Oriental Tales

In his Eastern Poems Byron also uses to a certain extent the themes, popular at the time, of nightmares and horrors. This is done, especially in “Lara”, which is reminiscent of the English Gothic novel, and the “Corsair”, which tells of unusual deeds in exotic and romantic circumstances. The “Corsair” relates the story of Conrad, a pirate chief who is a vicious man but posses a sense of chivalry. “Lara” is a sort of continuation of this poem. There is plenty of bloodshed jealousy, revenge and grief. There are such luxurious palaces of pashas and sultans as one can find in the Arabian Nights. These works had great success among the English readers. For instance, the Giaour, had eight editions in the last seven months of the year of the publication. The tale relates about slave Leila who was thrown into the sea for her unfaithfulness to her Turkish lord. Her lover, the Giaour, a young Venetian, avenges her by killing Hassan.

Byron’s rejection of bourgeois reality he lived in made him turn away to the exotic lands, heroic deeds and ultimate passions. The beginning of his poem “The Bride of Abidos” my be read as the epigraph to all his oriental tales:

«Know ye the land where the Cypress and myrtle

are emblems of deeds that are done in their elime?

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

know ye the land of the cedar and vine

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppres’d with perfume,

Wax faint, o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom;

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute…

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine

And all, save the spirit of a man, is devine?

Tis the clime of the East; tis the land of the sun –

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done»

Byron’s contemporary and friend, Pershy Bisshe Shelley. He was born at Field Place, Sussex, the estate of his father, in 1792. Like Byron, he was descended from an ancient aristocratic family. When a boy he rebelled against the brutal treatment of pupils in the public school where he began his education. His juvenile poetical works were imbued with the spirit of the struggle against tyranny and while a student he published a pamphlet. The necessity of atheism for which he was expelled from the university and forbidden by his father to come home. Shelley’s first important publication was “Queen Mab”, a romantic poem containing the essence of his social philosophy. The Revolt of Islam was directed by Shelley against the political reaction which reigned in Europe during the early XIX century; this poem was an expression of his hope in the rebirth of humanity and the final victory of liberty. The same spirit we find in Shelley’s lurical drama “Prometheus Unbound”.

The Revolt of Islam is in twelve cantos, of which Canto I is introductory and didactic to the rest narrative.

Cythna, a heroic maiden devoted to the liberation of her sex, united with her revolutionary brother Zoon in a common ideal, comes to her people with a call to overthrough the tyrants and to break the fetters in which enslaved mankind is rotting. For that purpose down rouses the spirit of revolt among the people of Islam. They succeed in awakening in the people the instincts of love and good, in overthrowing tyranny and establishing freedom. But the revolt is only temporarily successful. The tyrants return with increased forces, and in revenge lay the land desolute. The revolt is crushed by tyrants who hire foreign armies, exactly as was done in the French Revolution.

Shelley reaches the highest point of his revolutionary poetry and returns to the Greek theme in “Prometheus unbound”, a lyrical drama in four acts, published in 1820. This great work is an apotheosis of the spirit of liberty.

Jupiter, king of the Gods, has determined that mankind shall perish. Man is saved by Prometheus, who gives him two gifts – fire, the source of the technical inventions, and hope, which prevents him from brooding upon his mortal nature. Thus equipped and inspired, he survives and raises himself out of savagery into civilization. Jupiter punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and subjecting him to perpetual torture. Characterized by “courage, majesty, and a firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, and exempt from the taints of ambition, envy and revenge”, instinct also with the spirit of love, he remains – unlike Eschylus’s Prometheus unyielding to the threats of Jupiter, the spirit of evil and hate. He is supported by Earth, his mother, and the thought of Asia, his bride, the spirit of Nature. At the appointed hour, Demogorgon, the primal power of the world, overthrows Jupiter from his throne. Just as the triumphant Jupiter is proudly proclaiming from his throne:

“Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share

The glory and the strength of him, ye serve,

Rejoice! Henceforth I am ompipotent.

All else had been subdued to me”.

Demorgon descends, moving towards the throne of Jupiter, he announces himself:

“Etrenity. Demand no direr name

Descend, and follow me down the abyss

I am thy childe, as thou wert Saturn’s child

Mighter than thee: and we must dwell together

Henceforth in darkness”.

Prometheus is unbound by Hercules. The future of humanity is assured.

The first and the second acts of “Prometheus Unbound” are full of pathos of liberty in chains. The poet signs of the sufferings of Prometheus and the future. The third and forth acts present the victory of Prometheus over Jupiter. He is united with his beloved Asia, the beautiful daughter of Earth and Ocean. The love of Asia and Prometheus is an allegory of the unity of free mankind with the ideal of spiritual beauty.