15, 1 presume ]
15, 7–8 by Suwarrow’s bidding, … was ta’en myself instead of Widdin’ In 1789, Suvorov unsuccessfully tried to take Widdin in Bulgaria. See note to Canto VII 8, 7.
16, 8 ] A
17, 6 As if the corn-sheaj should oppose the sickle Byron inverted Biblical phrasing for his paradox: ‘thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn’ (Deuteronomy xvi 9). ‘For the earth bringeth forth… full corn in the ear… immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come’ (Mark iv 28–9).
22, 7–8 lime-twigs…/ Where still we flutter To ensnare small birds, twigs were smeared with lime (a sticky substance made from holly bark).
25, 6 ] Benevolence destroys what we had got
26, 6 ogled ] eyed so
26, 7 blackleg A dishonest gambler who swindled bettors on horse races. Three origins have been suggested for this word: the black boots they wore; the black legs of game cocks; the common black bird called ‘rook’, which was also a term for a cheat in gaming.
26, 8 felon] debtor
27, 6–7 ] Some by a place,
The Most by downright cash; but ail have prices
27, 7–8 but all have prices / From crowns to kieks This political axiom was usually attributed to Robert Walpole: all men can be bribed, though some cost more than others. ‘Kick’ is slang for a sixpence.
28, 7 sounded like ] looked just like
29, 5 sequins with paras jumbling For sequins see note to Canto IV 84, 5. A ‘para’ is a small Turkish coin, a fortieth part of a piastre (see note to Canto II 125, 8), formerly of silver, now of copper, valued at one-twentieth of an old penny (OED).
30, 2 ]
31, 1–2 Voltaire says ‘No’…/… after meals ‘Candide being well fed, well clothed, and free from chagrin, soon became again as ruddy, as fresh, and as gay as he had been in Westphalia’ (Candide, Part II, ch. 2).
31, 7–8 ]
Or Ammon’s – for two fathers claimed this one>
Of food I think with Philip’s son, or rather / Ammon’s The mortal father of Alexander the Great was Philip II of Macedon. Plutarch related a legend that also conferred divine parentage upon Alexander. The Delphic oracle bade Philip ‘sacrifice to Ammon and hold that god in greatest reverence… he espied the god, in the form of a serpent, sharing the couch of his wife [Olympias]. Moreover, Olympias… told him [Alexander]… the secret of his begetting, and bade him have purposes worthy of his birth.’
Plutarch also commented on Alexander’s moderation in diet. In delicacies he ‘was master of his appetite, so that often, when the rarest fruits or fish were brought to him from the seacoast, he would distribute them to each of his companions until he was the only one for whom nothing remained’ (Plutarch, Alexander, sections 3 and 23, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (1919), VII 228–9, 288–9, 290–91).
32, 1–4 I think with Alexander…/ Redoubled ‘He used to say that sleep and sexual intercourse, more than anything else, made him conscious that he was mortal…’ (Plutarch, Alexander, section 23, Lives, VII 286–7).
32, 7–8 ] Would pique himself
Or rises not) fragment
33, 5–8 I heard a shot… /… to pant ‘The assassination alluded to took place on the eighth of December, 1820, in the streets of Ravenna, not a hundred paces from the residence of the writer. The circumstances were as described. There was found close by him an old gun barrel, sawn half off: it had just been discharged and was still warm’ (Byron, 1821). See Marchand, II 889–90; Var. 180–85, 93 n., 98.
33, 8 ]
34, 8 five bullets ] five slugs
36, 5 He said as the centurion saith Matthew viii 9.
36, 6 forth he stepped ] strait they crept
36, 7 ]
39, 4 ]
40, 2 a gilded boat ] a
40, 5 ] They looked
40, 6 caïque The light and elegant wherries plying about the quays of Constantinople are so called’ (this note, possibly by Byron, was printed in the 1833 edition).
