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Jerome McGann and Paper Plans. April 15, 2007

Posted by jophine in : Criticism, Hero, Hilarious Things , comments closed

It’s safe to say that this weekend was pretty sweet. Among other things (not all of which were Byron-related),  I met Jerome McGann (which is about as Byron-related as you can get without being Ada Byron or syphilis.) We had a good hour-long conversation, and then he left.  Before I get to the work part of this post, though, I’d like to announce that if I get into grad school at UVA, Jerome McGann says he’ll be my advisor, which is pretty super-awesome.  So, yay me!  I think that’s enough ego-boosting.  (Though, I have to admit, in the face of a man whose books I’m using, I felt kind of like a blithering idiot. It was really intimidating, and the only thing that really put me at ease was saying more smart-sounding words.)

Because of the visit, I’ve decided to shift my focus. I’m still working with Cain as the model, so the title of the paper can — and will — stay. But now I’ve decided to spend all of part three of three talking strictly about Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; after describing my thesis to him, Dr. McGann pointed out a number of passages in canto 4 which not only illustrate the reconciliation described in canto 3, but do it with this really pretty metaphor, reminiscent of Tennyson’s Ulysses. I want to look at the construction of Harold in canti 1 and 2, and look harder at the Albanian section of 2; there’s some kind of resolution there, where Harold/Byron temporarily finds peace. I think the reason why might be because the Albanians don’t — in Byron’s mind — have a historical sanctity to violate. That’ll be a good discussion, I think.

Things I’ve decided not to do: Though it would be awesome, I don’t think I have the time to compare and contrast Byron’s hero with the epic hero and the pastoral hero. That means no genre studies, which means I can’t really bring in the cute moment in DJ canto 4, where Apollo plucks at Byron’s ear. Sorry, Virgil’s sixth eclogue! There’s no room for you! Also, I’ve decided to make Don Juan more a part of the conclusion, with only a short discussion of how Byron might have gotten DJ to the French Revolution and his death.

So there’s that.

Rest of the paper outline:

ii. Heroic evidence in Manfred, The Giaour, Beppo (if I get around to reading it), and “Prometheus”

– Present circumstances: things really suck. Manfred talks about his present, where we are with the Giaour, Prometheus chained to the rock.

– Different types of personal history: things used to really suck.

> The ellipsis with Astarte, and a one-sided dialogue with history.

> The events in the Giaour, and how they’re told.

> Prometheus and Zeus: ow, my precious insides (history or present circumstance?)

– Different types of absorbed history: even without me, things kind of sucked.

> Prometheus seeing visions of the future.

> What is in the Giaour? Will this even work?

> The awe-inspiring AWESOME POINT: Manfred and Geological history.

– Attempts at reconciliation

> “Prometheus”: introduction to death. Is death a victory? If it is for a demi-god, is it for man?

> The Giaour: failure. Death as submission to the pressures of memory.

> Manfred: success. Death on one’s own terms.

iii. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: the evolution of the Byronic hero

STUFF GOES HERE.

iv. Epilogue and Conclusions: Don Juan

STUFF GOES HERE.

I guess I should finish that outline some day.

Paper: part 1. April 15, 2007

Posted by jophine in : Dramatic Plays, Hero , comments closed

*****

i. Cain as model

            Cain, published in 1921, is the penultimate work in this study, but it is an apt place to begin an examination of history. When the play begins, the world that Cain knows has had few events, and Byron focuses on the more dramatic of these: the creation of Earth and man, the loss of Paradise, and the introduction and threat of death. Cain initially constructs his identity based on this history, but his dissatisfaction with his present circumstance of laboring for his food prompts a curiosity when Lucifer offers him knowledge. “Let me but / be taught in the mystery of my being,” Cain entreats (Act I, lines 322-3), which begins the conflict of every Byronic hero: the acquisition and understanding of a greater history beyond the self and the ability (or inability) to reconcile history with the present. Because the history of man at this point is so short, Byron has a rare opportunity to clarify his philosophy about different types of experience, and thus Cain serves as a concise model for the Byronic hero’s attempt at historical reconciliation. 

