Don Juan
Page 66
CANTO IV
For details of composition and publication see the head note for Canto III. The following stanzas were additions at various times: 1–7 (written in January 1820 after he decided to divide his original Canto III), 41, 55–6, 70, 99–101 (the preceding seven probably written in December 1819 after he had finished his first draft of Cantos III–IV), 102–6 (written after Byron moved to Ravenna and while he was making the fair copy during the first two weeks of January 1820).
1, 6 Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend ] Our Sin the same, and
1, 6–7 Our sin…/ Being pride which leads the mind to soar ‘… how glorious…/ Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down, / Warring in heaven.…’ (Milton, Paradise Lost IV 39–41).
Though rebukes of the pride of authors are common, the soaring image suggests that Byron may be recalling a reproach from one of his favourite poets: ‘In Pride, in reas’ning Pride, our error lies; / All quit their Sphere, and rush into the skies. / Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,…’ Pope, An Essay on Man, ed. Maynard Mack (1950), 1 123–8.
2, 7 widens ] broadens ] slackens S
3, 5–6 Now my sere fancy ‘falls into the yellow / Leaf’ ‘I have liv’d long enough : my way of life / Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf’ (Macbeth V iii 22–3).
3, 8 ] Restores
4, 1–2 if I laugh at any mortal thing, / ’Tis that I may not weep In Richardson’s Clarissa after Belford rebukes Lovelace for levity, the latter replies with the paradox that his grievous concern for Clarissa is the cause: ‘I struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections… and when I cannot, I am forced… to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry; for one or the other I must do: and is it not philosophy carried to the highest pitch, for a man to conquer such tumults… and, in the very height of the storm, to be able to quaver out a horse-laugh?’ (Clarissa, ‘Letter of Lovelace to Belford, Uxbridge, Sept 1, Twelve o’clock at Night’, Letter 92 (1950), IV 262). Chew noted another analogue in Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville I 2: ‘Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être obligé d’en pleurer’(’ I hasten to laugh at all things, for fear of being compelled to cry over them’). ‘Notes on Byron’). MLN, XXIX (1914), 106.
4, 5 ] First in the icy depths of Lethe’s Spring S, 1821
4, 7–8 Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; / A mortal mother would on Lethe fix Thetis, to render her son Achilles invulnerable, dipped him in the Styx, one of the rivers in the lower world. The waters of Lethe, a river near the Elysian Fields, caused forget fulness when they were drunk.
5, 1–3 Some have accused me…/… every line For the attack on the immorality of the first two cantos, see Var . IV 295–9. On the other hand, for the urbane view of John Scott in the London Magazine that DJ did not corrupt the morality of its readers, see E. L. Brooks, ‘Don Juan : Early Moral Judgments’, NQ, CCI (1956), 117–18.
5, 5 when I would be very fine when I affect an elegant and ornate style of writing, or try to be subtle and ingenious.
6, 3 Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme Luigi Pulci (1432–84) wrote the Margante Maggiore . Late in 1819 Byron began a laborious translation of Canto I of this burlesque. He knew that Pulci was the precursor of Francesco Berni (1498–1535), of Giovanni Casti (1721–1803), and of John Hookham Frere’s Whistle craft (1818), which was the immediate incentive of Beppo. Although no incidents and only a few details in DJ derive directly from Pulci, there is a resemblance in Byron’s use of colloquial language, of epigrams, and of rhetorical devices, such as the promise at the conclusion of some cantos to continue the poem if it meets with the reader’s approval.
7, 7–8 Apollo plucks me by the ear ‘When I felt compelled to celebrate kings and battles in epic song, the Cynthian [Apollo] plucked my ear and warned me’ (Virgil, Eclogue 6 3–4. This is a modified version of the translation by H. R. Fairclough (1920), 42–3).
8, 5 ]
Might sigh to see them of such hours bereft
9, 4–6 hail … assail …trail The rhyming triplet departs from ottava rima. In Canto II 49, Byron caught a different kind of rhyming change after publication and mailed his publisher a recast version. Evidently he never saw the necessity of altering Canto IV 9.
9, 5 Lightning ]
9, 7 ] A long and
12, 1 ‘Whom the gods love die young’ Solon explained to Croesus why he gave Celobis and Biton ‘the second prize of happiness’. At a festival of Hera these stalwart youths, when oxen were not available, ‘put themselves to the yoke’ and drew the carriage with their mother in it for forty-five furlongs to the temple and then made ‘a most excellent end of their lives, and the god showed by these men how that it was better for a man to die than to live’ [Herodotus, Book I, section 31, trans. A. D. Godley (1921), I 34–7). See also The Bride of Abydos II 641–9.
14, 7 ] Sweet playful
17, 2 ] But
17, 6–7 ]
Where Hymen
Where Hymen’s
18, 3 ] Who
22, 1 prophet eye Byron’s epithet, where ‘prophetic ‘would have been more conventional, was recorded by OED .
