Philosophy of the Modern Era

Byron

In comparison to the present day, the 19th century appears rational, progressive, and agreeable. However, many of the most remarkable individuals of the era of liberal optimism possessed qualities that are antithetical to those of our time. When we examine these figures not merely as artists or discoverers, nor as likable or unlikable based on our own preferences, but as forces and catalysts for change within societal structures, value judgments, and intellectual worldviews, we find that the evolution of recent events significantly alters our assessments, rendering some individuals less significant than they once seemed, while elevating others in importance. Among those whose significance has grown, Byron stands out as particularly noteworthy. On the continent, such a perspective may not seem surprising, but in the English-speaking world, it may appear odd. Byron's influence was felt abroad, and it is not within England that we should seek his spiritual descendants. For many of us, his poetry often seems subpar, and his sentimentality appears ostentatious; yet overseas, his mood and worldview spread, evolved, and transformed until they became so widespread that they influenced substantial events.

The aristocratic rebel, exemplified by Byron in his time, is a type distinctly different from the leader of a peasant or proletarian uprising. Those who suffer from hunger do not require a sophisticated philosophy to incite or justify discontent; to them, such philosophizing appears merely a pastime for idle wealthy individuals. They desire what others possess rather than some intangible and metaphysical good. Although they may preach Christian love, as medieval communist rebels did, their real motives for acting in such a manner are straightforward: the lack of love among the rich and powerful causes suffering for the poor, and the presence of it among their fellow rebels is perceived as essential for success. Yet the experience of struggle leads to a disillusionment with the power of love, leaving raw hatred as the driving force. This type of rebel, if he creates a philosophy akin to Marx, does so with the sole intention of demonstrating the inevitability of his faction’s victory, rather than to explore values. His values remain simple: the good lies in having enough to eat, while everything else is mere chatter. A hungry man likely should not think otherwise.

The aristocratic rebel, having his fill, must possess other reasons for discontent. I do not include among rebels the leaders of factions temporarily out of power. I refer to those whose philosophies demand substantial changes that transcend their personal success. Perhaps a love of power underpins this discontent, but within their consciousness lies a critique of world governance, which, when developed deeply enough, takes the form of titanic, cosmic self-assertion or, for those who harbor some superstition, a flavor of Satanism. We find both within Byron. Moreover, both, largely through the individuals he influenced, became widely accepted among social strata that can hardly be deemed aristocratic. The aristocratic philosophy of rebellion, evolving and transforming as it matures, inspires numerous revolutionary movements, from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon to Hitler's coup in 1933. At each stage, it has inspired corresponding modes of thought and sentiment among intellectuals and artists.

Evidently, an aristocrat does not become a rebel unless he is temperamental and his life circumstances are in some way extraordinary. Byron's life circumstances were indeed quite unusual. His earliest memories were of disputes between his parents; his mother was a woman he feared for her cruelty and despised for her vulgarity. His nurse combined immorality with the strictest Calvinist piety. He felt ashamed of his lameness, which hindered his ability to associate with his peers at school. At the age of ten, after living in poverty, he suddenly became a lord and the owner of Newstead. His cousin, the “immoral lord” from whom he inherited, had killed a man in a duel thirty years prior and had since been ostracized by his neighbors. The Byrons were an unruly family, and the Gordons, his maternal lineage, were even more unruly. After the poverty of the Aberdeen outskirts, the boy naturally reveled in his title and estate, wishing to embody the character of his ancestors in gratitude for their lands. If their martial spirit led to troubles in more recent times, he knew that in centuries past it had brought them glory. One of his early poems, "Farewell to Newstead Abbey," is imbued with admiration for ancestors who fought in the Crusades, at Crécy, and at Marston Moor.

He concludes the poem with pious determination:

He, like you, shall live,
And, like you, he shall die,
And shall mix his dust with your dust.

