byron and immortality

8/13/2019 Byron and Immortality

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Christianity and LiteratureVol 55, No . 3 Spring 2006

'I am more fit to die than people think :Byron on Imm ortality

Harold Ray Stevens

W hat is Poetry The Feeling of a Former world and a Future.

Byron, Ravenna Journal

Elizabeth Longford affirms a commonly accepted view that Byron mocked the idea of Christian imm ortality by citing one of his best-knownletters on the subject: And our carcases, which are to rise again, are theyworth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs than Ihave moved on these two-and-tw enty years, or I shall be sadly behind in thesqueeze into paradise (44).' That Calvinism shaped Byron's thoughts abou tthe afterlife is as well-known and frequently com mented on as his deformedfoot; and Longford's observation about Byron's occasional mocking ofanthropomorphic views of a contemporary and significant concept ofChristian imm ortality s illustrated in his Vision of Judgment { 1822 ^ Byron'sexploration of visions of immortality, however, is not limited to Calvin'stheology, and especially not to those who systematically condemn most ofhumankind to hell. Because the larger context of imm ortality is lost whendiscussing Byron's reaction to C alvinism, it is worthw hile to remem ber, asByron did, that perhaps the Calvinists who instructed the young Byron inAberdeen at the turn of the nine teenth cen tury did no t have exclusive rightsto Paradise.

Consequently, this article will explore the contexts for and reasons

behind Byron's fascination with immortality as it is influenced by hisinterest in bo th Christian and Islamic perspectives; his reading of the Bible;


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3 34 H A R O L D R AY S T E V E N S

and Earth (1823); and his reaction to Robert Southey, who led Byron toThe Vision of Judgment which, like Cain Heaven and Earth and Manfred

features spirits, phantom s, and people from religious tradition and acceptsa poe tic vision of life that transcends mortality.

Byron's interest in the afterlife and his references to eternity, often inbiblical contexts,' shape significant portions of his poetry and his poetictheory. On 28 January 1821, before he began writing the scriptural plays,Byron recorded in the Ravenna Journal: "W^hat is Poetry?The feeling ofa Former w orld and a Future" {LJ VIH, 37); and in The Prophecy of Dante(1821) he observed: "For what is Poesy but to create, / From overfeeling,Cood or 111, and aim / At an external life beyond our fate" (IV, 11-14).Byron also refers to an afterlife in conversations, letters, and journals;and occasionally includes speculations about the state of immortality inseemingly random fashion throughout his poetrywhether in the juveniliaor on Juan. Byron's attitude toward and belief about im mortality varies, buthe dismisses the concept as insignificant or irrelevant neither to his world-view nor to his writing. In practice, Calvinism a remnant of indoctrinationat Aberdeen by those who subjected Byron as an impressionable child tovisions of eternal torment functions best, especially in the scriptural playsand Vision of Judgment as a focal po int to explore avenues to an afterlife andto question the assumptions of those who taught eternal damnation.

During his final illness in Greece, where he was actively involved inthe battle for Greek independence, Byron was not tormented by doubt, ifreports of his final conversations are to be believed. Dr. Julius Millingen, thephysician who attended Byron at Missolonghi, recorded that Byron asked,

before losing consciousness for the last time: "Shall I sue for mercy?" Byronthen responded to his own question: "Come, come, no weakness Let's be aman to the last" (Marchand, Biography III, 1217). Shortly before his death,Byron com mented to his valet William Fletcher: "I am not afraid of dying, Iam m ore fit to die than people think" (Marchand, Biography III, 1221); andon his dea thbed he confided to his firem aster W^illiam Parry: "I fancy myselfa Jew, a Mahom edan, and a Christian of every profession of faith. Eternityand space are before me; but on this subject, thank God, I am happy and

at ease. The thought of living eternally, and of again reviving, is a greatpleasure" (Parry, 122-23). To understan d how Byron arrived at this point


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B Y R O N O N I M M O RTA L I T Y 3 35

vision of life that transcends death . Discussion begins and concludes withByron's satiric, ironic, and parodic treatment of a traditional pathway to

Heaven in The Vision of Judgment, published eighteen months before hisdeath w hen he was at the height of his creative powers with the ottava rim astanza. In between the two sections on Vision o f Judgment is a chronologicalexploration of his multiple views of immortality as they evolved from hisreaction to Calvinist theology in the juvenilia and early letters throu gh hisintroduction to Islam; his exploration of the theories that both the mindand the soul might be the immortal essence; his random incorporation ofthough ts about immortality in on Juan; and h is use of Old Testament texts

to explore death and im mortality in the m ystery plays.

The Vision of Judgment and the Priesthood of All Believers

In Vision of Judgment Calvinism is presented in contrast to Byron s ironic,satiric, and parodic presentation of a Deity whose mercy is everlasting.God is not indifferent to the suffering of the creatures he made not weourselves who in biblical metaphor are the sheep of his pasture. * Byrondoes not mock imm ortality, as Longford suggests. Rather, he satirizes no tonly the anthropom orphism of those who think damnation better still(13) as a way to define eternal life bu t also mortals who superim pose theirjudgment on the prerogatives of Deity. This is not to argue that Byronbecame a pious and traditional Christian late in life, but to assert theobvious: he is preoccupied with immortality to the extent thatin severalworksmem ory and the function of the mind in seeking to unde rstand theconcept of an afterlife become central to his pursuit of a knowledge of lifeafter death. Shelley recognized that in a different context when he referredto Byron as the Pilgrim of Eternity {Adonais 30 , echoing there arewanderers o'er Eternity / Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'ershall be {Harold III, 70). Of course Byron, a detached observer in Visionof Judgment keeps both ironic and doctrinal distance by reminding thereader in the concluding stanza that he views the proceedings of Southey'sappearance before the gates of heaven objectively th rough a telescope, whichkept his optics free from all delusion (106).


