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3102 words à faire pour 3 000 ( 20 mn) 18 août 2003
From Achilles
to The Stranger of The Deformed Transformed :
the testaments of Byron.
Aged 21, Byron sets off on his Grand Tour.
He condenses his fortnight in Troy to "the barrrows supposed to contain the carcases of Achilles, Antilochus, Ajax etc." 1
This detail that shocks him visually here, is the germ of my paper.
His interest in Achilles never left him, and he enriched it with strong ethical overtones, ( from where we get our title ).
We shall try to define « the good life » as Byron sees it, and, by simply following the chronological order of passages concerning this mythological hero, we can retrace one aspect of Byron’s beliefs on the values to be chosen, and on the path to be followed.
My first part emphasises the importance of Byron's vision of Achilles, who is clearly impressed by the contrast between the great hero and this pile of ashes. ( 1810)
Two years after his voyage, in Childe Harold and The Bride of Abydos, Byron explains that this «lone and nameless barrow »"2, this « defenceless » 3 and " little urn", "saith more than thousand homilies." 4 : it speaks of the early death5 of a hero who gloriously squandered his life, of the futility of this brief glory, and of human ingratitude 6.
Further, he conjures him7 up to protect modern Greece from political enemies and pillagers of works of art : hence he asks where is
Peleus’s son? whom Hell in vain enthrall’d,
His shade from Hades upon that dread day,
Bursting to light in terrible array ! 8
Byron described himself in something like these terms whilst wandering along the banks of the Scamandre, after his stay in Greece.
Could we find here as early as 1810 the seed of his idea ( to come back to help the Greeks), and could we infer that Byron saw himself as an Achilles figure? 9
In The Corsair10, the desire for a glorious and early death11 refers implicitly to him.
12In the Ode to a lady whose lover was killed by a ball…, Byron uses an alembic reference …This lover, wounded in his heart, is, thus, likened to the son of Thetis, a runner who had a weak point in his heel :
"13 No Cuirass o’er that glowing heart
The deadly bullet turned apart,
Love had bestowed a richer Mail
Like Thetis14 on her Son,
But hers at last was vain, -
And the lover’s race was run(...)15
So Byron has succeeded in reaching him via a very complicated route, which often bears on the theme of inherent weakness, which of course, personally affected him : we can distinguish here :
Physical defects in a perfect body,
Minute but deadly failings,
3) Defects coming from a great motherly love taken for granted perhaps (that is to say that of Thetis for Achilles and Mrs Byron for her son.) But yet a defect, that Byron puts down to a lack of motherly love (he said that his mother, whilst pregnant with him, wore a corset which caused him to be born crippled) 16.
My next section is called "The burlesque of Achilles in Don Juan".( 1819)
For the young Byron, Achilles was a subject of eulogy, a model of gallantry, a role-model, a young hero who died early in an exemplary way ; who gave the young Byron moral lessons to do with the shortness of life, human inconstancy, and involuntary flaws in perfection …
But, from 1819, there is a brutal change : throughout Don Juan, irony triumphs, and this my second section .
For example, Byron jests in rather bad taste about the dinner17 prepared by Achilles for the suppliant Priam. To excuse such lapses, he declares he has abandoned the Romantic stance because he now finds everything disgusting :
18we must steep
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe’s Spring
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep :
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.19
He later returns to the subject almost mechanically, as if to repudiate the feelings that he has experienced near his tomb : for example, speaking of Don Juan, tossed about by the waves, catching sight of Achilles’ ashes resting place :
"Another time, he might have liked to see’em,
But now was not much pleased with Cape Sigaeum." 20
"There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
(Flank’d by the Hellespont, and by the sea)
Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles ;
They say so - ( Bryant say the contrary);
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
The tumulus - of whom ? Heaven knows ; ‘t’may be
Patroclus, Ajax,or Protesilaus;
All heroes who if living, still would slay us." 21
This was, however, where, I think, Byron experienced the beginnings of his beliefs about the fragility of the human race and the changeability of mankind, as he writes.
I’ve stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted ; time will doubt of Rome.22
The fickleness of mankind leads him to think about his own fame : the glory of conquerors, like that of poets, will all be forgotten, so once again he can allude to him23.
This burlesque and satirical tone becomes more and more pronounced whenever he is thinking about fighting for, and with, the Greeks.
Why this contradiction?
Perhaps Byron supposed he would be compared with him, in commendation or shame, and could even be accused of trying to emulate him. To criticise him, was therefore to discretely deny any wish to resemble him.
As he « approaches » Greece, Byron increases his now habitual irony about two traditional Achillean virtues : beauty and valour :
In 1823, in Don Juan, Canto VII, stanza 14 and 39, Achilles, "grim and gory", is compared and assimilated to brutally hideous soldiers.