            First, the Byronic hero must be dissatisfied. This discontent appears in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage as wanderlust, in Manfred as unwanted memory. At the beginning of the play, Cain is troubled by the threat of Death, which no one has yet experienced. In Act I, he questions first the need to labor for life (lines 64-5), then the desire for life at all (lines 110-115). Because of the intrusion of death, he begins to doubt God’s goodness: “I judge but by the fruits – and they are bitter – / Which I must feed on for a fault not mine” (lines 78-9). Though initially self-concerned, Cain begins to see death and its unfairness in his surroundings, particularly in young creatures such as his son (Act III, lines 22-5), the sacrificial lamb (Act III, line 266), and all future lambs and kids “which fed on milk, to be destroy’d in blood” (Act III, 293). Byron portrays a Cain who does not seek God’s favor, but struggles to understand why he should worship a God who creates life which leads only to death. Though this argument is not original to literature or theology, Cain’s encounter with Lucifer leads to a sophisticated consideration of personal experience versus external history.

            From dissatisfaction comes the quest for resolution. Unable or unwilling to worship like the rest of his family, Cain asks a series of questions until, as if prompted, Lucifer appears to answer them. Byron uses “Lucifer,” light-bringer, instead of Satan to emphasize the knowledge that the fallen angel bears. In one of their first exchanges, Lucifer tells Cain not of the world of man, but the worlds, plural, which God has created (Act I, line 149). Cain replies, “Thou speak’st to me of things which long have swum / In visions through my thought: I never could / Reconcile what I saw with what I heard” (Act I, lines 167-9). Even before Lucifer’s involvement in the heroic struggle, the story of the loss of Paradise is troublesome to Cain. The history that his parents have told him has already become a focus of obsession; Cain relates to Lucifer how he stood by the gates of an Eden that he never experienced (Act I, line 172). This “heard” or absorbed history (as this paper will call it) is the focus of the Byronic hero’s conflict. Though Cain’s absorbed history is limited at first to the beauty and loss of Eden, Lucifer exposes the hero to a greater past: not the history of the world, but the history of all worlds.

            Byron devotes Act II of the play to an explorative journey, in which Lucifer frames his discussion of history with physical settings meant to give Cain perspective on his own earthly existence. Act II, scene 1 is set in “The Abyss of Space.” Perhaps Byron’s Lucifer is not anticipating space-travel, but in this scene he makes plain his role as a bringer of knowledge: “I will show / What thou dar’st not deny,– the history / Of past – and present, and of future worlds” (lines *****). Byron intentionally sets his discussion of the future in space, far from the fertile ground of Paradise—indeed, Cain has to admit that he can’t identify the one spot of Eden on the blue circle of Earth (lines *****). Here, Lucifer reveals the future history of Cain and man, but Cain, still tortured by the unfairness of death, says,

Here let me die: for to give birth to those

Who can but suffer many years, and die—

Methinks it is merely propagating Death,

And multiplying murder. (lines *****)

The immortality of the soul is no comfort to Cain, who does not want to be a progenitor of generations of men whose only destiny is to die. Even the knowledge of the immortal soul does not ease his teleological despair (“immortal despite of me”, lines *****), and he seeks more knowledge from being nearer to death. This discussion of the future and fertility becomes a part of Cain’s absorbed history, which he considers in the final lines of the poem; he recognizes the irony that he has prevented Abel from fulfilling this destiny of propagation (Act III, lines *****). The case of Abel’s death shows clearly that Cain is unable to reconcile his outrage at flesh-sacrifice and his knowledge that Abel would have populated the earth—if only God had not willed his murder.

            Act II, scene 2 opens in Hades, where Lucifer gives Cain one final piece of history to absorb: the pre-Adamite past. Before this scene, Cain does not know that such a past exists. In Hell, Lucifer shows Cain the phantom of an ocean and “its inhabitants / The past Leviathans” (lines *****), and phantoms of earthly mammoths “ten-fold / in magnitude and terror” (lines *****). Byron populates a pre-human world with enormous beasts, but it is evident that he was influenced by the discoveries of his time. Georges Cuvier, a naturalist and paleontologist whom Byron refers to in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, had in the two decades previous to Cain’s publication identified the pterodactyl, the plesiosaur, and a giant mammoth (McCarthy 432). Additionally, Cuvier had proposed that reptiles, not mammals, had been the dominant fauna (Rudwick 158). Byron, who was clearly familiar with Cuvier’s work, seems to allude to this theory in the earlier scene; Cain asks if the seemingly infinite other worlds have serpents, and Lucifer replies, “Must no reptiles / Breathe, save the erect ones?” (lines *****). To Cain, the existence of these pre-human beasts is evidence that God is willing to destroy a world full of creations, including men. This history becomes a part of his chronicle of the world, and because – according to Lucifer – he is destined to populate Earth, he can see it only as a destiny for himself and his progeny.