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poem because John Murray failed to forward it to Leigh Hunt of The iberal Byron reverses Southey's attack on him and on the Satanic School of

Poetry. He assumes the role of defender of the faith against the blasphem yof Southey's vision, advocating no doctrinal tenets, and following theacceptable tradition of treating saints with humor outside the gates ofParadise while keeping Deity absent. Second, in stanzas 1-7, the recordingangel's inactivity at the preadmittance bureau of the heavenly portals iscontrasted to the activity in the recording angel's black bureau where theclerk has performed an angelic strip-teasehaving stripp'd off bo th hiswings in quills, / And yet was in arrear of human ills (stanza 3) setting

the chaos that will be observed telescopically in the denouem ent. Third, instanzas 8-84, the debate over the proper way to enter heaven is presented.Fourth, in stanzas 85-103, Southey appears and begins to judge, furtheringthe chaos observed earlier in the recording angel's black bureau. Fifth, instanzas 104-106, the com ic denouem ent concludes rapidly as St. Peter useshis keys to the kingdom to knock Southey into the lake into which he fell likePhaetonand rose again to the top, to fulfill the prophesy from Revelation13:1-7, in contrast to Psalm 100.^

The longest of the five sections of Vision of udgment (8-84) examinessatirically and ironically the proper way to ascend to heaventhe debatethat has consumed C hristianity from St Augustine through Pelagius's heresyto the present: does one merit salvation through works, or is it exclusivelythe prerogative of God's grace? The debate over works, which awaits thetestimony of George Washington and John H orn Tooke, is only inte rruptedwhen Southey arrives and begins to judge. In Byron's vision Southey

standsand falls, into the Lake of the Lake Poetsas the quintessentialexample of anthropo morphists who presume to judge and who, in doing so,disregard the Vision of Judgment s central and largely silent biblical subtextalluded to in stanza 101: And thinkest th ou this, O Man, that judgestthem which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape thejudgment of God? (Romans 2:3)

Byron had already aligned himself with Christian benevolence, as PeterGraham has suggested (70). He hopes that he is not quite alone

I hi ll h f b i f ill


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Conversely, by invoking God to help us all, Byron challenges the Calvinismof his childhood I know my catechism (14)and the narrator is.

God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish.And not a whit more difficult to damn

Than is to bring to land a late-hook'd fish.Or to the butcher to purvey a lamb;

Not that I'm it for such a noble dish s one day will be that immortal fryOfalmost everybody born to die. (15)

Having identified himself as merciful not one am I / Of thosewho think dam nation bette r still (13)Byron's affirmation of Christianbenevolism is confirmed later in Vision of Judgment when Southey becomesthe quintessential anthropomorphist by presuming to judge George Ill'sfitness to enter heaven. Byron thus adopts a traditional C hristian conceptof the final judgment to develop his parody, just as he resolves ironicallygiven that he affirms throu gh Psalm 100 that God's mercy is everlasting to allow George III entry into heaven.

By rej ecting authoritarian prescriptions of mortals who thinkd am nationbetter still, Byron evolves, advertently or inadvertently, toward the traditionof the priesthood of all believers central to Protestant Christianity: it is theresponsibility of all Christians to interpret the Bible, using the true visiongiven by Deity. One needs ne ither priest, vicar, pastor, Calvinist saint,

and certainly not Robert Southey to interpret the Bible, and consequentlythe Chris tian faith. In the preface to ain in 1821, Byron emphasizes hisawareness of the need for personal, not d octrinal, interpre tation of scriptureby quoting Richard W atson, the Bishop of Llandaff who resolved to studynothing but my Bible. ... I had n o prejudice against the Church of England... but a sincere regard for the hurch of Christ and an insuperable objectionto every degree of dogm atical intolerance. Watson continues to arguethat he would hold the New Testament in his hand and say to those who

questioned his belief: Here is the foundation of truth. *Byron's 1821 view of activities at the portals of Paradise is more genial


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of faith vs. workscentral to understanding the debate about the Christianway to Paradise; singing praises; using the Christian homiletic practice of

choosing two biblical textsone each from Old and New Testaments, Psalm100 and Rev. 13:1-7to resolve his thesis . He follows Christian typology,confirming New Testament theology with Old Testament texts. W hichbiblical texts to choose when Byron uses so m any in Vision of Judgment is acon undrum to be resolved at the conclusion of this article.

ntimations of mmortality from Letters and Juvenilia

Byron's letters frequently com ment on an afterlife. Especially notablein one to Edward Noel Long on 16 April 1807 is a reference to the doctrineof works and a desire for a benevolent Deity in which he says he has been stampt ... with the Die oi Indifference. All the virtues and pious Deedsperformed on Earth can never entitle a man to Everlasting happiness ina future State: nor on the o ther hand can such a Scene as a seat of eternalpunishment exist, [51c.] it is incompatible with the benign attributes of aDeity to suppose so. I am surroun ded here by parsons & Methodists, but,as you will see, not infected with the Mania. I have lived a Deist, what Ishall die I know not; however, come what may, ridens moriar ' {LJ I, 114-15). He later wrote to Robert Charles Dallas: I believe . .. Death an eternalSleep, at least of the Body {LJ 1,148 . It should be remembered tha t Byronwrote these before his twentieth birthday, not after his thirty-sixth.

Four years later, shortly after returning from his first pilgrimage, fourpeople close to him died. Speaking of a curse [that] hangs over me andmine, ^ he wrote to Francis Hodgson that he would

have nothing to do with your immortality. ... If men are to live, whydie at all? And if they die, why disturb the sweet and sound sleep that'knows no waking'? ... who will believe that God will damn men fornot knowing what they were never taught? ... I am no Platonist, I amnothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist,

Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-twovillainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the


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endless theme; let me live, well if possible, and die without pain. Therest is with God, who assuredly, had e ome or sent would have madeHimself manifest to nations, and intelligible to all. {LJ II, 88-89)

Byron attacks assum ptions that men m ake about Deity, not Deity itself.Likewise, a variety of early poems address the afterlife and related themes,

some orthodox , some not. Comments range from "I'll ne'er submission tomy God refuse" ("On the Death of a Young Lady," 1802); to associations ofdeath with dreamlessness and sleep ("To Caroline," 1805, and "The Tear,"1806); to imm ortality in remembrance throu gh the power of the mind andmemory ("Answer to a Beautiful Poem, Written by Montgomery," 1806),anticipating suggestions that the soul and the mind might be synonymousin Manfred a decade later; to speculating ( Love's Last Adieu "1806) thatone's mortal life is "this life of probation" where "some penance is due" toprepare "for rapture divine" if one "kneels to the Cod, on his altar of light"; toquestioning ("To a Youthful Friend," 1808) why he, having been taugh t thatman is born in sin, must wrestle with sin throughout life to be culminated

by arbitrary damnation; and to suggesting ("To Caroline," 1805) that we"Will sleep in the grave, till the blast shall awake us, / When calling thedead, in Earth's bosom laid low"referring to corporeal resurrection. "ThePrayer of Nature" (1806) is notable because Byron unites various themes.He asserts guilt (5-8, 37-40, 61-64) but questions the concept of originalsin; admits that there might be no afierlife (57-60), but hopes that there is(53-64); questions the proper way to attain salvation (9-36); bu t affirms tha tit must be done through prayer and living nature's laws (37-40), but nature's

laws modified because he needs a personal Savior:

To Thee I breathe my humble strain.Grateful for all thy mercies past.

