their own “spiritual capabilities and strengths.” But unlike Childe Harold, Byron knows life and people better (“I studied the dialects of strangers, I did not enter strangers as a stranger”), his life experience is deeper and wider, so his hero is forced to leave the pages of the poem when it is necessary to comprehend and appreciate the universal problems and events - the origins of European freethinking, the Battle of Waterloo. M. Kurginyan sees the specificity of the image of Harold in its incompleteness: “Childe Harold is called upon to capture the very moment of awakening of the self-awareness of a person of modern times, when he begins to feel on himself and in the world around him the consequences of a deep historical breakdown and to recognize the irreconcilably tragic contradictions caused by it as a characteristic feature of its modernity"**.

[* Kurginyan M. The path of Byron the artist // Byron D. G. Collection. cit.: In 3 vols. T. 1. M., 1974. P. 10.]

[* Ibid.]

Another Soviet critic, I. G. Neupokoeva, considers the uniqueness of Harold’s personality in the context of the development of the genre of lyric-epic poem, as well as in the context of the work of Byron himself. The scientist identifies the internal dominants of the work, which determine the combination of lyrical and epic principles. In her opinion, the final stanza of the song “Sorry” seems to complete the “lyrical poem” about young Harold. The possibilities of a closed lyric poem were thus exhausted for Byron. The broadening of the poet’s horizons, who had escaped to so many exciting impressions, his entry into the big world of modern civil history required for him a more capacious poetic form. And although Byron continues to not part with his hero, who he needed, as he wrote, “in order to give the poem a certain coherence,” deep internal shifts in the content of the poem also determined shifts in the image of the hero. The place of young Harold is subsequently occupied in the poem by a man of a different, “deep social mind and temperament, capable of epically perceiving significant events and pictures of our time, feeling the greatness of the feat of the people of Spain, accepting the appalling poverty of Portuguese cities and the tragedy of Greece. The structure of the lyric poem thus seems to be torn apart. The poem, conceived as a diary of wanderings, increasingly included the epic of modern times.”*

I. G. Neupokoeva believes that the third and fourth songs of “Childe Harold” are typologically interesting “as a stage of bright maturity of the genre”**.

[* Neupokoeva I. G. Revolutionary-romantic poem of the first third of the 19th century. M., 1971. P. 61.]

[* Ibid. ]

An interesting idea of ​​the critic is that the further development of the polyphonic sound of the poem (the inclusion of philosophical problems of time, the destinies of peoples) is more organically and naturally connected with the major events of the era, in which the poet himself took an active part.

Let us add to what has been said that English romanticism, which coexisted so peacefully with classicism and enlightenment, was precisely by 1816-1817. began to break more and more decisively with didactic descriptiveness. The lyric-epic poem was an important link in the development of romanticism.

In March 1812, Byron's anonymous satirical poem "Ode to the Authors of the Bill Against the Machine-Breakers" appeared in the Morning Chronicle. By style, many unmistakably recognized the author of Childe Harold. “Ode” is one of the first works of English literature where, with great truthfulness and artistic power, the idea of ​​the injustice that exists in modern English society, which dooms the poor to an unworthy life, is heard.

Byron exposes the anti-people character of the English bourgeois-monarchical system, the purpose of which, according to the satirist, is to exploit the people.

The final lines of the “Ode” sound menacing. the theme of popular retribution, which should punish the “crowd of executioners” in power.

“The ode is a continuation and further creative development of the best traditions of poetic satirical literature of the late 18th century, which was in circulation among supporters of the Republican Party in England and among Irish patriots in Dublin. The main genre of literature of this type is the poetic pamphlet, witty and very short in form, printed on a small sheet of paper and accompanied by a caricature.

The Luddite struggle for their rights again assumed a national scale in 1816, and again Byron vividly responded to this heroic struggle of the workers of England with a passionate “Ode for the Luddites,” in which he openly called for the struggle:

As once for freedom in an overseas land

The blood ransom was paid by the poor people,

So we will buy our will,

We will live free or we will fall in battle.

(Translated by M. Donskoy)

The years 1811-1812 were the years of the rise of the radical democratic movement in England itself and national liberation movements in Europe. But this period was also one of the darkest and most difficult in English history. The ruling elite of Great Britain hastened to take advantage of the victory in the war on the continent in order to stifle all manifestations of love of freedom and prohibit workers' unions.

The onset of domestic and international reaction made a painful impression on Byron. He is going through a deep mental crisis. Motifs of gloomy despair appear in his works. However, the theme of the struggle against political and any other oppression not only does not disappear, but is even more intensified in his works of this period, which are usually called “oriental poems.” The following poems belong to this cycle: “Gyaur”, 1813; "The Bride of Abydos", 1813; "Corsair", 1814; "Lara", 1814; "Siege of Corinth", 1816; "Parisina", 1816.

The hero of Byron's "oriental poems" is usually a rebel-individualist who rejects all the legal orders of a proprietary society. This is a typical romantic hero; he is characterized by the exclusivity of his personal destiny, strong passions, unbending will, and tragic love. Individualistic and anarchic freedom is his ideal. These heroes are best characterized by the words Belinsky said about Byron himself: “This is a human personality, indignant against the common and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.”* The praise of individualistic rebellion was an expression of Byron's spiritual drama, the reason for which should be sought in the very era that gave rise to the cult of individualism.

[* Belinsky V. G. Collection. cit.: In 3. t. M., 1948. T. 2. P. 713.]

However, by the time the “eastern poems” appeared, this contradiction between them was not so striking. Much more important then (1813-1816) was something else: a passionate call to action, to struggle, which Byron, through the mouth of his frantic heroes, proclaimed as the main meaning of existence. People of that time were deeply concerned about the thoughts contained in the “eastern poems” about the ruined human capabilities and talents in modern society. Thus, one of the heroes of the “eastern poems” regrets his “unspent gigantic powers”; another hero, Conrad, was born with a Heart capable of “great good,” but he was not given the opportunity to create this good. Selim is painfully burdened by inaction.

The heroes of Byron's poems act as judges and avengers for desecrated human dignity: they strive to break the shackles forcibly imposed on a person by other people.

The composition and style of “oriental poems” are characteristic of the art of romanticism. Where exactly these poems take place is unknown. It unfolds against the backdrop of lush, exotic nature: descriptions are given of the endless blue sea, wild coastal cliffs, and fabulously beautiful mountain valleys. However, it would be in vain to look for them to depict the landscapes of any particular country, as was the case, for example, in Childe Harold. “The action in Lara takes place on the Moon,” Byron wrote on this occasion to his publisher Murray, advising him to refrain from any comments about the relief of the area described in this poem. Each of the “oriental poems” is a short poetic story, in the center the plot of which is the fate of any one romantic hero. All the author’s attention is aimed at revealing the inner world of this hero, showing the depth of his powerful passions. Compared to “Childe Harold,” the poems of 1813-1816 are distinguished by their plot completeness; is not only a link between the individual parts of the poem, but represents its main subject. The poet does not describe large folk scenes here, does not give political assessments of current events, or a collective image of ordinary people from the people. The protest sounded in these poems is romantically abstract.

The construction of the plot is characterized by fragmentation, a heap of random details; there are many omissions and significant hints everywhere. You can guess the motives driving the hero’s actions, but often you cannot understand who he is, where he came from, what awaits him in the future. The action usually begins with some moment snatched from the middle or even the end of the story, and only gradually does it become clear what happened earlier.

The plot of the poem “The Giaur” (1813) boils down to the following: The Giaur confesses to a monk on his deathbed. His incoherent story is the ravings of a dying man, some scraps of phrases. It is only with great difficulty that one can grasp the train of his thoughts. Gyaur passionately loved Leila, she reciprocated his feelings and the lovers were happy. But Leila's jealous and treacherous husband Hassan tracked her down. and murdered him villainously. The giaur took revenge on the tyrant and executioner of Leila.

The giaur is tormented by the thought that his “rich feelings” have been wasted. His monologue sounds like an accusation against society, which humiliated him and made him an unfortunate renegade.

The hero of the poem "Corsair" is the leader of pirates - fearless people who reject the despotic laws of the society in which they are forced to live and to whom they prefer a free life on a desert island.

The corsair, their brave leader, is as much a rebel as the Giaur. On the island of pirates, everyone obeys him and fears him. He is harsh and domineering. Enemies tremble at the mere mention of his name. But he is lonely, he has no friends, a fatal secret hangs over him, no one knows anything about his past. Only from two or three hints thrown in passing, one can conclude that Conrad in his youth, like other heroes of “oriental poems,” passionately “longed to do good”:

He was created for good, but evil

It was attracted to itself, distorting it...

(Translated by Yu. Petrov)

As in the fate of Gyaur, love plays a fatal role in Conrad’s life. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, the meaning of life for Conrad is lost, he mysteriously disappears.

The hero of “The Corsair” is always immersed in his inner world, he admires his suffering, his pride and jealously guards his loneliness. This reflects the individualism of the hero, as if standing above other people whom he despises for their insignificance and weakness of spirit. Thus, he is unable to appreciate the sacrificial love of the beautiful Gulnara, who saved him from prison at the risk of his life. The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance. Having learned true love, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion is active; she kills her tyrant Seid and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return.

The poem "The Corsair" is a masterpiece of English poetry. The passionate power of a romantic dream is combined in it with the comparative simplicity of the artistic development of the theme; the heroic energy of the verse in “The Corsair” is combined with its subtlest musicality; the poetry of the landscapes - with depth in depicting the psychology of the hero.

In his "oriental poems" Byron continued to develop the genre of romantic poem.

Having used English rhymed pentameter for most of his “oriental poems,” Byron imbued it with new stylistic techniques that allowed him to achieve the greatest expressiveness for depicting action, the hero’s moods, descriptions of nature, and shades of people’s emotional experiences. He freely addresses the reader with questions, widely uses exclamatory sentences, builds his plots not in a strict logical order (as was customary among classical poets), but in accordance with the character and mood of the hero.

It is also worth noting the evolution of Byron's hero: if Childe Harold - the first romantic character of the English poet - does not go beyond a passive protest against the world of injustice and evil, then for the rebels of the “eastern poems” the whole meaning of life lies in action, in struggle. They respond to the injustices committed by the “lawless law” of a “civilized” society with fearless confrontation, but the futility of their lonely struggle gives rise to their “proud and furious despair.”

Around 1815, Byron created a wonderful lyrical cycle called “Jewish Melodies.” In the poems of this cycle, as in the “oriental poems,” the mood of gloomy despair is palpable. This is the poem “My Soul is Gloomy,” translated into Russian by Lermontov. Regarding this poem, Belinsky wrote: ““Jewish Melody” and “Into the Album” also express the inner world of the poet’s soul. This is the pain of the heart, the heavy sighs of the chest, these are gravestone inscriptions on the monuments of lost joys.”*

[* Belinsky V. G. Collection. op. T. 1. P. 683.]

Byron's love lyrics of 1813-1817 are distinguished by their extraordinary richness and diversity: nobility, tenderness, and deep humanity constitute its distinctive features. This is lyricism, devoid of any mysticism, false fantasy, asceticism, or religiosity. According to Belinsky, in Byron's lyrics “there is heaven, but the earth is always permeated with it.”

In the collection “Jewish Melodies” Byron creates his ideal of love:

She comes in all her glory -

Light as the night of her country.

The entire depth of the heavens and all the stars

Contained in her eyes.

Like the sun in the morning dew.

But only softened by darkness...

(Translated by S. Marshak)

When speaking about the humanism of Byron's lyric poems, one must first of all keep in mind the spirit of freedom and struggle with which they are filled. In such pearls of his poetry as “Imitation of Catullus”, “To the Album”, “The Athenian Woman”, “To Thirza”, “I Decide”, “On the Question of the Beginning of Love”, “Imitation of the Portuguese”, “Separation”, “Oh, if there, beyond the heavens”, “You cried”, “Stanzas to Augusta”, etc., he expressed the liberating ideals of the new time. Deep sincerity, purity and freshness of feeling, thirst for freedom, high and genuine humanity of the lyric poems awakened the consciousness of society, set it against the customs and mores implanted by the church during the period of reaction.

