Don Juan
Page 58
CANTO I
Byron began PM, his first draft in Venice, on 3 July 1818 and completed it on 6 September. He started M, his fair copy, on 16 September and finished it on 19 September. Both of these manuscripts lacked about forty stanzas, of which twenty-three were added before II November when he sent M to Murray, his London publisher. Byron continued at intervals to write more stanzas until the canto was published anonymously along with Canto II on 15 July 1819. The following stanzas are additions made at various times: 2–5, 15–17, 27–31, 35–6, 43, 88–9, 108, 118–19, 128–32, 149, 156, 166–8, 190–98, 201–20, 222. All variants in the first five cantos are taken from PM unless otherwise indicated.
1, 3 ] Till after
1, 6 Don Juan As Englishmen and Americans have often done, Byron anglicized the pronunciation of many foreign words and names. He gave ‘Juan’ two syllables and rhymed it with ‘new one’ and ‘true one’ here and in stanzas 5, 48 and 86, with ‘drew on’ (II 146), ‘threw on’ and ‘through one’ (VII 60; VIII 52), and even with ‘brewing’ and ‘ruin’ (XII 23; XIV 99).
1, 7 the pantomime According to E. H. Coleridge, the play that Byron refers to is Charles Anthony Delpini’s Don Juan; or, The Libertine Destroyed, in two acts, with music by Gluck, an abbreviated and bowdlerized version of Thomas Shadwell’s Libertine . S. C. Chew, however, quoting Gendarme de Bévotte, states that Delpini’s play was taken directly from the Spanish (Byron in England (1924), 47). These earlier conceptions of a crudely licentious Don Juan had little influence on Byron. His Juan is not a roué, but an affectionate lad, thrust by circumstance, or enticed, into amorous adventure.
2, 1–2 Vernon, the butcher Cumberland,…/… Howe Byron’s ‘heroes’ were all distinguished at one time in their military exploits.
2, 4 And filled their signposts then, like Wellesley now Byron alludes to the statues, streets and squares named for popular heroes, such as Wellington Street or Waterloo Bridge, which was opened on 18 June 1817, the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo; the Prince Regent and the Duke of Wellington were present at the ceremony. OED cites Byron’s use of ‘signposts’ here.
2, 5 like Banquo’s monarchs stalk The Witches caused the spectres of Banquo and eight kings to parade before the agonized eyes of Macbeth (IV i 112–24). Byron liked this scene and alluded to it twice more in DJ . See Canto X 18, 6, Canto XI 54, 3, and notes.
2, 6 ‘nine farrow’ of that sow
‘FIRST WITCH: Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten / Her nine farrow’ (Macbeth IV i 65).
2, 8 the Moniteur and Courier Two French newspapers: Gazette Nationale; ou le moniteur universel (Journal officiel de la République française, founded 1789) and the Courier Républicain (founded 1796).
3, 1–2 Barnave, Brissot,… / … La Fayette These ‘heroes’ were either promoters of or actors in the French Revolution.
4, 3 Trafalgar Formerly pronounced with the accents on the first and last syllables – Tráfalgár.
4, 5 Because the army’s grown more popular Byron’s gibe at the army was probably inspired by his resentment at the popularity of Wellington after Waterloo. ‘Nelson was a hero: the other [Wellington] is a mere Corporal, dividing with Prussians and Spaniards the luck, which he never deserved’ (‘Detached Thoughts’, LJ V 462).
4, 7 Besides the Prince is all for the land service The Prince Regent repeatedly tried to join the army in active service. Later the Prince upheld Castlereagh’s advocacy of large allowances to the army when a clamour for lowering expenses was made in Parliament following Waterloo.
4, 8 Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis British naval heroes.
5, 1 ]
In st. 5 Byron freely adapted part of a sentence that Horace wrote: ‘Vixere ortes ante Agamemnona multi; sed omnes inlacrimabiles urgentur ignotique longa / nocte, carent quia vate sacro.’ (‘Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in unending night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred bard.’) Horace, Ode IV 9, 25–8, trans. C E. Bennett (1919), 320–21.
