Byron's Don Juan: a Brief History

by Galit Avitan

 Introduction

George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron, began writing Don Juan in Venice on July 3rd 1818. By the following January, he had completed two out of what, at the time, he had envisioned to be twelve cantos. These first two cantos were published in the following summer anonymously, with neither the Dedication nor the Preface which Byron had prepared. Even though all of Byron's poetry is a blending of autobiographical elements and echoes of the literature he has absorbed over the years, Don Juan is considered the most autobiographical of his works. "Almost all of Don Juan is real life- either my own, or from people I know," Byron declared.

Italy as Inspiration?

In the summer of 1818 Byron was entering the second year of his self-imposed exile in Italy. The entire poem was written there- in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa. Yet almost none of Byron's actual life in Italy figures in the poem. Byron had already immortalized his 1817 Spring journey though Italy, from Venice to Rome, in Canto IV of Childe Harold. Whether he would have if Byron had lived to finish he work, as it is the hero Don Juan never actually reaches Italy. With the exception of Russia, Byron had journeyed though the countries traversed by the poem- Spain, Greece, Turkey and England (Barton).

The Italian influence on the poem was actually more in form and style rather than content. Byron used the Italian stanza form of eight decasyllabic lines rhyming in a pattern that has always been associated with loosely woven narrative poetry: digressive, sometimes comic, sometimes grave and frequently conversational in manner. He initially had problems adapting a vehicle designed for the Italian language to the peculiarities and demands of English. He was still experimenting in the earlier cantos, particularly with the rhyme scheme- since there are more rhyming words in Italian than in English. Eventually, however, he learned to invent ways around 'structure' and took liberty in personalizing a style that will be subject to many attempted imitations (McGann)

Publication

Don Juan was left unfinished upon Byron's death in 1824. By this time he had completed sixteen Cantos, a Dedication and a Preface. The Preface was probably written in the autumn of 1818, but never published during his lifetime. It first appeared in a 1901 edition of the poem. Byron specifically wrote the Preface to parody Wordsworth's introduction to "The Thorn", but he abandoned this Preface without completing it, perhaps because he realized his Dedication to Robert Southly was a far harsher attack on Wordsworth and the Lake poets, and should stand alone.

Unlike the rejected Preface, which is written in prose, the Dedication is written in the same verse as the Cantos. Byron chooses to articulate his attack on the Lake Poets through one primary subject, Bob Southly the Poet Laureate, though he unabashedly mentions most of the Lake Poets and his particular qualm about each. What Byron chiefly disliked about Wordsworth and his circle was a narrowness of mind and a provinciality radically opposed to his own 'cosmopolitanism'. In the Preface he mocks their preference for each other's company to the exclusion of wider acquaintances, and for their hermit-like settlement in the Cumberland Lakes over his own preference for global oceans. Byron probably chose Bob Southly as the main subject simply because he was Poet Laureate, which meant he would occasionally compose poems in honor of the king- which was proof enough for Byron and Shelley that he had abandoned his earlier radical ways; it was the hypocrisy that Byron abhorred. And while it was clear to both Byron and Shelley that the Lake Poets had abandoned the radical attachments of their youth, Byron prided himself on fidelity to his.

Byron recognized the significance and epic quality of his poem to the extent that he continued working on it till his dying day. Although his dedication to Don Juan led him to take the last, unfinished canto with him to Greece in July of 1923, he did not work on the poem during the nine months he spent there before his death. Most of the little poetry he did write in Greece was forced out of him by an unrequited passion for a young Grecian youth (Barton).

Don Juan's  Reception: Bitter Disappointments and Pleasant Surprises

England's initial reception's of Cantos I and II, at least among the elitist literary circles, was anything but appraising. Despite his attempt at anonymity, Byron's authorship was clear from the start, and he was attacked from all sides. A 'filthy and impious poem' was the verdict of Blackwood's Magazine in August 1819. William Wordsworth fiercely proclaimed- '[it is] and infamous publication.. that will do more harm to the English character than anything of our time' (Barton, 1).

And yet the poem received extraordinary widespread attention, in part due to Byron's celebrity from previous publication, namely the gloriously popular Childe Herold. Most of the reviews of the first two cantos mingled censure as quoted above, with grudging admiration of the work's brilliance. Later cantos, especially Canto IX onwards, were dismissed by literary journals for the disintegration of their artistic achievement as well as their morals. Byron himself was well aware of his diminishing popularity, not only with his critics but also with his old readers. However a new class of interested readers was forming, and Byron nagged his publisher to bring out the poem in a cheaper edition, making it a feasible purchase for his new lower-class audience.

The consequences of making Byron's work more readily available to the new readers he attracted proved to be considerable. Friedrich Engles remarked in 1844 that it was the workers, not the hypocritical bourgeoisie, who really knew and cherished Byron's work, and that Don Juan was the poem they had taken to heart (Boyd). His poem reached the urban and rural poor, and it is very likely that thousands of these readers did not read Byron's other works, and many more thousands probably read nothing else except the Bible. Byron's death in the Greek War of Independence made his a hero to the rebellious poor. The poet's funeral procession, passing though London, consisted of the empty carriages of aristocrats who themselves remained at home; the streets, however, were lined with 'common' people (Boyd).

The poem's legacy continued to grow far after Byron's death. Chartists flaunted quotations from the poem on banners during demonstrations. Don Juan was revered by Hugo, Stendhal, Goethe, Ibsen- the list goes on and on. It is often set as the sharpest contrast to Milton's Paradise Lost, and many other canonical English works. It's legacy lies not only in the universality of it's themes and ideas- despite it's autobiographical nature- but also in Byron's signature writing style, which mixed wit with comedy, tragedy with satire.

Forgeries..

As yet another testament of just how popular the poem was is the history of the countless attempts made to mimic or finish the poem. Attempts in English at forging 'continuations' of Don Juan's adventures began as early as 1819, between the publication of the first two cantos and Cantos III-V. These attempts persisted throughout Byron's life and picked up great momentum after his death. Some finished the poem, others imitated it, sometimes by authors claiming to have discovered new cantos among Byron's Italian mistress's papers. Only two of these works possess worthy merit. The anonymous Don Leon claims to be Byron's account of his own bisexuality. Composed in the 1830's and published in 1866, the poem incorporates a serious plea to reform English law which held homosexual acts punishable by death. The second poem belongs to John Clare- Don Juan, a Poem was written from his asylum cell in 1841 under his conviction of being Byron resurrected, where he fiercely condemns the perversity of London sexuality (Barton). But for the most part the 19th Century imitators trivialized Byron, reducing his powerful play of the English language to something mechanical and narrow.

It is interesting t think of just how Byron would have completed the poem- or if he ever had any particular ending in mind. All we know is that the poem did run longer than he originally intended- by four stanzas. Don Juan stands as one of the most important and influential of the later Romantic poems, and even though at first it's popularity grew from it's outrageous unconventionality, over time it became recognized as an immensely significant work of literature for it's brilliance as well as radically unorthodox and unique.

Bibliography

Barton, Anne. Byron- Don Juan (Cambridge 1992).
Boyd, Elizabeth French. Byron's Don Juan: A Critical Study (New York 1958).
McGann, Jerome. Don Juan in Context (London and Chicago, 1976).