            The history that Cain absorbs on his journey adds to the history he has been told about the fall of man. He does not experience one as a metaphor for the other, but has both chronologies within him, simultaneously witnessing the death of the dinosaurs and the death of men. The result is internal turmoil, and Cain tells his brother that these sights “have made [him] / Unfit for mortal converse” (Act III, lines *****). Though more knowledgeable, Cain recognizes now that he is less pious than Abel, and his direct address to God is his attempt to reconcile the history he has learned and the perceived unfairness of his present circumstances. Here, he gives God one last chance to be good in his eyes: God must choose between the innocent lamb and fruits of the earth which have not “suffered in limb or life” (Act III, line *****). History – more specifically, God’s history of killing the great lizards – has become a crucial component of Cain’s character, which influences his behavior and his sense of morality so much that he kills his own brother.

            Cain is ideal as a model because it shows the direct and extreme influence of history on the hero’s life. He is so consumed by history that he seeks to engage with it, as Byron himself did in the Greek wars of independence. However, life does not occur in the past, and eventually, the Byronic hero must attempt to reconcile his knowledge of history with his present actions. In the final scene of the play, Cain suffers the consequences of the murder and desires death (Act III, line 482). His punishment, however, is life—the angel marks his forehead, but Cain himself must accept and continue with life in order to enact a full reconciliation. Cain does not expect or desire the forgiveness of God, but instead makes his reconciliation with the earth, which he is doomed to wander: “Oh, earth! Oh, earth! / For all the fruits thou hast render’d to me, I / Give thee back this.—Now for the wilderness” (Act III, lines 542-4). This short declaration captures the spirit of the Byronic hero; when Byron’s hero commits himself to the wild, he succeeds—not because he has somehow defeated life, but because he proceeds to endure the weights of life and memory simultaneously.

            Cain’s success has a counterpoint in the failure of the play’s other hero, Lucifer. At the end of their journey, Lucifer gives one of the English language’s most potent speeches on freedom of thought, in which he concludes, “Think and endure,— and form an inner world / In your own bosom—where the outward fails” (Act II, lines 463-6). Cain has experienced outrage over what he perceives as an unjust God; his rebellion and the murder of Abel are a result of his thought, but the endurance springs from Adah’s love and the realization that he must live. Lucifer too shares his history: the fall of worlds and of Paradise, the conflict with God, and the ceaseless obsession with the past. Also like Cain, Lucifer is doomed to live, and he devotes his life not only to truth, but using truth to malign others against God “world by world, / And star by star, and universe by universe” (Act II, lines 435-441) without end. However, Lucifer is unaware that God is no longer battling him in the same, physical way as He did during the war in heaven. Instead, Lucifer has doomed himself to this immortality of hatred, not because the war with God will not find resolution, but because the war consumes him. As Jerome McGann said in an interview, the successful hero must end in a state of “resting without rest” (**Interview**); where Lucifer is a slave to his battle, Cain finds peace in his free will and resolution to endure.

            Cain portrays the fullness of Byron’s heroic vision. From a stagnant and uncomfortable beginning, the hero reflects upon his own history and an external history that he assimilates into his personality. His personal history is tragic, in part a cause of his present dissatisfaction. His absorbed history is universal, beyond the reaches of his experience, but grand enough that he wishes to engage with it. His struggle with these histories and with his present circumstance is the plot of the poem and Byron’s main concern: how do people live with trauma, either their own or the world’s? The rest of this paper examines the evolution of Byron’s philosophy up until the poetic moment in Cain.

*****

So that’s what I’ve got so far. 4.19.2007: edited, and clearer now.