Rice University

Don Juan as Anti-Epic

Author(s): John Lauber
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 8, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn,
1968), pp. 607-619
Published by: Rice University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/449468
Accessed: 18/03/2010 21:21
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rice.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Rice University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1900.
http://www.jstor.org
Don
Juan
as
Anti-Epic
JOHN LAUBER
Far from being
a modern
epic,
or an
adaptation
of the
epic
to the
nineteenth century,
Don Juan systematically parodies
or attacks the
major conventions of
epic poetry
as set forth
by
neoclassic criticism.
The action of an
epic poem was expected
to be
single,
and
great;
the
action of Don Juan is
purely episodic
and often
flagrantly
"low." The
only actions which could be considered great-the shipwreck and the
siege of Ismail-are treated with a literal realism that is
entirely
foreign to the epic spirit.
The
epic
hero should be virtuous and con-
stant to some
great design;
Don Juan is the average man, drifting
with every
circumstance. Epic poetry was impersonal;
Don Juan is the
most
personal
of
poems. Physical prowess
and heroism in combat were
the
principal
values of the epic; heroism,
wars and
glory
are endlessly
ridiculed or condemned in Don Juan. Epic poetry
demanded
supernatural
intervention or at least concern with the affairs of men;
Don Juan
takes
place
in an
entirely
secular world. Byron
considers the "truthful-
ness" or realism of his own poem its greatest virtue, establishing
its
moral superiority
over the epic,
which for him was an outmoded and
morally dangerous form.
THE ECHOES OF EPIC
poetry
in Don Juan
are too numerous and obvious ever to have been overlooked,
but the
relationship
of
Byron's poem
to the
epic
remains un-
clear. Probably
the most widely
held view has been that
Byron,
like Milton before him, attempted
to "reinterpret
and
recreate the
epic
form."1 It will be the argument
of this
paper
that Don Juan's achievement is not to
reinterpret
or recreate
but to destroy
the
epic
form
by
a
comprehensive
attack on
the whole tradition of
epic poetry-its style,
its
structure,
and its values. The
epic genre,
for
Byron,
was moribund,
no
longer
a real
possibility
for a modern
poet.
The
prestige
of the
epic during
the
preceding
two centuries
and more was enormous and
nearly unquestioned.
"A heroic
poem, truly such,
is undoubtedly
the greatest
work which the
soul of man is
capable
to
perform," Dryden
had declared in
the
opening
sentence of the
preface
to his translation of the
Aeneid. The "rules" of
epic poetry
were formulated and re-
formulated,
and such
questions
as whether the duration of
the action in an
epic poem
could
properly
exceed one
year
were
argued at
length.
Critical interest in
England
was increased
1George
M. Ridenour,
The
Style of
Don Juan
(New Haven, 1960), p.
100.
DON JUAN
by
the
highly
successful translations of
Dryden
and
Pope.
And
epic poetry
was not
only
criticized and translated;
new
epics
were
actually
written. While Dryden
and
Pope projected epics
which were never
composed (perhaps fortunately),
the Black-
mores and Glovers wrote them. The
results,
to be
sure,
were
recognized
as unsatisfactory.
A historian of the
subject
ob-
serves that,
with the
exception
of Milton's
works,
a
history
of
"heroic
poetry"
in seventeenth and
eighteenth-century Eng-
land deals "with three classes of
poems-those
that never
lived,
those now
dead,
and those more dead than alive."2
Yet such failures did not dim the
prestige
of the form or
demonstrate its irrelevance to the
contemporary
world. Horace
Walpole might
observe that
"Epic poetry
is the art of being
as
long
as
possible
in
telling
an
uninteresting story"
and con-
clude that "So far from
epic poetry being
at the head of com-
position,
I am
persuaded
that the reason why
so exceedingly
few have succeeded is from the absurdity
of the
species,"8
but
Walpole's
view was heretical. The orthodox evaluation of the
epic persisted through
the first
quarter
of the nineteenth cen-
tury,
encouraging
the
production
of such diverse works as
Southey's Madoc and Keats's Hyperion. When the young
Wordsworth, freed by a legacy to devote his life to poetry,
began to consider a major work, his thoughts apparently
turned as naturally to the epic form as Milton's had more
than a century and a half before. The major poem that Words-
worth actually composed, however, was The Prelude, which
offers not an adaptation of the epic, but an alternative to it.
Of the major poets between 1670 and 1820, Dryden, Pope,
Wordsworth and Keats all planned epics, but, significantly,
not one carried out his plan. (The mode in which Dryden and
Pope did succeed was the mock-epic.) No critic, however,
seems to have drawn the conclusion that this history of abor-
tive effort and failure indicated more than the incapacity of
particular poets.
Byron's familiarity with the epic tradition might be taken
for granted as part of the cultural equipment of an educated
English gentleman, and it is confirmed by his own words:
"As a child I first read Pope's Homer with a rapture no subse-
'Wm. MacNeile Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (London, 1912),
p. 224.
'Quoted in Hugh T. Swedenberg, "The Theory of the Epic in
England,
1650-1800," University of California Publications in English,
XV
(Berkeley, 1944), 141.
608
JOH N LAUBE R
quent
work could ever afford ... As a
boy
I read Homer in
the
original,
as we have all done."4 The Aeneid would also
have been a
staple
of the schoolroom,
and of "modern"
epics
he was
acquainted
with Milton's works and with the Geru-
salemme Liberata of Tasso. While it is
unlikely
that
Byron,
with his distrust of theorizing
of
any kind,
would have read
extensively
in French and
English
neoclassic
criticism, Dry-
den's
preface
to the Aeneid would have
provided
him with a
compendium
of standard
opinions.
Modern criticism has in-
creasingly emphasized Byron's
neoclassic
affinities,
and cer-
tainly
he
possessed
a
general knowledge
of the "rules" as
well as of the
principal
ancient and modern
epic poems.
Byron's
own work
up
to Don Juan had
nothing
in common
with
epic poetry,
and some of his admirers seem to have be-
lieved that he should consolidate his frame with a more sub-
stantial
poem, presumably
an
epic,
that would be
worthy of
his
powers.
In 1819 Byron answered such a
suggestion
from
his
publisher,
John
Murray,
with his most
significant
direct
statement on the
subject:
"So
you
. . . want me to undertake
what you
call a
'great work'? an
Epic poem,
I
suppose,
or
some such pyramid . . . You have so many 'divine' poems,
is it nothing to have written a Human one? without any of
your wornout machinery?"6 Don Juan may be thought of as a
more considered and complete reply to Murray's suggestion.
"I want a Hero," the first words of Canto I, mimic the
traditional epic opening and at the same time imply that the
poet's world cannot supply the materials for such poetry. Of
bloodshed it offers an abundance, but of true heroism, nothing.
Its numerous "heroes" are the creatures of publicity, easily
made and soon forgotten. Byron's final choice, Don Juan, is
quite deliberately at the opposite extreme from the epic
ideal. Neoclassic critics had frequently held that the epic hero
must be
morally perfect, and the contrast with Byron's hero
hardly
needs pointing out (not that Juan is vicious; rather
he is simply the average man, well-meaning but weak, and
exposed by his charm to temptations considerably more fre-
quent
and attractive than the average man encounters.) John
Dennis had expressed a generally accepted opinion when he
asserted that "the Hero of an Epick poem always carries on
'The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero
(London, 1922), IV, p. 558.
?Letters and Journals, p. 284.
609
DON JUAN
some
good and
great design,"6
while on the contrary "the
central fact about Don Juan is that he has no mission."7
Juan's
shipwreck
and
landing on Haidee's island
may
remind
us of the adventures of
Odysseus,
but Juan has no
kingdom
or
Penelope
to return to
(Julia
has
already
been
forgotten).
It is this lack of
purpose
that accounts for the
frequent
critical comments on his
"passivity."
Juan acts
vigorously
enough during
individual
episodes,
but he makes no
attempt
to direct the
larger
movement of his life. It is true that the
actions of
Odysseus
and
Aeneas, for
example,
are in
large
part
determined
by
forces
beyond
their
control,
but at least
they
are
being guided
toward an
intelligible goal
which
they
themselves
accept.
Juan's
experiences
are
merely
the result of
blind
chance-Byron's skepticism
is too
complete
to allow a
place
even for Fate or
Necessity in his universe.
By epic
standards, then,
Don Juan is no hero at
all; indeed,
he
might
more
accurately
be called an anti-hero.
It is conventional
enough
to lament the absence of
genuine
heroism in the
contemporary
world (in whatever
century the
writer
may
be
living),
but
Byron's purpose
is more
interesting
and original than that. Satire is directed at the past as well
as at the present, and the epic concept of heroism is deflated.
The Homeric heroes, as the poem repeatedly makes clear,
were simply experts in the "brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting
art" of war, and no more deserving of honor than their mod-
ern counterparts who spill blood in even greater quantities.
The Russian "heroes" of the siege of Ismail, Strongenoff and
Roguenoff and Chokenoff and their companions (the names
make an obvious comment) are quite as heroic and deserving
of fame-"Achilles' self was not more grim and gory," (VII,
st. 14) the poet remarks. The horrors which ensue on the
capture of Ismail are explicitly compared with those that
followed the fall of Troy. The words "Glory" and "Hero"
hardly ever appear in Don Juan without an ironic connotation.
Implicit throughout, and occasionally directly expressed, is
an attack on the moral values of the traditional epic, with
its praise of war (which Byron made synonymous with mur-
der) and military glory. Don Juan was attacked by the prudish
for its supposed immorality, but Byron found a far more
'Quoted in Swedenberg, p. 177.
7Brian Wilkie, Romantic Poets and the Epic Tradition (Madison, 1965),
p. 212.
610
JOHN LAUBER
serious immorality
in that obsession with
"conquest
and its
consequences,
which /
make
epic poesy
so rare and rich."
(VIII, st. 90).
Souvaroff,
the victor of
Ismail,
is effective as a soldier
because he
simply
overlooks the cost in life and
suffering of
his achievement: "Suwarrow,
who but saw
things
in the
gross / Being
much too
gross
to see them in detail"
(VII, st.
72).
The similes with which he is introduced are
significant.
He shines over the Russian
camp
like a
gas lamp, suggesting
the glare
and
glitter
of
military fame,
"Or like a
wisp along
the marsh so
damp /
Which leads beholders on a
boggy
walk"
(VII,
st.
46).
His
reputation
is a false light, leading
those who
follow it to destruction. The contrast in outward
appearance
between this
"little,
odd old man"
(VII, 49)
who drilled the
awkward
squad
in
person,
and the heroes of the
Trojan War
only emphasizes
the essential
similarity.
Parallels between the action of Don Juan and that of classi-
cal
epic
are of course not limited to the
siege
of Ismail. In
Canto I, Byron promises his readers "Love, and War, a heavy
gale at sea" (the principal ingredients of the Odyssey and
Aeneid), and the promise is kept, but in a thoroughly Byronic
fashion. The shipwreck of Canto II and the sufferings of the
survivors are described with a detailed realism closer to the
novel than to any earlier poetry. The casting ashore of Juan
on an Aegean island and his rescue by Haidee and her com-
panion resemble the landing of Odysseus on Phaecia and his
discovery by Nausicaa and her maids, although there is a
striking difference between Odysseus's treatment by King
Alcinous and Juan's by Lambro. Epic parallels disappear in
the farcical Canto V, which contains Juan's adventures in the
Sultan's harem, but are at their most insistent during VII
and VIII at the siege of Ismail. Even in the English cantos,
where narrative movement slows nearly to a stop and the
author's digressions become dominant, the epic background
is kept in mind. The outstanding example is the feast at
Norman Abbey in Canto XV, which commences in the mock-
heroic vein:
Great things were now to be achieved at table
With massy plate for armour; knives and forks
For weapons....
The epic parallels in Don Juan, then, are numerous, but they
are sharply distinguished from their original sources by the
611
DON JUAN
Byronic irony
and
by
a
frequently painstaking
realism. The
settings
and action of Don Juan are based
primarily
on Byron's
own
experience.
When
Byron passed beyond
the limits of his
experience,
as in his accounts of
shipwreck
and war,
he chose
reliable
published
sources and followed them carefully.
The
often
praised
realism of the
English
cantos may
have been
required by
the
familiarity
of his readers with the subject,
but
Byron
took
equal pains
to achieve
accuracy
in Juan's more
exotic adventures.
Byron
was
perfectly
aware of the novelty
of his
method,
and
obviously
considered it a
principal
merit of
his
poem:
Besides, my
Muse
by
no means deals in fiction:
She gathers
a
repertory
of
facts,
Of course with some reserve and slight
restriction,
But
mostly sings
of human things
and acts-
And that's one cause she meets with contradiction;
For too much
truth,
at first sight,
ne'er attracts;
And were her
object only
what's called
Glory,
With more
ease, too,
she'd tell a different story.
