Religion and Romaticism  

First collective paper: "RELIGION AND ROMANTICISM"

Lord George Gordon Byron

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), has been considered as one the members of "the big six" of English romantic literature. Although Byron is appointed to a specific group, as we are going to deal with the theme of religion, we will see that Byron has his own religion perspective as each of the rest of “the big six”.

An outline of Byron’s biography will try to draw a clear explanation of how he has gone through several religious influences. And on the other hand, with the aim to summarize how he achieved his own ideology, different extracts from different works of Byron has been used to explain how he sees the traditional beliefs from that period.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born in London in 1788 and died in Missonlonghi (Greece) in 1824. Right from the very beginning of his life, Byron presented a contradiction between what religion dictates the morally correct Christian behaviour and the story of his life, which has been featured extravagant living; according to Lady Caroline Lamb, who kept a tempestuous affair with Lord Byron, he is "mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.[i] However George Ticknor, described him as "gentle, mannerly, natural, affectionate, and modest."[ii] George Gordon Byron was both things, opposite values and attitudes in a single person: cruel and kind, cynic and idealist, always covering opposite extremes. [iii]

The poet spent his early years with his mother in Aberdeen. There he attended ten years to a grammar school, and according to the International Byron Society, “where he was afflicted with ten years of Calvinist indoctrination, which, he claimed, instilled in him an ineradicable conviction that he was damned. A malformation of the right calf and ankle, which could not be cured, and gave him a limp, confirmed in his mind the idea that he was set apart for unusual punishment.”[iv]

Influences from Calvinism continued appearing during the following years in the life of Byron. At the age of nine, his mother assigned to him a Calvinist nursemaid called Mary Gray, who introduced the Bible and at the same time, it has been rumoured that the nursemaid herself awoke Byron’s sexual inclinations. This controversial situation has always been present in Byron’s life, on the one side we have the established social religion, and on the other side the sex, the scandals, the divorce and many other aspects in life that could be seen as sins, or not accepted socially.[v]

From 1805 to 1807, Byron studied in Cambridge University where the education was given from Anglican priests. According to the Biography of George Gordon Byron by E.H Coleridge, “Cambridge did him no good. “The place is the devil,” he said.” And as the International Byron Society states, Cambridge was for Byron, “a hotbed of cant, obfuscation and hypocrisy”. As we can observe, throughout the years, Byron starts to acquire a more subversive attitude towards religion. [vi]

Regarding to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, it is a quite autobiographical poem, as Byron freely admitted, and is based upon his travels through the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea. Here we have a stanza collected from the Canto Four where Byron describes how the main character was tormented:

XXXIV

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair

The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey

In melancholy bosoms, such as were

Of moody texture, from their earliest day,

And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom

Which is not of the pangs that pass away;

Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,

The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.[vii]

Byron’s mood at that time is exactly what he describes in these verses “with demons, who impair / The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey”. The evil is always present, and in a way, spoiling the good. Byron was tormented “with demons” in his real life as Childe Harold in the poem. Again we have the opposition between good and bad, a controversial attitude that will find a terrible destiny  “Deeming themselves predestined to a doom” , the idea of “ineradicable conviction that he was damned”[viii], mentioned before, takes shape in this stanza.

           In Cain, the subversive attitude and his conflict towards traditional religion evolve to a stronger position. According to Edward E. Bostetter (“Byron and the Politics of Paradise”) “He uses the biblical cosmos as the setting for the first act, superimposes upon it in the second act the cosmos of 19th century scientific speculation, and in the third act returns to the biblical cosmos. By so doing he shows up the inadequacy of the traditional cosmology at the same time as he reveals its continuing power over the minds of men.”[ix]

           Act 1, scene 1 from “Cain”

"What had I done in this? I was unborn." Besides, wasn't Jehovah guilty of entrapment: "The tree was planted, and why not for him [Adam]? / If not, why place him near it, where it grew, / The fairest in the center?" In any event, why proscribe knowledge and life: "How can both be evil?" [x]

           Cain puts the blame on his parents to have eaten the forbidden fruit, a course that is going to hand down from generation for generation. Cain did not provoke the original sin; instead he has inherited the course of being a mortal human. On the other hand, he accuses “Jehovah guilty of entrapment” as the tree was deliberately planted in the Paradise of Eden to lead them into crime.[xi]

           Cain is an individual who is fighting against the social and religious convention as Byron does. The clash existed in the 19^th century between Romantics as Byron and the traditional understanding of religion starts here. The questioning of a society dictated by social and religious rules is more emphasized at this point near to the modern times. Byron acts as a kind of rebel defying the society and its faith.[xii]