23, 5 ] When Juan
When Juan spoke too seemingly in sport
27, 1 Mixed in each other’s ] Clasped in each other’s
27, 2 They had lived too long The verse may be read: They’d lived too long.
28, 3 ] Unfit to
29, 1 in loving sleep ] in
29, 3 ] A Gentle Slumber
30, 8 ]
32, 1 ] Anon – there were no waters – but she strayed
32, 2 shingles Denotes here the pebbles along a seashore.
33, 1–8 In a cave she stood… /…she thought Haidée’s dream cave suggests the cave in Kubla Khan (1816), though it shows no evidence of deliberate borrowing.
33, 3 its water-fretted halls ] it’s water-
33, 7 ]
34, 2 foam that frothed on his dead brow ]
34, 5 Lay Juan This goes with lines 1–2: Juan lay wet and cold and lifeless.
34, 8 ] And that short dream contained a life too long
36, 8 ] I have seen some such; – but they
but they overthrew my mind
38, 6 Thy garment’s hem Matthew xiv 36.
39, 1 High and inscrutable ] High and
40, 2 ] Juan replied <“it must be won not given”>
40, 7 lock That part of the pistol which explodes the charge.
41, 8 The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice When one is no longer anovice with guns and shooting, his ear becomes less finical and delicate (‘nice’)and bolder, indifferent to danger (‘Irish’).
42, 1 Lambro presented Having already cocked his pistol (stanza 40), he now held it in the position for taking aim and firing.
43, 3–8 ] She stood as one who
Pale… stern –
Her bosom was the weapon – and even so
Near that the same> fragment
A fairer mark, –
43, 4 she wooed the blow By her posture she invited or tempted Lambro to hit her. O ED cites Byron’s figurative use of the ver
b here.
43, 5 their compeers Haidée, ‘tall beyond her sex’, was the equal or compeer of Juan and her father in height
45, 3 Even to the delicacy of their hand Byron’s letter to his mother, 12 November 1809: ‘He [Ali Pasha] said he was certain I was a man of birth because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands’ (LJ I 251). See note to Canto III 26, 1.
45, 6 Infixed ferocity ] In calm ferocity
46, 7–8 ] And if I did my duty as thou hast –
This hour were thine – and thy young minion’s last
47, 5 ] And rushing in impetuous order led
47, 7 ] Some thirty of his
47, 8 the Frank See note to Canto III 84, 1.
48, 7–8 ] The file of pirates,
49, 5 ] His man was
floored and
50, 4 ]
50, 6 galliots A galliot (galiot) was a small, swift vessel, propelled by sails and oars and formerly used in the Mediterranean.
52, 3 Cassandra One of the daughters of Priam and Hecuba, King and Queen of Troy. Her beauty won the love of Apollo, who, as a reward for her promise to gratify his ardour, conferred on her the gift of prophecy. When Cassandra later refused to fulfil her promise, Apollo in anger decreed that no one should believe her prophecies. Thus in the Trojan war, her countrymen disregarded her warnings. Upon the fall of Troy, Agamemnon took her as his slave to his home at Mycenae, where he ignored her prediction of his death, and he and Cassandra were slain by his wife Clytemnestra.
52, 6 Bohea A blade tea, that at the beginning of the eighteenth century was of superior quality. Now ‘bohea’ designates an inferior tea, the last crop of the season. The name was derived from Wu-i, the hills in China where the tea was grown when it was first exported to England.
53, 2 the Phlegetkontic rill Phlegethon was a river in Hades containing fire instead of water.
53, 2–4 ]
53, 5–8 rack / (In each sense of the word)…/ Wakes me next morning with its synonym Rack (arrack) in Eastern countries was any strong alcoholic liquor; in England it was a fiery drink usually made by distilling rum. The other meaning of ‘rack’ here is the illness that follows intoxication. Byron uses ‘synonym’ in a sense uncommon today. We would probably use ‘homonym’ (a word that sounds like another but has a different meaning); or ‘metonym’ (a word used in place of another that it suggests) – here one ‘rack’ suggests another ‘rack’ that is the effect of the first.
53, 7 ]
My
54, 8 ]
56, 6–8 ] Beauty
Of Haidee’s mother but her Climate’s force
Lay at her heart though sleeping at it’s source>
57, 5 her soft and milky way ] her
57, 7 Nutnidian North African. Numidia was an ancient country roughly corresponding to modern Algeria.
57, 8 simoom A hot, dry, dusty, violent wind that blows in the spring and summer across the African and Asiatic deserts.
58, 8 ] Her
59, 1–2 ]
Those eyes so beautiful – behold no more> ]
An inward vein had burst; her lip’s pure dyes
Were dabbled
59, 1–2 A vein had burst…/… which ran o’er ‘This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions’ (Byron, 1821).
