Don Juan E-Book

George Gordon Byron

• Herausgeber: George Gordon Byron
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

George Gordon Byron (later Noel), 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the short lyric She Walks in Beauty. Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets, and remains widely read and influential. He travelled widely across Europe, especially in Italy where he lived for seven years. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which many Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died one year later at age 36 from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs with people of both sexes, rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile. He also fathered Ada, Countess of Lovelace, whose work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine is considered a founding document in the field of computer science, and Allegra Byron, who died in childhood - as well as, possibly, Elizabeth Medora Leigh out of wedlock.

Leseprobe

Don Juan

Lord Byron

Contents

DEDICATION

CANTO THE FIRST

CANTO THE SECOND.

CANTO THE THIRD.

CANTO THE FOURTH.

CANTO THE FIFTH.

CANTO THE SIXTH.

CANTO THE SEVENTH.

CANTO THE EIGHTH.

CANTO THE NINTH.

CANTO THE TENTH.

CANTO THE ELEVENTH.

CANTO THE TWELTH.

CANTO THE THIRTEENTH.

CANTO THE FOURTEENTH.

CANTO THE FIFTEENTH.

CANTO THE SIXTEENTH.

CANTO THE SEVENTEENTH.

DEDICATION

     Bob Southey! You're a poet, poet laureate,       And representative of all the race.     Although 'tis true that you turned out a Tory at       Last, yours has lately been a common case.     And now my epic renegade, what are ye at       With all the lakers, in and out of place?     A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye     Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,     Which pye being opened they began to sing'       (This old song and new simile holds good),     'A dainty dish to set before the King'       Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.     And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,       But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,     Explaining metaphysics to the nation.     I wish he would explain his explanation.     You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,       At being disappointed in your wish     To supersede all warblers here below,       And be the only blackbird in the dish.     And then you overstrain yourself, or so,       And tumble downward like the flying fish     Gasping on deck, because you soar too high,     Bob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.     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.     'Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,       And may appear so when the Dog Star rages,     And he who understands it would be able     To add a story to the tower of Babel.     You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion       From better company, have kept your own     At Keswick, and through still continued fusion       Of one another's minds at last have grown     To deem, as a most logical conclusion,       That poesy has wreaths for you alone.     There is a narrowness in such a notion,     Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for ocean.     I would not imitate the petty thought,       Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,     For all the glory your conversion brought,       Since gold alone should not have been its price.     You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?       And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.     You're shabby fellows—true—but poets still     And duly seated on the immortal hill.     Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,       Perhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.     To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,       And for the fame you would engross below,     The field is universal and allows       Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow.     Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try     'Gainst you the question with posterity.     For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,       Contend not with you on the winged' steed,     I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,       The fame you envy and the skill you need.     And recollect a poet nothing loses       In giving to his brethren their full meed     Of merit, and complaint of present days     Is not the certain path to future praise.     He that reserves his laurels for posterity       (Who does not often claim the bright reversion)     Has generally no great crop to spare it, he       Being only injured by his own assertion.     And although here and there some glorious rarity       Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,     The major part of such appellants go     To—God knows where—for no one else can know.     If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,       Milton appealed to the avenger, Time,     If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs       And makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,     He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,       Nor turn his very talent to a crime.     He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,     But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.     Think'st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise       Like Samuel from the grave to freeze once more     The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,        Or be alive again—again all hoar     With time and trials, and those helpless eyes       And heartless daughters—worn and pale and poor,     Would he adore a sultan? He obey     The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?     Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!       Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,     And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,       Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,     The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,       With just enough of talent and no more,     To lengthen fetters by another fixed     And offer poison long already mixed.     An orator of such set trash of phrase,       Ineffably, legitimately vile,     That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,       Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile.     Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze       From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,     That turns and turns to give the world a notion     Of endless torments and perpetual motion.     A bungler even in its disgusting trade,       And botching, patching, leaving still behind     Something of which its masters are afraid,       States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,     Conspiracy or congress to be made,       Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,     A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,     With God and man's abhorrence for its gains.     If we may judge of matter by the mind,     Emasculated to the marrow, it     Hath but two objects, how to serve and bind,     Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,     Eutropius of its many masters, blind     To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,     Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice;     Its very courage stagnates to a vice.     Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,       For I will never feel them. Italy,     Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds       Beneath the lie this state-thing breathed o'er thee.

     I want a hero: an uncommon want,       When every year and month sends forth a new one,     Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,       The age discovers he is not the true one;     Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,       I 'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—     We all have seen him, in the pantomime,     Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.     Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,       Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,     Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,       And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;     Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,       Followers of fame, 'nine farrow' of that sow:     France, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier     Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.     Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,       Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,     Were French, and famous people, as we know:       And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,     Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,       With many of the military set,     Exceedingly remarkable at times,     But not at all adapted to my rhymes.     Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,       And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;     There 's no more to be said of Trafalgar,       'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;     Because the army 's grown more popular,       At which the naval people are concern'd;     Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,     Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.     Brave men were living before Agamemnon       And since, exceeding valorous and sage,     A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;       But then they shone not on the poet's page,     And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,       But can't 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.     Most epic poets plunge 'in medias res'       (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),     And then your hero tells, whene'er you please,       What went before—by way of episode,     While seated after dinner at his ease,       Beside his mistress in some soft abode,     Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,     Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.     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,     And therefore I shall open with a line       (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)     Narrating somewhat of Don Juan's father,     And also of his mother, if you 'd rather.     In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,       Famous for oranges and women—he     Who has not seen it will be much to pity,       So says the proverb—and I quite agree;     Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,       Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;     Don Juan's parents lived beside the river,     A noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir.     His father's name was Jose—Don, of course,—       A true Hidalgo, free from every stain     Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source       Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;     A better cavalier ne'er mounted horse,       Or, being mounted, e'er got down again,     Than Jose, who begot our hero, who     Begot—but that 's to come—Well, to renew:     His mother was a learned lady, famed       For every branch of every science known     In every Christian language ever named,       With virtues equall'd by her wit alone,     She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,       And even the good with inward envy groan,     Finding themselves so very much exceeded     In their own way by all the things that she did.     Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart       All Calderon and greater part of Lope,     So that if any actor miss'd his part       She could have served him for the prompter's copy;     For her Feinagle's were an useless art,       And he himself obliged to shut up shop—he     Could never make a memory so fine as     That which adorn'd the brain of Donna Inez.     Her favourite science was the mathematical,       Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,     Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,       Her serious sayings darken'd to sublimity;     In short, in all things she was fairly what I call       A prodigy—her morning dress was dimity,     Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,     And other stuffs, with which I won't stay puzzling.     She knew the Latin—that is, 'the Lord's prayer,'       And Greek—the alphabet—I 'm nearly sure;     She read some French romances here and there,       Although her mode of speaking was not pure;     For native Spanish she had no great care,       At least her conversation was obscure;     Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,     As if she deem'd that mystery would ennoble 'em.     She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,       And said there was analogy between 'em;     She proved it somehow out of sacred song,       But I must leave the proofs to those who 've seen 'em;     But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong       And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em,     ''T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means "I am,"     The English always use to govern d--n.'     Some women use their tongues—she look'd a lecture,       Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,     An all-in-all sufficient self-director,       Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,     The Law's expounder, and the State's corrector,       Whose suicide was almost an anomaly—     One sad example more, that 'All is vanity'     (The jury brought their verdict in 'Insanity').     In short, she was a walking calculation,       Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their covers,     Or Mrs. Trimmer's books on education,       Or 'Coelebs' Wife' set out in quest of lovers,     Morality's prim personification,       In which not Envy's self a flaw discovers;     To others' share let 'female errors fall,'     For she had not even one—the worst of all.     O! she was perfect past all parallel—       Of any modern female saint's comparison;     So far above the cunning powers of hell,       Her guardian angel had given up his garrison;     Even her minutest motions went as well       As those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:     In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,     Save thine 'incomparable oil,' Macassar!     Perfect she was, but as perfection is       Insipid in this naughty world of ours,     Where our first parents never learn'd to kiss       Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers,     Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss       (I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),     Don Jose, like a lineal son of Eve,     Went plucking various fruit without her leave.     He was a mortal of the careless kind,