It’s interesting that the theme of individual heroism is addressed in a new way in this cycle. The poem “You have ended the path of life” tells about a hero who deliberately sacrificed his life for the good of the fatherland. The poet emphasizes that the hero’s name is immortal in the minds of the people.

While living in Geneva, Byron visited Chillon Castle, where in the 16th century. the fighter for the cause of the republic, the patriot of Geneva, Bonivard, was languishing. Bonivard's feat inspired Byron to create the poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" (1810). The poem was preceded by "Sonnet to Chillon". This sonnet proclaimed the idea that “the sun of freedom illuminates the prison of prisoners thrown into prison for its bright ideals.” In the poem, the reader is no longer presented with the image of a romantic rebel, but with a real portrait of a political figure, an ardent patriot of his homeland.

Bonivard, by order of the Duke of Savoy, was thrown along with his seven sons into the dark, damp cellars of the castle, located under the bottom of Lake Geneva. Byron reproduces a terrible picture of the mental anguish of prisoners buried alive in a damp and dark underwater grave. Despite numerous hardships, the hero of the poem has not lost his fortitude and fortitude.

The theme of violent resistance to the oppressors, the theme of intransigence, which first sounded in the “Eastern poems,” appears again with great artistic force in the poem “Prometheus.” The Promethean theme of the fearless struggle for the freedom of the oppressed becomes one of the main themes of the third (and last) period of Byron's work.

The heroes of Byron's philosophical dramas act as representatives of all the oppressed on earth. The deep mental discord and terrible pangs of conscience characteristic of these heroes are their main distinguishing feature. But their proud suffering stems not only from the tragic consciousness that for them “personal happiness” is impossible. Disappointment and despondency are the lot of the entire generation that survived the collapse of the humanistic ideas of the French Revolution.

"Manfred" (1817) is Byron's darkest dramatic poem. It reflected the poet’s deep emotional experiences in 1816-1817. (after his expulsion from England). However, the motives of hopeless despair are combined in this work with the determination of its hero to defend his human dignity and freedom of spirit to the end.

The poem “Manfred” belongs to the powerful poetry of symbols, which interprets the fundamental questions of existence.

Manfred achieved his enormous power over nature not through a deal with the rulers of the underworld, but solely through the power of his mind, with the help of a variety of knowledge acquired through exhausting labor over many years of life. The tragedy of Manfred, just like the tragedy of Harold and other early heroes of Byron, is the tragedy of extraordinary individuals. However, Manfred’s protest is much deeper and more significant, for his unfulfilled dreams and plans were much broader and more diverse:

...and I cherished dreams,

And I dreamed in the morning of my young days:

He dreamed of being an educator of peoples.

Reach heaven - why? God knows!

(Translated by I. Bunin)

The collapse of hopes associated with enlightenment is what underlies the hopeless despair that took possession of Manfred’s soul:

... to humble oneself before insignificance,

To penetrate and keep up everywhere,

And be a walking lie...

(Translated by I. Bunin)

Having cursed the society of people, Manfred runs away from him, secludes himself in his abandoned ancestral castle in the deserted Alps. Lonely and proud, he opposes the whole world - nature and people. He condemns not only the orders in society, but also the laws of the universe, not only the rampant universal egoism, but also his own imperfection, because of which he destroyed his beloved Astarte, for Manfred is not only a victim of unjust social orders, but also a hero of his time, endowed such traits as selfishness, arrogance, lust for power, thirst for success, schadenfreude - in a word, those traits that turned out to be the other side of the coin of “personal emancipation” during the French bourgeois revolution. Astarte died because Manfred's selfish love killed her.

Through the fate of Manfred, Byron shows how destructive ambition and selfishness are for others. Manfred is well aware of his selfishness and is tormented by the fact that his wild, indomitable temper brings terrible devastation to the human world:

I'm not cruel, but I'm like a burning whirlwind,

Like a fiery simoom...

He is not looking for anyone, but destruction

He threatens everything he encounters along the way.

(Translated by I. Bunin)

Exhausted by his suffering and doubts, Manfred finally decided to appear in the face of the supreme spirit of evil - Ahriman, in order to evoke the spirit of Astarte, to hear her voice once again. In the face of this inexorable force, he shows resilience and courage. Ahriman's minions cannot break his will. On the contrary, Manfred achieves the fulfillment of his demand: the spirits summon the shadow of Astarte, who tells Manfred that he will soon find the desired peace in death.

The supreme spirit Ahriman, his handmaiden Nemesis, spirits and parks that destroy entire cities and “restore fallen thrones... strengthen thrones about to fall” form the ominous background of the drama. This is a symbolic image of the dark world of evil.

It is unthinkable for Manfred to submit to this cruel world, just as it is unthinkable for him to submit to religion, which seeks to subjugate his powerful, proud spirit. In the last scene of the drama, Manfred proudly rejects the abbot's offer to repent and dies as free and serene as he lived. However, Byron’s fight against God takes on a truly comprehensive character in the mystery “Cain” (1821).

Based on the biblical story about the first people on earth, Byron created an original work. Byron's Cain is not the criminal fratricide as the biblical legend represents him, but the first rebel on earth, rebelling against the despotism of God, who doomed the human race to slavery and untold suffering. Cain looks with bewilderment and indignation at his parents - Adam and Eve, who were expelled from paradise, but nevertheless raise their sons in the spirit of slavish obedience to God.

Jehovah in Byron's mystery is ambitious, suspicious, vengeful, greedy, susceptible to flattery, in a word, endowed with all the traits of an earthly despot. Cain, possessing a keen mind and observation, questions the authority of God. He strives to understand the world and its laws and achieves this with the help of the fallen angel Lucifer - a proud rebel who, like Milton's Satan, was cast out of heaven by God for his love of freedom.

Lucifer opens Cain's eyes to the fact that all disasters were sent down to people by God - it was he who expelled them from paradise, it was he who doomed people to death.

Like Manfred, knowledge does not bring happiness to Cain. It only fills him with the awareness of the injustice of the laws by which the universe is organized. Cain cannot come to terms with the commands of the supreme deity to “live like a worm” and “work to die.” He not only protests against the conditions in which people are condemned to live on earth, but also against the very laws of nature, thus proudly challenging God. Wanting to find support for his protest, Cain seeks sympathy from his brother Abel, but Abel blindly believes in the goodness of the ruler of the worlds. He brings a lamb to the altar of God - heavenly fire consumes Abel's bloody sacrifice. At the same time, a whirlwind overturns the altar of Cain with fruits - his sacrifice is displeasing to Jehovah. In the heat of an argument, succumbing to a feeling of anger, Cain hits Abel in the temple with a firebrand, which he grabs from the altar. Abel dies. The sight of the world's first death shocks Cain. His parents curse him. Pursued by Jehovah, together with his wife Ada and two children, he goes into exile into the “immense expanses of the earth.”

There is little action in the mystery "Cain": the secret of its artistry lies in the magnificent lyrical poetry with which it is saturated. Here Byron's “worldly sorrow” reaches cosmic proportions. Together with Lucifer, Cain visits the kingdom of death in space, where he sees the shadows of long-dead creatures. “The same fate awaits humanity,” Lucifer tells him. History develops in a vicious circle, progress is impossible - Byron comes to this gloomy conclusion under the influence of Cuvier’s philosophy about the regression of humanity.

However, “Cain” is also evidence that Byron partly decided to part with the individualist hero, which is very noticeable if we compare the image of Manfred and the image of Cain. Cain is not a lonely rebel, indifferent to the fate of other people (like Manfred). He is a humanist who rebelled against the power and authority of God in the name of the happiness of people; he is deeply saddened by the fate of future generations of humanity. Manfred suffered from the consciousness of his tragic loneliness. Cain is not alone: ​​he is dearly loved by Ada and reciprocates her feelings; Lucifer - “the spirit of doubt and daring” - is his advisor and ally. Cain is a fighter for justice for those who have entered into a dispute with God. The image of Cain's loving wife Ada is one of Byron's most charming female images. She is not only Cain's lover, but also his friend and comforter. She combines femininity and courage, a loving heart and strength of character. Without hesitation, she follows her husband into exile, towards future troubles and trials.

The bold atheistic and humanistic ideas of "Cain" made a huge impression on the progressive people - Byron's contemporaries. W. Scott called "Cain" "a majestic and stunning drama." Goethe noted that “the beauty of the work is such that the world will not see its like a second time.”

The poem "Beppo" (1818) opens the Italian period of Byron's work (1817-1823). This poem is the first work in which the English poet’s desire for realism was clearly outlined. In the poem, Byron comically reduces the “heroism” of the romantic image. The poem is based on a funny story about a rich Venetian woman, Laura, whose husband Beppo, having gone to overseas countries on business, went missing. This situation is reminiscent of similar collisions in “oriental poems” (for example, in “The Corsair”).

However, unlike romantic heroines, Laura is quickly consoled and has another lover. The heroes of the poem are alien to the gloomy disappointment characteristic of the characters in Byron's works before 1817. On the contrary, they are characterized by a spirit of carefree fun, they appreciate jokes and sparkling wit. During the Venice Carnival, Laura is pursued by a Turk. It turns out that this is her missing husband Beppo. There is an explanation. However, instead of “fatal passions,” a deadly duel between rivals, the reader will have a completely peaceful end.

Describing the cheerful morals of Venice, Byron ridicules the English Puritan inhabitants and mocks the hypocritical English nobility. He glorifies the joys of life, love, pleasure. The poem is characterized by an accurate reproduction of the details of Venetian life, a humorous description of morals, and comic situations. In 1819, Italy was preparing to throw off the yoke of occupation and regain its national freedom.

Byron writes the poem "Dante's Prophecy", in which he glorifies the poet-citizen, the brilliant creator of the Italian language and poetry. Echoing Dante, Byron condemns those who are “indifferent to the suffering of their homeland,” the poet calls not to hesitate, “to rally together” to save their homeland. At this time, he dreams of creating a “severe republican tragedy” that would call the people to fight the monarchy and foreign occupation.

The drama "Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice", written in Ravenna in 1819, is a political tragedy, saturated with great revolutionary pathos. Its plot is based on a historical event - the democratic conspiracy of the Venetian Doge Marino Faliero in 1355 against the feudal oligarchy and the guild of rich merchants - the “Council of Forty” in Venice.

Byron welcomed the Neapolitan revolution of 1820, offering to help the rebels with money and himself “at least as a simple volunteer.” In his diary, he wrote that “the people here are good, passionate, freedom-loving, but there is no one to direct their energy.” However, this did not make Byron forget about his homeland.

This anxiety about the fate of the homeland was most forcefully expressed in “The Irish Avatar” * (1821) - a small satirical poem that struck Goethe as “the height of hatred.” "Avatar" was written on the occasion of the visit of the new English king George IV to loyal Irish liberals. Recalling the famine, slavery in Ireland, and the robbery of the people committed by the English government, the poet condemns the Irish, who were flattered by the handouts of “the fourth of the fools and oppressors called the Georges.” Byron ironically ridicules the campaign launched by liberals to raise funds for the construction of a palace for George IV. This palace, he believes, they want to build “in exchange for a workhouse and prison” for the Irish. Grieving for a defeated, humiliated, bleeding Ireland, Byron calls on the Irish people to remember that freedom can only be found in battle.

[* The word “avatara” in Indian mythology means the incarnation of gods in human form; in Byron's poem it has an ironic meaning: George IV shows "God's mercy" and appears before the Irish liberals.]

Another significant work written in Italy and dedicated to events taking place in distant England is “The Vision of the Court” (1821) - a satirical poem published in the first issue of the magazine “Liberal” for 1822. It sounds like a harsh verdict on the Tory ruling clique and is intended as a parody of Southey's eulogy of the same name, in which that renegade poet extolled the wisdom and family virtues of the recently deceased King George III, placing him in heaven for it. As in Southey's poem, Byron depicts the trial of George III in the next world. In A Vision of Judgment, Byron creates the titanic image of Lucifer accusing George on behalf of the "martyrned millions" at the heavenly court. In the midst of the dispute, poet laureate Southey suddenly appears in heaven, brought on the back of the devil Asmodeus. Southey intervenes in the bickering between saints and devils. Speaking in defense of George III, he begins to read aloud his poem "A Vision of Judgment", which praises the deceased king. However, from the very first lines, everyone listening is overcome by such melancholy and boredom that devils and angels scatter in all directions. Even the guardian of paradise himself, St. Peter cannot stand the “nasal melody” and with a blow of the key to the gates of heaven knocks Southie back to earth. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the rising turmoil, George III slips into the heavenly abode and joins the “host of the blessed.”

