Byron's Manfred

The Persistence of Manfred

Below are two paintings depicting scenes from Byron's Manfred. The first is by an artist who was a contemporary of Byron. The Longman Anthology produces another famous painting by Martin in the color plates section. You might compare the painting below, depicting Manfred's encounter with the chamois-hunter, with Martin's "The Bard" included in the Longman.

Here is the same scene depicted by the late Victorian painter Ford Madox Brown.

Byron's pessimism contrasts sharply with the revolutionary optimism emanating from the French Revolution, Napoleon's rise to power, the emergence of a democratic government in the former British colonies of North America, and other heady Romantic moments. This emergence out of the darkness of tyranny into the light of liberty (and yes they actually talked like that) is captured beautifully in the "prisoners' chorus" from Beethoven's opera Fidelio:

The Prisoners' Chorus from Fidelio

GEFANGENEN O, welche Lust! in freier Luft den Atem leicht zu heben, O, welche Lust! nur hier, nur hier ist Leben, der Kerker eine Gruft, eine Gruft! ERSTER GEFANGENE Wir wollen mit Vertrauen auf Gottes Hülfe, auf Gottes Hülfe bauen, die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu, wir werden frei, wir finden Ruh, wir finden Ruh'. GEFANGENEN O Himmel Rettung, welch ein Glück, o Freiheit, o Freiheit, kehrst du zurück? ZWEITE GEFANGENE Sprecht leise, haltet euch zurück, wir sind belauscht mir Ohr und Blick. GEFANGENEN Sprecht leise, haltet euch zurück, wir sind belauscht mir Ohr und Blick.

ALL Oh, what a pleasure once again Freely to breathe the fresh air! In Heaven’s light we live again; From death we have escaped. One of them. Let us in Heaven trust; On Heaven depend our hopes: He will on our griefs look with pity. On His goodness all things depend. All. Oh, liberty! oh, salvation! Oh, God, upon our miseries have pity! [Here an Officer appears on the wall, and again retires. Prisoner. Silence! make no noise! Pizarro’s eyes and ears are o’er us! All. Silence! make no noise! Pizarro’s eyes and ears are o’er us! Oh! what a pleasure once again Freely to breathe the fresh air! In Heaven’s light we live again; From death we have escaped.

Byron's pessimism began as more mannerism than worldview. He achieved near-instant and worldwide fame with the immense popularity of his travelogue/reflective poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the first part of which was published in 1812.  As Byron later commented, he woke one day to find himself famous. This long rambling poem details the journeys and meditations of the world-weary "Harold" (to which Byron self-consciously prefixes the medieval title of "Childe" (young lord) complete with archaic spelling) as he travels throughout Europe and the Near East in search of experience to stir him out of his ennui and existential angst, neither term yet existing by the way. Readers weren't fooled and immediately recognized the author in the character of Childe Harold, but the exotic locations (closed to most Europeans by the Continental War still taking place) coupled with the self-loathing, self-aggrandizing narcissistic narrator were a compelling combination for readers.

When Byron returns to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1816, he drops the pretense and speaks in his own voice about his own life, a life that was widely known because Byron was Lord Byron (a member of the aristocracy) and according to one of his former lovers, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Like one of his Byronic heroes, Byron espoused democratic principles while simultaneously invoking his hereditary rights; he criticized the monarchy while partaking of the advantages of rank; he championed the people while disdaining the herd. 

Below are some excerpts from Canto 3 of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1816). Stanzas 36-45 are Byron's reflections on the fall of Napoleon, which reads like a gloss on Manfred. Stanzas 96-97 are pure Romanticism. And stanzas 113-114 are Byron's (arrogant) farewell to the English public as he leaves England to begin his own exile in the face of scandal.

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3

XXXVI.
There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose spirit anithetically mixed
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed;
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
Even now to reassume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
XXXVII.
Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became
The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
A god unto thyself; nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.
XXXVIII.
Oh, more or less than man--in high or low,
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield:
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
XXXIX.
Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.
XL.
Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steeled thee on to far too show
That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
XLI.
If, like a tower upon a headland rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
THEIR admiration thy best weapon shone;
The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men;
For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.
XLII.
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul, which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
XLIII.
This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:
XLIV.
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
XLV.
He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high ABOVE the sun of glory glow,
And far BENEATH the earth and ocean spread,
ROUND him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

                       * * * *

XCVI.
Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices, is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest.
But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
XCVII.
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,--could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe--into one word,
And that one word were lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

                       * * * *

CXIII.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee, -
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
CXIV.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me, -
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,--hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the falling: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem, -
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.

Finally, we might consider Manfred as one in a long list of Romantic anti-heroes. Rebels, revolutionaries, outcasts, outsiders, these figures are found everywhere in the texts of the times (and in the texts of our time). The Romantic Satan (as in Satan from Milton's Paradise Lost) is one of the most important figures alongside Faust (resurrected and re-written by Goethe), Prometheus (in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, but also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus), Hamlet (a quote from the play is one of the epigraphs of Byron's play), Napoleon, the Ancient Mariner, and countless others. This striking rewriting is nowhere more apparent than in Goethe's re-imagining of the Faust legend. Goethe wrote a version of the Faust legend that mostly followed the original, at least in terms of the deal with the devil, the acquisition of secret knowledge and other bits. Goethe's play does much more, but we don't need to go into that here. Some time later (over two decades), Goethe revisited the Faust story and wrote a second part, in which he imagines a "second act," for Faust, a chance to redeem himself, which takes the form of involvement in large public works and service to the community and the nation. Below is a small excerpt from near the end of Part 2, where Faust, despite having signed away his soul to the devil (remember), is finally admitted into Heaven, not because he was without sin and not because he did good works, but because his life has been marked by everywhere by restlessness, ambition, and striving: "Whoever constantly aspires and perseveres, / Him can we redeem." In redeeming Faust, Goethe and Byron and all the other Romantics were redeeming "ambition" and transforming it into something like the heroic ambition of classical and pagan texts (Odysseus, Achilles, Aeneas, Beowulf, and so forth) necessary to normalizing the world of global consumer capitalism in which we live.

From the final scene of Goethe's Faust, Part 2

ENGEL (schwebend in der höhern Atmosphäre, Faustens Unsterbliches tragend) Gerettet ist das edle Glied Der Geisterwelt vom Bösen: Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen; Und hat an ihm die Liebe gar Von oben teilgenommen, Begegnet ihm die sel'ge Schar Mit herzlichem Willkommen.

ANGELS (hovering in the higher atmosphere, bearing Faust's immortal soul) Now the noble member Of the spiritual world is saved from evil: Whoever constantly aspires and perseveres, Him can we redeem; And if he fully merges in the Love high above, The sacred congregation will meet him With the most heartfelt welcome.