The Romantic Rebel and the Byronic Hero

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The Romantic Rebel and the Byronic Hero
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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Title Page
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Themes in Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

1. Blake uses the terms of conventional morality
   (Heaven/Hell Angel/Devil Good/Evil) and then
   reverses their moral polarity. He speaks in the
   voice of the devil, a strategy that is meant to
   be provocative.

• 2. But Blake defines good and evil quite
  differently from the way we normally use the
  terms. He identifies good with reason and
  evil with energy, both of which are valuable
  and necessary.

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• 3. Finally, Blake connects energy with liberating
  vision. It is through the energy of creativity
  and imagination that human senses can be cleansed
  and perceive the infinite
• To see the world in a grain of sand
• And Heaven in a wild flower,
• Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
• And eternity in an hour.
• Blake, Auguries of Innocence

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Examples

• Martin Luther King is now regarded as an American
  hero, but during the civil rights movement, many
  saw his tactics as disruptive of order. Blake
  would have seen King as a devil of energy, a
  rebel working against bad laws for a higher good.

• French Revolution seen as evil by its opponents,
  but Blake sees it as an explosion of
  revolutionary energy with the potential to bring
  about universal human liberation.

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Holy Thursday

• In the Innocence version, the wise guardians of
  the poor are angels in Blakes sense of the
  term they uphold the status quo and are good
  by conventional standards. But the Experience
  version sees them differently as oppressors who
  coerce the charity children. The entire ritual
  can be seen as a shame.

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Dont be fooled by Blakes terms

• By using words like Heaven and Hell, Blake is
  calling attention to conventional moral attitudes
  which he wants to question and overturn. He is
  on the side of energy in terms of politics
  (liberty), art (originality) and human relations
  (a rejection of sexual repression).

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Proverbs

• You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make
  him drink.
• People who live in glass houses shouldnt throw
  stones.
• The early bird catches the worm.

• A stitch in time saves nine.
• A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
• Lie down with dogs and youll get up with fleas.
• All is not gold that glitters.

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The First Seven Proverbs of Hell

• In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter
  enjoy.
• Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of
  the dead.
• The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

• Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by
  Incapacity.
• He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
• The cut worm forgives the plow.
• Dip him in the river who loves water.

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Byrons Manfred and the Byronic Hero
Lord Byron in Albanian dress.
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Byrons Life

• Byrons father Mad Jack Byron abandoned his
  mother, Catherine Gordon after running through
  her fortune.
• She took her son back to her home in Aberdeen,
  Scotland.
• He was ten years old when he inherited the title
  of Lord Byron and the ancestral Bryon home,
  Newstead Abbey near Nottingham.

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George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron
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Catherine Gordon
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Newstead Abbey around 1880
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Photograph of Newstead Abbey Today
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Childhood and Education

• Byron received sexual advances from his nurse,
  Mary Gray, when he was about eleven.
• He was educated at Harrow, where he compensated
  for his club foot by excelling at sports like
  boxing, swimming and cricket.
• At Trinity College in Cambridge, he lived
  extravagantly (he kept a trained bear) and got
  into debt, which plagued him all his life. He
  also formed a passionate attachment to a choir
  boy at Cambridge.

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Trinity College, Cambridge
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Byron at Age 19
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Byron as International Celebrity

• After his graduation, Byron traveled in Portugal,
  Spain, Gibraltar, Malta, Albania and Greece,
  places that were at the margins of Europe at that
  time, with his friend John Cam Hobhouse (1809
  1811).
• During this time he wrote the first two cantos of
  the poem that would make him an international
  celebrity, Childe Harolds Pilgriamage.

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Lord Byron Reposing in the House of a Fisherman
after Having Swum the Hellespont
Sir William Allan
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Turners Painting Childe Harolds Pilgrimage,
1823
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Man About Town The Best-Selling Author and His
Affairs, 1811 - 1814

• The identification of the dashing writer with his
  protagonist proved irresistible to his readers
  and attracted many women.
• Byron had infamous affairs with Lady Caroline
  Lamb (who wrote a novel, Glenarvon, with a
  villain closely based on Byron) Lady Oxford
  Mary Godwin Shelleys step-sister, Claire
  Clairmont and most notoriously, his half-sister
  Augusta Leigh.

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Cartoon of Byron as a Man About Town
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Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron
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Augusta Leigh, Byrons Half Sister
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Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelleys Step-Sister
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Marriage to Annabella Milbanke, 1815

• Byron tried to escape from the complications of
  his many affairs and from his mounting debt by
  marrying a wealthy heiress, Lady Annabella
  Milbanke in January, 1815.
• She was an intellectual with a particular gift
  for mathematics. Their daughter, Ada, was born
  in December 1815.
• The marriage was a disaster the couple separated
  in 1816.

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Annabella Milbanke Married Byron in 1815
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Ada Byron, 1815 - 1852

• Interestingly, their daughter, who never saw her
  famous father, wrote what has been called the
  first computer program.
• She worked with Charles Babbage, who invented an
  early computing machine.
• A software program developed by the U.S. Defense
  Department was named Ada in her honor in 1979.

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Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace
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Lord Byrons Novel The Evening Land by John
Crowley
Byrons novel uses a number of themes from his
life and from his work in a wild gothic story.
Crowleys novel intertwines three narrative
strands Emails (in the present) from a woman to
her lover and her estranged father Ada Bryons
diary and a text in code that turns out to be
The Evening Land, an undiscovered novel by Bryon.
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Byron in Exile

• Byron left England for good in 1816 driven away
  by scandal and debt.
• He lived in Geneva, where he first met Shelley,
  and later in Venice. He went to Pisa, where the
  Shelleys settled in 1819.
• Byron worked actively for Greek independence from
  Turkey, and died in Greece (1824) while training
  troops he paid to equip from his own funds.
• He is still a national hero in Greece.

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The Byron Café in Messolonghi, Greece
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Statue of Byron in Athens
Byron Touched by the Muse
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Welcome of Lord Byron at Messolgi

• Theodoros Vrisakis, 1861

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The Byronic Hero

• Sees himself as apart from ordinary people, a
  being of superior intellect and strength of will
  (like Manfred).
• Bears his terrible suffering (in his case, guilt)
  and rejects any power that would make him bend a
  knee.
• Accepts nobodys judgment or condemnation of him,
  only his own. 
• Insists on his ambition and his identity he
  seeks to strive, to seek, to find and not to
  yield, as Tennyson puts it in his poem Ulysses.

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The Byronic Heros defiant stance was influenced
by Miltons Satan
Satan Summoning his Legions
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And by the defiant Prometheus
Byron wrote a poem about Prometheus, making the
titan a type of the Romantic Rebel. Despite his
suffering, Prometheus refuses to give in to
Jupiter. He bears his suffering with great
courage and without Complaint. Byron offers him
as a model even against overwhelming odds we
can remain defiant. The stance itself becomes a
victory.
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And by the titanic figure of Napoleon
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Brooding Portrait of Lord Byron

• Theodore Gericault

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Characteristics of the Byronic Hero

• Gloomy and solitary (Manfred alone at midnight
  raising spirits)
• Powerful intellect and will (Manfred commands
  spirits and expresses his superiority to others)

• Burdened by guilt (Manfred is crushed by guilt
  over Astartes death strong implication of
  incest)
• Defiant (Manfred refuses to bend to anyone or
  anything)

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Byrons Manfred a Summary

• The play opens with Manfred brooding at midnight.
  He has gained great power through long nights of
  study and labor, but he is crushed by guilt. He
  calls up spirits who represent various aspects of
  nature and asks for oblivion total loss of
  consciousness but they cannot grant that. They
  imply that his spirit will outlive death. One of
  the spirits takes the form of his beloved, whom
  we later learn is Astarte, probably his sister.
  Manfred falls senseless.

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Manfreds Study
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• Manfred climbs high into the alps, where he
  attempts suicide, but is prevented by a chamois
  hunter. Manfred admires the hunters simple,
  decent life, but rejects the idea that he would
  exchange places. Though he suffers, he asserts,
  with great pride, that he can bear this
  suffering. We see his strange combination of
  complaint and defiance, a theme of the play.

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Manfred on the Jungfrau
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Compare Dores Image of Satan Struggling to Climb
out of Hell
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Manfred and the Chamois Hunter
Gustav Dore, 1853
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Hold, madman! though aweary of thy life,Stain
not our pure vales with they guilty blood
Ford Maddox Brown, begun 1840
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• Manfred calls up the Witch of the Alps, who asks
  to hear his story. He tells her that from his
  youth on he felt separate from and superior to
  all others except Astarte, his soul mate and
  female double. The implication is that she was
  his sister and that his great sin was incest. He
  implies that he had something to do with her
  death. The Witch offers to help if he promises
  to serve her. Manfred angrily refuses and she
  disappears.

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Manfred and the Witch of the Alps
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Manfred and the Alpine Witch
John Martin, 1837
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• Manfred descends into the underworld to confront
  Arimanes, the principle of evil. Various evil
  spirits demand that he bow before Arimanes, but
  Manfred refuses, defying them all. Arimanes,
• Impressed, grants his request to speak with
  Astarte. Her spirit appears but only calls his
  name and foretells his death. She ignores his
  request for forgiveness and he is convulsed in
  agony. The spirits ridicule his human weakness,
  until he uses his great will to recover. They
  grudgingly admit that he would have made a
  powerful spirit.

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Manfred and the Phantom of Astarte
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• The abbot visits Manfred in his castle, seeking
  to offer the comforts of Christianity prayer,
  repentance and absolution. Manfred is defiant
  and rejects the abbots attempts, saying
• I disdained to mingle with/A herd, though to be
  a leader and of wolves./The lion is alone and
  so am I.
• Manfred again asserts his solitary and superior
  nature. The abbot follows him to see if there is
  any chance to help Manfred gain redemption. He
  is witness to the final scene.

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• In the last scene, a spirits come to summon
  Manfred to hell, be he defiantly refuses
• I stand/upon my strength I do defy deny
  /Spurn back, and scorn ye!
• Manfred knows he is dying and does not fear
  death, but he will not submit to the spirits,
  just as he refused to submit to the Witch of the
  Alps or to Arimanes. He will judge and condemn
  himself rather than submit to any external power.
  This act of defiance is central to the Romantic
  Rebel.

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Tchaikovskys Manfred Symphony Fourth Movement
Henry Fuseli, The Rosicrucian Cavern (1804)