And hope, my God, to thee again.This erring life may fly at last.*

Eight years later, Byron wrote three poem s discussing immortality tha tt ll ld b bli h d i H b M l di I th fi t "If Th t High


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340 H A R O L D R AY S T E V E N S

heart that shares, / With them the imm ortal waters drink, / And soul in soulgrow deathless theirs ... suggesting corporeal imm ortality. In the second,

When Coldness Wraps This Suffering Clay, Byron questions whitherstrays the immortal mind, which is Eternal, boundless, undecay'd. ... / Anameless and e ternal thing, / Forgetting what it was to die an apparentlyincorporeal spirit that anticipates Harold III and Manfred In the third, From Job, A spirit pass'd before me: I beheld / The face of Immortalityunveil'd /. .. all formlessbut divine. personified immortality reminds Creatures of clay that they are but Things of a day who will wither soon H eedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light not, apparently, to becom e

the disembodied m ind of the preceding poem . Finally, in a poem publishedfirst in the Examiner {ll June 1815), Byron writes of one recently deceased ,suggesting as Milton does an etern ity of light for the blessed: Bright Be thePlace of Thy Soul. The dead one was divine on earth, As thy soul shallimm ortally be ... / W hen we know that thy God is with thee.

hristians and Mussulmen

Byron's attitude toward Muslims was shaped primarily by experiencewith Islam during his irst pilgrimage of 1810-11, primarily through contactsthat led to the Turkish Tales and stanzas in Childe Harold s Pilgrimage I and/ / (1812). He did, however, laugh genially at the contrast of Christian andIslamic concepts of women in the afterlife before his journey. Referring tothe charms of Ehza ( To Miss E[Hzabeth]P[igot], 1806)Byron prefers theChristian version to that of the Mussulman sect, / Who to woman, denythe soul's future existence. Had M uhammad known Eliza, the Islamic viewof Paradise would have been altered:

Had their prophet possess'd half an atom of sense.He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven;Instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence.With woman alone he had peopled his Heaven. (2)


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Matthew that addresses both entry into heaven and the nature of lifethere. Byron places the doc trine of the priesthood of all believers in iron ic

context, suggesting that he can help even the Benedictines un ders tand Jesus'message:

This terrible truth, even Scripture has told.Ye Benedicks hear me, and listen with rapture;If a glimpse of redemption you wish to behold.Of ST. MATT.read the second and twentieth chapter. (5)

Byron then cites the passage that inspires his romp through conjugalrelationships in heaven and on earth: "'But in Heaven' (so runs theEvangelist's Text,) / 'We neither have giving in m arriage, or wedding'" (6).

Byron chooses Jesus' direct w ords (in King James's English) to reinforcehis quarrel with Calvinists and others of the "seventy-two sects" whoanth ropo morph ize scripture and restrict entry into Paradise. He cites Jesus'words to doubtersprimarily Sadducees and Phariseeswho try to entrapHim : "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For inthe resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as theangels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, haveye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the G od ofAbraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the Godof the dead, but of the living" (Matt. 22:29-32).

Byron confided to his artilleryman William Parry at Missolonghi late

in life: "I am sure that no man reads the bible with more pleasure than Ido; I read a chapter every day, and in a short time shall be able to beat thecanters with their own weapons" (Parry, 153). Byron was well on his way todefeating canters with their own weapons at the age of eighteen, however,as he demonstrates by selecting Matthew 22 to address matters immortal,foreshadowing his choice of Psalm 1 to seal the fate of Southey in Vision ofJudgment It is also advice Byron gives to his readers in Don uan 1 220: "Sothank your stars that matters are no worse, / And read your Bible, sir, and

mind your purse," imm ediately before he ridicules the poe try of Southey toconclude canto I.


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instruc tions to prepare for entry into his eternal presence, and are of especialrelevance given the fact that Jesus was challenged by doubters. Even though

the context of the poem is satiric in its presentation of conflicting viewsof the role of women in Christian and Islamic paradises, it is appropriateto comm ent on the full text of M atthew 22. The chapter opens with theparable of the wedding feast, the m ain lesson of which is God's acceptanceof all who clothe themselves for his presencea metaphor for belief(22:13). In addition to the passage that Byron cites in the poem , in whichit is recorded that those who enter heaven will be more angelic thananthropomorphic, Matthew 22 also addresses the proper relationship

of Christians to the state and to each other. The first guides church-staterelationships: Render therefore u nto Caesar the things which are Caesar's;and unto God the things that are God's (22:21). The second issues thetwo great com mandm ents about human relationships: love the Lord thyGod with all thy heart ... soul, and ... mind and love thy neighbor asthyself On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets(Matt: 22:38-40). As Byron might have said in reference to confusion aboutpredestination and the proper way to attain im mortal peace and harm ony:

It doesn't get much clearer than that.Byron return s to Islam in H arold I and // and the Turkish Tales, especially

in The Giaour, where he contrasts Christian and Islamic beliefs about love,death, and the afterlife, and addresses in a footnote a misconception in ToMiss E P and again in The Giaour about the place of Muslim wom enin Paradise, as A. R. Kidwai has noted (87-88). Love, death, and paradiseconjoin in the face of Leila, as the narrator questions how any Muslimwho saw Leila's glance could read / And keep tha t portion of his creed /W hich saith, that woman is but dust, / A soulless toy for tyrant's lust? (487-90). Byron moves from the humor of To Miss E P to the serious in TheGiaour as he corrects the misconception, from both Islamic and Westernpercep tions, in one of several notes on Islam:

A vulgar error: the Koran allots at least a third of Paradise to well-behaved women; but by far the greater number of Mussulmans interpretthe text their own way, and exclude their moieties from heaven. Beingenemies to Platonics, they cannot discern anyfitness of things in the


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The Muslim Hassan believes that he can pass happily into the afterlifewith the knowledge that Houris, "the maids of Paradise," await those who

"fall in battle 'gainst a Giaour" and are consequently "worthiest an immortalbower" (739-46), returning to the harem image of Paradise that Byron hadwritten about seven years earlier. The Giaour is no t so fortunate: not onlyis he evil (912-13), but he has also been cursed by a Muslim fisherman forsome 40 lines (747-86)who describes hell in terms that even the moststereotypical late eighteenth century Calvinist could approve of: "And fireunquench'd, unquenchable / Aroundwithinthy heart shall dwell, /Nor ear can hear, nor tongue can tell / The tortures of that inward hell "

(751-54).' The Giaour's curse differs from Love given by "Alia":

Yes, Love indeed is a light from heaven spark of that immortal fireWith angels shar'dby Alia g iven .... Ray of him who form'd the whole Glory circling round the soul (1131-41)

The conclusion is ambiguous even though the alienated Giaour earlierhad declined to kneel in worship with monks (887-88) and has told hisConfessor tha t he does not seek forgiveness unless Leila lives (1208-17). TheGiaour's final comment to the Confessor mitigates the curse: he envisionshis soul "fieeting towards the final goal" (1282) and perh aps sees his belovedLeila's altered presence in an afterlife (1283-1315). He alterna tes a desirefor repose ("I want no paradise but rest." [1270]) with a vision of Leilaas "shape or shade what'er thou art, / In mercy, ne'er again depart / Orfarther w ith thee bear my soul ..." (1315-17). But neither Confessor norGiaour nor Byron resolves the veiled vision because the tale concludes in thesecrecy of confession and on the sealed lips of the Confessor who "shrivedhim on his dying day" (1332). The Giaour rem ains a giaour, apparentlyconfirmed in the belief that Christian practice is better preparation foreternity than Islam, despite the fact that he requests no cross above his

grave (1325). Byron leaves unsaid whether the Confessor only received theGiaour's confession; whether he prescribed penance; or whether, through


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that of Coleridge's ancient mariner, both of which rely on the Catholictrad ition . Byron often expressed sympathy for the tenets of Catholicism.

Suffice it here to record that Byron confided to Thomas Medwin: I oftenwish I had been born a Catholic. That purgatory of theirs is a comfortabledoctrine. ... {LJ I, 15); mused to Thomas Moore that Catholicism has notonly the most elegant worship but also leaves no possibility of doubt;for those who swallow their Deity . .. in transubstantiation , can hardly findanything else otherwise than ease of digestion {LJ IX, 123); finally, heraised his daughter by Claire Claremont as a strict Catholic{LJ IX, 119).

mmortality of the Mind and of the Soul

By 1816, when Byron left England, primarily because of the scandalassociated with his separation from Lady Byron, he had begun to shift focuson the nature of imm ortality and its relationship to life in this world ratherthan the next. In an early example, Byron writes about the imm ortalityof remembrance, blending two approaches to imm ortality in Churchill'sGrave (1816). In the first, recalling a trad ition that imm ortality exists inremembrance, Byron presents ironically and paradoxically a church sextonwholeading the poet to the graveyard where Churchill liesvaguelyremembers that he was a most famous writer in his day. In the second thepoet questions mortal and imm ortal aspirations by invoking the rending ofthe veil at Christ's crucifixion (Matt. 27:51-53) when sp irits who rose fromthe grave were recognized:

And is this all? I thought,and do we rip he veil of Immortality, and craveI know not what of honour and of lightThrough unborn ages, to endure this blight.''So soon, and so successless? (15-19)'

Further, on the vanity of human wishes and the role of monuments

and memory in ensuring immortality, one should not forget Don Juan'sremembrance of old Egypt's King Cheops, who erected the first and largest


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Memorable lines in arold III and Manfred recall the world oft ranscendence in nature as central to immortal i ty and remembrance,

emphasizing the human soul" in varying contexts :

I live no t in myself but I becomePortion of that arou nd me; and to me.High m oun tains are a feeling, but the humOf hum an cities torture: I can seeNothing to loathe in nature, save to beA link reluctant in a fleshly chain,Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee.And with the sky, the peak , the heaving plain

Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. {Harold III, 72)

Twenty-four stanzas later, Byron speculates both about the soul of natureand the hu man soul within the context of the four elementsearth, air, fire,waterof antiquity:

Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings yeWith night, and cloud, and thunder, and a soulTo make these felt and feeling, well may beThings that have made me watchful....But where of ye, oh tempests is the goal? re ye, like those with the human breast? {Harold III, 96)

In the next stanza, the poet would like to "throw / Soul, heart, mind,passions, feelings, strong or weak, / All that I would have sought, and all Iseek" to becom e as "Lightning"heat and light and power. Unable to doso, he asserts that he will "live and die unheard, / With a most voicelessthou ght...." (Ill, 97). Drum m ond Bone argues that these stanzas emphasize"man's alienated existence" and his fear that he will "live and die unheard"

(42), but the references to "soul" through out Canto III imply a life beyondthe physical, and Byron incorporates that assumption because in mostCh i i d i i hi h B d h l i l' i l


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argue, sometime later on the path to birth. Of course Byron calls on othertradit ions to explain a condition that he cannot easily dismiss, because

Lucifer suggests M anic hae an origins in Cain.

Nev ertheless, the presen ce ofthe sou l is con stant in Harold III

But quiet to quick bosom s is a hell.And th r hath been thy bane; there is a fireAnd m otion of the soul which will not dwellIn its own narrow being, but aspireBeyond the fitting medium of desire;And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore.... (42)

Earlier, in Canto II, Byron had suggested lugubriously that the soulresides, not in the bosom, but in the head Observing skull on the Acropolis,the narrator asks: "Is that a temple where a God may dwell?" (5)

Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall.Its chambers desolate, and po rtals foul:Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall.The dome of Thought, the palace of the S ou l... . (6)

There are multiple references to Harold's soul in the opening stanzas ofCan to III: the "soul's haunted cell" (5); "What am I? No thing; but no t so

art thou, / Soul of my thought with whom I traverse earth, / Invisible butgazing, as I glow / Mix'd with thy spirit, blended w ith thy birth . ..." (6); "YetTime ... had altered him / In soul and aspect as in age" (8); "his soul wasquell'd / In youth by his own thoughts ..." (12). After having referred to the"wonder-works of God and Nature's hand" (10), the poet remarks that ifHarold could

have kept his spirit to that flightHe had been happy; but this clay will sinkk i l i i h li h


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But Harold "wanders forth again" (16) like a "wild-born falcon withdipt wing" lest "the heat / Of his impeded soul would through his bosom

eat" (15). There is more to imm ortality than meets the doubter's eye in rold because Byron affirms, lest we doubt, that "there is that w ithin mewhich shall tire / Torture and T ime, and breathe w hen I expire; / Somethingunearthly, which they deem not of, / Like the remembered tone of a mutelyre ..." (IV, 137). Byron once commented to Moore that one "certainly hasa soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more thanI can imagine" {LJ I, 15).

Finally in arold IV Byron views St. Peter's in Rome, affirming that the

mind is central to understanding imm ortality:

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;And why it is not lessened; but thy mind.Expanded by the genius of the spot.Has grown colossal, and can only findA it abode wherein appear enshrinedThy hopes of imm ortality; and thouShalt one day, if found worthy, so deflned.See that God face to face, as thou dost now

His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. (155)

Byron's observations about the imm ortality of the m ind are best expressedin Manfred. When Manfred tells the First Spirit that he seeks "Forgetfulness.... Oblivionself-oblivion " (I, i, 136, 145), the Spirit confronts him withthe spirit world's imm ortality. "We are immorta l, and do no t forget. / W eare eterna l, and to us the past / Is, as the future, p resent" (I, i, 149-51). Later,Manfred tries to consign the Spirit "Back to thy hell ": "Slaves scoff no t atmy will / The mindthe spiritthe Promethean spark, / The lightning ofmy being ... / shall not yield to yours, though coop'd in clay" (1, i, 153-57).Byron had linked "mind" with "soul" in the manuscript: "The Mind whichis my Spiritthe High Soul"but omitted it in the revision.'^ Later, anaffirmation:


