But ‘‘why then publish?’’—There are no
rewards
Of fame or profit when the World grows
weary.
I ask in turn,—Why do you play at
cards?
Why drink? Why read?—To make some
hours less dreary.
It occupies me to turn back regards
On what I’ve seen or pondered, sad or
cheery;
And what I write I cast upon the stream,
To swim or sink—I have had at least my
dream.
Writing is like a pointless game of cards or is
a soporific, like reading and drinking. It pacifies.
All these passages, and countless other, suggest
that Byron had become obsessed with emptiness
and futility. Art became a game, played only as
earnestly as suburban housewives might play
bridge, to keep blankness away.
This affable but calloused appraisal of the
world finally leads Byron to train his hero
quickly for the insubstantial, hypocritical society
he will find in the English Cantos. After several
stanzas of cataloguing ignominious historical
events and figures in England’s past and present,
the poet instructs Juan in how to survive in the
inanity of the English society Juan has entered:
But ‘‘carpe diem,’’ Juan, ‘‘carpe, carpe!’’
To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devoured by the
same happy.
‘‘Life’s a poor player,’’—then ‘‘play out
the play,
Ye villains!’’ and above all keep a sharp
eye
Much less on what you do than what
you say:
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem, but always what
you see.
(XI, lxxxvi)
All races and days in this society are transi-
ent, and Juan must learn self-annihilation and
shape-shifting if he is to play in a frivolous
world. This is self-annihilation, though, which
is manifested in convenient refusal to be a per-
son; Juan must always be whatever the situation
demands. This capacity to disguise one’s essen-
tial self while playing various roles is identified in
Canto XVI as ‘‘mobility.’’ While Lady Adeline
entertains her husband’s political supporters,
she assumes her role so elegantly that Juan
‘‘began to feel / Some doubt how much of Ade-
line was real’’ (xlvi). Furthermore:
So well she acted all and every part
By turns—with that vivacious
versatility,
Which many people take for want of
heart.
They err—’t is merely what is called
mobility,
A thing of temperament and not of art,
Though seeming so, from its supposed
facility;
And false—though true; for, surely,
they’re sincerest
Who are strongly acted on by what is
nearest.
‘‘Want of heart’’ is precisely what is wrong in
the world Juan inhabits. Strong will and heart
moved Childe Harold and Manfred through
anguished existences, though, and Byron, like
Juan and Lady Adeline, has learned that an emo-
tional commitment to an essentially meaningless
existence can only bring anguish. Don Juan will
prosper in England; like Lady Adeline he learns
to adjust to the moment at hand. Persistent and
flippant inconsistency is the only way to deal
with an insubstantial, incoherent world.
Don Juan is something of a labyrinth,
though, and around each corner and at each
dead-end is more evidence that the poet has deter-
mined existence itself to be an incoherent maze.
Rather than proceed with more particular illus-
trations, perhaps it is better to look at three
general points about the poem to show that it is
finally about nothingness. First, the very fact that
the poem concerns everything suggests that it is
ultimately about nothing. Byron admitted in a
letter to his publisher (April 23, 1818) that the
poem ‘‘is meant to be a little quietly facetious
upon every thing.’’ A central theme is impossible
to locate. At times the theme seems to be the old
discrepancy between illusion and reality. Or per-
haps it is, as several critics recently have argued,
the theme of the Fall with elaborate variations. Or
perhaps a desire to expose gross hypocrisy moti-
vated the poem. Or perhaps. The possibilities are
countless. The focus is finally nowhere. By being
everywhere,Don Juanis not anywhere—it is con-
stantly in the process of becoming, but it never
simply is, nor could have been until it ended, and
it could end only with Byron’s death. To look too
closely at any single subject, or to narrate in aChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage