mind, nourished by traditional values, which
both Byron and Manfred repudiate. Childe Har-
old tentatively asserted the supremacy of the
individual will; Manfred glorifies it.
Heroic defiance cannot last indefinitely.
Either it must consume its possessor, as it does
Manfred, or be consumed, leaving a void behind.
The tone of the poetry afterManfredsuggests
that the latter may have happened to Byron,
that at least in his art the will to command expe-
rience absolutely slowly diminished. In the best
poems, especially inDon Juan, there is a resigna-
tion which accepts incoherent meaninglessness
and deals with it. In his epic, Byron’s outright
defiance fades, and he doubts the sanctity of most
things, the individual will and poetry included.
Having lowered his two earlier defenses against
ruin in the face of chaos, Byron adopted new
ways of dealing with an essentially absurd
world. Sentimental visions of innocence, shrine-
less pilgrimages, aesthetic imposition of order,
heroic self-assertion, and Shelleyan transcen-
dence all failed to uncover the coherent, ordered
world he sought. By 1818, then, Byron concluded
that no order was to be found. His consequent
acceptance of chaos is even reflected in the form
of his greatest works. The earlier poetry usually
had been written in rhymed forms dignified by
the weight of tradition. Pope and the heroic cou-
plet stood behind English Bards, and Scotch
Reviewers, supporting an interesting but lame
satire. Spenser and all his imitators gave aged
authority to the stanza form ofChilde Harold’s
Pilgrimage. Even the plays, although unique in
many ways, show obvious indebtedness to the
rich English and Greek dramatic traditions. But
in English there was noottava rimatradition, no
precedent for the unlikely rhymes, the diversified
metrics, sometimes Miltonic in grandeur, some-
times deliberately doggerel. Byron was on his
own, free from serious concerns for propriety
and structure. The rejection of most literary
standards complemented his rejection of the
idea of an ordered universe. With the freedom
afforded by theottava rima,Byron developed
his last defense against incoherence. Childe
Harold’s quest and Manfred’s peculiar knowl-
edgehadturneduprelativelylittletobecele-
brated in the world. The world, though, could
be neither transcended nor ignored, but had to
be faced. Laughter, even when it tended toward
the hysterical, offered a way of coping without
going mad.
A cursory look atBeppoconfirms that Byron
had begun to laugh. The material for an explosive
melodrama is here. After years away, Beppo
returns home to find his wife, Laura, keeping the
company of a ‘‘Cavalier Servente.’’ If Beppo had
had Childe Harold’s idealism and Manfred’s grand
passions, he could have turned his unexpected
homecoming into an Italian domestic tragedy.
The poem, though, gives nothing of the sort. The
hero accepts his plight calmly, makes necessary
adjustments. Laura occasionally enrages Beppo
by henpecking him, but his fury is soon spent.
Indeed, the Count, the ‘‘Cavalier Servente,’’ and
Beppo ‘‘were always friends.’’ No heroic venge-
ance; no epic destruction of Penelope’s suitors.
Beppo simply accepts things as they are, and his
acceptance resembles Byron’s own; things may
occasionally enrage him, but he is now amiable
on the whole.
Mazeppareaffirms the notion that nothing
now is very important. Much of the poem
approximates the emotional depths Byron had
examined in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimageand
Manfred.The tale relates events of passion, vio-
lence, and revenge, and Byron seems to have
exposed his pulse in public once again. But
finallyMazeppais an elaborate joke, a shaggy-
dog story constructed in 868 lines leading to a
punch line which deflates the serious tone of the
narrative. The fact that the King, the intended
audience, slept through the balance of the narra-
tive implies that the poet’s art is really a sopo-
rific. The poet may have participated in a greater
world created by the imagination inChilde Har-
old’s Pilgrimage(III, vi), but inMazeppapoetry
has become dull entertainment which may or
may not reach the intended audience; it really
does not matter, though, because the joke is for
the poet’s sake.
With the peculiar calm which resulted from
his realization of nothingness in the world, and
with the relaxed freedom afforded by theottava
rima,Byron wroteDon Juan. To demonstrate in
this poem the despair at a meaningless world is
easy. Indeed, the unlimited scope of the poem
makes it likely that nearly anything can be proved
by reference to the text. But the idea of nothing-
ness permeates the poem because it appears at so
many strategic and dramatic moments. For
example, the following stanza might be cited as
evidence of Byron’s vision of nothingness:
Ecclesiastes said, ‘‘that all is vanity’’—.
Most modern preachers say the same,
or show itChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage