Byron and the distorted prism
is highly prevalent, within Byron’s writing there are the beginnings of a deviation from ‘ well-tried eighteenth-century literary images ’ (Schoina, 2022, p. 3) . Further investigation of Byron’s seemingly strict adherence to the ‘influence of allegiance’, reveals that such allusions to Greek antiquity are poorly executed by Byron in spite of his boastful claims to friends. The critic William Hazlit remarked at the time, ‘[Byron’s] Childe Harold contains a lofty and impassioned review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as wrecks of time; but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of every school-boy, has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought [my italics], and has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery ’ (Hazlitt, 1825, p. 119). Hazlit asserts that Byron has approached the ‘burden of antiquity’ to which he must conform in a rather pedestrian, lacklustre, and cack-handed way, preferring allusions which are entertaining and emotive, but have little basis in fact. One can perhaps forgive Byron for attempting to dodge the full responsibility of his educated allegiances and avoid congealing his verse with excruciating accuracies, as Hazlit seems to want; after all, Byron is writing a poem and not a textbook. Nevertheless, Hazlit does identify a key discrepancy in CHP concerning the influence of antiquity: despite its prevalence in the poem, almost all exploration of Greek antiquity is feeble and shallow. While Hazlit takes a critical view of Byron’s ‘school boy’ references, it can nonetheless be argued that such a subversion of philhellenic tropes, however minor, is absolutely characteristic of the ‘anti - establishment’ Byron. While admittedly not a critical rebellion that contributed to Byron’s infamous description as ‘ mad, bad, and dangerous to know ’ , the poet continues to subtly depart from philhellenic norms through tonal change. Indeed, although often accused of helpless melancholy when reflecting upon the destruction of ancient Greece, 1 Byron chooses to deviate from such incessant lamentation, repurposing the beauty of modern Greece to achieve this. Whilst it is true that the beauty of modern Greece serves to exacerbate an often tragic contrast between ancient glory and modern degradation, it is also simultaneously a source of solace for Byron as he delights in the beauty of the landscape he sees before him, admitting ‘ Art, Glory, Freedom fail — but Nature still is fair ’ (Canto II, Stanza 87). It appears that Byron, exercising his privilege of being one of the few poets of the 19 th century to have written on Greece and have first-hand experience of the contemporary nation, is beginning to employ modernity as his literary lens in which to positively frame the aspirations of the modern nation; channelling traditional settings and monuments through an ‘ intense receptiveness to what he saw in Greece ’ (Spencer, p. 290). Byron therefore grounds his allusions to Greek antiquity as not only a cause for despair, but also as a ‘ stimulus to achievement among the Greeks and Europeans too ’ (Schoina, 2022, p. 4), showing an acute awareness of the modern Greek situation of being under Ottoman rule, as he writes in ( The Siege of Corinth . 371-78):
Despite of every yoke she bears, That land is Glory’s still and theirs! ’Tis still a watch -word to the earth. When man would do a deed of worth He points to Greece, and turns to tread, So sanctioned, on the tyrant’s head:
1 Schoina 2022: 3: ‘Byron’s Grecian poetry emphasizes the sadness of the poet for the departed glory of Greece.’
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