single tone of voice, would be to edge toward
consistency, and consistency is more than the
hobgoblin of small minds; it is madness. Byron’s
‘‘mobility,’’ though, allows him to keep playing
opposites off against one another in a desperate
defense against despair. If love becomes painful, it
must be mocked. If war is violent and cruel, there
must be women wondering when the raping will
begin. If there is an Aurora Raby, there must be a
Lady Adeline. Rapid movement with a shifting
world is the only means of survival.
Secondly, the character of Juan himself dem-
onstrates the emptiness of the world Byron inhab-
ited. Mobility becomes the habit of Juan’s soul.
A reader spends an immense amount of time
with Juan, but finally knows very little about his
character. Even more important, Juan almost
completely lacks the willwhich sustained Childe
Harold and Manfred. As numerous critics have
pointed out, the world acts upon him. Even his
few willed acts, like the saving of Leila, are vague
gestures that go nowhere. Like Auden’s unknown
citizen, ‘‘When there was peace, he was for peace;
when there was war, he went.’’ When there is an
empress to pamper him, he lets her. But that is
Juan’s victory; the moment determines both his
actions and his essence.
Finally, the essential formlessness of the
poem reflects Byron’s conviction that life is ulti-
mately incoherent and chaotic. The poem literally
sprawls from Spain to Greece, from Greece to
Turkey, from Turkey to Russia, and from Russia
to England. Byron was too much an artist to try
to impose strict, traditional artistry on Juan’s
meandering. He simply terminates episodes
when they no longer interest him, and numerous
digressions interrupt and defy a strictly coherent
narrative. This formlessness, though, comes not
from incompetence, but from Byron’s under-
standing of how he had to operate within his
world in order to stay sane. From one canto to
the next he wrote what pleased him, how it
pleased him. If he decided that the reader did
not need to know how Juan escaped from the
Seraglio, Byron did not bother to tell. If Leila,
who was the occasion for Juan’s one really heroic
and compassionate act, virtually disappears from
the poem though she remains with Juan, the poet
does not care. What did it matter? The poem
meant more to Byron as process than as achieve-
ment. With urbane laughter and the emotional
detachment afforded thereby, Byron survived
in his poetic world which earlier had nearly
devoured him. Byron’s own comment that parts
ofChilde Harold’s Pilgrimagewere written by a
man much older than he would ever be is appro-
priate. Childe Harold’s idealism-to-anguish jour-
ney tired the poet; the endless growth and process
ofDon Juannot only kept him young, but sus-
tained him in a world which he intellectually knew
and experimentally proved to be imperfect.
Source:Howard H. Hinkel, ‘‘The Byronic Pilgrimage to the
Absurd,’’ inMidwest Quarterly,Vol.15,No.4,Summer
1974, pp. 325–65.Sources
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and IV and The Vision of Judgement, Basil Blackwell,
1968, p. 58.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III,
stanza LXXII, Canto IV, stanzas CXXVIII-CXXX,
CLXXVIII-CLXXXIV, inLord Byron: Selected Poems,
edited with a preface by Susan J. Wolfson and Peter J.
Manning, Penguin, 1996, pp. 440, 552, 567–69.
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https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
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teenth and Twentieth Centuries (1789–1950), 6th ed.,
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Joseph, M. K.,Byron, the Poet, Victor Gollancz, 1966,
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Manning, Peter J.,Byron and His Fictions, Columbia
University Press, 1966, pp. 96–97.
Marchand Leslie, A., ed.,Lord Byron: Selected Letters
and Journals, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
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Rutherford, Andrew,Byron: A Critical Study, Oliver and
Boyd, 1961, p. 97.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, ‘‘Ozymandias,’’ inShelley’s Poetry
and Prose, selected and edited by Donald H. Reiman and
Sharon B. Powers, Norton, 1977, p. 103.
Woodward, Christopher,In Ruins, Pantheon Books,
2001, p. 13.
Wordsworth, William,Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth and
Coleridge, edited with introduction, notes and appendices
by R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones, Methuen, 1968, p. 266.Further Reading
Abrams, M. H.,Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and
Revolution in Romantic Literature, Norton, 1971.
This renowned study of Romanticism examines
poetry and philosophy in England and Germany,Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage