Admirin’ Byron

That a romantic could have also been So classical is striking you’ll agree Though waxing passionate when we are green And cooler when mature is probably A change determined in the very gene Or so at any rate it seems to me – Our grasp of life is just that bit more firm, Our reason turns like the proverbial worm.

And in Don Juan it turns like billy-oh. (Don Ju-an is the poem’s actual title But it would cause the line to overflow Its metric banks so, scansion being vital, I plumped for Juan just then; for all I know I shall again, though not to scan it right’ll I fear annoy you, and you doubtless yelped At this misnomer, but it can’t be helped.) I read it first when I was seventeen And it enthralled me even then despite My being obviously far more keen Than comprehending; long into the night I’d labour over what a line might mean And sometimes wish, though fairly erudite, He hadn’t put in such a host of quotes My nose was all but buried in the notes. At thirty I returned to it with glee, Its wit, its charm, its wisdom and its wry, World-weary take on life delighted me. Civilization is distinguished by Such understatement and such irony, And they’re what make the English, by the by, (Or so, for all he hated them, thought Byron) A race one simply cannot help admirin’. To quote a poem in a poem seems A touch like fraudulently expediting One’s composition; when one’s own rhyme scheme’s The same as that about which one is writing The fraudulence is worse; so, though my theme’s A literary critique, I shan’t be citing My subject; you must take it from the shelf And look for illustrations for yourself. What’s that I hear you say? You haven’t got it? Off to your local bookshop, then, at once! Not got Don Juan? You should be garrotted! And when there’s so much sawdust in your bonce, As every reader’s brain these days is dotted With books to which the only right response Is to forget them all as soon as read, A feat that’s sometimes harder done than said. If his prosodic geyser tends to gush In later cantos, and his scansion slackens, The early ones (don’t take them at a rush But mull and ponder them) in which he blackens Hypocrisy and lies and cant and mush – A modern Jason taking on those krakens Quite fearlessly – display a touch so light It makes one wonder why one tries to write. Some critics claim the poem’s core and pith Lie in the figure handed down to us By Moliere, Molina, Mozart, myth, Pace those pundits, I don’t see it thus: Byron had enemies to tangle with And many burning issues to discuss And chose the libertine dragged down to Hell Where other heroes would have done as well; Don Juan’s the poem’s spokes and not its hub Or else its hub when that bit matters less Than do the spokes; a part but not the nub; The manikin but not the actual dress; Or, in bridge parlance, not a lesser club But not a high spade either; if success (To get back off this metaphoric limb) Depended on him, yet it wasn’t him. Byron is what this poem is about If about anything, that is, per se, And if he’d sought a different subject out From here to Timbuktu, now till doomsday I, for my own part, seriously doubt If he’d have found a better. Anyway He will repay you, whether dipped into Or, novel-fashion, simply read straight through. Wordsworth, among the verse he slams is yours, For me, at least, one of his noblest aims, Since I’d consign without the least remorse Most if not all your poems to the flames Along with Coleridge’s (bar two, of course) While Keats, with great percipience, he names As promising, though he cannot excuse His sensitivity to bad reviews. The bards he loves are Milton, Dryden, Pope, And there again, of course, he doesn’t err, Seeing how superior in technique and scope To his contemporaries those poets were, Historically he seems to interlope Among his own peers, never their confrere But championing the measured and the sane In an epoch with fever of the brain. When he does wax romantic for a while In Canto Two, where Juan’s ship is wrecked And he hooks up with Haidee on her isle, It’s brought off to such dazzling effect, So sweetly do both verse and tale beguile The reader’s ear and heart and intellect – The whole thing somehow viewed askance yet felt – How could the staunchest cynic fail to melt? The book is seldom serious for a minute But sometimes is for two or even three, By which I mean that there are stanzas in it Where Byron is, or leastways seems to be, Pronouncing from the heart. But three’s his limit And even then he will immediately, As if it wasn’t really him that spoke, Explode his own intention with a joke. This, and its harsher, more acerbic traits, Are what should make this poem, for my money, Compulsory reading in these dreary days When being frank, fearless, sometimes even funny Is almost frowned upon, and what one says Right down to whether it is wet or sunny Must undergo self-censorship until It can be grasped by any imbecile And guaranteed to cause no toss-wit pain . . . My thousand words are up. I have to go. You’ll read Don Juan if you’ve got a brain, You’ll need much more than that to grasp it though – To pin this Proteus down’s a long-held aim – I thought I had for a half a sec, but no – Perhaps I shall before I bite the dust – Till then you’ll have to take my praise on trust.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 5 © Ranjit Bolt 2005