The most spectacular example of irony is a burlesque version of Achilles’ fatal injury : an enemy has bitten 24
the very tendon, which most acute -
( That which some ancient Muse or modern Wit
Named after thee, Achilles) and quite through’d it. 25
The Officer here ends up lame for life 26, and Byron, who bore a grudge against the doctors who had never been able to do anything about his leg at birth or later, blames27 the surgeon. 28
And so to my third section 3 : changes of values. (1821-february 1823)
In fact, the reasons of these changes of tone are progressive changes of values that we can notice since about 1821 ( and this will be my third part) .
In The Island 29 , the tone of the 3 allusions to Achilles becomes more serious :
1°) He is called a student-poet to Centaur Chiron30. It is a strange reference since Achilles was not famous for his poetical gifts.
2°) Byron makes a deprecatory allusion to Achilles' tomb, as inferior to the cairns of the natives31. Strange again.
3°) He discloses32 the modalities of his fascination for Achilles and Greece : he was in fact searching everywhere for his childhood impressions:
The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o’er Troy,
Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,
(… )Forgive me, Homer’s universal shade!
Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy's trayed.
His vision of Achilles has clearly changes.
There is also , then, a change in behaviour :
For the first time in works intended for publication33, Byron treats with near realism his relationship with his parents : Canto XVII of Don Juan too, begins by illustrating the sufferings of unloved children and The Deformed Transformed begins by cruelly portraying the lack of motherly love.
.
Concerning our subject, let us note first two others allusions to our poor Thetis 's in this last short text :
1) Arnold wanted only to wholly resemble Achilles, but The Stranger points out that Arnold has forgotten a detail : the said Achilles measured "twelve cubits" : in battle, the culverins would wound him more easily than the Paris'arrow through Achilles'
heel,
Which Thetis had forgotten to baptize
In Styx.
(Once again, so, Byron here alludes to his mother’s supposed responsibility in causing Byron's own lameness.)
2) second allusion when Arnold-Achilles is setting off to fight with remarkable but rash bravery : the Byron-Stranger figure once again alludes to the consequences of the lack of professional awareness of our poor Thetis ! :
But though I gave the form of Thetis 'son,
I dipt thee not in Styx; and 'gainst a foe,
I would not warrant thy chilvalric heart
More than Pelides' (heel).34
More important, The Deformed transformed broaches strong ethical questions35 about the Good Ligfe , but with new answers from Byron : the quesiton of the choice of the Beauty is very important here . it is common to two of the three sources mentioned by Byron36 . ( see Imke Heuer's paper) . Arnold chooses37 the persona of Achilles because of its physical beauty38, and because he wants to be loved .
Now what is new ?
The fact that the the Stranger openly criticises Arnold’s choices ( Beauty etc.) as obvious, superficial, and almost childlike. 39
-For instance, it is the first work where Byron almost publicly links physical imperfection40 with courage, explaining that valour is the virtue necessarily earned by those who are deformed in some way. 41
Perhaps Byron himself had chosen this type of psychological reaction ( in French we call it "resilience") : riding and swimming until exhausted, breaking records, and taking risks.
But, here, when Arnold is setting off to fight bravely, the Stranger compares the vanity of the battles with everlasting values for which Man should fight. Paradoxical reproaches from the Devil!
-Later, Arnold falls in love with Olimpia whom he thinks that he has just killed42, but the Stranger sneeringly likens this episode to Achilles' love43 for Penthesilea, the Amazon, after Achilles killed her .
-Later on, even if the Stranger revives Olympia44, he soon hints that Arnold's honeymoon is already over : absolute practical proof that the key-values of Arnold-Achilles have meant nothing.
Byron of course writes these lines : could he be reproaching his own conscience for having been obsessed with his own limp and having paid too much attention to physical beauty and ephemeral qualities ? …
It is clear that Byron becomes more and more distant from the mythic light-footed and impetuous hero 45… who is no longer his role-model, nor his own conception of Achilles a guide : from now on, Byron's mouthpiece is The Stranger.
Achilles is thus openly relegated to secondary importance46 even at the very moment, in march 1823, when Byron is preparing his own embarcation to Greece, to be a hero rather than a poet 47 …
But, precisely, he has missed out the fact that in the Iliad, the Achaean victory would only be due to the fighting of Achilles, yet he would die before Troy …
Why therefore has Byron never mentioned this idea of a death, so to speak, foreseen and accepted ? of a « sacrifice » ?
It is almost impossible, I think, that Byron did not see the call to go to fight in and for Greece as a moving repetition of Achilles’ actions.
Silence on this topic can perhaps be simply explained because Byron dared not even favour a possible comparative connexion.
This silence leads into my last part which could be entitled : A different, possibly a sublimated Achilles ( july 23).
Until now, we have followed the chronological order of the texts, but now48 we are obliged to take the liberty of studying his last texts and even scraps49 after july 1823, as if they were contemporary and definitive50.