In 1822, the congress of the reactionary Holy Alliance met in Verona. The defeat of the Carbonari movement meant a new intensification of reaction in Europe. The monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia entered into a reactionary alliance in order to... to strangle the liberation movement in Europe. Congress decided to instruct the French government to suppress the revolution in Spain and recognized the Greek struggle against the Turkish yoke as a “criminal revolution.” Among the few voices that rose in Europe against the establishment of the police despotism of the Holy Alliance was the voice of Byron. In the third issue of the magazine “Liberal” his satire “The Bronze Age” (1823) was published, in which the poet again took the path of struggle against the forces of reaction.

Byron's "Bronze Age" contains, along with bitter irony, lyrical passion. The heroic inspiration of the great champion of justice is heard in the satirical verses of the poem. The lines directed against Louis XVIII and the ministers of the Holy Alliance breathe with caustic contempt and hatred. Byron develops and strengthens the anti-war theme in the poem (expressed in “Harold” still very weakly, in encrypted romantic symbols).

With truly realistic insight into the contradictions of reality, Byron shows that the reactionary policies of the monarchs of Europe are directed by robber bankers. They restore the rights of “bankrupt tyrants”, “control all countries and states”, profit from organizing rebellions or suppressing them:

Shylock's shadow hovers here again,

Take your “pound of meat” from the hearts of nations!

(Translated by V. Lugovsky)

The collective image of the people, which first appeared in Childe Harold, reappears on the pages of The Bronze Age. Here, for example, are the people of heroic Spain fighting for freedom:

The cry went up: “Spain, unite!”

Stand up like a wall! Your steel chest

Napoleon's path was blocked!

(Translated by V. Lugovsky)

Then we see the walls of the Moscow Kremlin:

Moscow! For all invaders the limit...

Moscow, Moscow, before your flame

The illuminated smoke of the volcanoes has faded...

Only the fire of the days to come can compare with it,

Which will destroy the thrones of all kings!

Moscow! He was menacing, and stern, and strict

You taught your enemies a lesson!

(Translated by V. Lugovsky)

Recreating pictures of the liberation struggle of peoples, Byron expresses optimistic confidence that justice must prevail. He calls on the French troops to go over to the side of the rebels of Madrid:

Rise, Frenchman, loving freedom,

You will rescue the Spaniards and yourself!

(Translated by V. Lugovsky)

The Bronze Age differs from Byron's early satire in its enormous coverage of the phenomena of European life during the Restoration period. The criticism of capitalist orders, begun in the “Bronze Age,” finds its further development in the poem in verse “Don Juan” (1818-1823), which is the crown of all Byron’s work.

Byron began writing the main work of his life, the poem “Don Juan,” in Italy. According to the author's original plan, Don Juan should have had “twenty-five songs.” However, the poet managed to write only sixteen songs in their entirety and only fourteen stanzas of the seventeenth.

“Don Juan” reflects Byron’s contemporary era and deeply and truthfully shows the life of society. At the same time, in this work he revealed the depth of the human soul. If in romantic works “one eternal melancholy”, “one but fiery passion” prevailed, then Byron’s poem reveals many character traits of the hero and the life of European society at the beginning of the 19th century. Byron narrates comic incidents and funny love stories, paints menacing pictures of battles and storms at sea.

This artistic and emotional richness was determined by the extremely broad ideological and thematic content of the poem genre, which Byron, an innovative poet, constantly searching for new forms to best reflect life in art, created in the last period of his work. A. S. Pushkin spoke about the “truly Shakespearean diversity” of Don Juan. W. Scott also believed that in this last major work of his, Byron was “as varied as Shakespeare himself.” Indeed, the genre of the poem is distinguished by the enormous richness of its components: it is characterized by deep lyricism, the presence of an epic element and passionate journalisticism.

Polemicizing with the Leucists (in the dedication to the poem), Byron ironically calls his own muse “on foot,” thereby making it clear that from now on he is critical of the writing style of the romantics, that he condemns them for idealizing life. Participation in contemporary national liberation movements, close contact with patriotic Italians and Greeks (in Venice, Ravenna and Pisa) convince Byron of the unlifeability of his former romantic hero and force him to turn to the “poetry of reality.” This desire for an objective transmission of reality is combined in the English poet with an indispensable desire to condemn the narrowness, pretentiousness and, under certain conditions, the comedy of the actions and actions of the romantic hero. Byron, ridiculing the romantic impulses of the characters in his novel - Juan, Julia and others - essentially creates a parody of a romantic work in the first songs of the poem.

The very way of creating the character of the main character of the poem, Juan, is fundamentally different from the presentation of the image of the romantic hero in “Harold”, “oriental poems” and in “Manfred”. In these works we are presented with a proud loner, disillusioned with life and withdrawn into himself; one can guess about his past only from random hints. In contrast, the poem gives a detailed account of Juan's childhood and upbringing. His image is devoid of any aura of romantic “heroism”. He is a living person with all human weaknesses and vices. The author emphasizes that his hero and he himself have nothing in common, while Byron almost always endowed the hero of his early poems with some autobiographical traits.

João was born in the 18th century. in Spain, in Seville, in a noble family in which a religious and sanctimonious spirit reigned. As a child, he did not bother himself too much with his studies, because he was taught by boring and ignorant scholastics, and in his youth, contrary to the teachings of bigots, he completely surrendered to his heart's desire - he fell in love with his neighbor's beautiful wife Julia, who had an old and jealous husband - the lover of Juan's mother. To avoid a scandal, his mother hastened to send Juan on a long trip to Europe.

In the satirical descriptions of the life of the noble circles of Seville, it is not difficult to recognize the sanctimonious morals and hypocritical morality of the high society of England. The transfer of the action to Spain is determined only by the desire to preserve the plot of the Spanish legend of Don Juan.

Going on a journey, Juan got into a shipwreck and was saved by the daughter of the pirate Lambro, the charming girl Gaide. Juan's love for Guy de is one of the most poetic passages in the poem. In the fourth through sixth songs, Byron glorifies their wonderful union, untainted by any vile material calculations. However, happiness with Hayde turned out to be short-lived. The angry pirate, Hayde's father, sells Juan into slavery to the Turks, and Hayde, unable to bear it, dies.

From the slave market, Juan ends up in the Sultan's seraglio, then flees from there to Izmail, where he joins Suvorov's troops, participates in the capture of Izmail, receives an award for valor, after which he arrives in St. Petersburg, to the palace of Catherine II, where Suvorov sent him with a dispatch. He becomes Catherine's favorite and goes to England as the Russian ambassador. This is where the novel ends. Byron was going to bring the biography of his hero to the revolution of 1789 in Paris, where he was supposed to die on the barricades.

The realistic orientation of the work is felt in the author’s desire to describe the fate of an ordinary, ordinary person, to reveal the secrets of his mind and heart and, without keeping silent about his shortcomings, to show the positive traits of his character: honesty, moral fortitude, aversion to hypocrisy, love of freedom. Juan is intemperate, fickle in his affections, sometimes selfish, but he rejects cold debauchery with disgust, refusing the love of the sultana in the seraglio; he courageously and steadfastly fights for his independence. Juan is sensitive, humane, and capable of compassion: for example, during a fierce battle in Izmail, he saves a little girl who has lost her parents, and then takes her in to raise her. In England, he observes with irony the hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and snobbery of the ruling classes.

The character of Juan is given in development. His views and feelings change depending on the circumstances in which life puts him.

The poem is written in pentameter octave. This meter, requiring the obligatory so-called third rhyme in the fifth and sixth lines, gave the author the opportunity to best accomplish the task he had set for himself: without disturbing the flow of the narrative. about the fate of the hero, talk in passing about political events, give your assessment of what is happening. "Don Juan" contains a huge generalization of the socio-political life of the era. As Juan matures, the satirical intensity of Byron's criticism of various despotic regimes increases.

Byron predicts the quick and inglorious death of the Holy Alliance - the monstrous “Union of Stranglers”; he says that the bourgeois order will not bring “higher freedom”:

Byron portrays the power of all owner-exploiters as a web entangling peoples who only need to wake up in order to throw off fatal oppression forever.

An uncompromising enemy of wars of conquest, Malthusianism, oriental despotism, bankers and feudal lords, Byron satirically draws a whole gallery of such characters. Among them are George IV, Castlereagh, and the Sultan. The poet's thought is turned to the future. Byron, as it were, bequeathed to future generations to complete the struggle for the “highest freedom” of people that he and his generation began.

Byron's protest in Don Juan against all oppression and political tyranny is much deeper than in all his previous works. The poet attacks the feudal-church reaction, stigmatizes the English bankers and the “corrupt government” of England. He compares Haide's father, the pirate Lambro, to the Prime Minister. A banker and a politician are the same swindler, only on a much larger scale, but no one in a “civilized society” would even think of being outraged by their robbery. This legalized robbery is “called a tax!” - Byron exclaims bitterly.

At times, awareness of the injustice and ugliness of the social life of England and Europe gives rise to gloomy moods in the poet. Indignantly, he claims that the world is a cramped dungeon, where England is a “prison sentry.”

In songs X-XVI of Don Juan, the poet exposes the anti-people policy of the English government, the hypocrisy and insignificance of high society, the comedy of parliamentary struggle, the self-interest and narrow-mindedness of the die-hard English bourgeoisie, the rulers of the City - the bankers who are the true masters of the state.

The last songs of “Don Juan” are convincing proof of the correctness of Belinsky’s opinion, who wrote that Byron’s work is “... a denial of contemporary English reality.” This is especially felt in those lines of the X song of “Don Juan”, where Byron gives a general description of Tory Britain.

And in the last songs of “Don Juan” Byron presents a long gallery of “secular scoundrels” - politicians, city bosses, noble regulars of social drawing rooms - “fashionable lions and lionesses”.

Here in front of us is the powerful adviser to the king - Lord Henry Amondeville with his wife Lady Adeline. Introducing the reader to Lady Adeline, the poet lavishes praise on her intelligence and beauty, but one can notice a slight irony that is mixed with this praise. At her home receptions, Lady Adeline smiles equally warmly at both the “last scoundrel” and the “decent man.” Selfish calculation, cold insensibility - this is what hides behind the patrician gloss and ostentatious cordiality of a society lady.

The psychological portrait of Sir Henry is also built on the contradiction between appearance and essence - an important post and impressive appearance are in blatant contradiction with the complete spiritual wretchedness of this man. He is an unprincipled careerist and a clever demagogue who thinks least of all about the “good of the nation.”

The motley background for the Amondeville couple - typical representatives of the ruling circles of England - is made up of much less detailed, but numerous portraits of other “secular scoundrels”: here and the “mediocre count, marquis, baron”, aimlessly wasting their lives, dividing all their time between hunting and carousing , balls and ballet; these “socialites” “lie down in the morning, get up in the evening and recognize nothing else.” And in passing, a sketched portrait of a general, “very brave on the floor,” but “a humble warrior on the battlefield”; There is also a “lying lawyer” who interprets the laws at random in the interests of the rich and powerful. In many cases, a clear epigrammatic description of negative characters ends with a comic surname, expressing the very essence of these characters. For example, the priest Postoslov, the philosopher Dick-Sceptius, the empty high-society ladies Mak-Pustoglisk, Mak-Hangis, Bom-Azey o'Train, etc.

Often, a satirist achieves a reduction in the image by placing it in a comic situation or connecting it with a comic character. So, for example, speaking about the eloquent radical philosopher, Byron places him next to the famous drunkard:

Sir John Puviskey, famous drunkard;

There's Lord Pyrrhon, the radical philosopher...

(Translated by T. Gnedich)

By exposing the emptiness, selfishness, and immorality of high society, Byron develops a national satirical tradition.

The poem “Don Juan” remained unfinished, but its incompleteness does not prevent us from considering this work as an integral artistic system in which the achievements of Byron the romantic were most fully manifested. This poem was preceded by a number of satirical works (“Vision of the Court”, “The Irish Avatar”, “The Bronze Age”), built on the principle of free association. The use of mythological, folklore images, traditions of medieval and Renaissance literature was surprisingly complemented by political allusions to circumstances, events and persons of modern reality. The creative search for a hero should have led Byron to the discovery of an ordinary, ordinary person for this role, to the deheroization of the individual, becoming either the subject or the object of history and circumstances. The traditional Don Juan - a seducer and a cynic - was an active participant in conflicts and clashes with life circumstances. Byron's hero initially develops according to the laws of a romantic character. He even goes on a journey, like his predecessor Harold, and finds himself in the most unpredictable situations - on a robber island, in a slave market, in a Turkish harem, under the walls of Ishmael, at the court of Catherine II and, finally, in England.

Unlike Harold, Don Juan has mentors in the person of his mother, Dona Inea, and the Englishman Johnson. They are trying to instill in him hypocrisy and hypocrisy, cold prudence and cynicism. From the pilgrim and the observer comes the participant and the dispassionate analyst. He does not disappear from the poem like Harold. Don Juan's acquisition of life experience and knowledge of the world and people is active and consistent.

The octave in which the poem was written corresponds to the author’s intention to reflect the diversity and complexity of pictures of the world and various emotional states. Irony and satire enrich the romantic palette, introducing obvious variety into the relationship between the hero and the author. From a commentator on events that Harold did not understand, Byron turns into a mocking critic, observing his hero as if from the outside. He enters into a closer, almost equal relationship with Juan, thereby emphasizing the closeness of their life experience and social position. M. Kurginyan quite rightly noted the peculiarity of the lyric-epic narration in this poem: “The story is told as if from two persons - from the poet himself, who stands in the position of irreconcilable criticism, and a certain conventional narrator who accepts the world “as it is” and does not believe in its improvement. Such a division of positions creates unlimited opportunities for versatile commentary on the hero’s conclusions, and for discussions in different tones about important aspects of social life, pressing political issues, the state of literature, morals, tastes, everyday life - in a word, about life in the world. in the broadest sense of the word."

[* Kurginyan M. The Path of Byron the Artist. P. 20.]

Don Juan directly correlates with the previous heroes of Byron's works, sometimes polemicizing with them, sometimes continuing in some way the planned paths of character development. Collision with the surrounding reality gives enormous advantages to Byron's hero. His passivity, selfishness and unaccountable thirst for pleasure completely disappear, giving way to moral fortitude (cannibalism among sailors while sailing on the sea), selflessness and kindness (saving a Turkish girl), critical development of other people's experience (Johnson, Catherine, mother). Byron's hero either approaches the author or moves away from him when it comes to the epic line of the poem. The possibilities of the lyric-epic poem, as Byron proved with his Don Juan, are far from exhausted. The variety of themes, tones, episodes and characters are subject to the internal logic of the development of the hero’s character, the formation of his inner world, filled with impressions of what he has seen and subject to systematization, analysis, and critical assimilation. The lyrical beginning expands and enriches itself, passing through various external circumstances and being tested by an epic vision of life. The “amazing Shakespearean diversity” of Byron’s last poem, noted by Pushkin, is explained both by its deep connection with the English tradition of descriptive poems and by its innovative understanding of the patterns of a romantic work.

Byron's work had a powerful influence on the development of many national literatures. “Byron’s poetry,” writes V. G. Belinsky, “is a page from the history of mankind: tear it out, and the integrity of history disappears, leaving a gap that cannot be replaced by anything.”

[* Belinsky V. G. Collection. op. T. 1. P. 713.]

The enormous ideological and artistic wealth of Byron's works had a beneficial effect on the development of English, American, French, German and Russian democratic and revolutionary democratic poetry.

A. S. Pushkin, who lived through a whole period of fascination with Byron, forever captured his image (in his immortal poem “To the Sea.”

Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Dostoevsky, following Pushkin, gave a deep assessment of Byron's work. Belinsky considered Byron an “immensely colossal” poet, a “Prometheus of modern times.”

Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Dostoevsky also highly valued Byron’s passionate, fiery, fighting spirit-filled poetry. They noted that his heroic life (the fight for the freedom of Italy and Greece) is inextricably linked with the freedom-loving humanistic pathos of his poetry.

George Gordon Noel Byron, from 1798 6th Baron Byron (eng. George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron; January 22, 1788, Dover - April 19, 1824, Missolungi, Ottoman Greece), usually referred to simply as Lord Byron (Lord Byron) - English poet a romantic who captivated the imagination of all Europe with his “dark selfishness.” Along with P.B. Shelley and J. Keats, he represents the younger generation of English romantics. His alter ego Childe Harold became the prototype for countless Byronic heroes in various European literatures. The fashion for Byronism continued after Byron’s death, even though by the end of his life, in the poetic novel “Don Juan” and the comic poem “Beppo”, Byron himself switched to satirical realism based on the legacy of A. Pope. The poet took part in the Greek Revolution and is therefore considered a national hero of Greece.

Name
Gordon is Byron's second personal name, given to him at baptism and coinciding with his mother's maiden name. Byron's father, however, in laying claim to his father-in-law's Scottish possessions, used "Gordon" as the second part of his surname (Byron-Gordon), and George himself was enrolled at school under the same double surname. At the age of 10, after the death of his great-uncle, George became a peer of England and received the title “Baron Byron”, after which, as is customary among peers of this rank, his usual everyday name became “Lord Byron” or simply “Byron”. Subsequently, Byron's mother-in-law bequeathed property to the poet with the condition that he bear her surname - Noel, and by royal patent Lord Byron was allowed, as an exception, to bear the surname Noel before his title, which he did, sometimes signing "Noel-Byron". Therefore, in some sources his full name may look like George Gordon Noel Byron, although he never signed all of these names and surnames at the same time.

Origin
His ancestors, natives of Normandy, came to England with William the Conqueror and, after the Battle of Hastings, were awarded rich estates taken from the Saxons. The original name of the Byrons is Burun. This name is often found in the knightly chronicles of the Middle Ages. One of the descendants of this family, already under Henry II, changed his surname to the surname Byron, in accordance with the reprimand. The Byrons especially rose to prominence under Henry VIII, who, during the abolition of the Catholic monasteries, endowed Sir Byron, nicknamed “Sir John the little with the Great Beard,” with the estates of the wealthy Newstead Abbey in Nottingham County.
During the reign of Elizabeth, the Byron family died out, but the surname passed to the illegitimate son of one of them. Subsequently, during the English Revolution, the Byrons distinguished themselves by their unwavering devotion to the House of Stuart, for which Charles I raised a representative of this family to the rank of peerage with the title of Baron Rochdel. One of the most famous representatives of this family was Admiral John Byron, famous for his extraordinary adventures and wanderings across the Pacific Ocean; the sailors who loved him but considered him unlucky nicknamed him “Foulweather Jack.”
The eldest son of Admiral Byron, also an admiral, was a cruel man who disgraced his name: while drunk, in a tavern, he killed his relative Chaworth in a duel (1765); he was imprisoned in the Tower, convicted of manslaughter, but escaped punishment thanks to the privilege of the peerage. This William Byron's brother, John, was a reveler and a spendthrift. Captain John Byron (1756-1791) married the former Marchioness of Comartin in 1778. She died in 1784, leaving John a daughter, Augusta (later Mrs. Lee), who was later raised by her mother's relatives.
After the death of his first wife, Captain Byron remarried, out of convenience, to Catherine Gordon, the only heiress of the wealthy George Gordon, Esquire. She came from the famous Scottish family of Gordons, in whose veins flowed the blood of Scottish kings (through Annabella Stewart). From this second marriage, the future poet was born in 1788.

Biography
The poverty into which Byron was born, and from which the title of lord did not relieve him, gave direction to his future career. When he was born (on Hall Street in London, January 22, 1788), his father had already spent his entire fortune, and his mother returned from Europe with small remnants of her fortune. Lady Byron settled in Aberdeen, and her “lame boy,” as she called her son, was sent to a private school for a year, then transferred to a classical grammar school. Many stories are told about Byron's childhood antics. The Gray sisters, who nursed little Byron, found that with affection they could do anything with him, but his mother always lost her temper at his disobedience and threw anything at the boy. He often responded to his mother’s outbursts with ridicule, but one day he he himself says that the knife with which he wanted to stab himself was taken away. He studied poorly at the gymnasium, and Mary Gray, who read psalms and the Bible to him, brought him more benefit than the gymnasium teachers. When George was 10 years old, his great-uncle died, and the boy inherited the title of lord and the Byron family estate - Newstead Abbey. Ten-year-old Byron fell so deeply in love with his cousin Mary Duff that, upon hearing of her engagement, he fell into a hysterical fit. In 1799, he entered Dr. Gleny's school, where he stayed for two years and spent the entire time treating his sore leg, after which he recovered enough to put on boots. During these two years he studied very little, but he read the entire rich library of the doctor. Before leaving for school at Harrow, Byron fell in love again - with another cousin, Marguerite Parker.
In 1801 he went to Harrow; dead languages ​​and antiquity did not attract him at all, but he read all the English classics with great interest and left school with great knowledge. At school, he was famous for his chivalrous attitude towards his comrades and the fact that he always stood up for the younger ones. During the holidays of 1803, he fell in love again, but this time much more seriously than before, with Miss Chaworth, a girl whose father was killed by the “bad Lord Byron.” In the sad moments of his life, he often regretted that she had rejected him.

Youth and the beginning of creativity
At Cambridge University, Byron deepened his scientific knowledge. But he distinguished himself more by the art of swimming, riding, boxing, drinking, playing cards, etc., so the lord constantly needed money and, as a result, “got into debt.” At Harrow, Byron wrote several poems, and in 1807 his first book, Hours of Idleness, appeared in print. This collection of poems decided his fate: having published the collection, Byron became a completely different person. Ruthless criticism of Leisure Hours appeared in the Edinburgh Review only a year later, during which the poet

Autograph

wrote a large number of poems. If this criticism had appeared immediately after the book was published, Byron might have completely abandoned poetry. “Six months before the appearance of merciless criticism, I composed 214 pages of a novel, a poem of 380 verses, 660 lines of “Bosworth Field” and many small poems,” he wrote to Miss Fagot, with whose family he was friends. “The poem I have prepared for publication is a satire.” He responded to the Edinburgh Review with this satire. The criticism of the first book terribly upset Byron, but he published his answer - “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” ​​- only in the spring of 1809. The success of the satire was enormous and was able to satisfy the wounded poet.

First trip
In June 1809, Byron went on a trip. He visited Spain, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor, where he swam across the Dardanelles Strait, which he was later very proud of. One might assume that the young poet, having won a brilliant victory over his literary enemies, went abroad contented and happy, but this was not so. Byron left England in a terribly depressed state of mind, and returned even more depressed. Many, identifying him with Childe Harold, assumed that abroad, like his hero, he led a too immoderate life, but Byron protested against this both in print and orally, emphasizing that Childe Harold was only a figment of the imagination. Thomas Moore argued in Byron's defense that he was too poor to maintain a harem. In addition, Byron was worried not only about financial difficulties. At this time he lost his mother, and although he never got along with her, he nevertheless grieved greatly.

"Childe Harold." Glory
On February 27, 1812, Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords, which was a great success: “Is there not enough blood [of rebels] on your criminal code that you need to shed more of it so that it cries to heaven and testifies against you?” "The dark race from the banks of the Ganges will shake your empire of tyrants to its foundations."
Two days after this performance, Childe Harold's first two songs appeared. The poem was a fabulous success, and 14,000 copies were sold in one day, which immediately placed the author among the first literary celebrities. “After reading Childe Harold,” he says, “no one will want to listen to my prose, just as I myself will not want to.” Why Childe Harold was so successful, Byron himself did not know and only said: “One morning I woke up and saw myself famous.”
Childe Harold's journey captivated not only England, but also the whole of Europe. The poet touched upon the general struggle of that time, speaks with sympathy about the Spanish peasants, about the heroism of women, and his hot cry for freedom spread far, despite the seemingly cynical tone of the poem. At this difficult moment of general tension, he also recalled the lost greatness of Greece.