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And its own place and timeits innate sense.When stripp'd of t is mortality, derivesNo colour from the fleeting things without.But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy.Born from the knowledge of its own d eser t.. . .I . . . was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter. {Manfred III, iv, 129-40)

Whatever the ultimate state of an afterlife, the Mind is destined to keepthe though t alive. Manfred's final words to the abbot, who implores Manfredto pray as he dies, are

Old man 'tis no t so difficult to die.Abbot He's gonehis soul hath ta'en its earthless fl ig h t-

W hither? I dread to think but he is gone. (Ill, iv, 151-153)

Because Manfred assumes responsibility for his actions ("my own destroyer,and will be / My own hereafter" [III, iv, 139-40]) he rejects a predestinedeternity. If, however, the voice from the Incantation is correct"N orto slumber, nor to die, / Shall be in thy destiny" (I, i, 254-55),'^ Manfredwill not find the self-forgetfulness or oblivion that he sought early in thedram a. The abbot's concern for Manfred's soul is more vocal than tha t ofthe Giaour's confessor, but Byron wrote no more about that uncertaintyin Manfred Rather, he returned to Harold IV after completing Manfred

and rediscovered images of eternity in nature in the concluding stanzas onthe ocean (179-84), "where the Almighty's form / Glasses itself in tempests... / Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime / The image ofEternity the thron e / Of the Invisible. ..." (IV, 183)

Random References to mmortality in on uan

Byron occasionally expresses unconventional interest in immortality.Take for example the way the theory of predestination informs Haidee's


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Almost hidden in Byron's pathos and verbal play are the consequencesof original sin: that somehow Haidee's innocent child might have been

spared the burd en of sin from an earlier fall in a more innocent paradise.'''Byron assumes, but leaves unmentioned, the doctrine of ensoulment. Herefers to immortality early in the Haidee stanzas, when Haidee and Zoe firstdiscover Juan.

And thus they left him to his lone repose:Juan slept like a top, or like the dead.

Who sleep at last perhaps, (God only knows)lust for the present. ... (II, 134)

Depending on the religious tradition one accepts, "repose" might referto the sleep that comes with death as one awaits the second coming, or tothe repose of the soul, or simply to the state of death itself. Byron pointedlynotes that "God only knows"a concept explored extensively in ManfredCain and H eaven and Earth. We attempt to understand the afterlife nowonly through glimpses, suppositions, and imperfect vision, accepting theaffirmation of Cor. 13:12 that "now we see through a glass, darkly; butthen face to face: now I know in par t; but then shall I know even as also Iam known."

Images of an afterlife also appear in the shipwreck of II, 86, andelsewhere in references to the sea (V, 6; XV, 99). Another example is apassing apocryphal allusion to the harrowing of hell, which informs the

actions of the Russian General Suwarrow"the greatest Chief / That everpeopled hell with heroes slain" (VII, 68) at Ismail, who slaughters for thesake of rehgion: "I have vowed / To several saints, that shortly plough orharrow / Shall pass o'er what was Ismail, and its tusk / Be unimpeded bythe proudest mosque" (VII, 63). The cross, symbolizing the Atonement,becomes ironically its antithesis: "The crimson cross glared o'er the field; /But red with no re eeming gore" (VIII, 122); and a reference to imm ortalityearlier in the stanzas devoted to Suwarrow is scathingly ironic (VII, 84).

Byron also reverts to traditional images of heaven in impious context in the"Ava Maria" stanzas (III, 101-103), where "the heavenliest hour of Heaven


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Canto XIV opens with a meditation on death and evolves six stanzaslater into the quandary of a potential suicide approaching the uncertainty

of death, an uncertainty that Byron also addresses in Cain.

The narratorprofesses that he, like the reader, does no t know w hat is beyond life. In fact,even the knowledge that you were bo rn to die might be un true because An age may come. Font of Eternity, / W hen noth ing shall be either old ornew (XIV, 3). Byron concludes the passage equivocally because the suicidefaces his mom ent of decision shuddering at the mirror of his thoughts and all their self confession

The lurking bias, be it truth or error.To the unknown; a secret prepossession.

To plunge with all your fearsbut where? You know not.And that's the reason why you do [commit suicide]or do not. (XIV,6)

Byron had written earlier, to begin Canto VII, a series of stanzas on thereception of Don Juan. Professing that he hoped that it is no crime / Tolaugh at all things (VII, 2), he cites many who had done similar thingsamong them Socrates, Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Dante, Swift, Luther, andWesleyand concludes, as he did in Canto XIV, with uncertainty aboutdeath and what might exist beyond: We live and die, / But which is best,you know no more than I (VII, 4).

W hen he w ishes, Byron retu rns to his confiicts with some casuists who

think that he has no devotion by challenging them to pray with him:

And you shall see who has the properest notionOf getting into Heaven the shortest way;

y altars are the mountains and the ocean.Earth, air, stars,all that springs from the great Whole,Who hath produced and will receive the soul. (Ill, 104)

In a simple digression, Byron combines the classical elements with


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B Y R O N ON I M M O RTA L I T Y 3 51

throughout Byron's poetry. Any attempt to study comprehensively theimplications of the 447 scriptural references235 from the Old Testament,

212 from the New Testamentthat Looper (56-89, 199-222) finds in DonJuan would require an independent essay.

mmortality and the O ld Testamentthe M ystery Plays

Because Byron anticipated the furor that would be caused by thepublication of Cain he justified his approach to the subject matter in the

Preface by referring to precedent, especially on the topic of immortality: there is no allusion to a future state in any of the books of Moses, norindeed in the Old Testament. Consequently he believes his discussion of itnew to C ain.^^ He also notes that any reference to the New Testament wouldbe anachronistic, even though he alludes to the atonement (I, i, 163-66), thedescent in to hell (I, i, 540-42), and Jesus walking on the w ater (II, i, 16-20).In addition he justifies incorporating the catastrophic theories of Cuvier,noting that they do not contradict the Genesis record. Einally, Byron assertsthat he takes biblical texts as they exist, despite how Rabbins and Eathersmight interpret them: he follows the practice of the ishop of Llandaff becausehe relies on biblical texts rather than biblical commentary . That said, Byronmakes immortality important in Cain and Heaven and Earth originatingthe discussion through the confused mind of Cain and the Manichaeandualities of body and soul introduced by Lucifer. He questions the justiceof the consequences of original sin and pursues an unsuccessful quest forknowledge about the condition of immortality, especially important afterhe kills Abel. W hen Byron turn s to eaven and Earth he applies Christiantypology to wrestle with the m atter of salvation in the record of the fiood:why God chose Noah to Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for theehave I seen righteous before me in this generation (Gen. 7:1).

