BYRON, GEORGE GORDON. - English poet, b. Jan. 22, 1788 in London, d. Apr. 19, 1824 at Missolonghi, in Greece, where he had gone to fight for the liberation of that people.
Noble and wealthy, he embodied the figure of the "dandy" then in vogue. The adventurous itinerary across all of Europe was transfigured in his imagination: and from it resulted Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-16-18), which in substance became a pictorial diary in which his hero dominated, gloomy and scornful: Harold, "weak son of doubt and death, who rests his hope only on fragile reeds" (Childe Harold's Pilgr., II, st. 3).
This hero was repeated in the verse tales (1813-16): The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, Parisina. Of '17 was Manfred, mirror of a murky passion of his; and of '21 the apocalyptic Cain, published during his stay in Italy, along with the other three dramas: Marin Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari. A rebel against a punishment he does not feel to be his own, Cain, having abandoned God, gives himself over to Lucifer, in the vain hope of finding in him an answer to his anguished questions; and when he sees Abel ever more bound to that God whom he hates, he kills him and, in despair, flees into exile. The work bears the mark of the old myth of the God of evil.
In '19 he began the publication of his masterpiece, Don Juan, an epic satire. In this poem, in which comedy, tragedy, voluptuousness and cynicism alternate, are set forth the adventures of the protagonist in Spain, Greece, Russia, up to his moving to England, where through him the poet satirizes the customs and society of the time.
A rebel against every morality, against every law or social convention, but incapable of proposing new values, B. made of his existence a rebellion that was an end in itself, stamped by the need for fatality.
It is true that in moments of interior concentration B. felt the fascination of Christ and the need to believe (Don Juan, c. XV, st. 18). Then his hand knew how to trace, in Parisina, the sublime picture of the priest who absolves from sins and restores calm to the dying Hugo, and, in Don Juan (c. XV), the purest profile of a Catholic virgin; just as he succeeded in evoking, in the same poem (III, stt. 101-103), the mystical suggestion of the Ave Maria, later echoed by Carducci. But these are isolated passages; nor should his declared "propension to Catholic doctrine" be regarded as anything more than a momentary aesthetic attitude (Th. Moore, Letters and journals of L. B. with notices of his life, 2 vols., New York 1830, lett. 283, 482).
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Franco Costabile