THE BYRONIC HERO: MAN AND SUPERMAN

By
Dr. Stanley Sfekas
Presented to:
The Byron Society
The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western
Philosophy, has devoted a chapter to Byron, not because he was a
systematic thinker, but because Byronism established an outlook and a
way of feeling that entered 19th Century philosophy and eventually helped
to form Nietzsches concept of the Superman, the great hero who stands
outside the jurisdiction of the ordinary criteria of good and evil. Russell
calls Byronism the attitude of Titanic cosmic self-assertion. He goes on
to say that the when the great men of the 19th Century are considered as
forces, as causes of change in the social structure, in values, or in the
worldview, Byron occupies a high place. Indeed, the course of events in
recent times has necessitated much revision in our historical estimates,
making some men less important than they had seemed, and others more
so. As among those whose importance is greater than we realized in the
history of ideas, Byron is prominent, Russell assures us.
In continental Europe this assessment does not appear surprising, but
in the English-speaking world Byron was not always fully appreciated.
His verse was influenced by the 18th century canon and made him
difficult to classify as a Romantic. But on the continent his way of feeling
and his outlook on life were assimilated and continually transformed until
they became so widespread as to be factors in great events.
The French critic, Hippolyte Taine, in his History of English
Literature, gave only a few pages to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and
Keats, and then devoted a long enthusiastic chapter to Lord Byron whom
he called the greatest and most English of these artists. Taine went on
to say: He is so great and so English that from him alone shall we learn
more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together.
Byron had achieved an immense European reputation during his own
lifetime, while his great English contemporaries were admired only by
small coteries in England and America. Byron was viewed as the very
prototype of literary romanticism. For Byron provided his age with what
Hyppolyte Taine called its ruling personage, which he defines as the
model that contemporaries invest with their admiration and sympathy.
This personage is the Byronic hero.
The central characteristic of the Byronic hero is that of a melancholy,
passionate, moody sinner who is both torn with remorse yet unrepentant.
In proud moral isolation he relies on his absolute self against all moral or
social limitations on the expression of his individuality. This rebellious
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figure is non-political and erotic. It embodies elements of Byrons

personality and, more importantly, the yearnings of Byrons time. It was
imitated in life as well as in art, and helped shape the intellectual as well
as the cultural history of the later 19th Century.
Russell points out that this figure of the arch-rebel is basically the
aristocratic rebel, of whom Byron was in his day the exemplar. The
aristocratic rebel is a very different type from the leader of a peasant
revolt or proletarian uprising. The aristocratic rebel has enough to eat,
therefore he must have other causes of discontent. Russell thinks that love
of power may be the unconscious cause of his discontent, but that in his
conscious thought the aristocratic rebel is critical of the way the world is
governed. Taken to an extreme this becomes the standpoint of the
superman with perhaps an element of Satanism. Both tendencies are to be
found in Byron. Both tendencies, Russell argues, largely through men
that Byron influenced, became common in large sections of society which
were not aristocratic. Russell avers that the aristocratic philosophy of
rebellion, as it evolved, inspired a long series of revolutionary movements
from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon to Hitlers coup in 1933.
And at each of these stages it has inspired a corresponding philosophy.
Russell states that for Nietzsche the great man is godlike and for
Byron he is usually a Titan at war with himself. Byrons portrayal of the
Corsair in his dealings with others is like Zarathustra. Byron writes:
Still sways their souls with that commanding art
That dazzles, leads, yet chills the vulgar heart.
The Corsair is a hero that in Byrons words: hated man too much to feel
remorse. But for Byron this trait was true to human nature since similar
traits, Byron tells us, were exhibited by Genseric, the King of the
Vandals, by the Ghibelline tyrant, Ezzelino, and by a certain Louisiana
pirate. Byron not only looked to the Middle Ages and the Levant for
heroes. He invested Napoleon with a romantic mantle. Napoleons
influence on 19th century Europe was profound. He inspired Hegel,
Fichte, Nietzsche, Beethoven, Heine, Stendhal, Clausewitz, and the acts
of Italian patriots. Russell states that Napoleons ghost stalks through the
age, the only force which is strong enough to stand up against
industrialism and commerce, pouring scorn on pacifism and
shopkeeping.
Byron had proclaimed his wish for Napoleons victory and when he
heard of Waterloo he said: Im damned sorry for it. Only once did
Byron turn against his hero: in 1814 when he thought suicide would have
been more honorable than abdication, but Napoleons return from Elba
mad up for it. Andre Maurois has written, in his Life of Byron about the
French reaction to Byrons death: it was remarked in many newspapers
that that the two greatest men of the century, Napoleon and Byron, had
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disappeared almost at the same time. Carlyle called Byron the noblest
spirit in Europe and felt as if he had lost a brother. He later came to
prefer Goethe, but always coupled Byron with Napoleon. Carlyle wrote
comparing the two: Your Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George,
in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte presents
his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an all-too-stupendous style; with
music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage lights
are the fires of conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of
embattled Hosts and the sound of falling cities. Carlyle goes on to say:
Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe. He says this because he sees Byron
and Goethe as antitheses, Byron as melancholy and Goethe as cheerful.
Most French poets have found Byronic unhappiness the best material for
their verses. The poet Alfred de Musset considered Napoleon, Byron and
Goethe as the greatest geniuses of the century.
