6. Conclusion
As Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe said, “ Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, an Englishman,
and as a great genius. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his
bad to the Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommeasurable”.¹[1]
The truth is that Lord Byron was a very
influential and intense poet. Lord Byron forms part of the "Second
generation" of Romantic Poets, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley
and John Keats.
Byron however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps
the least 'romantic' of the three.
Due to the complicated and poor situation
of his earlier life he always reflected his experiences in most of his works.
We could say that he was somehow forced to have a premature experience of life
and this had so much to do with his mood and personality. He was an attractive
and bright poet and talker, although he also was arrogant, cruel and mean. In
spite of all these things, he managed to go on and he soon became one of the
most important figures in Europe at his time, although he has been losing
success as time goes by.
Byron was influenced by everything he went
through in life, he used to travel a lot and this fact may be the most
important source of his inspiration. He took the traditional Grand Tour of
Europe visiting Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Balkans.
He wrote as
he lived, and intensity was the greatest distinction of his writings. Lord Byron did not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant
objects into importance by the romantic associations with which he surrounded
them, but generally (at least) took common-place thoughts and events, and endeavoured to express them in stronger and statelier
language than others.He used to compose everywhere and his production was a
mixture of mediaeval and classical inspiration. He
was often monotonous, extravagant, offensive; but he was never dull or tedious,
but when he wrote prose.
Lord
Byron’s work is characterized by the expression of melancholy, worry about
freedom and eternity and a curious feeling of repugnance that he had towards
life. He used to adopt a cruel point of view and regarded humanity and
collective thinking as ridicule and stupid. The most important characteristic
of his works was indeed the so-called ‘Byronic Hero’; a representation of
himself containing many of the characteristics that we have mentioned before,
and others such as arrogance, cynism, self- criticism, etc. He also used to
reflect conflicts with his emotions and sexual identity.
We
can see that this poet was a very strange human being but it cannot be denied
that he was a genius as well. Byron had strong influences on other poets,
especially Shelley, Polidori and Poe, but his genius also arrived to Russia and
the rest of Europe. He was a real celebrity during his time and his death was
regarded as a national loss in England.
So
important was his influence that he was the inspiration and precursor of the
appearance of so important and famous characters such as the Vampyre and
Frankenstein. It is also important to mention ‘Byronism’, which
was the tendency and movement that referred to the way of his seeing life.