I think I read some Byron a long time ago, but didn't find it very interesting, I should read DJ though. Was he a reasonable poet, famous for the myths, and not the reality - a horrible, futile death in a war that really decided very little - his copious lovers - do people really have such tedious love lives that they have to live vicariously off the amorous adventures of a long dead - let's face it - aristo? A dark man in a cloak, sometimes depicted in a kind of turban - really quite theatrical and ridiculous. The women who sent him locks of their hair - would they not have been better pursuing some flesh and blood lover - is this analogous to those modern cricketers who receive pairs of knickers in the post? Its all a bit pathetic, really, so why are (some) people fascinated by it? Why do people think that fame has some kind of special lure, a mystique - we know that lots of people who are contemporaneously famous -!
are often utterly mediocre, Byron was too. He wasn't Shakespeare, and nor was he.
>From: Douglas Clark <
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>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <
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>To:
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>Subject: Re: FW: Byron
>Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 19:00:49 +0000
>
>I listened to Tchaikovsky's Manfred symphony on the radio
>before watching the TV programme (I have half-an-hour before
>Top of the POps so I will send this message). I thought the
>emphasis on the poetry was about right. Camille Paglia
>and Michael Peverett go on about poems of Byron which no
>sensible person will ever want to read nowadays, as they
>hunt for incest clues etc. I think the essential of
>BYron's poetry is roughly the 'no more roving' lyric
>and 'Don Juan'. Everybody should read Don Juan at least
>once in their life because it is marvellous. (I am now
>contemplating dragging it out for the third time).
>The rest has almost all passed its sell-by date.
>But the programme did go out of its way to presentByron
>in a good light. What a good thing they burnt his Memoirs.
>
>
>
>Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto:
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>Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