In Germany the attitude toward Napoleon was divided. There were
those who like Heinrich Heine saw him as the mighty apostle of
liberalism, the man who made princes tremble, the enemy of the
establishment, the destroyer of feudalism. And there were others who saw
him as the Antichrist, the destroyer of the noble German nation, the
powerful immoralist. Napoleon was an Antichrist but an Antichrist to be
imitated as much as to be hated and feared. Nietzsche had remarked that
the classical age of war is coming and that this is desirable and that we
owe this not to the French Revolution but to Napoleon. In this way,
nationalism, Satanism, and hero-worship, the legacy of Byron, became
part of the mind-set of Germany.
Satan plays a role in the concept of the Byronic hero. The tradition
begins with Miltons Paradise Lost. In Byrons time some readers of
Milton had begun to take the side of Satan in the war between Heaven
and Hell, admiring him as the archrebel who had taken on no less of an
antagonist than omnipotence itself. In his Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
William Blake claimed that Milton had unconsciously but correctly taken
the part of the Devil, who represents rebellious energy, against Jehovah,
who represents the oppressive power of limitation. Thirty years later,
Shelley similarly maintained that Satan is morally superior to Miltons
tyrannical God, except for the fact that he is flawed by vengefulness and
pride. But it was precisely this aspect of flawed grandeur that made Satan
so appealing to Byron. The sinister and terrifying aspects of Miltons
Satan were combined in Byron with the towering historical figure of
Napoleon Bonaparte who in the imagination of that time combined moral
culpability with superhuman power and grandeur.
Byron first sketched out his figure in 1812 in the opening stanzas of
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, Canto I. At this stage he is rather crudely
depicted as a young man, prematurely sick of sinning who wanders about
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in an attempt to escape society and his own memories. Late Conrad, the
hero of Corsair, has become more isolated, darker, more complex in his
inner conflict, and therefore more frightening and appealing to the reader.
The hero of Lara represents the complete figure of the Byronic hero and
he reappears in Canto III of Childe Harold and again as the hero of
Byrons poetic drama, Manfred. Lara is the assumed name of the hero,
Conrad, in The Corsair who has given up piracy and returned to his
ancestral home. Lady Byron related that Byron once said with respect to
Lara; Theres more of me in that than any of them. Saying this he
shuddered and avoided her eye.
The Byronic hero harbors an inner demon, a torturing sense of guilt,
which drives him toward an inevitable doom. The Byronic hero is alien,
mysterious and gloomy. His powers and his passions are immensely
greater than the common run of mankind, whom he regards with
contempt as inferior to him. He lives according to a simple code of his
own: he is faithful unto death to the one he truly loves, and he will not
betray a trust. He is totally self-reliant and relentlessly pursues his own
ends against any opposition, human or superhuman. He is oblivious to
ordinary human concerns and values and he therefore exerts on men and
women alike an irresistible attraction as well as a sense of terror.
Coleridge recognized the dangerous elements of the SatanicNapoleonic-Byronic figure and warned against it, but in vain. It had
become the ruling personage of the age. This personage affected the life,
the art, and even the philosophy of the 19th Century. It becomes the model
for the behavior of young men and the yearnings of young women of the
age. The Byronic hero appears in hundreds of European novels. It has
become the protagonist of masterpieces, including Heathcliff in
Wuthering Heights, Ahab in Moby Dick, and the hero of Pushkins great
poem Eugene Oniegin.
Coleridge perceptively notes that Milton has sublimely embodied
in Satan the characteristics of despotic will, absolute pride and rebellious
self-idolatry. And too often, he says, it has been embodied in real life.
Too often, says Coleridge, has it given a fiery grandeur to the historic
page. These are the marks that characterize the masters of mischief, the
hunters of men from Nimrod to Bonaparte, as he puts it. These men
surpass their fellow creatures in one act of courage only, that of daring to
say with their whole heart; Evil, be thou my good.
Bertrand Russell states: Byron is not gentle, but violent like a
thunderstorm. Byron praises Rousseau and Russell states that what Byron
says of Rousseau applies to Byron himself. Rousseau was, he says:
He who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence.
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Yet he knew
How to make madness beautiful and cast
Oer erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue.
But there is a profound difference between the two men, Russell
notes: Rousseau is pathetic, Byron is fierce. Rousseaus timidity is
obvious, Byrons is concealed. Rousseau admires virtue provided it is
simple, while Byron admires sin provided it is elemental.
For an aristocrat to become a rebel his temperament and
circumstances must have been peculiar. In Byrons case his strict
Calvinist background played a significant role. Byron described himself
to Shelley in 1816 as Methodist, Calvinist, Augustinian. This made him
feel that his manner of life was wicked. But wickedness, he told himself,
was a hereditary curse in his blood, an evil fate to which he was
predestined by the Almighty. If that were indeed the case, since he must
be remarkable, he would be remarkable as a sinner. And he would dare to
commit transgressions beyond the courage of the fashionable libertines of
his day. In his incestuous relationship with his sister he would feel
himself the equal of the greatest sinners. He would be the peer of
Manfred, of Lara, of Satan himself. The Calvinist in him, the aristocrat,
and the rebel were all equally satisfied. And so was the romantic lover
whose heart was broken. Thus was the gloomy and misanthropic Byronic
and Satanic hero formed.