59, 3 lily lies ] lily plies ] lily dies
59–5 ] Their Lady to her
Their Lady to her
60, 2 nothing livid Since ‘livid’ meant discoloured (bluish or leaden) as bya bruise, if Haidée were ‘nothing livid’, her face was pale.
61, 1 The ruling passion Each person was supposedly controlled by one dominant emotion. Pope’s view of it as an irresistible force was typical: ‘one master Passion in the breast, /… swallows up the rest. … So, cast and mingled with his very frame, / The Mind’s disease, its ruling Passion came.’ An Essay on Man, II 131–8. Among his eminent predecessors who had discussed this psychological theory were Montaigne and Bacon.
61, 4–6 O’er the fair Venus…/… Laocoon’s…/…Gladiator’s Byron had written about these sculptures in CH IV 49–53, 140–42, 160. The Venus di Medici was in Florence. In the Vatican the bronze statue that Byron called the Gladiator was later known as the Dying Gaul. The Vatican sculpture of Laocoon and his sons renders their death agony. Laocoon, a Trojan priest, failed to dissuade his countrymen from drawing into Troy the wooden horse that the Greeks left when they pretended to sail for home. As he and his sons prepared to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon, two serpents came from the sea and crushed them.
61, 7–8 ]
Their
63, 3 ] She took their medicines without
65, 3 At the first notes, irregular ] At the first
65, 6 ] Her
68, 7 ] Nor time – nor
69, 8 Oh to possess such lustre – and then lack ]
70, 3 ] Have dawned a child of beauty though of Sin
71, 7 she sleeps well ‘Duncan is in his grave: / After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well’ (Macbeth III ii 22–3).
72, 7 ] No dirge, save when arise the stormy Seas
73, 1 ] But many a
73, 7 ]
75, 1 ‘cabined, cribbed, confined ’ ‘But now I’m cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears’ (Macbeth III iv 24–5). Byron had earlier used these Shakespearean verbs in CH IV 127: ‘Though from our birth the faculty divine / Is chained and tortured – cabined, cribbed, confined.’
75, 8 Cape Sigeum Byron recalled being ‘anchored off Cape Sigeum in 1810, in an English frigate’, for two weeks awaiting permission to enter the Dardanelles (LJV 544–5). See also ‘Sigeum’s steep’ (The Bride of Abydos II 26).
76, 4 (Bryant says the contrary) Jacob Bryant’s Dissertation concerning the war of Troy, and the expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer; showing that no such expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed (1796).
76.7 Patrochts, Ajax, or Protesilaus ‘The only vestige of Troy, or herdestroyers, are the barrows supposed to contain the carcasses of Achilles, Antilochus, Ajax, etc; – but Mount Ida is still in high feather, though the shepherds are now-a-days not much like Ganymede’ (Byron’s letter to HenryDrury, 3 May 1810, LJ I 365).
Many believed as Byron did that they could locate the site of Troy (see also stanzas 77 and 101). Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote that she had seen where Hecuba, Achilles and Ajax were buried, and where the Scamander flowed, and that the area was now inhabited by poor Greek peasants (
see Canto IV 78). The Complete Letters, ed. R. Halsband (1965), 1 417–19.
76, 8] All heroes
All heroes who if still alive would slay us S
77, 1–2 ] High
A vast – unchanged – and
Mountain-bounded plain PM ]
mountain-outlined plain S
77, 7 where I sought for Ilion’s walls Stanzas 76–8 describe what Byron saw when he visited the legendary site of Troy in 1810. See LJ I 262–80.
77, 8 the tortoise crawls See letter to Murray, 21 February 1821, in which Byron reminisces on his swimming in the Hellespont in 1810: ‘An amusement in the small bay which opens immediately below the Asiatic fort was to dive for the LAND tortoises, which we flung in on purpose, as they amphibiously crawled along the bottom’ (LJ V 250).
78, 2 ] hamlet with name uncouth
78, 5 ] Whom to the spot – their learned researches bear
78, 6 ] A
78, 8 but the devil a Phrygian Ancient Phrygia extended southward from the Hellespont in Asia Minor and hence included the traditional site of Troy.
80, 1–8 He saw some fellow captives, who appeared /… at no high rate ‘This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre… embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to Algiers… sold them all One of the women, returned from her captivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini’s opera of “L’ltaliana in Algeri”, [sic] at Venice in the beginning of 1817’ (Byron, 1821).
81, 1 the buffo A comic opera singer, usually a basso.
81, 7 more reconciled demeanour ]
82, 2 ‘Our Macmavelian impresario ] our
[variant] porco pig, swine.
82, 4 Corpo di Cato Mario ‘[by the] body of Gaius Marius’, a Roman general of the first century BC. Byron may have invented this mild oath for the sake of rhyme. Corpo di Bacco (‘body of Bacchus’) is still common in Italy.