(XIV,
st. 13)
Epic poetry
was a
poetry
of
"fiction,"
to use
Byron's
term. It
dealt with
imaginary history
and fanciful
supernatural
agen-
cies;
it falsified the realities of war to create the illusion of
Glory.
Don
Juan,
on the other
hand,
was a
poem
of fact,
"And fact is
Truth,
the
grand desideratum," (VII,
st. 80) as
Byron at least half-seriously remarks.
Such minute
accuracy
had never been
required
of the epic.
In his
preface
to the
Aeneid, Dryden
defends
Virgil's
anachron-
ism in
bringing together
Dido and
Aeneas, persons
who were
supposed
to have lived two hundred
years apart,
and it was
believed that the
epic
should be set in a remote
age, presumably
to
prevent any
demand for an irrelevant realism. Byron's
practice
is
exactly
the
opposite:
the action of his poem
occurs
only thirty years
before the time of
publication,
a
period
which
many
of his readers would have well remembered. These
contrasting
attitudes
clearly
reveal themselves in language
as well. With his
passion
for
accuracy, Byron
uses the techni-
cal
jargon
of war and
seamanship,
or the cant of the high-
wayman,
when the occasion
requires (one
suspects
that
he
made the occasion
require it),
whereas the diction of epic
poetry
was
(or
was considered
by
neoclassic critics to be)
general
and elevated.
Dryden explains
in his
preface
that in
translating Virgil
he "writ not
always
in the
proper
terms
of
612
JOHN LAU B E R
navigation,
land
service,
or in the cant of
any profession"
be-
cause Virgil
had avoided such language, writing "not for
mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gard'ners, peasants, etc.,
but
to all in
general,
and in
particular
to men and ladies of the
first
quality,
who have been better bred than to be too
nicely
knowing
in the terms."
In
fact,
a literal realism would have been
impossible
in
any
traditional
epic, being contrary
to the whole
spirit
of the
work. The characters and actions of
epic poetry
are
necessarily
larger
than life.
Morality
is
hardly involved; it is rather that
the
major figures of
epic poetry
are constructed on a
larger
scale (in their
pride, cruelty, wrath,
or
vengefulness
as well
as in
bravery
and
perseverance)
than actual human
beings.
Epic poetry, like Greek and Elizabethan
tragedy, belongs
to
what
Northrop Frye
has called the "high mimetic mode," in
which the
protagonist, although not
possessing supernatural
powers,
"has
authority,
passions
and
powers
of
expression
far
greater
than ours."8 In the
contrasting
low mimetic
mode,
which
chronologically
succeeds
it,
"the hero is one of us. We
respond
to a sense of his common
humanity
and demand from
the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our
own experience."9 Frye goes on to point out that with the rise
of low mimetic standards the word "hero" itself tends to be-
come suspect, as it so obviously does in Byron's poem. Clearly
Don Juan, like the eighteenth-century novel, belongs to the
low mimetic mode, and in this extremely important respect
has more in common with Torn Jones than with the Iliad.
For whatever reasons, it is plain that since at least the
middle of the seventeenth century the high mimetic mode,
whether in poetry or drama, has become increasingly difficult
and finally almost impossible to practice. In Byron's time the
process was well advanced with the establishment of the
novel and the serious, but not tragic, prose drama as the most
popular literary types. Inevitably, these low mimetic stand-
ards were applied to poetry, by writers as different as Byron
and Wordsworth (primarily in the Lyrical Ballads). Funda-
mentally, we may say, by the early nineteenth century it had
become impossible to write epic poetry (except for a hack
like Southey), because it was no longer possible to hold the
high mimetic view of human nature. Byron's view, in con-
SNorthrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
(Princeton,
1958),
p. 34.
9Anatomy of Criticism, p.
34.
613
DON JUAN
trast,
is
realistic, ironic,
and
tolerant,
aware of human vices
and still more of human
weaknesses,
but
accepting
them with
amused
resignation as
simply
what one must
except
from
such a creature as man.
(The
obvious
exceptions
to this gen-
eralization are the
repeated
attacks on war and
tyranny-
inconsistency
is also a
principle
of Don
Juan.)
The structure of Don Juan is
equally
remote from that of
the
epic. By beginning
with the birth of his
hero, Byron
de-
liberately
(and
quite literally!)
violates Horace's
warning
against beginning
ab ovo. The action of
epic poetry, Dryden
declares in his
preface
to
Virgil,
"is
always one, entire,
and
great.
The least and most trivial
episodes
... are either neces-
sary
or convenient to
carry
on the main
design;
either so
necessary, that,
without
them,
the
poem
must be
imperfect,
or so
convenient,
that no others can be
imagined
more suitable
to the
place
in which
they
are." Don Juan
systematically
breaks these
rules;
it is a
poem
which is all
episode.
Its action
is neither one nor entire-in fact there are at least seven
actions: Juan's love for Julia, the shipwreck, his affair with
Haidee, his adventures as a Turkish slave, the siege of Ismail,
his brief career as a favorite of Catherine the Great, and his
English experiences, which are broken off not only before they
are complete but even before we can see clearly how they
might have developed. This final episode was interrupted by
Byron's involvement in Greek politics and his sudden death,
but, Don Juan being the kind of poem it is, it probably would
not have been completed if Byron had lived for another thirty
years. His remark to his publisher, Murray, "I have no plan-
I had no plan; but I had or have materials,"'0 describes his
method accurately. When contrasted with the careful struc-
ture of the Aeneid or Iliad, Don Juan seems improvised, and
no doubt actually was. It is unlikely, for example, that Byron
had planned the English cantos from the outset, and one sus-
pects that he did not even know how the developing entangle-
ment between Juan, Adeline, and Aurora Raby was to be
resolved. (Such uncertainty would account for the narrative
slowness and endless digressions of these cantos.) As for
the episodes being "necessary," in Dryden's term, they are
so only in the sense that the conclusion of each one does, as
it must after all, lead to the beginning of the next. But if
Byron had decided to omit the shipwreck, the love of Juan and
10Letters and
Journals, IV, p. 342.
614
JOHN LAUBER
Haidee,
the harem adventure-all of Cantos II
through VI,
in fact-and had conducted Juan from Cadiz to Ismail in half
a dozen stanzas, what reader would sense that anything
was
lacking?
Don Juan is a broken-backed
poem,
if it can be con-
sidered vertebrate at
all,
divided into two
quite sharply
dis-
tinguished
sections, Cantos I
through
IX which
present
a
series of
picaresque
adventures leading
from Julia's bedroom
to that of the
Empress Catherine,
and the remaining six
(much
the
longest
of continuous narrative in the
poem)
deal-
ing
with Juan's English experiences.
As for Dryden's
final
criterion of
greatness,
the
only
action in Don Juan which can
be considered "great"
is the siege
of
Ismail, and we have seen
how far
Byron's
treatment of it
departs
from the
epic spirit.
The
comparative
formlessness of Don Juan no doubt is
related to
Byron's philosophical skepticism.
He instinctively
rebelled
against systematic thought,
and
may
well have be-
lieved that an elaborate
plot,
like an elaborate moral code or
philosophical system, necessarily
led to a distortion of
reality
in the interests of the system. Byron was quite aware of his
own departure from the "rules," as his mocking comment
reveals: "The regularity of my design / Forbids all wander-
ing as the worst of sinning." Epic poetry consists primarily of
dialogue and narration, and in this respect, too, Don Juan is
thoroughly un-epic. From the opening canto, commentary
threatens to overpower the action, which is sometimes lost
sight of for twenty or thirty stanzas at a time. These digres-
sions, so characteristic of the poem, are more suggestive of
Tristram Shandy than of classical epic.
The style and tone of Don Juan are at the opposite pole
from those of epic poetry, at least as neoclassic critics con-
ceived of it. "Even the least portion . . . must be of the epic
kind: all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime,"
Dryden declared in his preface. Wit and humor were held to
be beneath the dignity of the form, and the wit and flippancy
of Don Juan would have immediately disqualified it, in the
eyes of Byron's contemporaries, from being considered as an
epic. The abrupt and often disconcerting changes of mood,
the alternation of sentiment and cynicism, are even more anti-
pathetic to the epic spirit. To maintain the continuous dignity
of the epic, Milton and Pope had created a highly distinctive
poetic diction; Don Juan, on the other hand, draws on all the
resources of the language, including the lowest slang, such
616
DON JUAN
as the thieves'
jargon
in Canto XI or the obscene
pun
on
"dry
bob" in the Dedication. Its characteristic diction and
syntax,
however,
are
colloquial,
as Ronald Bottrall has demonstrated
in his
essay, "Byron
and the
Colloquial
Tradition."
(It
is the
colloquialism
of a cultivated
gentleman,
of
course.)
The more
pompous epic
cliches are
occasionally parodied,
as in the "Hail,
Muse! et cetera" which
opens
Canto III.
Epic poetry
does not
rely
on the single brilliant
line,
but builds its effects over
long
and
continuously
sustained units. Don
Juan,
on the con-
trary,
abounds in comic
rhymes
and
epigrams,
devices which
instantly
attract attention to themselves at the
expense of
the
continuing
action or
prevailing
mood.
Epic poetry,
on
the whole,
is
impersonal,
and Homer in
particular
has tradi-
tionally
been
praised
for his success in
keeping
himself out
of his work. Don Juan is the most
personal
of
poems,
and its
fundamental
unity,
insofar as it has unity,
derives less from
the character of Juan (which really
does not
develop very
much,
in
spite
of Ridenour's
attempt
to show that Juan is
gradually sophisticated
and
corrupted)
than from the
Byronic
personality
and world-view.
Epic poetry was the genre preeminently associated by neo-
classic critics with the sublime, a quality conspicuously absent
in Don Juan. In the final stanza of Canto V, it is true, Byron
promises "Let this fifth canto meet with due applause / The
sixth shall have a touch of the sublime," but the mockery is
obvious-the sixth canto narrates the harem episode! Don
Juan contains the romantic, the pathetic, and even the terri-
ble-but never the sublime. The language and tone of the
poem render it impossible, no doubt, but a more general rea-
son can be given. The world of Don Juan is a world in which
sublimity cannot exist. "No heroic poem," asserted Dryden,
"can be written on the Epicurean principle." His explanation
was that epic required the constant guidance and interference
of providence or the gods; every remarkable event must seem
to be supernaturally inspired. Dryden might have added that
supernatural intervention establishes a sense of purpose and
significance appropriate to the heroic scale of the characters.
Man must be important when the gods are so concerned with
his fate.
The world of the epic is, on the whole, a world of unques-
tioned moral absolutes. In particular, the concept of heroism
is never subjected to analysis or doubt. The world of Don
616
JOHN LAUBER
Juan, however,
is
secular, skeptical, relativistic, even nihilistic
at times. Any positive statement,
on whatever
subject,
seems
to
inspire
the
poet
with doubt. Life is seen as without
purpose
or
meaning;
heroism and
glory
are illusions which can
hardly
exist in an
age
of fact. (On
the
question
of whether this dis-
pelling
of illusions is
beneficial, Byron characteristically wob-
bles. Cervantes is
quite seriously
blamed because he "smiled
Spain's chivalry away" [VII,
st. 11], thus
depriving
his
country
of
heroes,
but
surely Spain
was better off without
them,
if "heroism" means what it has meant
throughout
Don
Juan.) Epic poetry
is a celebration of heroism, and heroism
cannot exist in the world of Don Juan. The moral
pretensions
of the
epic
as set forth
by neoclassic critics ("to form the mind
to heroic virtue
by example,"
in
Dryden's words)
become
simply laughable.
On a more
superficial
level,
Don Juan contains a
good
deal
of direct ridicule of the
epic.
Cliches of diction and
episode
are
satirized, as in the well-known
catalog
of Don Juan's
contents in Canto I:
My poem's epic,
and is meant to be
Divided in twelve books; each book containing,
With Love, and War, a heavy gale at sea,
A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,
New characters; the episodes are three:
A panoramic view of Hell's in training,
After the style of Virgil and of Homer,
So that my name of Epic's no misnomer. (I, st. 200)
Byron employs occasionally both the "low" burlesque, or trav-
esty, and the "high," or mock-epic. The description of the
banquet at Norman Abbey, "With massy plates for armour,
knives and forks /
For weapons" (XV, st. 62) provides an
example of the latter. Stanza six of Canto I illustrates the
"low" burlesque, which degrades a serious subject by trivial
or flippant treatment. Byron describes the epic hero relating
his story (like Odysseus or Aeneas):
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.