42, 6–8 of late your scribblers…/ Because one poet travelled’ mongst the Turks In 1810 Byron visited the coast of Asia Minor and Constantinople. Though his Eastern tales (1813–14) – The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair and Lara – encouraged imitators, Orientalism had been a literary staple for decades. Southey had preceded Byron with Thalaba the Destroyer in 1801 and The Curse of Kehama in 1810 and Moore began Lalla Rookh in 1812, though he did not publish it until 1817. See stanza 52 and note to Canto VI 87, 5.
44, 4 ] We
We from impalement had ensured our skin
Saint Bartholomew According to legend, St Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Apostles, was flayed alive and crucified, head downward.
44, 7–8 take, / Like Esau, for my birthright a beefsteak Genesis xxv 29–34.
45, 2 ] For the old
46, 3 besprent sprinkled over with moisture or dust; dotted with points or objects. Possibly a more apposite sense here would be ‘strewed or splashed’ with ‘a deal of gilding’.
46, 5–6 A gaudy taste…/… the font Byron’s residence in Italy taught him something about the value of restraint, proportion, and the natural, functional use of colour and ornament. He found that recent Turkish buildings and furnishings showed little of the skill of the ancient Greek and Byzantine artists and craftsmen. Hence from stanzas 46 to 94 he condemns the magnificent pomp (51), the ‘lifeless splendour’ (56), of the Sultan’s palace with its marble, gems, gilt, bronze and glitter, where ‘wealth had done wonders, taste not much’ (94), and ‘which puzzled Nature much to know what art meant’ (64).
46, 7–8 Each villa on the Bosphorus looks a screen / New painted or a pretty opera scene Byron and Hobhouse in 1810 saw in a resort town on the Bosphorus near Constantinople the elaborately decorated villas of the Turkish aristocracy.
47, 2 pilaus See note to Canto III 31, 3.
48, 4 ]
For reason thinks all reasoning out of season Byron here preferred cleverness to clarity. He may distinguish between ‘Reason’ (he capitalized it on the MS) as an eternal absolute, or as a standard logical process, or as a body of accepted thought, and individual ‘reasoning’, which may deviate from general, traditional law, logic or thought, and therefore be rejected as eccentric, illicit, unsound, ‘out of season’. In later cantos Byron’s sceptical individualism mocked the lack of agreement among philosophers. One system gobbles up another.
49, 8 ]
50, 1 Turkey contains no bells In the East bells were forbidden to Mohammedans, partly because of their association with Christianity, and partly because they might be used as signals for revolt.
52, 2 these bright days ] these
52, 5 Death to his
53, 5 smoked superb pipes decorated ] smoked their
54, 4–8 But those who sate…/… with conversation Perhaps Byron implies that slavery breeds apathy: none spoke; only a few stared ‘as one views a horse to guess his price’. ‘Every thing is so still [in the court of th
e seraglio] that the motion of a fly might be heard, in a manner; and if any one should presume to raise his voice ever so little, or show the least want of respect to the Mansion-place of their emperor, he would instantly have the bastinado by the officers that go the rounds’ (J. P. de Tournefort, A Voyage into the Levant (1741), II 183).
54, 8 ] But no one
But no one bothered him with conversation
55, 4 A marble fountain ‘A common furniture. – I recollect being received by Ali Pacha, in a room containing a marble basin and fountain’(Byron, 1821).
58, 1–2 ] A a winter’s night,
58, 5–6 so grand a sight / As is a theatre lit up by gas Gas lighting in theatres had been loudly opposed as dangerous, a cause of fire and of suffocating the actors with its fumes. Byron consistently admired the new method of lighting. See notes to Canto XI 22, 28.
58, 7 I pass my evening in long galleries solely Byron was living in the enormous Palazzo Guiccioli at Ravenna while he was composing this stanza.
60, 3 Nabuchadonosor Latin form of Nebuchadnezzar.
