The Byronic hero
Translation of some passages from La morte la carne e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica by Mario Praz.
“And it is the latter [Byron] the one who is useful to talk about*, because it was Byron who brought to perfection the model of the rebel character, far descendant of Milton’s Satan.
The model of Milton’s Satan is instantly recognizable in the portrait of Byron made by the Earl of Lovelace in Astarte, the book who was the first to shed light upon the mistery of the life of the poet and Lovelace’s grandfather.
“He had a fancy for some Oriental legends of pre-existence, and in his conversation and poetry took up the part of a fallen or exiled being, expelled from heaven, or sentenced to a new Avatar on earth for some crime, existing under a curse, predoomed to a fate really fixed by himself in his own mind, but which he seemed determined to fulfil. At times this dramatic imagination resembled a delusion; he would play at being mad, and gradually get more and more serious, as if he believed himself to be destined to wreck his own life and that of everyone near him**”
It is a portrait, this one, which resumes in a dumped form the gloomy silhouette of an ideal self that Byron himself painted in Lara’s three famous stanzas (Canto I, XVII-XIX).***
The Corsair and the Giaour possess the same characteristics. The Corsair too has his forehead pale and high, and under a calm appearance conceals tenebrous passions. The furrows on his face and his frequent change in colour attracted the eye and, at the same time, left him perplexed, as if in the depths of his spirit horrible passions trembled although undefined. But nobody can say what his secret is. <Yet these in vain his eye could scarcely scan, nor glean experience from his fellow-man; but what he had beheld he shunn'd to show, as hardly worth a stranger's care to know; if still more prying such inquiry grew, his brow fell darker, and his words more few***>. The Giaour, finally - the first in order of time of these Byronic heroes – clearly reveals his relationship with Radcliffe’s Schedoni. The Giaour, who with his passion has indirectly caused the death of Leila, conceals his obscure past under the habit of the monk. […] Pale, with the face furrowed by an ancient pain, a vague Satanic smile, traces of a fallen nobility, (<a noble soul and lineage high>), worth of a better destiny: all these characteristics you may say that Byron get them from Radcliffe. [..] But it’s true that certain similarities with his own life – Zeluco too [Zeluco by John Moore, 1789] lost his father, and had shown signs of a violent temperament, as flammable as gunpowder, ready to explode in bursts of rage at the slightest provocation – had to have impressed him strongly.
If there can be no doubt on the Anglo-German origins of the colours used by Byron for his portrait of his outlaw-hero, on the other hand it’s possible that his thought was guided by Chateaubriand. The entity of the debt of Byron towards Chateaubriand is hard to define. French critics, relying on the words of Mémoires d’Outre-tombe (and reiterated in Essai sur la littérature anglaise), tend to exaggerate this same entity. Byron’s silence about Chateaubriand gives to the question a particular appearance, similar to that discussed familiarity of Chaucer with Boccacio’s Decameron.”
I beg pardon for errors and for my numb English. I may be good in comprehension, but in writing I have very little experience
*The translation is not exactly adherent to the Italian text. Unluckily, Praz’s Italian, as that of most of the authors of that time, is classical and a little archaic, thus is difficult to translate without losing in clarity.
** This passage comes directly from the English translation of Charles Du Bos’ Byron and the Need of Fatality.
*** I neglected to quote the passage as it is two pages long.
**** The quotes reported by Praz from an old Italian translation are not recognizable in the original. I chose the passage more likely and appropriate.