Savor
He met Moore. Until this time, he had never been in the big world and now indulged himself with enthusiasm in the whirlwind of social life. One evening, Dallas even caught him in court dress, although Byron did not go to court. In the big world, the lame Byron (his knee was slightly cramped) never felt free and tried to cover up his awkwardness with arrogance.
In March 1813, he published the satire “Waltz” without a signature, and in May he published a story from Turkish life, “The Gyaur,” inspired by his travels through the Levant. The public enthusiastically accepted this story of love and vengeance and greeted with even greater delight the poems “The Bride of Abydos” and “The Corsair”, published in the same year. In 1814, he published “Jewish Melodies,” which had enormous success and was translated many times into all European languages, as well as the poem “Lara” (1814).

Marriage, divorce and scandal
In November 1813, Byron proposed to Miss Anna Isabella Milbank, daughter of Ralph Milbank, a wealthy baronet, granddaughter and heiress of Lord Wentworth. “A brilliant match,” Byron wrote to Moore, “although this was not the reason I made the offer.” He was refused, but Miss Milbank expressed a desire to enter into correspondence with him. In September 1814, Byron renewed his proposal, which was accepted, and they were married in January 1815.
In December, Byron had a daughter named Ada, and the next month Lady Byron left her husband in London and went to her father's estate. While on the road, she wrote her husband an affectionate letter, beginning with the words: “Dear Dick,” and signed: “Yours Poppin.” A few days later, Byron learned from her father that she had decided never to return to him again, and after that Lady Byron herself informed him of this. A month later, a formal divorce took place. Byron suspected that his wife separated from him under the influence of her mother. Lady Byron took full responsibility upon herself. Before her departure, she called Dr. Bolly for a consultation and asked him if her husband had gone crazy. Bolly assured her that it was only her imagination. After this, she told her family that she wanted a divorce. The reasons for the divorce were expressed by Lady Byron's mother to Dr. Lashington, and he wrote that these reasons justified the divorce, but at the same time advised the spouses to reconcile. After this, Lady Byron herself visited Dr. Lashington and told him the facts, after which he also no longer found reconciliation possible.
The true reasons for the Byron couple's divorce forever remained mysterious, although Byron said that “they are too simple, and therefore they are not noticed.” The public did not want to explain the divorce by the simple reason that people did not get along in character. Lady Byron refused to tell the reasons for the divorce, and therefore these reasons turned into something fantastic in the public’s imagination, and everyone vied with each other to see the divorce as a crime, one more terrible than the other (there were rumors about the poet’s bisexual orientation and his incestuous relationship with his sister). The publication of the poem “Farewell to Lady Byron,” published by one indiscreet friend of the poet, raised a whole pack of ill-wishers against him. But not everyone condemned Byron. One Kurier employee stated in print that if her husband had written her such a “Farewell,” she would have immediately rushed into his arms. In April 1816, Byron finally said goodbye to England, where public opinion, in the person of the “lake poets,” was strongly incited against him.

Life in Switzerland and Italy
Before leaving abroad, he sold his Newstead estate, and this gave Byron the opportunity not to be burdened by constant lack of money. Now he could indulge in the solitude he so craved. Abroad, he settled in the Villa Diodati on the Geneva Riviera. Byron spent the summer at the villa, making two small excursions around Switzerland: one with Hobhaus, the other with the poet Shelley. In the third song of Childe Harold (May-June 1816), he describes his trip to the fields of Waterloo. The idea of ​​writing “Manfred” came to him when, on his way back to Geneva, he saw Jungfrau.
In November 1816, Byron moved to Venice, where, according to his ill-wishers, he led the most depraved life, which, however, did not prevent him from creating a large number of poetic works. In June 1817, the poet wrote the fourth song of “Childe Harold”, in October 1817 - “Beppo”, in July 1818 - “Ode to Venice”, in September 1818 - the first song of “Don Juan”, in October 1818 - “ Mazepa", in December 1818 - the second song of "Don Juan", and in November 1819 - 3-4 songs of "Don Juan".
In April 1819 he met Countess Guiccioli and they fell in love. The Countess was forced to leave with her husband for Ravenna, where Byron followed her. Two years later, the Countess's father and brother, Counts Gamba, involved in a political scandal, had to leave Ravenna together with Countess Guiccioli, who was already divorced at that time. Byron followed them to Pisa, where he continued to live under the same roof with the countess. At this time, Byron was grieving the loss of his friend Shelley, who drowned in the Gulf of Spice. In September 1822, the Tuscan government ordered the Counts of Gamba to leave Pisa, and Byron followed them to Genoa.
Byron lived with the Countess until his departure to Greece and wrote a lot during this time. During this happy period of Byron's life, his following works appeared: “The First Song of Morgante Maggiora” (1820); "Dante's Prophecy" (1820) and trans. “Francesca da Rimini” (1820), “Marino Faliero” (1820), the fifth canto of “Don Giovanni” (1820), “Sardanapalus” (1821), “Letters to Bauls” (1821), “The Two Foscari” (1821 ), “Cain” (1821), “Vision of the Last Judgment” (1821), “Heaven and Earth” (1821), “Werner” (1821), the sixth, seventh and eighth songs of “Don Juan” (in February 1822) ; the ninth, tenth and eleventh songs of Don Juan (in August 1822); “The Bronze Age” (1823), “The Island” (1823), the twelfth and thirteenth songs of “Don Juan” (1824).

Trip to Greece and death
A calm, family life, however, did not save Byron from melancholy and anxiety. He enjoyed all the pleasures and fame he received too greedily. Soon satiety set in. Byron assumed that he had been forgotten in England, and at the end of 1821 he negotiated with Mary Shelley about the joint publication of the English magazine Liberal. However, only three issues were published. However, Byron really began to lose his former popularity. But at this time a Greek uprising broke out. Byron, after preliminary negotiations with the Philhellen committee formed in England to help Greece, decided to go there and began to prepare for his departure with passionate impatience. Using his own funds, he bought an English brig, supplies, weapons and equipped half a thousand soldiers, with whom he sailed to Greece on July 14, 1823. Nothing was ready there, and the leaders of the movement did not get along very well with each other. Meanwhile, costs grew, and Byron ordered the sale of all his property in England, and donated the money to the just cause of the rebel movement. Of great importance in the struggle for Greek freedom was Byron's talent in uniting uncoordinated groups of Greek rebels.
In Missolonghi, Byron fell ill with a fever, continuing to devote all his strength to the fight for the freedom of the country. On January 19, 1824, he wrote to Hancop: “We are preparing for an expedition,” and on January 22, his birthday, he entered Colonel Stanhope’s room, where there were several guests, and said cheerfully: “You reproach me for not writing poems, but I just wrote a poem.” And Byron read: “Today I turned 36 years old.” Byron, who was constantly ill, was very worried about the illness of his daughter Ada. Having received a letter with good news about her recovery, he wanted to go for a walk with Count Gamba. During the walk, it began to rain terribly, and Byron completely fell ill. His last words were fragmentary phrases: “My sister! my child!.. poor Greece!.. I gave her time, fortune, health!.. now I give her my life!” On April 19, 1824, the poet died. Doctors performed an autopsy, removed the organs and placed them in urns for embalming. They decided to leave the lungs and larynx in the Church of St. Spyridon, but they were soon stolen from there. The body was embalmed and sent to England, where it arrived in July 1824. Byron was buried in the family crypt at Hunkell Torquard Church near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

Pansexuality
The intimate life of Lord Byron caused a lot of gossip among his contemporaries. He left his native country amid rumors about his inappropriately close relationship with his half-sister Augusta. When Countess Guiccioli’s book about Lord Byron appeared in 1860, Mrs. Beecher Stowe came out in defense of the memory of his wife with her “True History of the Life of Lady Byron,” based on the deceased’s story, allegedly conveyed to her in secret, that Byron allegedly was in “criminal relationship” with his sister. However, such stories were fully in keeping with the spirit of the era: for example, they form the main content of Chateaubriand’s autobiographical story “Rene” (1802).
Byron's diaries, published in the 20th century, reveal a truly pansexual picture of sex life. Thus, the poet described the port town of Falmouth as a “lovely place” offering “Plen. and optabil. Coit." (“numerous and varied sexual intercourse”): “We are surrounded by Hyacinths and other flowers of the most fragrant nature, and I intend to put together an elegant bouquet to compare with the exoticism that we hope to find in Asia. I’ll even take one sample with me.” This model turned out to be the handsome young Robert Rushton, who “was Byron’s page, like Hyacinth was Apollo’s” (P. Weil). In Athens, the poet took a liking to a new favorite - fifteen-year-old Nicolo Giro. Byron described the Turkish baths as “a marble paradise of sherbet and sodomy.”
After Byron's death, the erotic poem "Don Leon", which tells about the same-sex relationships of the lyrical hero, in which Byron was easily guessed, began to diverge in the lists. The publisher William Dugdale spread a rumor that this was an unpublished work by Byron and, under the threat of publishing the poem, tried to extort money from his relatives. Modern literary scholars call the real author of this “freethinking” work George Colman.

The fate of the Byron family

The poet's widow, Lady Anne Isabella Byron, spent the rest of her long life in solitude, doing charity work - completely forgotten in the big world. Only the news of her death, on May 16, 1860, awakened memories of her.
Lord Byron's legitimate daughter Ada, married Earl William Lovelace in 1835 and died on November 27, 1852, leaving two sons and a daughter. She is known as a mathematician, one of the first creators of computer technology, and a collaborator of Charles Babbage. According to a well-known legend, she proposed several fundamental principles of computer programming and is considered the first programmer.
Lord Byron's eldest grandson, Noel, was born on May 12, 1836, served briefly in the English navy, and after a wild and disorderly life, died on October 1, 1862, as a laborer in one of the London docks. The second grandson, Ralph Gordon Noel Milbank, was born on July 2, 1839, and after the death of his brother, who shortly before his death inherited the barony of Wintworth from his grandmother, became Lord Wentworth.

Nature of creativity and influence
Byron's poems are more autobiographical than the works of other English romantics. He felt more acutely than many others the hopeless discrepancy between romantic ideals and reality. Awareness of this discrepancy did not always plunge him into melancholy and despondency; in his latest works, the removal of masks from people and phenomena evokes nothing but an ironic smile. Unlike most romantics, Byron respected the heritage of English classicism, puns and caustic satire in the spirit of Pope. His favorite octave predisposed him to lyrical digressions and games with the reader.
In Victorian England, Lord Byron was all but forgotten; his popularity was in no way comparable to the posthumous success of Keats and Shelley. “Who reads Byron these days? Even in England! - Flaubert exclaimed in 1864. In continental Europe, including Russia, the peak of Byronism occurred in the 1820s, but by the middle of the 19th century, the Byronic hero was reduced and became the property of predominantly mass and adventure literature.
Everyone started talking about Byron, and Byronism became a point of insanity for beautiful souls. It was from this time that little great people began to appear among us in crowds with the seal of a curse on their foreheads, with despair in their souls, with disappointment in their hearts, with deep contempt for the “insignificant crowd.” Heroes suddenly became very cheap. Every boy whom the teacher left without lunch for not knowing the lesson consoled himself in grief with phrases about the fate pursuing him and about the inflexibility of his soul, struck but not defeated.
- V. Belinsky.

Material taken from the site http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron,_George_Gordon

Books

Selected works
volume 1
volume 2
Dyakonova N.Ya. Lyric poetry of Byron (From the history of world culture) - 1975
The Collected Works of Byron (1904). Volumes I-II
volume 1
volume 2

19th century

Victor Eremin

George Noel Gordon Byron

(1788—1824)

George Noel Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788 in London. The boy was immediately given a double surname. On his father's side he became Byron. By mother - Gordon.

The Byrons' ancestry dates back to the Normans, who settled in England during the time of William the Conqueror and received lands in the county of Nottingham. In 1643, King Charles I Stuart gave Sir John Byron (c. 1526–1600) the title of Lord. The poet's grandfather, also John Byron (1723-1786), rose to the rank of vice admiral and was famous for his unluckiness. He was nicknamed Stormy Jack because as soon as his crew set sail, a storm immediately broke out. In 1764, on the ship "Dauphin" Byron was sent on a voyage around the world, but during this campaign he managed to discover only the Disappointment Islands, although there were still many unexplored archipelagos around - they were simply not noticed. In the only naval battle that he fought as a naval commander, Byron suffered a crushing defeat. After this, he was not trusted with command of the fleet.