For passion - and the next for vanity –52 …
The mythological Achilles and his values have vanished beneath the bitter irony of the Stranger.
In a September poem53, entitled Aristomenes, Byron, weighing up all this mythological beauty as if to bid farewell to myths, admits that he has been under an illusion. Trelawny, among others, testifies too that Byron, as soon as he set off for Greece, refused any literature, even Homeric.
Similarly, in his famous poem read to his friends on his 36th birthday, he is presented as already dead since the flame of his passion can no more set fire54 to another … :
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle,
No torch is kindled at its blaze
A funeral pile !
The worm, the canker and the grief
Are mine alone.
This rejection of his love ought to ( as The Stranger would have told him) make him to treat physical beauty with contempt.
Tread those reviving passions down
Unworthy Manhood ; - unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of Beauty be.
It is almost, again, a kind of death or suicide .
Why all these changes ?
We know that Byron was passionately torn by an unreciprocated love in the Ancient Greek style55 in these last months, and confesses his own weakness.
The end56 of the scrap of the end of The Deformed Transformed shows us a person who is weak in front of his own desire to be loved57.
In the last verses of his last poem58, he confesses that he is basically "the fool of passion".
Hence new reactions and texts, in which the theme of Achilles is implicit.
We shall try to explain some of these complications which may lurk in Byron’s mind in his relation to and contest of mind about loving Loukas and fighting for Greece. It is difficult but interesting … and may be provoke some discussion. I hope so …
In the poem on his Birthday, he signifies that he wants to die, and sets out his reasons:
If thou regret’st thy youth, why live ?
T’is time this heart should be unmoved
Since others it hath ceased to move.
He proclaims that he will seek Death here :
The Land of honourable Death
Is here - up to the Field ! and give
Away thy Breath.
Seek out - less often sought than found,
A Soldier’s Grave - for thee the best,
Then look around and choose thy ground
And take thy Rest. 59
Death is not so much the met death of a stoic warrior, but rather the hope of rest for a suffering man 60.
The strength and style of these passive and active reactions resemble those of Achilles : Achilles, angry against Agamemnon, and in love with Briseis, refuses to fight with Agamemnon ; and mad of pain because of Patroclus, chooses to fight even until death… Moral and physical death are confused together here.
But we suggest that Byron, this finally rejected lover, who could give up everything, remains master of his acts, and so this byronian dichotomy is weighed up and analysed in those last poems of his.
Yet in his last texts, and even in full despair of love, he does not blaspheme against the own principles he had chose .
The poem on his Birthday is clearly a decision for a useful and "honourable Death"61. He works himself up to heroism and in effect, he chooses Death in combat, in place of a futile death.
2) In his Last verses too, he aims higher than past or future honours and fame, and knows what it is worth dying for :
What are to me those honours or renown
Past or to come, a new-born people’s cry
Albeit for such I could despise a crown
Of aught save Laurel, or for such could die ;
Even weak in love, — even ‘the fool of passion’ as he says—he declares that he will still be able to continue to risk his life, but only for « a new-born people’s cry""or for such" : that is to say Greece62.
If Achilles seems essentially to be a hero obedient only to his feelings, Byron in his last months, seems to realize that, since his new love will be probably always unreciprocated, he can, at least, overpass his own desire for beauty and love, and act as a moral and free hero.
He confesses that he is not a hero of the Achilles’ type, and that valour is no more a real aim for him : but isn't this the best courage ? the true one ? Since his life cannot get ( pleasure), would not his "good life" take the active significations of (virtue) and ( good and right conduct or action)63 ?
Here, I move into a difficult territory which needs more thought … I will again be grateful for your comments in the discussion, and also look forward to Professor Peter Graham’s paper.
It is time to conclude on our brief exploration of the figure of Achilles in Byron’s thought and verse.
It has been the leitmotif which has allowed us to trace the development of Byron's opinion about the Good Life. 64
Courage and glory, beauty and pleasure, immortality, motherly love, friendship and love, have been exchanged for almost opposite themes : human changeability, loneliness, defects, early death, moral faults and wider ethical problems.
There has been a corresponding change from high Romantic rhetoric to burlesque, realism, autobiography and the decision for action…
Depending on whether he saw Achilles as a son of Thetis or a hero, "light" or "defected-footed", with a loving or a stupid mother, Byron saw him like a brother, an elder or a father figure, with the obscure inherent feelings associated with these relationships …65
The Homeric figure was wonderful, but perhaps rather simple ; Byron's vision of Achilles is complex.
His own death is still more complex for it seems to be both a mere twist of fate and yet still his own forchosen heroic death.
Today, only a « defenceless urn » remains from Lord Byron — the man nourished by Achilles, estranged from him, and perhaps reunited with him, voluntarily or not, into the ineradicable realm of myths and of role models.
From which we could take some of our own patterns and choices, as to what makes a good life and a good death…
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