6, 1 in medias res Following Homer’s practice, Horace stated that an epic writer hurried his reader into the middle of the story (Epistola ad Pisones, Ars Poetica, 148–9, trans. H. R. Fairclough (1926), 462–3).
6, 2 (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road) ] Horace commends it as the safest road
8, 4 So says the proverb ‘Whoever has not seen Seville has not seen a marvel ’ (‘Quien no ha visto Sevilla / No ha visto maravilla’).
9, 1 Jóse Byron accented the first syllable of Jóse, and in II 58 rhymed Jóse’s with ‘noses’ and ‘reposes’.
9, 2 hidalgo a low-ranking Spanish nobleman.
9, 4 ] From
From the most Gothic Goths of Gothic Spain
J. C. Collins compares Casti’s La Diavolessa IV 9, whose hero, Don Ignazio, was born in Seville: ‘La nobil sua famiglia / Drittamente scendea fin dai re Goti’ (‘His noble family descended straight down from the Gothic kings’). Studies in Poetry and Criticism (1905), 97.
10, 1–8 His mother was a learnéd lady,… / … she did Byron denied that Donna Inez was an ‘elaborate satire on the character and manners’ of Lady Byron in his ‘Reply to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine’ (no. 29, August 1819): ‘If there appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there be, it is in those who make it. I can see none’ (LJ IV 477). But readers have always found inescapable allusions to her.
11, 2 Calderón… Lopé Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) and Lopé de Vega (1562–1635) were Spanish dramatists.
11, 5 Feinagle’s were an useless art Gregor von Feinaigle (?1765–1819) lectured on mnemonics in England and Scotland in 1811.
11, 8 Donna Inez The rhyme with ‘fine as’ shows that Byron anglicized her name. He also used the Italian Donna instead of the Spanish Doña .
12, 1 Her favourite science was the mathematical Byron joked about this in Beppo 78, 7–8, and twice more in DJ II 3, 3 and III II, 8. He later said that Lady Byron ‘was governed by what she called fixed rules and principles, squared mathematically’ (Medwin, 48).
12, 3–4 ]
12, 6 dimity Thomas Moore noted this allusion to Lady Byron’s favourite dress material (Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence, ed. Lord John Russell (1853), II 266). In recent times dimity was a fine, thin cloth, often corded or figured. But OED, citing Byron’s use of the word, describes dimity as a stout cotton fabric, woven with raised stripes or figures, and used for bed covers, bedroom wall hangings, and sometimes for garments.
13, 4 her mode of speaking was not pure Inez spoke French about as precisely as Chaucer’s Prioress (Canterbury Tales, Prologue 124–6). E. Köbling noted this analogue (‘Byron und Chaucer’, Englische Studien, XXI (1895), 331).
14, 7 the Hebrew noun which means “I am” The Hebrew word ‘Yahweh’ (variously spelled in English) was apparently derived from a verb that meant to be or exist. Christian translators spelled it Jehovah. Exodus iii 13–14: ‘Moses said unto God… they shall say to me, What is his name? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.’
15, 4 Sir Samuel Romilly Solicitor-general from 1806 to 1807, he upheld many reform measures in Parliament Byron believed that Romilly was to represent him in the 1816 separation proceedings, having accepted a retaining fee. Romilly, however, went over to Lady Byron, and Byron never forgave him. He heard from Hanson in November 1818 that Romilly had killed himself (29 October 1818) after the death of his wife. Byron then inserted this stanza, which because of its disparagement of Romilly, Murray did not print in 1819.
16, 2 Miss Edgeworth’s novels Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), author of Practical Education,
Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, Moral Tales .
16, 3 Mrs Trimmer’s books on education Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) published Guardian to Education (1802–6), founded to protect the young from vicious political and moral propaganda, Comparative View of the New Plan of Education (1805) and The Teacher’s Assistant .
16, 4 Coelebs’ Wife In 1809 Hannah More (1745–1833) published Coelebs in Search of a Wife, comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits .
16, 7 ‘female errors fall’ Pope, The Rape of the Lock II 17.
17, 6 the best timepiece made by Harrison John ‘Longitude’ Harrison (1693–1776), an eminent horologist, perfected a chronometer which determined the longitude within half a degree.