Jack Bad Weather's eldest son, John Byron (1756-1791), graduated from the French Military Academy, joined the Guards, and participated in the American wars almost as a child. There, for his bravery, he received the nickname Mad John. Returning to London, Byron seduced the wealthy Baroness Amelia Osborne (1754-1784) and fled with her to France, where the fugitive gave birth to a daughter - Her Grace Augusta Byron (1783-1851), the poet’s only half-sister (August later played a sinister role in Byron’s fate ) - and died.

Mad John had no means of livelihood left, but luck did not abandon the rake. Quite soon, he met a rich bride at the fashionable resort of Bath - Catherine Gordon Gate (1770-1811). Outwardly, the girl was “ugly” - short, fat, long-nosed, too ruddy, but after the death of her father she inherited substantial capital, a family estate, salmon fisheries and shares in the Aberdeen Bank.

The ancient Scottish family of Gordons was related to the royal Stuart dynasty. The Gordons were famous for their furious temper, many ended their lives on the gallows, and one of them, John Gordon II (c. 1599-1634), was hanged for one of the most famous political murders in history - Wallenstein *. Many famous Scottish ballads tell of the exploits of the crazy Gordons. But by the end of the 18th century this genus was almost extinct. The poet's great-grandfather drowned, his grandfather drowned himself. To prevent the family from disappearing completely, Katherine’s son was given a second surname - Gordon.

* For more details, see Eremin V.N. “Geniuses of Intrigue: From Godunov to Hitler,” chapter “The Murder of Wallenstein.” - M.: “Veche”, 2013.

John Byron married Catherine Gordon for convenience; she passionately loved and at the same time hated her husband until the end of her days.

Newborn George was very beautiful, but as soon as he stood up, his family saw with horror that the boy was limping. It turned out that the shy mother had greatly tightened her womb during pregnancy; as a result, the fetus was in the wrong position and had to be pulled out during childbirth. In this case, the ligaments on the child’s legs were incurably damaged.

John Byron acted vilely with his second wife and her son. He squandered Catherine's fortune, estate, and shares by deception, after which he fled to France, where he died in 1791 at the age of thirty-six. It was rumored that the adventurer had committed suicide. Little George never forgot his father, and all his life he admired his military exploits.

Catherine and baby Geordie moved closer to her family in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, where she rented furnished rooms for a reasonable fee and hired two maids - sisters May and Agnes Gray. May looked after the boy.

The child grew up kind and obedient, but was extremely hot-tempered. One day the nanny scolded him for his soiled dress. Geordie took off his clothes and, looking sternly at May Gray, silently tore the dress from top to bottom.

Events in little Byron's life developed very quickly. At the age of five he went to school; at the age of nine, George fell in love for the first time - with his cousin Mary Duff; and when the boy was ten years old, in May 1798, his great-uncle Lord William Byron (1722-1798) died, and the titles of the sixth Baron Byron and peerage, and the family estate of Newstead Abbey near Nottingham, passed to George. Lord Frederick Howard of Carlisle (1748-1825), who was Byron's distant relative on his mother's side, was appointed guardian of the young lord. Katherine and her son moved to their own estate. The ancient house was located near the famous Sherwood Forest, on the shore of a large lake, half overgrown with reeds.

In the autumn of 1805, George entered Trinity College, Cambridge University. From now on, he began to receive pocket money. However, as soon as the young man had his own money, he abandoned his studies, settled in a separately rented apartment, took a mistress of whores, and hired boxing and fencing teachers. Having learned about this, Mrs. Byron threw a huge scandal at her son and tried to beat him with fireplace tongs and a dustpan. George had to hide from his mother for some time.

At Cambridge, Byron was already writing poetry. One day he showed them to Elizabeth Pigot (1783–1866), the elder sister of his college friend John Pigot (1785–1871). The girl was four years older than the boys and enjoyed special reverence among them. Elizabeth was delighted with the poetry of seventeen-year-old George and persuaded him to publish what he read. In 1806, Byron published the book “Poems for Occasion” for a narrow circle of friends. A year later, the collection “Leisure Hours” by George Gordon Byron, a minor, followed. Critics ridiculed him for this book. The young poet was wounded to the core and for some time thought about suicide.

On July 4, 1808, Byron received his Master of Arts degree and left Cambridge. He returned to Newstead. The mother was not there - at first the estate was rented out, and then the young man assured Catherine that the mansion was being renovated. So George celebrated his coming of age (21 years old) away from his mother and quite cheerfully.

It's time to assume your peerage. The young man presented himself in the House of Lords and took the oath of office on March 13, 1809. The Lord Chancellor John Eldon (Ealdon) (1751-1838) presided at the time.

Almost immediately after the swearing-in ceremony, Byron and his closest friend from Cambridge, John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), set off on a journey - through Lisbon through Spain to Gibraltar, from there by sea to Albania, where they were invited to stay by the Turkish despot Ali, known for his courage and cruelty. - Pasha Tepelensky* (1741-1822). The pasha's residence was in Ioannina, a city in northwestern Greece. There the travelers were met by a small, gray-haired seventy-year-old good-natured old man, famous for roasting his enemies alive on a spit and once drowning twelve women in the lake at once who did not please his daughter-in-law. From Ioannina, Byron and a friend went to Athens, then they visited Constantinople, Malta... Only on July 17, 1811, Lord Byron returned to London and stayed there for a short time on personal business, when news arrived that on August 1, 1811, in Newstead, she died suddenly in the result of a stroke by his mother Katherine Byron.

* The fantastic story of the fate of the Yanino Pasha was told by Alexandre Dumas the father and Auguste Macke in the novel “The Count of Monte Cristo”.

Having buried his closest person, Byron decided to seek solace in parliamentary activities. On February 27, 1812, he made his first speech in the House of Lords - against the Tory bill on the death penalty for weavers who deliberately broke the newly invented knitting machines.

And then a significant event occurred in the history of world poetry. From his trip, Byron brought back the manuscript of a poem composed in Spencerian stanzas, telling the story of a sad wanderer who is destined to experience disappointment in the sweet hopes and ambitious hopes of his youth. The poem was called "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." The book with the first two songs of the poem was published on February 29, 1812, on this day one of the greatest poets of all times and all peoples, George Gordon Byron, was revealed to the world. In the world of literature, the tearful melancholic Werther was replaced by the gloomy skeptic Childe Harold.

London's secular society was shocked by this poetic masterpiece. For several months, the capital of a powerful empire talked only about Byron, everyone admired and admired him. The lionesses of high society organized a real hunt for the poet. And in general, in Europe, the cult of Byron almost immediately began to take shape - one of the first in history manifestations of the idiotic product of educated humanity - mass culture. Apparently then, if not earlier, the poet began to develop an illness that we call megalomania. Over the years, it only worsened and took on pathological forms.

The daughter-in-law of Byron's good friend Lord Peniston Melbourne (1745-1828), Lady Caroline Lamb* (1785-1828), described her impressions of her first meeting with the poet: “An angry, crazy man with whom it is dangerous to deal.” Two days later, when Byron himself came to visit her, Lamb wrote in her diary: “This beautiful pale face will be my destiny.” She became Byron's mistress and did not want to hide this from London society. The poet came to Caroline in the morning and spent whole days in her boudoir. In the end, Caroline’s mother and mother-in-law rose to defend the honor of the libertine’s husband. Oddly enough, the women turned to Byron for help. By that time, George had become fairly tired of his mistress, which is why he happily joined the fighters for morality. The three of them began to persuade Caroline to return to her husband. But madly in love with the poet, the woman did not want to listen to anything. To finally bring her to her senses, Byron asked the hand of Caroline’s cousin, Anna Annabella Milbank (1792-1860). Once he was refused, but after a second matchmaking the girl agreed.

* For more information about the connection between Byron and Caroline Lamb, see Eremin V.N. “Geniuses of Intrigue: From Godunov to Hitler,” chapter “The Grievances of Lady Caroline Lamb.” - M.: “Veche”, 2013.

During his love epic with Caroline Lamb, when the poor woman tried to commit suicide with a dull knife right at a high society ball, Byron committed one of the most shameful acts in his life. In January 1814, his half-sister Augusta came to stay with him in Newstead. George fell in love and had an incestuous relationship with her.

The poet Byron did not stop at Childe Harold. Next, he created a cycle of “oriental” poems: “The Giaour” and “The Bride of Abydos” were published in 1813, “The Corsair” and “Lara” - in 1814.

The marriage of Byron and Annabella Milbank took place on January 2, 1815. Two weeks later, Augusta arrived in London again, and “life for the three of us” began. It soon became known that Lord Byron's condition was significantly upset, that he had nothing to support his wife. Debts to creditors amounted to an astronomical amount - almost 30 thousand pounds. Discouraged, Byron became embittered with the whole world, started drinking, and began blaming his wife for all his troubles...

Frightened by her husband's wild antics, Anabella decided that he had fallen into madness. On December 10, 1815, the woman gave birth to Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada (1815-1852), and on January 15, 1816, taking the baby with her, she left for Leicestershire to visit her parents. A few weeks later, she announced that she would not return to her husband. Later, contemporaries claimed that Anabella was informed about Byron’s incest with Augusta and about the poet’s homosexual relations. Biographers, having studied numerous documents of that time, came to the conclusion that the vast majority of dirty rumors about the poet came from the circle of the vengeful Caroline Lamb. True, there is no smoke without fire, but we will talk about this below.

The poet agreed to live separately with his wife. On April 25, 1816, he left for Europe forever. In the last days before leaving, Byron entered into a love affair with Claire Clairmont (1798-1879). In fact, the girl’s name was Jane Clairmont, but she demanded to be called Claire - with this name she entered the history of world literature. She was the adopted daughter from the second marriage of the philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836), predecessor and like-minded person of the famous Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Claire Clairmont was an impetuous, sincere girl of an adventurous nature, she dreamed of becoming an actress and, to her misfortune, fell passionately in love with a poet. Byron initially treated her as an insignificant, quarrelsome commoner, designed to temporarily satisfy his lust, nothing more. Claire herself came to her idol’s house and gave herself to him on the very first evening.

In Europe, Byron initially decided to settle in Geneva. Imagine his displeasure when, on the day of his arrival, Miss Claremont showed up in his room, who, as it turned out, had already been living in the same hotel for several days. The girl brought with her to introduce her half-sister Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's (1797-1851) lover, the aspiring poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

Byron was already familiar with Shelley’s work, but the poets’ personal acquaintance took place only that day in Geneva. George and Percy became friends immediately, and according to Caroline Lamb's circle, they became lovers. Official biographies claim that Byron simply had fatherly feelings for the fragile, passionate Shelley and his charming lover. Mary was Godwin's own daughter from his first wife, the founder of the feminist movement, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). By the time Byron and Shelley met, Mary's mother had already died, and her father kicked her daughter out of the house for debauchery. At the same time, Godwin excommunicated his half-sister Claire, who followed him everywhere, from home. With the latter, Byron fornicated out of indulgence, until in August of the same year it became clear that the girl was pregnant.

It must be said here that at the end of the 20th century, after careful research into Byron’s personal papers and the correspondence of his contemporaries, more and more scientists were forced to admit the poet’s bisexuality. It is believed that it all started with his unconventional relationship with his own page, the handsome young Robert Rushton (1793-1833), the son of a tenant in Newstead. Their connection happened shortly before Byron’s departure on his first trip; it was not renewed later. In 1809 - 1810, already in Greece, Byron had a long, sinless relationship with fifteen-year-old Nicolo Giraud (1795 -?). Other names of young people with whom Byron sympathized in different years of his life are also mentioned; in this case it makes no sense to name a list of them. I will only note that all the evidence given by researchers of the poet’s homosexual preferences is indirect.

Be that as it may, poet friends Byron and Shelley visited Chillon Castle together*. Both were shocked by what they saw. Upon returning from the excursion, Byron composed the poetic story “The Prisoner of Chillon” in one night, and Shelley created “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” In Geneva, Byron also composed a third song, “Childe Harold,” and began the dramatic poem “Manfred.”

