Lord Byron - Darkness, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Lord Byron - Darkness e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Lord Byron, “Darkness” The immediate historical context for this poem was 1816, which was also called “the year without summer”. This was due to the eruption of a volcano that was situated in what was then called the Dutch West Indies, now Indonesia. However, the eruption was so strong that it sent ashes and dust all over the sky, and this dust eventually reached Europe and the eastern side of North America. This triggered some changes in the weather. It was continuously raining, and the sky was darkened by these ashes. At the time, people did not know that this phenomenon was due to the eruption of a volcano, so they could not explain this sudden change in climate. They started to get worried, because this was really impressive. This generated preoccupations and fears: they believed that this was a permanent change. The other element affecting this poem was the fact that exactly in this year the first sun spots had been observed. Apparently, these sun spots were so big that they could even be observed through the naked eye, and scientists started to wonder about the meaning of this phenomenon, which was never studied and understood before. People started to panic, because in this case too they believed that this was a new and permanent phenomenon: they were witnessing an epic change in the sun. They had no scientific tools to interpret these data. This was a phenomenon that was widely debated across Europe, and a scientist of the University of Bologna predicted that the sun would go out on July 18th of the same year, so he basically announced the end of the world. People really expected the end of the world, so there were a lot of reactions, like cases of riots, but also suicides. Moreover, all this happened very close to the French Revolution and what followed it. It was a very nervous time. This poem copes with these themes of the end of the world and, more specifically, the end of nature. Byron is not just considering the human side, but also the end of nature itself. The nature is so different from that kind of nature that was so important for the other romantic poets. Wordsworth insisted on this connection between God and nature; and even in the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge, who was a bit darker in his view, we can see nature fighting death (because the mariner kills the albatross for no good reason, and from that moment things start to go bad not just for him, but for everyone). Coleridge’s poem conveys the idea that nature is very good until you leave it alone, but if you do something bad, it will react. The mariner commits an animal murder, and then nature fights back: the meaning of this is that nature can become cruel if you are cruel with it. Only when the mariner starts to appreciate nature, he actually starts to heal from the curse. In Byron’s poem nature is not just good or evil, but indifferent. For Byron nature does not really care about humans, animals, or even the environment. This was shocking at the time, because the approach of natural theology was very widespread. There was this idea of seeing nature as an emanation of God and his design, so inherently positive and benevolent. Byron went against all this, and he also recurred to another specific literary trend, that was the one of Last Man Literature. This was a very nervous period, and we have a wide range of different works that treat the end of the world with different perspectives. At the beginning of the 19th century, therefore, a lot of literary works about the end of the world started to be published. “1811” by Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a long poem in which she depicted the fall of Britain as an economic superpower, and she imagines that in the distant future American tourists would come to London and commemorate that great country that once was so prominent and influential, while now was overgrown with weeds and grass, while the balance of power has moved to the United States. Most other works published on this idea focused on the Last Man: they imagined some disasters that would end the human race, apart from one or few survivors, and they described what would happen. These poems were so popular that also novels and short stories started to be written about this: “The Last Man” by Mary Shelley is an intriguing and disturbing novel, a kind of dystopian literature in which she imagines the future in a very negative way. The theme was so popular that it also influenced visual arts. John Martin specialised in paintings depicting various kinds of catastrophes: “The Destruction of Pompeii” depicts a climate phenomenon that destroys the city, with some survivors trying to escape. Given this context, he did not want to exploit the literary fashion to publish something also because his poem about the end of the world was very different from all the other poems and novels that we mentioned. In particular, the lack of the Last Man character. There are two ways in which Byron goes against conventions: 1) No Last Man (no group of survivors) → This kind of aspect was noticed by critical reviewers, they were trying to say is that the poem disturbs you, because it talks in a way that people did not expect about a topic which was very much discussed. They probably expected something more conventional, with someone surviving to repopulate the earth or with some virtue involved, like strength under difficulties. Instead, there was nothing