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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > Don Juan

Byron on Politics

Hatred of Castleraegh - Most powerful man in British Politics at time.

Promised Catholic emancipation to the Irish… changed mind… lead the main enemy to the slaughtering.

Dedication XI - “The intellectual eunuch Castleraegh”
Dedication XII - “Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!”
II. Cciii - “So good - I wonder Castleraegh don’t tax ‘em.” (Byron has a grudge because he is in so much debt)
“Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.”

Attacking Cant

Dedication I -
“Although ‘tis true that you turn’d out a Tory at
Last, - yours has lately been a common case, -”
(Romantics commissioned to write for King - against beliefs)
Dedication XII
“Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore.”
(Elected for being good to Catholics and then destroyed them)
Dedication XVII
“To keep one creed’s a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, Ultra-Julian?”
(Classical reference - Julian = 2 faced hypocrite.
Renouncing one religion for another to get power… about politics)
I.XXVII
“Save that her duty both to man and God
Required this conduct - which seem’d very odd…”
(Donna Inez trying to have Don Jose certified as mad - ’moral duty’ vindictive)
I.XXXIII
“His death contrived to spoil a charming cause;
A thousand pities also with respect
To public feeling, which on this occasion
Was manifested in a great sensation.”
(Don Jose à horrible man à Kills himself à Everyone loves him…again a comment on the fickleness of society)
I. CCVIII
“Cry that they ‘the moral cannot find’,
I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;
Should captains the remark, or critics make,
They also lie too - under a mistake.”
(They are hypocrites)
I. CCIX
“I’ve bribed my grandmother’s review - the British…”

Attacking individuals

Dedication II - Coleridge
“And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber’d with his hood.
Explaining metaphysics to the nation-
I wish he would explain his Explanation.”
(Limited field of vision/Imagery of flying as an ideal)
I. XCI - Coleridge
“And turn’d, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.”
Coleridge = immature… speculation about world without scientific input à Romantic.
Dedication III - Southey
“You, Bob! Are rather insolent, you know […]
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!”
(Flight and fall imagery… Icarus…)
I. CCVVII - Southey
“The four first rhymes are Southey’s, every line:
For God’s sake reader! Take them not for mine”
Dedication IV - Wordsworth
“And Wordsworth, in a rather long ‘Excursion’
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages”
“There poets find materials for their books,
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible”
I.VI - Flowery poets
“Palace, or garden, paradise or cavern”
I.XXXII - Lawyers
“The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don Jose died.”
I. LVII - Nobility
“His blood less noble than such blood should be;
At such alliances his sires would frown,
They bred in and in, as might be shown,
Marrying their cousins - nay, their aunts and nieces,
Which always spoils the breed, if it increases.”
(Donna Julia’s husband - a Noble - in breading)
I. LXXXIII - Religion
“Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.”
I. XCVII - Intellectuals
“Whether it was she did not see, or would not,
Or, like all very clever people, could not…”
(Intellectuals - are they blind to the world?)
I. CXVI - Plato! Ancient Philosopher
“Oh Plato! Plato! You have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies…
A Charlatan, a coxcomb - and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.”
(Plato - notion that man and woman could be friends without sex)
I.CCV
“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy”

Attacking the Lakers

Lakers are insular and narrow mined in Byron’s opinion.

Dedication V
“There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.”

Criticism of the Enlightenment

I. L
“They tamed him down amongst them; to destroy
His natural spirit not in vain they toil’d.”
(Link to theory of Romantic poetry being organic… stem from the imagination)

Don Juan

I. XXV
“A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth.”
I. XLIX
“And seem’d at least, in the right road to heaven,
For half his days were pass’d at church, the other
Between his tutors, confessors, and mother.”
I. LXXXVII
“Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow” à A Byronic hero

Donna Inez (Mother)

Wants to keep Juan young forever… protect him from the evils of the world.

I.X.
“With virtues equall’d by her wit alone,
She made the cleverest people quite ashamed.”
(Enlightenment rationality Vs Emotion)
I.XI
“A memory so fine as
That which adorn’d the brain of Donna Inez.”
I.XVI
“She was a walking calculation.”
I. XXXIX
“That which Donna Inez most desired,
Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral.”
(Taught Juan all about history but no natural sciences)
I. XL
“But not a page of anything that’s loose,
Or hints continuation of the species”
(Education - counter effective - learnt nothing of life)
I. XLI
“Filthy loves of gods and goddesses”
“For Donna Inez dreaded mythology”
I.XLVIII
“Her maids were old, and if she took a new one,
You might be sure she was a perfect fright,
She did this during even her husbands life -
I recommend as much to every wife.”
I. LXVI
“That Inez had, ere Don Alfonso’s marriage,
Forgot with him her very prudent carriage.”
(Donna Inez had an affair with Don Alfonso (married to Donna Julia)

Relationship with Donna Julia

Introduced: I. LV
“There was Donna Julia, whom to call
Pretty were but to give a feeble notion
Of many charms in her as natural
As her sweetness to the flower, or salt to ocean”
I. LXX
“Whate’er the cause might be, they had become
Changed; for the dame grew distant, the youth shy,
Their looks cast down, their greetings almost dumb,
And much embarrassment in either eye.
There surely will be little doubt with some
That Donna Julia knew the reason why,
But as for Juan, he had no more notion
Than he who never saw the sea of ocean.”
(Growing close but Juan = too ignorant and naïve for anything to happen)
I. LXXIII
“Masks it often wears” à Trying to hide their infatuation
I. LXXVI
“She vow’d she never would see Juan more,
And next day paid a visit to his mother.”
I. LXXXI
“Purity of soul”
I. CIX
“One hand on Juan’s carelessly was thrown,
Quite by mistake - she thought it was her own”
I. CXVII
“A little still she strove, and much repented,
And whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’ - consented…”

Byron on Love

I. LXXII
“Even innocence itself has many a wile,
And will not dare to trust itself with truth,
And love is taught hypocrisy from youth.”
(Nature of being young… assume roles, find out who you are… Young love… horrible to someone you like etc)
I. CXII
“Love is so very timid when ‘tis new”

Don Jose

I.XVIII
“Don Jose, like a lineal son of Eve,
Went plucking various fruit without her leave.”
(unfaithful to his wife)

Byron on Women

I.XXI
“And sometimes ladies hit exceedingly hard,
And fans turn into falchions in fair hands,
And why and wherefore no one understands.”
(Byron referring to the vicious nature of women)
I. XXXVII
“As only son left with an only mother
Is brought up much more wisely than another.”
(Quite sincerely positive towards single mothers - Donna Inez)
I. LXII
“Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue
Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.”
(Relationships are physical)
I. CLXV
“No sooner was it bolted, than - Oh shame!
Oh sin! Oh sorrow! And Oh womankind!
How can you do such things and keep your fame”

Byron on Poetry

Dedication VI
“You’re shabby fellows - true - but poets still,
And duly seated on the immoral hill.”
(Romantic concept - Poets are special)
I.VI
“Most epic poets plunge ‘in medias res’,
LVII
“That is the usual method, but not mine-
My way is to begin with the beginning;
The regularity of my design
Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,”
(Ironic! - he is such a waffler!)
I. XC
Romantic - “Young Juan wander’d by the glassy brooks,
Thinking unutterable things; he threw
Himself at length within the leafy nooks
… Unless like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.”
I. XCII
“He thought about himself, and the whole earth,
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;
And then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”
(Metaphysical speculation but beautiful stanza… Romantic in style)

Love of Milton

Dedication X
“And makes the word ‘Miltonic’ means ‘sublime’.
“He deign’d not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime.”
(Milton worked against King. Refused role of Poet Laureate)
Dedication XI
“From the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies.”

Flight and Fall Imagery

Dedication VIII
“For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed”

Byron on the world/society

Dedication XIII
“That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.”
(Repressive and ghastly world)
I. I
“I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.”
(Society is fickle… changes with the times. What would benefit them most)
I.IV.
“Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d.”
(Criticism of the fickleness of man)

Bathos

Dedication III
“Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.”
I. LV
Introduction of Donna Julia
“As sweetness to the flower, or salt to ocean,
Her zone to Venus, or his bow to Cupid,
(But this last simile is trite and stupid).
(Builds up beautiful classical imagery and then breaks it down… From sublime to the ridiculous)
I. LXI
“As if her veins ran lighting; she, in sooth,
Possess’d an air and grace by no means common:
Her stature tall - I hate a dumpy woman.” (Donna Julia)
I. LXXXVII
“I’m fond myself of solitude or so,
But then, I beg it may be understood,
By solitude I mean a sultan’s, not
A hermits, with a haram for a grot…”
(Wouldn’t be lonely on his own à brothel…serious à ridiculous)

Poets Voice

I. III.
“Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.”
(Bathos - very obvious poets voice. Byron uses singular first person with ease)
I.V
“But cant find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I’ll take my friend Don Juan.”
I.XXIII
“Twas surely no concern of theirs nor mine;
I loathe that low vice - curiosity.”
(Hypercritical and self-ironic… he loved getting involved with other peoples relationships)
I.XXV
“Had they been but both in their senses,
They’d have sent young master forth
To school.”
(Byron distancing himself from Don Juan - He did go to school)
I. LI
“But scandal’s my aversion - I protest
Against all evil speaking, even in jest.”
(Who is the narrator here? Is it Byron?)
I. LIII
“I never married - but, I think, I know
That sons should not be educated so.”
(Byron distancing himself from the narrator - he did marry… the Narrator is intruding on the narrative)

Comments on his own life?

The marriage between Donna Inez and Don Jose. à It is the marriage of Byron and Annabella Milbank?

Employing Comedy

I.XXIV
“For little Juan o’er me threw, down stairs,
A pail of housemaid’s water unawares.”
I. CVIII
“When poets say, ‘I’ve written fifty rhymes’
They make you dread that they’ll recite them too.”

Water Imagery

Dedication V
“There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.”
I. LXX
But as for Juan, he had no more notion
Than he who never saw the sea of ocean.”

Form and Structure

I.VIII - Emergency rhyming
“Don Juan’s parents lived beside the river,
A noble stream, and call’d the Guadalquivir.”
.XXII - Emergency rhyming
“But-oh! Ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?
I. LIX
Play on words - Oxymoron -“She was married, charming, chaste and 23” (Two ideas intending to clash. Married à Chaste)
I. CIV - Train of thought/consciousness -
“’Twas on the sixth of June, about the hour
Of half-past six - perhaps still nearer seven -”
(Poetry should be ‘Organic’!!!)
I. CXXII -
“’Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep
From leaf to leaf, ‘tis sweet to view on high
The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.”
(Listing things that are beautiful… Romantic without evoking bathos)
I. CCII - Half-rhyme
“Their labyrinth of fables to thread through,
Whereas this story’s actually true.”

An Epic?

I. CCII
“There’s only one slight difference between
Me and my epic brethren gone before,
And here the advantage is my own, I ween
They so embellish, that ‘tis quite a bore
Their labyrinth of fables to thread through,
Whereas this story’s actually true.”