* The famous castle-prison, which for many centuries controlled the only road through the St. Bernard Pass, connecting Central Europe with Southern Europe. Located on the shores of Lake Geneva, 3 km from the city of Montreux.

The already established cult of Byron in Europe turned out to be its bad side for the poet. Even before his arrival to the shores of Lake Geneva, a stir began among the local public. When Byron arrived, his every step was accompanied by the eyepieces of numerous binoculars. The curious were not embarrassed in their attempts to find out the most hidden secrets from the life of the idol. In the end, these persecutions became disgusting.

Byron chose to go to Italy. The Shelley family returned to England, where on January 12, 1817, Claire Clairmont gave birth to a daughter, Allegra (1817-1822), from Byron. By preliminary agreement, in the summer of that year the girl was given to her father. Having played enough with the child and having acquired a new passion, the poet chose to send his daughter to be raised in a monastery in Bagnacavallo.

* Read more about the twists and turns of the tragic fate of Claire Clairmont and Allegra in the chapter “Percy Bysshe Shelley” of this book.

Byron chose Venice as his permanent residence. He rented the Moncenigo Palace on the Grand Canal. There Manfred was completed, there the poet began writing the fourth song of Childe Harold, the satire Beppo was composed and Don Juan began.

Since Byron was constantly short of money, in the fall of 1818 he sold Newstead for 90 thousand guineas, paid off all his debts and was able to start a quiet, prosperous life. Every year for the publication of his works, Byron received gigantic money for those times - 7 thousand pounds, and if we take into account that he also had annual interest on other real estate in the amount of 3.3 thousand pounds, then we must admit that in the first third of the 19th century Lord Byron was one of the richest men in Europe. Growing fat, having grown long hair with glimpses of the first gray hair - this is how he now appeared before his Venetian guests.

But in 1819, Byron's last, deepest love came to him. At one of the social evenings, the poet accidentally met the young Countess Teresa Guiccioli (1800-1873). She was called the “Titian blonde.” Having recently graduated from a convent school, the countess had been legally married for less than a year, and her husband was forty years older than his wife. Since in Venetian society it was the order of things for every married lady to have an indispensable lover, Signor Alexander Guiccioli (1760-1829) treated Byron very friendly and even rented out the top floor of his own palace to him, thus encouraging the growing passion of his wife and poet. However, Teresa’s entire family - father, brother and the girl herself - turned out to be Carbonari*. They quickly drew Byron into the conspiracy, who began purchasing weapons abroad for future rebels. Guiccioli was loyal to the Austrian authorities and, having learned what was happening behind his back, hastened to take his wife to Ravenna. On the eve of their departure, Teresa became Byron's mistress and thereby virtually decided his future fate.

* Carbonari - members of a secret society in Italy in the 19th century, who fought for the unification of Italy, the liberation of the country from Austrian occupation and the introduction of a constitutional system.

In June 1819, the poet followed his lover to Ravenna. He settled in the Palazzo Guiccioli. Teresa's father, Count Ruggero Gamba (1770-1846), who saw his daughter's torment, obtained permission from the Pope for the Countess to live separately from her husband. At the same time, she did not have the right to marry again; if evidence of her love affair on the side appeared, Teresa should have been arrested and imprisoned in a monastery.

His stay in Ravenna became unusually fruitful for Byron: he wrote new songs “Don Juan”, “Dante’s Prophecy”, a historical drama in verse “Marino Faliero”, translated Luigi Pulci’s poem “Great Morgante”...

Meanwhile, a Carbonari conspiracy was brewing in the city. Byron purchased weapons for the conspirators at his own expense. One evening, the poet came home and found all these weapons on the threshold of his palace: a rumor spread throughout the city that the conspiracy had been discovered and the authorities were preparing for general arrests, and therefore the revolutionaries preferred to get rid of dangerous evidence. The authorities actually uncovered the conspiracy, but they did not persecute anyone, only the leaders were sent away. Among them was the entire Gamba family. Teresa retired to Florence.

Byron moved to Pisa. There the news arrived that the poet's mother-in-law, Lady Judith Milbanke Noel (1751-1822), had died. She was not angry with her unlucky son-in-law and bequeathed him 6 thousand pounds, but on the condition that he take the surname Noel, since this family had no descendants in the male line. From now on, the poet became fully known as George Noel Gordon Byron.

Following the news of the death of the old lady, came the news of the death of five-year-old Allegra - the girl contracted typhus in the monastery. Byron was shocked, he suffered - one evening. The next morning, the poet declared that everything that was happening was for the best: Allegra was illegitimate and the life of an outcast pariah awaited her. Undoubtedly, dad was lying to himself, but having calmed down with such reasoning, Byron forbade reminding him of his daughter, while those around him continued to express sympathy for him and talk about the titanic suffering of a genius.

In the summer of 1822, a villa was rented on the Shelley coast near Pisa. Percy often came to Byron, they decided to publish their own magazine in London. On July 8, 1822, returning home by sea after one of these meetings, Shelley was caught in a storm and died. On July 16, 1822, Byron cremated the remains of his friend with his own hands. Local authorities gave special permission for this as an exception, only out of respect for the great poet Byron, since according to Italian quarantine rules, the drowned man had to be buried in the sand on the shore, after first pouring quicklime over the corpse.

Unexpectedly, the London “Greek Committee” turned to the poet with a request to help Greece in the war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. They counted on his money, but on July 15, 1823, Byron left Genoa on his personal yacht to take part in the Greek uprising. The poet fully financed the equipment of the rebel fleet and at the beginning of January 1824 he joined the leader of the Greek uprising, Prince Alexander Mavrocordato (1791-1865), in Missolongi (Mesolongion), the capital of Western mainland Greece. Byron, who knew nothing about military affairs, was given command of a detachment of Souliotes*, to whom he paid allowances from his personal funds. This was the end of his participation in the uprising, but this did not stop the Greeks from declaring Byron their national hero, a fighter for the independence of the people.

* The Souliotes are a Greco-Albanian mountain tribe.

The poet's residence became the island of Kefalonia. There he caught a cold after swimming in the cold sea. Pain in the joints appeared, which developed into convulsions. Doctors talked about an epileptic attack. After some time, improvement came, and Byron, who was very bored, wanted to take a short horse ride. As soon as he drove a relatively far distance from the house, a heavy icy downpour began. Two hours after returning from a walk, the poet developed a fever. After suffering from a fever for several days, George Noel Gordon Byron died on April 19, 1824, at the age of thirty-seven. On July 16 of the same year, the poet's remains were buried in the Byron family crypt in the Hunkell Torquard church near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

The fate and creativity of Byron, his skepticism, pride and contemplation of the world from the outside had a huge influence on European society in the first half of the 19th century. The fashion for thoughtful, silent condescension towards the little ones of this world, embellished with revolutionary impulses somewhere in the name of an ideal, was called Byronism in history. The greatest bearers of Byronism were the greatest poets of Russia - A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov. Pushkin, in particular, did not hide the fact that he created “Eugene Onegin” largely under the influence of the work of the English genius.

Byron's works were translated into Russian by V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, A. N. Maikov, L. A. Mei, A. A. Fet, A. N. Pleshcheev and many others outstanding poets.

Byron's poetry in translations by Russian poets

From "The Prisoner of Chillon"

I

Look at me: I'm gray
But not from frailty and age;
Not sudden fear on one night
He gave me gray hair before the deadline.
I'm hunched over, my forehead is wrinkled,
But not toil, not cold, not heat -
Prison destroyed me.
Deprived of a sweet day,
Breathing without air, in chains,
I slowly grew decrepit and wasted away,
And life seemed endless.
The lot of the unfortunate father -
For faith death and shame of chains -
The sons also became the lot.
There were six of us - there are no longer five.
Father, a sufferer from a young age,
Died as an old man at the stake,
Two brothers who fell into the past,
Having sacrificed honor and blood,
Saved the souls of your love.
Three buried alive
At the bottom of the prison depths -
And two were devoured by the depths;
It's just me, the only ruin,
He survived on his own mountain,
To mourn their lot.

II

On the bosom of the waters stands Chillon;
There are seven columns in the dungeon
Covered with wet summer moss.
A sad light dawns on them -
Ray, inadvertently from above
Fell into a crack in the wall
And buried in the darkness.
And on the damp prison floor
It shines dimly, lonely,
Like a light above a swamp,
In the darkness blowing the night.
Each column has a ring;
And the chains hang in those rings;
And those chains of iron are poison;
It bit into my limbs;
Will never be destroyed
The mark pressed by him.
And the day is hard on my eyes,
Unaccustomed from so many years ago
Look at the pleasing light;
And to the will my soul has cooled
Since my brother was last
Killed unwillingly in front of me
And, next to the dead, I, alive,
Tormented on the prison floor.

III

We were the chains
Nailed to the columns,
Although together, they are separated;
We couldn't take a step
In each other's eyes we can tell each other apart
The pale darkness of the prison disturbed us.
He gave us someone else's face -
And brother became unknown to brother.
There was one thing we enjoyed:
Give each other a voice,
Awaken each other's hearts
Or the reality of glorious antiquity,
Or the sonorous song of war -
But soon it's the same thing
In the darkness of the prison is exhausted;
Our voice has become terribly wild,
He became a hoarse echo
Blind prison walls;
He wasn't the sound of old times
In those days, like ourselves,
Powerful, free and alive!
Is it a dream?.. but their voice is mine too
Always sounded like a stranger to me.

Translation by V. A. Zhukovsky

Jewish melody

(From Byron)

My soul is gloomy. Hurry, singer, hurry!
Here is a golden harp:
Let your fingers, rushing along it,
The sounds of paradise will awaken in the strings.
And if fate did not take away hope forever,
They will wake up in my chest,
And if there is a drop of tears in the frozen eyes -
They will melt and spill.

Let your song be wild. - Like my crown,
The sounds of fun are painful to me!
I tell you: I want tears, singer,
Or your chest will burst from pain.
She was full of suffering,
She languished for a long time and silently;
And the terrible hour has come - now it is full,
Like a cup of death full of poison.

Translation by M. Yu. Lermontov

Melody

My soul is sad! Sing a song, singer!
The voice of the harp is kind to the sad soul.
Enchant my ears with the magic of hearts,
Harmony with sweet omnipotent power.

If there is a spark of hope in my heart,
Her inspired harp will awaken;
When even a tear remains in him,
It will spill, and my heart will not burn.

But songs of sadness, singer, sing to me:
My heart no longer beats for joy;
Make me cry; or long melancholy
My oppressed heart will burst!

I have suffered enough, endured enough;
I'm tired! - Let your heart or be broken
And my earthly unbearable lot will end,
Or he will reconcile himself with life as a golden harp.

Translation by N. I. Gnedich

Love and death

I looked at you when our enemy walked by,
Ready to defeat him or fall with you in blood,
And if the hour struck - to share with you, my beloved,
Everything, remaining faithful to freedom and love.

I looked at you in the seas, when on the rocks
The ship struck in the chaos of stormy waves,
And I prayed for you to trust me;
The tomb is my chest, the hand is the boat of salvation.

I fixed my gaze on your sick and clouded gaze,
And the bed gave way and, exhausted by the vigil,
He clung to his feet, ready to surrender himself to the dead earth,
If only you would go into the sleep of death so early.

The earthquake was going on and the walls were shaking,
And everything swayed before me as if from wine.
Who was I looking for in the empty hall?
You. Whose life did I save? You alone.

And with a convulsive sigh the suffering spiraled into me,
The thought was already extinguished, the tongue was already numb,
To you, giving you my last breath,
Ah, more often than it should, my spirit flew to you.

Oh, a lot has passed; but you didn't fall in love,
You won't fall in love, no! Love is always free.
I don't blame you, but fate has judged me -
It’s criminal, without hope, to love everything again and again.

Translation by A. A. Blok

Song to the Souliots

Children of Suli! Rush into battle
Do your duty like a prayer!
Through the ditches, through the gates:
Baua, baua, souliots!
There are beauties, there is prey -
To battle! Create your own custom!

Holy foray banner,
Scattering the enemy formations,
Your native mountains banner -
The banner of your wives is above you.
To battle, to attack, Strathcotes,
Baua, baua, souliots!