This is not the mood of a rebel, but it evokes the image of Childe Harold, a modern lord who emulates medieval barons. As a final-year student, upon first gaining his own income, he wrote that he felt as independent as “a German prince who mints his own coin, or a Cherokee chief who does not mint coins at all but delights in something far more precious—Freedom. I speak with enthusiasm of this Goddess because my dear mother was so despotic.” Throughout the subsequent periods of his life, he penned numerous noble poems extolling freedom; yet it must be understood that the freedom he lauded was that of a German prince or a Cherokee chief, rather than the more modest kind that ordinary mortals might enjoy.

Despite his lineage and title, his aristocratic relatives shunned him, leaving Byron to feel socially estranged from their circles. His mother was greatly disliked, and he was viewed with suspicion. He knew she was vulgar, and he vaguely feared he might share the same flaw. Thus emerged the peculiar blend of snobbery and rebellion characteristic of him. If he could not be a gentleman in the modern sense, he would be a desperate baron in the style of his crusading ancestors or in the fiercer, yet more romantic style of the Ghibelline leaders who cursed God and man on their way to glorious ruin. Medieval romances and tales were his cherished reading. He sinned like a Hohenstaufen and died like a crusader in battle against Muslims.

His aloofness and sense of solitude compelled him to seek solace in romantic affairs, but since he unconsciously sought a mother rather than a lover, all women disappointed him—except for Augusta. Calvinism, from which he could never detach himself (in a letter to Shelley in 1816, he described himself as a "Methodist, Calvinist, Augustinian"), made him feel that his way of life was immoral. Yet, he told himself that this immorality was his inherited curse, a malevolent fate decreed by the Almighty. If this were indeed the case, then, as he was destined to stand out, he would manifest as a sinner and commit transgressions with greater audacity than the boldness of the worldly libertines he sought to scorn. He loved Augusta because she was of his blood, one of the Byron line, and also simply because she cared for his daily well-being with the kindness of an elder sister. But this was not all that she represented to him. Through her simplicity and her obliging good nature, she became a source of the most delightful self-destructive pangs of conscience. He could feel himself equal to the greatest of sinners—Manfred, Cain, nearly to Satan himself. The Calvinist, the aristocrat, and the rebel were all equally satisfied. The romantic lover was equally satisfied, his heart shattered by the loss of the sole earthly feelings of compassion and love that could still arise within him.

Byron, though he felt himself akin to Satan, never dared to place himself in God's position. This next step in the elevation of pride was taken by Nietzsche, who asserted, "If gods existed, how could I bear that I am not a god? Therefore, gods do not exist." The hidden foundation of this reasoning is: "Anything that diminishes my pride must be condemned as false." Like Byron, Nietzsche received a pious upbringing, but being more intellectual, he found a better escape than satanism. Yet, he held a great sympathy for Byron. Nietzsche stated, "The tragedy is that one cannot believe in these dogmas of religion and metaphysics if one adheres in heart and mind to a strict method of truth; and, on the other hand, due to humanity's development, we have become so tender, irritable, and sensitive in suffering that we need the strongest remedies for healing and consolation; hence arises the danger that a person may bleed to death from the knowledge of truth." This sentiment is expressed by Byron in his immortal verses:

Sadness is knowledge; those who know too much
May mourn the bitterness of fateful truth!
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

Sometimes, though rarely, Byron approaches Nietzsche's perspective quite closely. But in general, Byron's ethical theory, in contrast to his practice, remains commonplace. A great man, according to Nietzsche, resembles God. For Byron, he is typically a titan engaged in battle with himself. Yet at times, he portrays a sage, unlike Zarathustra—the Corsair in relation to his followers:

He knew the art of power, that the blind
Always dominates, chilling the crowd.

And the same hero "hates humanity too much to feel pangs of conscience." A footnote assures us that the Corsair possesses true human nature, as similar traits are exhibited in Genseric, king of the Vandals, Ezzelin, the tyrant of the Ghibellines, and certain Louisiana pirates.

Byron need not confine himself to the Levant and the Middle Ages in search of a hero, for it was not difficult to drape Napoleon in a romantic mantle. The influence of Napoleon on the imagination of 19th-century Europe was profound. He inspired Clausewitz, Stendhal, Heine, the thoughts of Fichte and Nietzsche, and the actions of Italian patriots. His spirit marches proudly through the century— the only force powerful enough to resist industrialism and commerce, pouring scorn upon pacifism and pettiness. Tolstoy's War and Peace represents an attempt to exorcise his spirit, but a futile attempt, for the specter of Napoleon has never been as potent as it is today.

