Republic of uzbekistan ministry of higher and secondary special

Chapter I. Life path of the poet
1.1. Life and work of J. Byron
BYRON, George Noel Gordon (January 22, 1788, London - April 19, 1824, Missolungi , Greece) was an English poet. He belonged to an ancient English family, and through his mother, nee Gordon, was a direct descendant of King James I of Scotland. creditors, where he died when Byron was three years old. The mother, almost deprived of her livelihood, took her son to her homeland in Aberdeen. B 1798 г. On the death of his great-uncle Byron inherited the title of lord and the family estate - Newstead Abbey. B 1801 г. Byron entered the aristocratic Harrow School; in 1805 - to the University of Cambridge.

In December 1806, Byron published his first collection of poems (" Fugitive Pieces "), which, on the advice of a friend who found some of the poems too sensual, seized and destroyed (four copies survived). Soon the second edition of this collection was published, consisting of only twelve pieces and under a changed name (" Pomems on Varios Ossions "). Both editions appeared without attribution. For the first time, Byron put his name by releasing the collection Leisure Hours in June 1807.

However, the best that has already been written and what Byron was writing at that time remained outside the collection. For example, the poems addressed to Mary Chaworth : “A passage written shortly after the marriage of Miss Chaworth ”, “Remembrance” (“ Remembrance ” ), are evidence of the poet’s adolescent love, forever remaining in his poems as the first and most sincere feeling.

Byron did not accept modern romanticism, although many of his attacks against Wordsworth, Southey , Moore, W. Scott were personal. The scandal that broke out (as well as the challenge to a duel sent by the offended Moore) did not find Byron in England. In June 1809 he left for a two-year voyage around the Mediterranean. When he returns, he admits and apologizes.

For Byron, the poet is not a magician, not a solitary dreamer, but an orator, a public person. He will confirm this with his second manifesto, brought from the eastern journey, the poem "From Horace".

The poet attached great importance to it, but disappointed his friends, who expected something else. Their expectations were much more in line with the first two cantos of the new poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which came out of print on March 10, 1812, and immediately made Byron's name famous. If the first attempt to outline the image of a romantic person, undertaken in the lyrics, was unsuccessful, then the second brought success.

There are two countries in the first song: Portugal and Spain. Since 1807, a war has been going on in the Iberian Peninsula, caused by the invasion of the French army. Byron does not yet pronounce the name of Napoleon: the personality of a great man, a modern hero, still retains charm for him. However, the sense of justice that drives the poet makes him take the side of the peoples whose rights are violated, the lands are devastated, blood is shed.

The main character, whose name the poem is named, has not yet been forgotten. It is no coincidence that most of the text of the first song is framed by two lyrical inserts: the hero's farewell and the romance "To Ines ". This reinforces the illusion that the consciousness of the hero, his soul, in all the novelty of impressions, is revealed to the reader.

In the second song, the journey continues through Greece, which has outlived its historical greatness. The third and fourth will be connected with Byron's other journey - with his wandering after April 25, 1816, he will be forced to leave England forever. This was caused by his final break with English secular society after the scandalous departure of his wife Annabella from him. Milbank , which took place immediately after the birth of Ada's daughter.

The London period (1812-1816) was a time of difficult romantic glory for Byron. Years of success that turned out to be an ordeal. To remain oneself, to live one's own life - this was not completely possible. In 1812-1813. there were important speeches in the House of Lords, but quickly "tired of parliamentary comedy."

It was during these years that Byron created a cycle of so-called "Oriental poems", developing a new genre of lyrical-epic poem already found in "Childe Harold", which complexly builds relationships between the author and the hero. In the new cycle, the author recedes somewhat into the shadows and, with more or less consistency, sets out the story of his hero. A story in which the love episode is almost always central. The poems increased Byron's fame as a violent, lonely romantic.

Whoever the hero is, he is always a stranger among people. Often he is a person who has defied the laws and prohibitions of existing morality, a robber, a pirate, but in the depths of his hardened heart nobility has not died. His last hope, his last life connection is in love. The strength and tragedy of romantic love lies in the fact that it is always unique, in it, as in the last refuge, all the best properties of the soul have merged, and beyond its borders there is only hostility of the hero insulted by misunderstanding, deceived in his best intentions.

Byron himself continued to be recognized in the heroes of the "oriental poems". Legends captivating the imagination were created, according to which everything that happened to the heroes once happened to the author. The very persuasiveness that Byron communicated to his heroes (the type of his hero) prompted such conjectures.

One of the reasons for the difficulty with which to distinguish between the author and the hero was the unusualness of the form itself - the lyric-epic poem created by Byron. However, the novelty of the form was the result of a new personality, which directly affected the lyrical cycles of the London period. It begins with six poems, united under the conventional Greek female name "To Tirza " and dedicated to a deceased woman. In it, sometimes they try to guess some specific person, "nameless" or "hidden" love.

On August 1, 1811, the poet's mother dies, with whom he had a difficult but close relationship. Then, within two months, he receives news of the deaths of several friends from Harrow and Cambridge.