60, 7 Thisbe and for Pyramus ‘Pyramus and Thisbe – he, the most beautiful youth, and she, loveliest maid of all the East – dwelt in houses side by side, in the city which Semiramis is said to have surrounded with walls of brick’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses IV 54–8, trans. F. J. Miller (1944), I 182–3).
60, 8 – 61, 5 the calumniated Queen Semiramis /… This monstrous tale This legend is mentioned by Pliny: ‘Juba attests that Semiramis fell so deeply in love with a horse that she married it’ (Natural History VIII, section 64, trans. H. Rackham(1940), III 108–9).
61, 1–8 That injured queen…/… jury here George IV, who had long wanted to divorce Queen Caroline, allowed his supporters to charge her with committing adultery with Bartolomeo Bergami, her Italian chamberlain, originally a courier. Byron agreed to omit this stanza in the 1821–2 editions lest it hurt the Queen. See Appendix.
61, 1 That injured queen ] That virtuous Queen
61, 7 ] In an erratum of her horse for Courier
61, 8 ] Pity! the Case can’t come before a jury e’er
This variant was sent in a letter to Murray, 30 December 1820.
62, 3 the very spot ] the precise spot
62, 6 And written lately two memoirs upon’t Claudius James Rich, Resident for the Honourable East India Company at the Court of the Pasha of Bagdad, published Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (1815) and Second Memoir (1818).
63, 7 et sepulcri immemor struts domos Horace, Ode II 18, 17–19: ‘Tu secanda marmora locas sub ipsum funus et sepulcri immemor struis domos’ (‘On the very brink of the grave you contract for the cutting of marble slabs, and forgetful of the tomb, you build palaces’). This is a modified version of C. E. Bennett’s translation (1919), 156–7.
64, 7 ]
66, 5–6 with a stretch attaining / A certain press After a short distance Baba came to a clothespress.
67, 8 for the Christians ] for the
68, 3 A candiote cloak A cloak made at Candia on the island of Crete.
68, 4 ]
68, 5 ] But such as
68, 7 ]
71, 8 ]
72, 5 perpend ] reflect
76, 7–8 ]
77, 2–4 ] A pair of drawers – of
And dragged on a Chemise as white as milk
77, 6 as the Scotch say, whilk Scottish dialect, remembered from his boyhood in Aberdeen.
77, 8 ] Kings are not more imperative than rhymes PM, M, 1821; the present text first appeared in 1822.
78, 3 to get through ] to
79, 3 tresses all to spare ] tresses dark or fair PM ] tresses
80, 1 being femininely all arrayed Margaret E. McGing suggested that for some details of Juan’s disguise and of his harem adventures, Byron might have drawn upon Miss Tully’s Narrative of a Ten Years Residence at Tripoli in Africa… (1816), a book he was familiar with. Disguise as a woman occurred four times in this narrative (‘A Possible Source for the Female Disguise in Byron’s Don Juan’, MLN, LV (1940), 39–42).
80, 3 ] He looked – in all save modesty – a maid
80, 5 A perfect transformation ]
84, 5 when Fate puts from shore ] when Fate
84, 6 ]
85, 4 ]
86, 7–8 before the line / Of Rome transplanted fell with Constantine Constantine I in the first quarter of the fourth century ‘transplanted’ the imperial capital from Rome to Byzantium. In 1453 Constantine XI and the Christian empire fell when Mohammed II captured Constantinople. Thus the carvings on the giant door dated back not to the Roman era, but to the Middle Ages.
87, 3 – 90, 8 Two little dwarfs…/… their eyes on Peter Ure thought that Byron may have got the ‘misshapen pygmies’ from William Beckford’s (1759–1844) dwarf, who opened doors at his extravagant mansion at Fonthill. Ure, however, was unable to explain how Byron had heard about that ugly little servant (’Beckford’s Dwarf and Don Juan’, V 87–94, MLN, CXCVI (1951), 143–4).
87, 4 ] Were
87, 6 ] Oer them,
87, 7 The gate so splendid was in all its features Byron, 1821: ‘Features of a gate – a ministerial metaphor; ”the feature upon which this question hinges.” ‘Moore also mocked this image of Castlereagh’s in The Fudge Family in Paris, Letter II, The Poetical Works (1841), VII 103. For a sample of Moore’s parody of Castlereagh’s language see note to Dedication 13, 1.
88, 5 an extraneous mixture The complexion of the dwarfs was unnaturally incompatible with their origin or nationality.
88, 7 pygmies ] pigmies PM, M, 1821 and later editions
89, 4 being as smooth as Rogers’ rhymes) ] being
The poetry of Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) was always held up by Byron as a model.
89, 5–7 with tough strings of the bow … To give some rebel pasha a cravat The Turks used the string of a bow to execute or murder a man by strangling him (giving him a cravat). Byron used the verb ‘bowstring’ in the sense of ‘strangle’ three more times in this canto.
90, 2 like two incubi ] like two
90, 6–8 With shrinking serpent optics…/… they fixed their eyes on
A snake’s small eye blinks dull and sly,
And the lady’s eyes they shrunk in her head,
Each shrunk up to a serpent’s eye.
(S. T. Coleridge, Christabel II 583–5)
91, 1–2 ] Before they entered – Baba
To Juan on the mode of his them> fragment
Byron probably intended to write ‘demeanour’.
92, 6 Marmora The small Sea of Marmora is in Turkey between Europe and Asia. It connects with the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and with the Aegean through the Dardanelles. Constantinople (Istanbul) is located on the banks of the Bosphorus at the eastern end of the Marmora Sea.
92, 7–8 Stitched up in sacks…/… upon occasion At the end of The Giaour, Byron in a note related as fact an episode in which twelve women, accused of adultery by a jealous wife, were ‘fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night’.
93, 8 ]
94, 3 ch
astened ] polished
94, 4 I have… seen In addition to contracting the verb ‘I’ve seen’, there is elision in ‘orient’ (2) and in three rhyme words: ‘even’, ‘seven’, ‘forgiven’.
96, 3 ] With a far reaching glance – a Paphian pair PM ]
Bent
Paphos, an ancient city of Cyprus, contained a famous temple to Aphrodite. Hence Paphian here means amorous.
97, 7–8 ]
So luckily for both
98, 5 Mary’s, Queen of Scots Described by contemporary writers as a woman of delicate beauty, and yet of commanding majesty.
98, 6 And love destroy ] And Days destroy
98, 7–8 ]
Each charm away; yet some will never grow
Ugly – for instance Ninon de L’Enclos.
Ninon de l’Enclos Anne de l’Enclos (1620–1705) so preserved her attractions that she had lovers when she was eighty. During her long life, her admirers included Scarron, Saint-Evremond, Molière, and La Rochefoucauld. During her later years, Voltaire’s father managed her business affairs; she bequeathed to the child Voltaire money for books.
99, 6 Diana’s chorus Byron identifies the Roman Diana with the Greek Artemis, the virgin huntress, who was attended by a train of nymphs. A groupof young girls were her temple servants at Athens.
100, 8 – 101, 1 nil admirari. / ‘Not to admire is all the art I know’ ‘Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum.’ (‘To marvel at nothing is just about the one and only thing, Numicius, that can make and keep a man happy.’) Horace, Epistle 1 6, 1–2, trans. H. R. Fairclough (1942), 286–7 (his translation has been slightly modified).
Iris Origo quotes from Byron’s letter to the Countess Guiccioli, 25 April 1819: ‘Never to feel admiration – and to enjoy myself without giving too much importance to the enjoyment in itself – to feel indifference towards human affairs – contempt for many but hatred for none, this was the basis of my philosophy’ (The Last Attachment (1949) 48, 495 n.).
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