During the Hundred Days, Byron expressed his wish for Napoleon's victory, and upon hearing of Waterloo, he remarked, "I damn well regret this." He spoke against his hero only once: in 1814, when he believed that suicide would be more decorous than abdication. In that moment, he sought solace in Washington's virtue, but after Napoleon's return from Elba, this attempt ceased to be necessary. In France, upon Byron's death, "many newspapers noted that the two greatest men of the century—Napoleon and Byron—had vanished almost simultaneously."

Carlyle, who once regarded Byron as "the noblest spirit in Europe" and felt somewhat like his younger brother, later came to prefer Goethe, yet he still compares Byron and Napoleon: "For your noble minds, the public disclosure of such a work of art in one dialect or another becomes almost a necessity. For what is it, if not a quarrel with the devil before you honestly begin to fight him? Your Byron publicizes his 'sufferings of Lord George' in poetry and prose and by all manner of means. Your Bonaparte presents his opera 'The Sufferings of Napoleon' in an astonishing style, with the music of cannon fire and the dying cries of the world; the scene is illuminated by the lights of a great fire; his rhythm and recitative echo the march of phantoms arrayed for battle and the sounds of cities being destroyed."

Indeed, three chapters later, he gives a sharp command: "Close Byron, open Goethe." But Byron was in his blood, while Goethe remained an aspiration.

For Carlyle, Byron and Goethe stood as antitheses. To Alfred de Musset, they were accomplices in the dark enterprise of poisoning the buoyant Gallic soul with the toxin of melancholy. Most young Frenchmen of this century seemed to know Goethe solely through "The Sorrows of Young Werther," rather than as an Olympian figure. Musset reproached Byron for not finding solace in the Adriatic and in Countess Guiccioli; this view was misguided, for after he met her, he penned no more "Manfreds." Yet, "Don Juan" was read in France as little as Goethe's more spirited poetry. Despite Musset's perspective, most French poets since then have found Byron's melancholic sorrows to be superior material for their verse.

For Musset, Byron and Goethe were the greatest geniuses of the century, second only to Napoleon. Born in 1810, Musset belonged to that generation whose members he lyrically describes as "conceived between two battles." In Germany, sentiments toward Napoleon varied widely. Some, like Heine, spoke of him as a powerful preacher of liberalism, a destroyer of slavery, an enemy of legality, a man who made hereditary princes tremble. Others referred to him as the Antichrist, a pretended destroyer of the noble German nation, an immoralist who had convinced himself once and for all that Teutonic virtue could only be preserved through an unquenchable hatred of France. Bismarck achieved a synthesis: Napoleon remained the Antichrist, but one to be emulated, rather than merely reviled. Nietzsche, who accepted this compromise, noted with devilish delight that the classical age of war had arrived, and we owe this grace not to the French Revolution, but to Napoleon. Thus, nationalism, satanism, and the cult of the hero—Byron's legacy—became part of Germany's complex soul.

Byron is not gentle but fierce, like a storm. What he says of Rousseau applies equally to himself:

Rousseau—a prophet of sorrow,
Entranced by passion, a madman who condemned
Himself to torment, yet from his suffering
Drew forth the power of marvelous eloquence.

Yet there exists a profound distinction between these two men: Rousseau is pathetically earnest, while Byron is ferocious. Rousseau's timidity is palpable, whereas Byron's is concealed. Rousseau admires virtue when it is simple. Byron admires sin when it is poetic. This difference, though it merely represents a distinction between two stages in the rebellion of anti-social instincts, is significant and indicates the direction of movement.

Byron's romanticism, it must be admitted, was only half sincere. At times, he could assert that Pope's poetry surpassed his own, yet such judgment likely arose only under the influence of a particular mood. The world insisted on his simplification and the removal of the pose from his cosmic despair and open disregard for humanity. Like many other eminent figures, he was more significant as a myth than as a real man. His significance as a myth, particularly on the continent, was immense.