To assure that he had a sound text for reference while writing thescriptural plays, Byron wrote to Murray on 9 October 1821 asking for awell-bound Bible to replace the one given to him by Augusta:

S d [ ] bibl f d l ibl i t (b d i R i )


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booksand had read them through through before I was eight yearsoldthat is to say the old Testamentfor the New struck me as a t a s k -

but the other as a pleasureI speak as a to^from the recollectedimpression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796. {LJ VIII, 238n)

Murray sent the Bible, and a volume of Bible commentary, a m onth later.Many have commented on Byron's life-long reading of the Bible.

Theresa Guiccioli, in her Recollections of Lord Byron wrote: The Bible .. .constituted his favorite reading. Often did he find in the magnificent poe try

of the Bible matter for inspiration (131). The Methodist James Kennedyrecorded that Byron read the Bible daily and that he would occasionallycorrect Kennedy when Kennedy cited a scriptural passage erroneously.Further, Byron confided to V^illiam Parry: I am sure that no man reads thebible with m ore pleasure than I do; I read a chapter every day, and in a shorttime shall be able to beat the Canters with their own weapons (Parry, 153).Finally, he told his valet William Fletcher on his dea th-bed: I am no t afraidof dying, I am m ore fit to die than people think. '^ Certainly, if the ability

to cite the Bible is any sign of religiosity, Byron ranks with the best becauseLooper records 1,063 references to the Old and 643 to the New Testamentin his poetry, and that does not include the many references to topics ofbiblical concern in the letters and journals and to allusionsoften nuancesof phrasing that Looper does not record. Byron never joined the ranks ofthe canters; nor did he become a doctrinaire advocate of the priesthood ofall believers. But it was not because he was unprepared textually.

Given the undeniable evidence of Byron's life-long interest in thebiblical record, his objections to the way prac titioners of the seventy-twosects manipulate texts, and his interest in dram a, it seems only natura l tha tByron would use the mystery play to examine two Old Testament texts thatinform New Testament concerns. Milton had explored the fall in ParadiseLost; Byron wanted rather to examine the entrance of death into the worldafter the exile from Eden. Both Cain and Heaven and arth refer to originalsin while casting doubt on the efficacy of the doctrin e of the elect. Cainquestions early in the drama:


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The questioning continues in Heaven and Earth but Byron insiststhat, if a playwright has a character raise questions in a drama, it does not

necessarily mean that heor any playwrightis that character. Byronaddressed this in a letter to Thomas Moore on 4 March 1822, three monthsafter ain was published:

... can I never convince you that I have no such opinions as thecharacters in that drama, which seems to have frightened every body?... My ideas of character may ru n away with m e: like all imaginative

men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I draw

it, bu tnot a mo ment after the pen is from off the paper. I am no enem y toreligion. ... I incline, myself very much to the Catholic doctrines; butif I am to write a drama, I must make m y characters speak s I conceivethem likely to argue. {LJ IX, 118-19)

By choosing Adam and Eve as his charactersand by contrasting theaffirmations of faith and acceptance of God's will by the family of Adamto the questions of the outcast Cain and to the manipulative provocationsof LuciferByron examines from varying perspectives both traditionallydeveloped theories of the consequences of original sin and the implicationsof tha t original sin for eternity. He con tinues this in Heaven and Earthbecause, while the main actors in the mystery approach the doctrinevariously, underlying alleven the fiood itselfis the question of divinejustice and its consequences for future life.

In a drama with frequent references to immortal creaturesLucifer,seraphs, angels, archangels, cherubsCain introduces immortality byreferring to the presence of Lucifer, who has a sterner and sadder aspect /Of spiritual essence . .. sorrow seems / Half of his imm ortality (I, i, 81-82,95-96). Lucifer teases Cain almost out of thought with comments, such asthose echoing Psalm 90:4, that im mortal spirits

Can crowd eternity into an hour.Or stretch an hour into eternity:We breathe n ot by a mo rtal measurement


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Lucifer addresses Cain's eternal yearnings by adapting the Manichaeanduality of n imm ortal soul in an alien body comparable in some ways to

ensoulmentand uniting it with Byron's earlier explorations of the mindas immortal: "They are the thoughts of all / Worthy of thought;'tis yourimmortal part / Which speaks within you" (I, i, 102-04). Until this pointCain has focused only on death as the end of an unwanted life, and in hisview of the meaninglessness of life and his parents' conviction that thepursuit of knowledge is sinful, sees no reason to live: he echoes Manfred'sview that it would probably be no t so difficult to die (I, i, 111 -115). Luciferassures him that is not so: "Thou livestand must live forever" w hen Earth's

covering is gone, and when Cain will be "No less than thou art now" (I, i,118). Lucifer then uses the appeal of eternity to entice Cain to join h im inchallenging a Deity who, in a negative allusion to the atonement, mightcreate a son whom God will sacrifice (I, i, 163-66). Thus Lucifer, appealingto Cain's anger, offers immortality through defiance:

Souls who dare use their immortality

Souls who dare look the Omn ipoten t tyrant inHis everlasting face, and tell him, thatHis evil is not good (I, i, 137-40)

When Cain informs Lucifer that he would "rather consort with spirits,"Lucifer affirms tha t Cain's "own soul" is prepared for such consorting. Cain'sprimary affirmation of immortality comes from Lucifer in the absence

of Paradise, but Cain's quest is mental, continuing the knowledge-mindcontinuum (I, i, 213-14) in Byron's desire to unde rstand im mortality Theirony of the human knowledge of immortality, however, begins with itsantithesis, which has tormented Cain's mind, and w hich Lucifer uses to lureCain. Lucifer continues:

all things are

Divided with me; life and deathand timeEternityand heaven and earthand that


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His. If were not that which I have said.Could I stand here? His angels are within

Your vision. (I, i, 547-56)

Lucifer asks Cain about his desire for immortality: "I am angelic:wouldst thou be as I am?" (II, i, 78), recalling Matt. 22:30, in which Jesus tellsdoub ters that people "are as the angels of God in heaven." Cain responds:"Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn / To anticipate my immortality" (II,i, 93-94). Lucifer then suggests tha t Cain's imm ortality will be much like

his life: suffering (II, i, 96); and Lucifer replies to Cain's query "And musttortu re be immortal?": "We and thy sons will try" (II, i, 96-97).During the fiight to Hades, which Lucifer identifies as "the realm / Of

Death" (II, ii, 13-14), Cain curses Adam who gave him life. QuestioningCain's curse, Lucifer provokes Cain's predestinarian reply: "Cursed he notme in giving me my birth? / Cursed he not me before my birth, in daring /To pluck the fruit forbidden?" (II, ii, 22-25). Cain is no t satisfied w ith theknowledge of life after death that Lucifer has shown through phantoms.

Lucifer in turn consoles Cain, reminding h im that he now knows that thereare multiple states after death , which will seem "clearer to thine immortality"(II, ii, 177). In the rem ainde r of the scene leading up to Cain's murder ofAbel in Act III, there are multiple references to "immortality," to "eternity,"and to "Paradise,"'* the last identified as the eternal abode of God, butCain can resolve nothing further about imm ortality. Even though Cain'sexperience has confirmed the existence of some type of immortality, thedram a concludes with Cain expressing ignorance of the eternity that he haddefiantly sought with Lucifer. Cain no longer looks forward to eternal life,however, as his final words over the body of Abel affirm: "what thou nowart, /1 know not but if thou seest what / am , / I think tho u wilt forgive him ,whom his God / Can ne'er forgive, nor his own s ou l... " (Ill, i, 530 -33)."

At the conclusion of eaven and Earth Japhet continues to questionthe uncertainty about immortality that Cain had introduced in Byron'sfirst mystery. The saved Japhet asks: "Why, when all perish, why must Iremain?" (I, iii, 929) as Noah's ark comes to rescue him from the floodth t h l d d t d t f h k i d R b ti i J h t'


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in scene three (lines 266-71, 594-99, 643-45, 877-82, 905-10), Byron iscuriously silent about the verses of Psalm 139 that follow, which might have

meliorated the gloom:

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell,behold, thou art there. If take the wings of the morning, and dwell inthe uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, andthy right hand shall hold me. If say, surely the darkness shall coverme; even the night shall be light about me. .. . Search me, O God, andknow my heart try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be anywicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Ps. 139:8-11,23-24)

Perhaps Byron does not allude to this because it seems inconsistent w iththe predestinarian argument of Heaven and Earth suggesting as the psalmdoes a benevolent God with a sustaining hand and an affirmation of the"way everlasting." Some exegetes argue that Psalm 139 refers to immortalityin the Old Testamentwhich Byron had com mented in the preface to Caindid not exist. Byron is also silent about the context of Psalm 55, whichhe alludes to in I, iii, 643-45: "Fly / And as your p inions bear ye back toHeaven, / Think that my love still mounts with thee on high." "Oh that Ihad wings like a dove for then would I fiy away, and be at rest. ... I wouldhasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. ... Cast thy burdenupon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous

to be moved" (Psalm 55:6, 8, 22). According to these texts, not on ly doesGod not destroy, bu t he also sustains everlastingly Psalm 139 refers bothto an omnipresent, warm , and personal God and to everlasting life. Byronmust have questioned how one resolves stereotypical Calvinism in the faceof contradictory evidence, not only in the psalms but elsewhere, especiallyin "ST. MATT the second and twentieth chapter," the text that Byron hadincorporated in "To Miss E P" in 1806. The second coming of Christ doesenter by allusion, however, when Japhet, answering the "Chorus of Spirits

issuing from the cavern," responds that the "eternal V^ill" will


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The subject is dropped because of the sense of doom growing as the floodgathers.

But the general theme of immortality central to Heaven and Earthremains, because Byron's inscription to the mystery is from Genesis 6:1-2:"the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they tookthem wives of all which they chose." The mystery of the un ion of mortalityand imm ortality is addressed early in the drama in human terms as Anah andAholibamahmortal womenand Azaziel and Samiasatheir immortalangel loversdiscuss imm ortality. Random passages emphasize it: Anahrefers to Azaziel's "immortal wings" in contrast to her "clay" (I, i, 21-23),

the "eternal depths of heaven" (I, i, 39), Azaziel's "eternity" (I, i, 64), and"immortal essence" (I, i, 66). The more defiant Aholibamah, contrastingher lover Samiasa's "im mortality" to her "clay," professes he r immortality :

Thou art immortalso am I: I feelI feel my immortality o ersweep

All pains. ."Thou livest forever "

But if it be in joy,I know not, nor would know;That secret rests with the Almighty giver.

Who folds in clouds the fonts of bliss and woe.But thee and me he never can destroy;

Change us he may, but not o erwhelm; we areOf as eternal essence and must warWith him if he will war with us; with th

I can share all things, even immortal sorrow;For thou hast ventured to share life with meAnd shall Z shrink from thine eternity? (I. i, 110-126)

In both m ystery plays, the most rebellious mortals, man and womanCainand Aholibamahare most pointed in affirming not only the existence ofan immortal state but also of a personal immortalityCain with Lucifer'sassistance.

The words of the two fallen wom en are important, bu t so is the conceptof typology which many exegetes use to interpret the story of Noah A


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358 HA RO LD RAY STEVENS

In strictness of application this speaks of the preservation through the"great tribulation" (Mt. 24:21-22) of the rem nant of Israel who will turn

to the Lord after the Church (typified by Enoch, who was translatedto Heaven before the judgment of the Flood) has been caught up themeet the Lord (Gen. 5:22 24; I Thes. 4:15-17; Heb. 11:5; Isa. 2:10-11;26:20-21). But the type has also a presen t reference to the position ofthe believer "in Christ" (Eph. 1) etc. It should be noted that the w ordtranslated "pitch" in Gen 6:14 is the same word translated "atonement"in Lev. 17:11, etc. It is atonement that keeps out the waters of judgm entand makes the believer's position "in Christ" safe and blessed.

The ark of Noah becomes a type of Christ, serving as refuge of Hispeople from judgm ent (Heb. 11:7; 1 Pet. 3:20-21). Consequently Japhetsunsuccessful attempt to get Anah aboard and Noah's more successful savingof Japhet become metaphors of salvation as type of eternity.^"

Marchand suggests that Heaven and Earth struggles with the familiarByronic them e of the "ineffable longing for a celestial life and love free fromfhe imperfections of the earthly stafe" Critical Introduction, 91). Byrondoes this within fhe context of his struggle wifh the doctrine of the elect,however, despite the flood as type of baptism. W ithin the context of theprincipal beings in fhe d rama, Byron adopts peculiarly utilitarian stance tocharacter development, made more meaningful by his com ment f o M oorein reference fo ain fhat, even though his characters do nof speak as Byron,he becomes fhem when creating fheir thoughts and actions. Thus Byronexamines the doc trine of the elecf and its relationship fo the afterlife in hispenultimate drama from six points of view. First, fhe doctrinal Noah, whomE. H. Coleridge complained that "Byron had faik like a street preacher" (V,309), affirms the doctrine of fhe elecf in various ways; second, Anah, whosins wifh a fallen angel, seems fo be religious and is, from Japhef s point ofview, worthy of salvafion (I, iii, 426-27, 467-70); fhird, Aholibamah, also inlove with an angel, challenges Noah and remains unrepenfanf as a defianfseed of Cain's lineage (I, i, 110 fF.); fourth, Samiasa and Azaziel, fwo fallenangel-lovers, paradoxically seem above the froubles of mere mortals; fifth,

Raphael is fhe angelic and unquestioning emissary of Cod's will ("Farewell,fhou earth ye wretched sons of clay, / I cannot, must not, aid you. 'Tis


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7:1: And the Lord said unto N oah, Come thou and all thy house into theark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation (I, iii, 380-

82). As Raphael tells Noah : Thy son, despite his folly, shall no t sink: / Heknows no t what he says, yet shall not drink / W ith sobs the salt foam of theswelling waters ... (I, iii, 765-67). Obviously these comments confiict withFairchild's one-paragraph dismissal of Heaven and Earth as the sole workin which Byron is consciously dishonest (III, 433).