like that in the poem. 2) No explanation → What happens in this poem is not even seen as a punishment: it is not that humans are vicious, and God decided to punish them. There is just no reason. This is the most disturbing thing, because we always tend to look for a reason, especially when we are faced with some epic and impressing earth-shattering event. Here, there is no way of finding out any kind of reason. Page 618 This poem “Darkness” concerns religion in a provocative way, because it turns upside down many images from the Bible. The very title, “darkness”, is the opposite of “creation” (because God, at first, created light). He begins with this very short sentence that opens up various possible scenarios. The reader is uncertain about how to interpret what follows: is it a dream or not? Is it a kind of predictive dream? Is he posing like a kind of sybil? We do not know. “The bright sun was extinguish’d” there is no prequel that justifies this sentence: this is a shocking way to begin a poem. The whole poem describes the effects of this phenomenon that will remain unexplained. He starts from a very wide and open perspective on what happens in the sky: the sun is extinguished, and not only we do not have no more heat nor light, but we also do not have no more difference between the day and the night. We have complete darkness from the very beginning. After having described what happens in the sky, in line 7 he is moving down to go and see what happens on earth, because people, of course, perceive the effects of this and cannot explain them. From the term “selfish” we immediately see that there are no virtuous heroes who will try and save the world: everyone becomes selfish. This is the effect that he sees as a consequence of the going out of the sun. According to Byron, if people are in danger and do not understand the situation they will not get together and try to help each other: their natural reaction will be that of being afraid and, like wild animals, they close up and become selfish. What really matters, now, is only your own survivor: there is not this altruistic vision according to which, in a situation of difficulty, we will tend to help each other. Especially for people of this period, the first thing to do in a situation like this is to go to Church and pray. Most people would have interpreted this as something that has to do with God; however, there are no prayers here: the only one is a selfish prayer for light, which, of course, is not working. There is no community, and everyone prays for himself, not for others. There is an insistence on cold and darkness: even hearts become chill. He is basically depicting the end of all civilization (he does not really believe the very optimistic ideas about society of the 18th century, according to which, if we follow our feelings, we will naturally tend to do something good for ourselves and, as a consequence, for society). At the beginning of some lines there are many “and”: this emphasizes the fact that there is a cumulative effect. Bad things accumulate, and it seems that there is no end to the evil effects of this. From line 10 he implies that society has ended, and he describes this through the image of the home, which was considered the symbol of family and society at large. He is talking about some places where people live (rich, but also poor people) and about the different kinds of dwellings that are destroyed, because, of course, people needed light and fire, so they destroyed everything they could find to burn it down. Line 12: he is referring to various kinds of creatures, because he takes the two extremes to include everything. The house is not just a place in which you stay because you need some kind of repair, but its image also evokes some ideas of affection, of family, and of protection. This kind of refuge in the private sphere was very emphasized in this period, and it will become even more important in the Victorian Era. Therefore, he is touching the very status symbol of protection and family which was considered as the basis of society. These people destroy everything, because they need something material to start a fire: entire cities are eventually burnt down. Line 14, “blazing homes”: this overturns the other popular symbol of family and affection (which we saw also in Coleridge’s poem), that is the idea of the housefire, and all the positive things included in that. Now, people are gathering around a fire, but it is the fire of the whole house burning. There is a very harsh disruption. They also do so in order to see other people, because otherwise they would be blind. Fire has a very strong double value: on the one hand it is a symbol of home and warmth, on the other side it is the fire of Hell. In this case, it is not a purifying fire. In line 16, readers expect a small redemption for some people, because he begins the line with “happy”, but if we go on reading, we discover that this is ironic, because there is nothing to be happy about living near a volcano. It is a dangerous situation, but when things go really bad, even living near a volcano can be positive. Line 18: people still hope that something positive will happen and that the situation will change, but they are almost afraid to hope for the better, because the situation is so bad that they fear to be disappointed. They want to hope, but they are afraid of hoping too much. They burnt their houses; then, looking for other materials to start a fire, they start to burn entire forests. But then, when even the forests are extinguished, it is all black and dark.