17, 8 ‘incomparable oil’, Macassar A reference to the advertisements of A. Rowland and Son, whose ‘celebrated Macassar oil’ was sold throughout the early part of the century. Byron himself used it See Appendix, I 15–17.
20, 4] And so
21, 5 ‘brain them with their lady’s fan’ ‘Zounds! an were I now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan’ (Henry IV Part I II iii 25–6>.
21, 7 falchions swords. In the Middle Ages they were broad-bladed and slightly curved.
22 1–7 learnéd virgins…/… ladies intellectual About 1750 a group of ladies, wanting to substitute rational conversation for card playing and tea-table gossip, invited to their evening parties men of letters and aristocrats with literary interests. Among the original bluestockings, as they were soon called, were Elizabeth Montagu, Mrs Vesey, Elizabeth Carter, Mrs Ord, and later Fanny Burney and Hannah More, who wrote a poem about them, Bas Bleu, or Conversation. Some of these ladies studied ancient and foreign languages and published editions of classical authors, as well as novels and poems. There were several speculations about the origin of their name. According to Fanny Burney, when Benjamin Stillingfleet declined Mrs Vesey’s invitation because he lacked evening dress, she persuaded him to come in his blue stockings – ordinary worsted, instead of the usual black silk (Madame d’Arblay, Memoirs of Doctor Burney (1832), II 262–3). In Boswell’s version, when Stillingfleet, who was a lively talker, was absent, someone said ‘We can do nothing without the bluestockings’ (entry for May 1781, IV 108). Another explanation is that many who attended the meetings wore informal dress and that Mrs Montagu herself adopted blue stockings as the badge of the coterie. However, the name may have come from a Venetian society (1400) known as Della Calza from the colour of their stockings. Similar groups met in Paris at the end of the sixteenth century. Byron in his London period met the blue stockings of his day – the Misses Berry, Lydia White, Lady Beaumont, Mrs Wilmot and Lady Charlemont (‘that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book–learning’). Though he professed to disdain ‘ladies intellectual’ as silly, affected and insincere, he was attracted to well-read women: Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Oxford, Annabella Milbanke, the Countess Guiccioli and Lady Blessington. He returns often to the bluestockings in DJ : especially IV 108–11; XI 50–52; XIV 79; XV 41; XVI 47. See also Beppo, stanzas 72, 76–8, and his short satire The Blues .
27, 2 And tried to prove her loving lord was mad Medwin (44–7) gives Byron’s account of how Dr Baillie and the lawyer Lushington paid him a surprise visit in London. Byron believed that they were sent by Lady Byron’s mother to provide proofs of his insanity. Lady Byron later denied this.
27, 7 her duty both to man and God See letter of Lady Byron to Augusta Leigh, 14 February 1816: ‘Now, independent of any advice whatever, I deem it my duty to God to act as I am acting’ (LJ III 310–11).
28, 2 opened certain trunks Byron believed that his wife or someone in her service opened his desk or letter trunks (see Medwin, 43; Astarte, letter to Augusta Leigh, 269). See Appendix.
30, 5 malus animus In Terence’s The Lady of Andros 164, Simo says, ‘mala mens, malus animus’ (‘bad mind, bad heart’), trans. John Sargeaunt (1959), 18–19.
31, 7–8 ]
32, 1 Their friends Samuel Rogers, J. C Hobhouse, Francis Hodgson and Madame de Staël.
32, 2 Then their relations Byron probably had in mind his cousin George Anson Byron, who earned the poet’s unrelenting hostility because of partisanship for Lady Byron during the separation proceedings. George Byron, successor to the title upon Byron’s having no male heirs, was pointedly excluded from Byron’s will.
32, 6 ]
The Lawyers recommended a divorce
34, 3–5 ]
His death was very sudden – his disease
I never could make out> fragment
34, 7–8 ]
And naught survived him but his wife’s aversion.)
the slow fever called the tertian An intermittent malarial fever which returns every other day with convulsions, trembling and chills.
35, 1 Jóse was an honourable man See Julius Caesar III ii 83–101.
