Byron and the distorted prism
. Indeed, Byron’s pride in possessing such a coveted knowledge of the classics can be seen most tangibly in a letter he sent to his friend Robert Charles Dallas on the 21 st January 1808, the eve of his twentieth birthday, writing ‘ As to my reading, I believe I may aver without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department, so that few nations exist or have existed with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted from Herodotus down to Gibbon. ’ (Byron, 1976, pp. 147-148). Such boastfulness perhaps explains Byron’s more implicit classical references throughout CHP as stemming from a need to exercise his aristocratic superiority in alluding to such obscure figures from antiquity; as a means of ‘ flagging up his allegiance to a form of knowledge culturally enveloped – and perceived as naturally so – in notions of superiority; in cultural taste and intellectual refinement ’ (Pregnolato, 2018, pp. 47-48) . The ‘influence of allegiance’, and consequent ly the influence of Greek antiquity, can be identified most prominently in Canto II of CHP in which Byron makes repeated reference to events in Greece’s ancient history, for example the Spartan warriors who died in Thermopylae during the Persian Wars (II, 73):
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait — Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Allusions to ancient Greece as above also follow a general trope of praise for a moving landscape, followed by lament for beauty spoiled by whatever causes, be that man, war, death, or time (Schoina, 2022, p. 3), as in the progression from CHP II, Stanza 85
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou! Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now;
To CHP II, Stanza 88
Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told.
In employing such a pattern Byron appears to remain confined within the strictures of, and dominated by, the literary tropes, attitudes, and manners shaped by the tradition of literary philhellenism. As Terrence Spencer remarks, ‘ Byron was following in the footsteps of scores of other Englishmen and travellers in Greece ’ (Spencer, 1954, p. 290). Yet although such conformity to tropes of Greek antiquity
21
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker