Essays on literary works - 2023
My Understanding of Byronism and Byronic Hero
Lord George Gordon Byron
And after him, like the noise of the sea, a genius, the ruler of our thoughts, sped away from us. Disappeared, mourned by freedom ... A. S. Pushkin. One must have the strength to rise above one's own physical shortcomings, which every person has. So, like Byron, who, being lame, could swim across the channel between the Peloponnese and Western Asia. You must have the strength to rise above your own fears, which every person also has. To resist the horror of death that seizes a person and encourages her to sit still and endure. Fear of battle that causes one to drop one's weapon and run or raise one's hands. And this extraordinary lord took part in the activities of the Italian Carbonari and Heterists of Greece. One must have the strength to overcome one's own social prejudices, inspired from a pink childhood. For example, about the special role of the aristocracy or about the inferiority of the common people. It was he, George Gordon Noel Byron, who at the age of 10 inherited the title of Lord, was brought up and educated first in Garrow and then in Cambridge, and after reaching the age of majority became a member of the House of Lords of the British Parliament. It was he who, on February 27, 1812, delivered a speech from the parliamentary rostrum against the Luddite law. These people, Byron argued, were guilty of a serious crime called poverty.
You need to have the strength to endure the terrible loneliness that your environment will condemn you to and the betrayal of your loved ones, and slander, and lawsuits, and all this will be retribution for the fact that you are not like that ...
Byronism is also an impotent despondency. The very life that the "encyclopedists" propagandized as just and natural, having become a reality, looked like an evil parody of the "kingdom of freedom." It only added to the already existing conflicts and injustices new ones - no less cruel and inhumane. The story itself turned out to be such that the mind had no chance to influence it. So the man bulged out like a pitiful plaything of forces full of secrets. Byron himself and his corsairs and childe harolds did not believe in social progress. They did not trust science and industry, suspecting in them the very irrational, and perhaps hellish forces that would simply lead a person to new misfortunes and torture. They saw how a person spiritually devastates under the pressure of the "golden calf". And that these same processes took place not only in England, but everywhere, then the heroes and their creator were filled with despair, "world sorrow." They saw themselves as prisoners of a terrible world that lies in evil. Here was the terror of gold, the pressure of an inevitable and evil fate.
The struggle against these fatal forces was completely hopeless, since human forces would not be enough to overthrow this system. And if it were enough, then where is the guarantee that victory will not bring new senseless misfortunes? Nevertheless, neither Byron nor his heroes could sit in the dreary expectation of the “liberator”, who with a wave will break the circle of endless monotonous days. These were the heroes who went to battle under the slogan "Will or death!", without hoping for victory.* But death in borba was so famous!
The moment of death itself was just one moment in a life full of courage, a force that found an enemy before which others conquered without resistance. This is Byronism.
Byron's poem "Prometheus" was first published in 1816. Byron's verse is not a variation on the tragedy of Aeschylus or the myth of Prometheus. As in all the lyrics of the romantic English poet, the personal experiences and thoughts of the lyrical hero are put forward in the first place, caused by the image of the titan Prometheus, his feat in the name of humanity. Byron's verse, which consists of three parts, is constructed as a direct appeal of the author to the titan Prometheus. It is full of passion, sympathy and understanding. The suffering of Prometheus, his steadfastness in the trials of Fate, the dignity with which he carries his cross - all this makes the titan closer to mere mortals than to the Gods, who are harsh and merciless to man, indifferent to her suffering. Prometheus countered the "soullessness of heaven", the hatred that dominates the earth, with kindness.
Why not Victory - His death? - with these lines the poet ends his thoughts about the theomachist Prometheus, who embodied the best features of a person: kindness, readiness for a feat and self-sacrifice in the name of people, steadfastness in the struggle, dignity and pride. Prometheus, by his fate, showed people their long and difficult path to happiness. And the very struggle for it will become the content and meaning of their lives for many centuries.