35, 2–5 ]
At times too he would get a little mellow –
But these are little foibles I pass over – >
35, 6–7 not so peaceable / As Numa’s (who was also named Pompilius) During the forty-three-year reign of Pompilius, the second king of Rome, there was comparative peace. See Aeneid VI 810–12.
36, 6 his household gods lay shivered round him See letter to Moore, 19 September 1818: ‘I could have forgiven… any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me’ (LJ IV 262).
36, 8 Save death or Doctors’ Commons ] Save death or
Doctors’ Commons Buildings of the civil courts that had jurisdiction over divorces.
37, 2 messuages House with adjacent buildings and adjoining land.
37, 6–7 ]
The interest of an only son – like the fond mother.>
An only son In these and the following lines, Byron refers to the coincidence that he and other members of his family were only children: it ‘looks like fatality almost. But the fiercest Animals have the rarest numbers in their litters, as Lions, tigers, and even Elephants which are mild in comparison’ (‘Detached Thoughts’, LJ V 467). See Canto XVII 2, 1–2.
42, 1–4 ]
And Virgils second eclogue a bad sample> ]
Ovid’s a rake as
Ovid… Anacreon… Catullus… Sappho’s ode See Ovid’s Amores and the Ars Amatoria; the passionate love hymns of Anacreon and Catullus (lyrics to Celia, Sappho, Lesbia); and Sappho’s Ode to Aphrodite .
42, 5–6 Longinus To show that sublime writing required the selection and unifying of salient detail, Longinus quoted an ode by Sappho on the madness of a lover: ‘To me he seems a peer of the gods, the man who sits facing you and hears your sweet voice and lovely laughter; it flutters my heart in my breast. When I see you only for a moment, I cannot speak; my tongue is broken, a subtle fire runs under my skin; my eyes cannot see, my ears hum…’ (Longinus, On Sublimity, section 10, trans. D. A. Russell (1965), 14–15).
42, 8 Formosum pastor Corydon The opening words of Virgil’s Eclogue 2, Alexis, a poem about pederastic love, are ‘The shepherd Corydon burned for fair Alexis, his master’s darling’ (Virgil’s Works, trans. J. W. Mackail (1950), 268).
43, 1 Lucretius’ irreligion In the philosophical poem, De rerum natura, Lucretius adopts the atomic theory of the universe of Epicurus and seeks to show that the course of the wo
rld can be explained without resorting to divine intervention, his object being to free mankind from terror of the gods.
43, 6 downright rude Juvenal’s sixteen extant satires depict Roman society of the first century after Christ and denounce its vices.
43, 8 nauseous epigrams of Martial Martial left a collection of fifteen hundred epigrams, witty but frequently coarse.
44, 7 add them all in an appendix ‘Fact. There is, or was, such an edition, with all the obnoxious epigrams of Martial placed by themselves at the end’(Byron, 1819). Possibly a reference to Epigrammata… interpretatus est (1701). In this edition the indelicate epigrams are at the end, where the young Dauphin of France, to whom the volume is dedicated, could readily find them.
47, 3 To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured Jerome (c. 340–420) during an illness at Antioch had a vision in which Christ rebuked him for preferring pagan to Christian study. He promptly retired to the desert southeast of the city where he meditated, learned Hebrew and translated manuscripts (373–9). Though he thereafter travelled widely and often engaged in partisan polemic with too much personal invective, he consistently favoured the monastic life and finally settled in a Bethlehem monastery where he revised and translated the scriptures. Chrysostom also spent ten studious and ascetic years in the desert near Antioch (c. 370). Later as an archbishop he advocated austere simplicity, deposed thirteen archbishops for licentiousness, and denounced the wanton luxury of the Empress Eudoxia.
47, 8 make the reader envy his transgressions ‘For thou wert with me at every turn, most mildly rigorous, and ever and anon besaucing all my unlawful pastimes with most bitter discontents’ (St Augustine’s Confessions, trans. William Watts (1912), 65–9).
50, 2 At twelve he was a fine but quiet boy The New Anti-Jacobin I (April 1833), no. 1, in ‘A Cast of Casti’ compares Casti’s La Diavolessa stanza 12: ‘Entrambe giunte a dodici anni appena’ (‘Both having hardly reached the age of twelve’).