At times the epic is made synonymous with boredom:
617
DON JUAN
... 'twould not be hard to
bring
Some fine
examples
of the Epogee,
To
prove
its
grand ingredient
is Ennui.
(III,
st.
97)
In the
light
of such
passages,
one can
hardly
take
literally
Byron's assertions that Don Juan should be considered as an
epic.
The context of such claims usually
indicates their ironic
or
flippant quality:
And as she treats of all
things,
and ne'er retreats
From
anything,
this
Epic
will contain
A wilderness of the most rare conceits.
(XVI,
st.
3)
The
relationship
of Don Juan to the
epic
tradition is
close,
continuous,
and destructive. It will not do to
say,
as Ridenour
does in his
study
of the
poem,
that "in his lesser
way
and
from his secular and
predominantly
rationalist
point
of
view,
Byron
is
attempting
as radical a redefinition of the nature
of
epic
and the
epic
hero as was Milton in Paradise Lost."1'
First,
the
relationship
of the two
poems
to classical
epic
is
entirely
different. Milton
accepts
the conventional valuation
of epic poetry, he uses the epic devices in all seriousness, he
claims that his poem resembles but surpasses existing epics
because of the greatness of his subject. Don Juan does none
of these things. Instead, it ridicules the epic form as a whole
and in its details, and regards epic concepts of heroism and
glory as disastrous illusions. Second, a secular and skeptical
point of view makes epic impossible, as Dryden saw: "No
heroic poem can be writ on the Epicurean principle." Such a
view deprives man of the dignity and importance which are
essential to the high mimetic mode. Human action becomes
meaningless, whereas for the epic poet it is part of a divine
order. Even the Iliad provides this sense that order exists-
there are the gods, and beyond them there is Fate-even
though it may seem unjust and cruel by human standards.
Don Juan, on the contrary, asserts a radical disorder in the
universe, a disorder which it exemplifies by its own form.
Milton attempted to continue and extend a tradition whose
authority he accepted; Byron attempted to destroy it. To call
Don Juan an "epic of negation," as Brian Wilkie has done in
his recent study, Romantic Poets and the Epic Tradition,'2 is
to beg the question. An epic of negation is an impossibility and
'1Ridenour, p.
92.
"Wilkie, p. 188.
618
J O HN L A U B E R
the word
"epic," here,
can
hardly
mean more than something
like
"long
narrative
poem
of a certain seriousness." It has
lost all value as a critical term.
Plainly, too,
the relation of Don Juan to the
epic
differs
greatly
from that of neoclassic
mock-epic
and low
burlesque.
Miock-epic
does not
really challenge
the whole
epic genre,
as
Don Juan
does, by denying
the
epic concept
of
heroism; its
satire is
stylistic
and
comparatively superficial.
On the other
hand,
Don Juan has a kind of
seriousness,
for all its
flippancy
and
inconsistency,
which is absent from the low
burlesque.
The
poem obviously
is influenced by
both of these traditions,
but is not included within either of them.
A
poem
which
consistently violates,
or
directly attacks,
the
conventional
structure, language, action, and moral value of
epic poetry
can
hardly
be considered an
adaptation
or redefi-
nition of the
epic.
Don Juan is not an
epic,
but an
anti-epic.
Byron is
intensely conscious of the
epic tradition,
as almost
every page
of the
poem
reminds
us,
but he sees it as an influ-
ence to be
destroyed,
a wornout form whose conventions
would
prevent
the modern
poet
from
dealing
with "human
things and acts" (his proper subject) and whose moral values,
with their glorification of war and false conception of heroism,
are positively dangerous to society. In the modern world, and
Byron's world is essentially modern, it is no more possible to
compose epic poetry than Elizabethan tragedy. In this respect,
at least, Byron saw his age more clearly than Wordsworth or
Keats. It was important that the enormous prestige of the
epic should be deflated and its uselessness as a model be re-
vealed, and this Don Juan attempts to do. Don Juan, of course,
cannot be entirely included in any formula, and it contains
much that is irrelevant to the epic tradition. Nevertheless, the
anti-epic intention is not only reflected in innumerable details,
but functions as a
shaping and unifying force throughout the
poem.
UNIVERSITY
OF ALBERTA
619