The second important lyrical cycle of those years was a series of poems united by the personality of Napoleon. First, in connection with his abdication on April 6, 1814, a large “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte” was written in one day. Napoleon preferred compromise and life to the tragic ending. Byron perceived the event as the finale of modern history with the participation of a romantic hero, the finale is not tragic, turning into an everyday drama, not without a farcical tinge. Byron will return to this topic a year later, when Napoleon's flight from Fr. Elba will first end with a triumphant entry into Paris, and then with a final defeat at Waterloo: "Napoleon's flight from the island of Elba", "Ode from the French", "Star of the Legion of Honor", "Napoleon's Farewell".

In the interval between the beginning and the end of the cycle about Napoleon, Byron creates "Jewish Melodies" - 23 poems, which appeared in the beginning of 1815. The cycle includes the most famous examples of Byron's lyrics, translated into Russian. Biblical subjects are selected in such a way that they represent a small but exhaustive anthology of romantic motifs: the doom of a tyrant, the greatness of a hero, the beauty of self-denial, the suffering of the people... And all this is united lyrically - by the presence of the singer, in his soul, knowing despair, but ready to rise again.

The lyrical completion of this period of Byron's life were poems addressed to his half-sister Augusta Lee: "Stances to Augusta", "Message to Augusta " - one of the few who did not leave the poet. The poems were already written in Switzerland, where Byron first went after breaking up with his wife. The months - from May to October 1816 - spent there were a time that was mentally difficult for Byron and creatively fruitful. Immediately there is a collection that combines poetry and a new poem - " Prisoner of Chillon ".

In the same months, small lyrical poems were written: "Darkness" and "Sleep", bringing the darkness and hopelessness of romantic consciousness to an apocalyptic vision of universal death. The third, “ Russoist ”, song of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” turns the hero to nature, against which the action of the first of Byron’s plays, the philosophical drama “Manfred”, also begun in Switzerland and bearing traces of resemblance to Goethe’s Faust, is played out , although at the same time there are controversies with him. The action represents only the finale of a tragic life, the events of which can only be guessed from randomly dropped phrases.

Manfred is one of those to whom much was given, and who achieved much, gaining power over both people and spirits, but, gaining, did not come close to happiness. His strength, his knowledge became his tragedy. Another "deadly" love is Manfred's for Astarte, a date with which, dead, the hero demands from the gods, because he does not even know how to pray to them. Manfred is the final and climactic work. Here, the features of a romantic hero are given the character of an unprecedented, but sweeping generalization made with the belief that the beautiful and the great inevitably lead to death through the vanity and selfishness that accompany them in a person. There is no way out, there is only the possibility of leaving - into oblivion. Byron mythologizes romantic despair, completely subordinating the image of his hero to the expression of this idea.

In November 1816, Byron moved to Italy, where he first stopped in Venice, then pursued by the police for his connections with the Carbonari, in October 1821 he moved to Pisa, and finally, exactly one year later, he settled in Genoa. Italian impressions sharpen Byron's historical sense.

His thoughts about the fate of the poet are clothed in small poems "Tasso's Complaint" and "Dante's Prophecy". In 1818, the historical poem "Mazepa" was written. After moving to Ravenna in the house of Count Guiccioli , directly involved in the events of the present by the Carbonari, Byron begins the cycle of historical tragedies “Marino Faliero ”, “ Sardanaial ”, “Two Foscari ”. Two stories - from the history of medieval Venice, the third - from the Ancient East.

Byron's growing interest in history extends to modern history as well. He is still interested in everything that happens in England. He supported Lee Hunt's political magazine The Liberal (1822-1823), in the first issue of which he published his satire "The Vision of the Court". This is a parody of a blissful poem of the same name, with which, as a court poet, R. Southey loyally responded to the death of King George S. In Byron, the meeting prepared for the English monarch in heaven turns out to be a little solemn , and he manages to squeeze into paradise in turmoil, furtively . And not only about England, but about all of Europe after Napoleon, strangled by the hands of his victors. In parallel with them, until his departure to Greece, he continues to work on "Don Juan"

Byron's Don Juan is not a ready-made character, but a man in the process of educating feelings, immediately forcing him to draw a parallel with enlightenment novels. In the character of Don Juan, nature takes precedence over the educational system. He does not know how to resist passions, turning out to be the beloved of a pirate's daughter, then in the harem of a Turkish pasha, then in Suvorov's camp near Ishmael, and, finally, in England, where he ends up in the X song and where he remains to the end.

Byron's literary reputation in his homeland was not as significant as in the countries of continental Europe. Byron's conflict, which forced him to leave England, and his repeated accusations of being unpatriotic also affected here . However, Byron is often denied what necessarily accompanies a great poet - in a significant renewal of the language itself, in the discovery of its new possibilities. Of course, it is only recognized that they give the poetic language more colloquial, speech freedom, primarily in satirical works and Don Juan. In this row, you can put the best examples of Byron's mature lyrics, including his last poem - "On the day I turned thirty-six years old." These verses were already written in Greece, where Byron went in July 1823 to take part in the uprising in the heteria against Turkish rule.