Our plow is a sword: so take an oath
Here to reap the golden harvest;
Where a hole is made in the wall,
The enemies' wealth is hidden there.
There is loot, glory is with us -
So go ahead, argue with the thunder!

Translation by A. A. Blok

* * *

When I pressed you to my chest,
Full of love and happiness and reconciled with fate,
I thought: only death will separate us from you,
But we are separated by the envy of people.

May you forever, beautiful creature,
Their malice has torn them away from my heart,
But believe me, they will not drive your image out of him,
Until your friend fell under the burden of suffering.

And if the dead leave their shelter
And the dust will be reborn from decay to eternal life,
Again my forehead will bow on your chest:
There is no heaven for me without you with me!

Translation by A. N. Pleshcheev

I've made up my mind, it's time to free myself

I've made up my mind - it's time to free myself
From my dark sorrow,
Take your last breath, say goodbye
With love, in your memory!
I shunned worries and light
And I was not created for them,
Now I parted with joy,
What troubles should I fear?

I want feasts, I want a hangover;
I will begin to live soulless in the world;
Happy to share the fun with everyone,
You can’t share your grief with anyone.
Was it the same as before!
But the happiness of life is taken away:
Here in the world I am abandoned by you
You are nothing - and everything is nothing.

A smile is just a threat,
From under it the sadness is more visible;
She is like a rose on a tomb;
The torment is compressed more tightly.
Here between friends in a noisy conversation
Involuntarily the cup will come to life,
The mad spirit will burst into joy,
But the languid heart is sad.

It used to be a full month
Above the ship in the silence of the night:
He silvers the Aegean waves...
And I, striving for you with my soul,
I loved to dream that your sweet gaze
Now the same moon captivates.
O Tirza! over your grave
Then she was already shining.

In sleepless hours of illness,
How the poison boiled, stirring the blood -
“No,” I thought, “the suffering of a friend
Love will not be alarmed!”
An unnecessary gift to him is freedom,
Who in chains is a victim of decrepit years.
Here nature will resurrect me -
For what? - you are no longer alive.

When love and life are so new
In those days you gave me a pledge:
Sorrow paints harsh rock
Darkens it in front of me.
That heart grew cold forever,
Who brought everything to life;
Mine without death is numb,
But the feeling of torment is not without.

The pledge of love, eternal sorrow,
Snuggle, snuggle to my chest;
Be the guardian of heartfelt loyalty,
Or kill a sad heart!
In melancholy the rebellious heat does not go out,
Burns behind the shadow of the grave,
And to the dead flame the hopeless
Holier than love for the living.

Translation by I. Kozlov

George Byron, whose photo and biography you will find in this article, is deservedly considered great. The years of his life are 1788-1824. The work of George Byron is inextricably linked with the era of romanticism. Note that romanticism arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Western Europe. This direction in art appeared as a result of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment associated with it.

Byron's Romanticism

People who tried to think progressively were dissatisfied with the results of the revolution. Moreover, it has intensified. As a result, the romantics were divided into two opposing camps. Some called on society to return to patriarchal life, to the traditions of the Middle Ages, and to refuse to solve pressing problems. Others advocated continuing the work of the French Revolution. They sought to bring into life the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. George Byron joined them. He sharply denounced the colonial policy pursued by the British government. Byron opposed the adoption of anti-people laws and the suppression of freedoms. This caused great dissatisfaction with the authorities.

Life in a foreign land

In 1816, a hostile campaign began against the poet. He had to leave his native England forever. An exile in a foreign land, he actively participated in the struggle of the Greek rebels and the Italian Carbonari for independence. It is known that A.S. Pushkin considered this rebel poet a genius. The Englishman was very popular among the Decembrists. Belinsky, an outstanding Russian critic, also did not ignore him. He spoke of Byron as a poet who made a great contribution to world literature. Want to get to know him better? We invite you to read Byron's detailed biography.

Origin of Byron

He was born in London on January 22, 1788. His descent was high on both his father's and mother's sides. Both John Byron and Catherine Gordon came from the highest aristocracy. Nevertheless, the future poet spent his childhood in conditions of extreme poverty.

The fact is that John Byron, a guards officer (pictured above), led a very wasteful life. The father of the future poet squandered in a short time two large fortunes, which he inherited from his first wife and from his second, the boy’s mother. John had a daughter, Augusta, from his first marriage. She was raised by her grandmother, and only in 1804 did her friendship with her half-brother begin.

Early childhood

His parents separated shortly after George's birth. The father went to France and died there. The future poet spent his early childhood in the Scottish city of Aberdeen. Here he studied at the Grammar School. At the end of the third grade, a message came from England that George's great-uncle had died. So Byron inherited the title of lord, as well as Newstead Abbey, a family estate located in Nottingham County.

Both the castle and the estate were in disrepair. There were not enough funds to restore them. Therefore, George Byron's mother decided to rent out Newstead Abbey. She herself and her son settled in Southwell, located nearby.

What darkened Byron's childhood and youth?

Byron's childhood and youth were marred not only by lack of funds. The fact is that George was lame from birth. Doctors came up with various devices to cope with the lameness, but it did not go away. It is known that Byron's mother had an unbalanced character. In the heat of quarrels, she reproached her son for this physical defect, which caused deep suffering to the young man.

Study in Harrow

George entered the boarding school in Harrow in 1801. It was intended for children of noble birth. Future diplomats and politicians were trained here. Robert Peel, who later became the Minister of the Interior and subsequently the Prime Minister of England, studied in the same class with such a great poet as George Gordon Byron. The biography of our hero continues with events in his personal life.

First love

At the age of 15, in 1803, Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth. This happened during the holidays. The girl was 2 years older than George. They spent a lot of time together. However, this friendship was not destined to end in marriage. For many years, love for Mary tormented the romantic soul of such a poet as Byron George Gordon. The short biography moves on to describe George's student years.

Student years

The young man became a student at Cambridge University in 1805. The period of study there was a time of mischief, pleasure and fun. In addition, George was fond of sports. He was involved in boxing, swimming, fencing, and horse riding. Subsequently, George Byron became one of the best swimmers in England. Interesting facts about him, aren't they? At the same time, he became interested in reading. Soon, many began to notice that Byron was able to memorize whole pages of text.

First collections of poems

"British Bards", George Byron

The short biography also introduces readers to the difficulties that the poet had to face throughout his life. In particular, an anonymous review appeared in the Edinburgh Review magazine in 1808. In it, an unknown person mercilessly ridiculed Byron's works. He wrote that he did not speak the language of fiction and advised him to study poetry and not publish clumsy poems. George Byron responded to this by publishing the poem "The British Bards" in 1809. The success of the work was enormous. The poem went through four editions.

The Two Year Journey Taken by George Byron

His brief biography is marked by a two-year journey on which Byron set off at the end of 1809. At this time he completed his poem entitled “In the Footsteps of Horace”, and also created poetic travel notes. The journey greatly influenced the development of Byron's creativity and poetic gift. His journey began in Portugal, after which George visited the island of Malta, Spain, Albania, Greece, and Constantinople. In the summer of 1811, Byron returned to England. Here he learned that his mother was seriously ill. However, George failed to catch her alive.

"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

George retired to Newstead and began working on his new poem, which he called Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. However, when the work was completed, editor Murray put forward a demand to exclude stanzas of a political nature from the poem. George Byron, whose biography testifies to his love of freedom, refused to remake the work.

In the image of Childe Harold, Byron embodied the features of a new hero who is in irreconcilable conflict with morality and society. The relevance of this image ensured the success of the poem. It has been translated into almost all languages ​​of the world. Soon the name Childe Harold became a household name. It means a person who is disappointed in everything and who protests against a reality that is hostile to him.

Activities in the House of Lords

He decided to defend his position not only in poetry. George Byron soon took the place that the poet inherited. In England at this time, the Luddite movement became very popular, which consisted of a protest by weavers against the emerging weaving machines. The fact is that labor automation has left many of them unemployed. And those who managed to get it saw their wages drop significantly. People saw the root of evil in and began to destroy them.

The government decided to pass a law according to which those who destroyed cars were to be sentenced to death. Byron made a speech in parliament protesting against such an inhumane bill. George said that the state is called upon to protect the interests of citizens, and not of a few monopolists. However, despite his protests, the law was passed in February 1812.

After this, terror began in the country against weavers, who were sentenced to death, exiled, and imprisoned. Byron did not stand aside from these events and published his angry ode, in which the authors of the law were denounced. What did George Byron write during these years? A whole series of romantic poems came from his pen. Let's talk briefly about them.

"Eastern Poems"

George Byron wrote a series of romantic poems starting in 1813. In 1813, The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos appeared, in 1814 - Lara and Corsair, in 1816 - The Siege of Corinth. In literature they are usually called “Oriental poems”.

Unsuccessful marriage

The English poet George Byron married Annabella Milbank in January 1815. This girl came from an aristocratic background. Byron's wife opposed his social activities, which clearly contradicted the government's course. As a result of this, quarrels arose in the family.

The couple had a daughter in December 1815, who was named Ada Augusta. And already in January 1816, his wife left Byron without explanation. Her parents immediately initiated the divorce proceedings. Byron at this time created several works dedicated to Napoleon, in which he expressed the opinion that, by waging war against Bonaparte, England brought a lot of grief to its people.

Byron leaves England

Divorce, as well as “wrong” political views, led to persecution of the poet. The newspapers inflated the scandal to such an extent that Byron could not even just go outside. He left his homeland on April 26, 1816 and never returned to England. The last poem written in his native land was “Stanzas to Augusta,” dedicated to Byron, who was a support for him all this time and supported the creative spirit in George.

Swiss period

At first, Byron intended to live in France, and then in Italy. However, the French authorities forbade him to stop in cities, allowing him only to travel around the country. So George went to Switzerland. He settled near Lake Geneva at the Villa Diodati. In Switzerland he met and became friends with Shelley. The period of residence in this country was from May to October 1816. At this time, the poems “Darkness”, “Dream”, “The Prisoner of Chillon” were created. In addition, Byron began writing another poem, "Manfred", and also created a third song, "Childe Harold". After this he went to Venice.

Getting to know Guiccioli, participating in the Carbonari movement

Here he met Countess Guiccioli, with whom Byron fell in love. The woman was married, but she reciprocated the poet’s feelings. Nevertheless, the Countess soon left for Ravenna with her husband.

The poet decided to follow his beloved to Ravenna. This happened in 1819. Here he actively participated in the Carbonari movement, which in 1821 began preparations for the uprising. However, it did not start because some members of the organization turned out to be traitors.

Moving to Pisa

In 1821 George Gordon moved to Pisa. Here he lived with Countess Guiccioli, who was already divorced by that time. Shelley also lived in this city, but in the fall of 1822 he drowned. Byron from 1821 to 1823 created the following works: “Marino Faliero”, “Sardanapalus”, “Two Foscari”, “Heaven and Earth”, “Cain”, “Werner”. In addition, he started his drama called "Transformed Freak", which remained unfinished.

Byron created the famous Don Juan between 1818 and 1823. This great creation, however, also remained unfinished. George interrupted his work in order to participate in the struggle for the independence of the Greek people.

Participation in the struggle for independence of the Greek people

Byron moved to Genoa in the fall of 1822, after which he left for Missolonghi (in December 1823). However, in Greece, as well as among the Italian Carbonari, there was a lack of unity among the rebels. Byron spent a lot of energy trying to rally the rebels. George did a lot of organizational work trying to create a unified rebel army. The life of the poet was very tense at that time. Besides, he caught a cold. Byron wrote a poem on his 36th birthday called “Today I Turned 36.”

Death of Byron

He was very worried about the illness of Ada, his daughter. Soon, however, Byron received a letter saying that she had recovered. George happily mounted his horse and went for a walk. However, a heavy downpour began, which became fatal for the cold poet. George Byron's life was cut short on April 19, 1824.

Byron had a great influence on world literature of the 19th century. There was even a whole movement known as “Byronism”, which was reflected in the works of Lermontov and Pushkin. As for Western Europe, the influence of this poet was felt by Heinrich Heine, Victor Hugo, and Adam Mickiewicz. In addition, Byron's poems formed the basis for the musical works of Robert Schumann and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. To this day, the influence of such a poet as George Byron is felt in literature. His biography and work are of interest to many researchers.