W hat is Poetry?The feeling of a Forme r world and a F uture

While reading Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel's lectures on literarycriticism^' on 29 January 1821, Byron paused to write in his RavennaJournal :

Why there is gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness, when he istender. It is true that, treating of the Christian Hades, or Hell, there is

not much scope or site for gentlenessbut who but Dante could haveintroduced any gentleness at all into HelU Is there any in Milton's?Noand Dante's Heaven is all love, and glory, and majesty. (I/, VIII,39-40)

Like Dante and Milton, Byron writes primarily about Judeo-Christianconcepts of an afterlife, examining the biblical record and questioningthrough serious commentary in his letters, journals, conversationsand poetry in manners comic, serious, satiric, ironic, and parodic thechallenges to the biblical record by his childhood teachers and by exegetesof his infamous seventy two sects. Responses to his questions about theexistence of an afterlife, its nature, and ways to attain it come in variouscontexts. Am ong them are perfunctory affirmation, even to corporealresu rrection, in some juvenilia while doubting the existence of an afterlifein letters from the same time; contrasting alternative Islamic and Christian

visions of paradise in both com ic and tragic contexts ( To Miss E P andThe Giaour); questioning its nature and justification, and speculating about


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dissolving anthropomorphic dicta and conflicts about eternity in laughterin The Vision of Judgment Or, as Peter Cochran comments, in Byron's

ottava rima period redemption is comically redefined (48) as Ceorge IIIascends into heaven and Southey sinks into the abyss of the Lake Districtbecause Byron circumscribes with some slight restriction, / The eternity ofhell's hot jurisdiction (13). This is despite the fact that he will be labeled unpopular, blasphemous, and perhaps damn'd / For hoping no one elsemay e'er be so. Like othe rs, he has been cramm'd with the best doctrines,knows that all save England's church have shamm'd / And tha t the othertwice two hundred churches / And synagogues have made a damn d bad

purchase (14).Byron questions neither the existence of Co d no r an afterlife in ision of

Judgment, because he affirms that he has intentionally kept God out of theconfrontation before the gates of Heaven. Further, he records that he seeshis parodic and quintessentially ironic vision not through a glass darkly (ICor. 13:12) but clearly from the distance of a detached observer through atelescopic lensit can't get much clearer and more ironically objective andaffirmative than that. In two ironic biblical allusions in ision of Judgment,however, Byron returns joyfully to the practice of the sectarians whomhe criticizes by selecting two texts, one from the Old Testament and onefrom the New, to conclude his version of a homily, which is complete withexemplasome of which are inspired by the 75 biblical texts, 32 from theOld Testament, and 43 from the New, ^ that Looper identifies (161-65, 260-66). The Old Testament text is Psalm 100; the New Testament text is Rev.13:1-7. In Byron's ironic vision, the Old Testament text gives the trad itionalNew Testament message; the New Testament conveys the traditional OldTestament avenue to confirm the message.

The first appears in stanza seven, where Byron introduces the beastfrom Revelation who came out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns.On the beast's heads was written blasphemy (13:1), and it was given untohim to make war with the saints, and to overcome them(13:7). Such seemsto be Southey's case when he arrives on the scene in stanza 8 and begins tobray like Balaam's ass (Num. 22:21-34). The rest of the parody becomes

both apocalyptic and homiletic: St. Peter knocks Southey out of heavenwith the keys to the kingdom (104), but Byron ironically gives historical and


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falls, like Phaeton, into the lake of the Lake District. Why like Phaeton ?Phaeton, the son of Helios, tried unsuccessfully to drive his father's golden

chariot. Undisciplined and presum ptuous like Southey, he would have setthe world on fire had Zeus not knocked h im from heaven with thunderbolt.In like apocalyptic manner, had Southey not been knocked from Heavenby another type of thunderboltthe keys to the kingdomhe too mighthave brought fire to the world if Michael had been composed enough tosound the trumpet of the Lord (Rev. 8:6-13 to signify the coming of theApocalypse. Ironically, in the absence of Deity, Peter's impetuosity andMichael's inability to sound the trumpet keeps the world safe as Southey

descends to the lake, not of fire but of the Lake District, where he will beable to live up to the promise of Revelation 13, and Ceorge III can enterheaven to sing praises. ^

V ^ic h brings us finally o a subtext of ision of Judgment and perhaps ofthis article as well. Ceorge III is left practicing Psalm 100. W hy that, ratherthan any of a dozen other psalms or passages of scripture? The answeris in the exegesis. After Psalm 23 , Psalm 100 is perhaps the best know n,and Byron enhances his irony by suggesting that Ceorge III might no t haveknown it outside the gates. The answer is not in Ceorge III slipping throughin a Southey-inspired confusion, but in searching the scriptureswhichis the record in the Judaeo-Christian traditionto resolve the essentiallyChristian enigma that Byron focuses on in his prose and poetry. As hehad discovered at the age of sixteen, Matthew 22 might be an answer. Inlaughter at the improbability of sinful man's entry into heaven, however,Byron returns to the Psalmsas he does without laughter in Heaven and

arthto suggest possibilities that even Ceorge III and by association allcanters culminating in Southey might understand .If an essayist might be allowed to turn exegete for a moment, Byron

chose Psalm 100 to conclude his final unified poem devoted to the p roblemof immortality; and in doing so he chose the Old Testament as testimonyto his exploration of Christian benevolism.^'' Like Matthew 22, Psalm100 addresses distinc t topics relating to Byron's quest. The them e of thepsalm is to praise and serve the Lord joyfully all ye lands : consequently,

because access is no t limited by artificial boundarie s, the seventy-twosects or the twice two hundred churches become superfiuous. En trants


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his people, and the sheep of his pasture, man is in Cod's han ds, not Codin man's; consequently Southey and all canters are dismissed. Ceorge III

does precisely what worshipers are supposed to do by entering into hisgates with thanksgiving ... bless his name. Finally, because his mercy iseverlasting; and his truth endu reth to all generations, there is perhaps hopefor all.

Even though Byron's inquiries into the nature of immortality connoteuncertainty at various stages of life, his critique of cantersespeciallySoutheywas effective long before he confided to Parry that in a shorttime [I] shall be able to beat the canters with their own weapons. During

his final illness at Missolonghi, Byron was not to rmented by doub t. PerhapsByron s comm ents to two associates in Creece best illustrate his final houghtsabout death and an afterlifewhen he was not creating the personae ofChilde Harold, Manfred, Cain, Aholibamah, or Southey. He told Parry: Ifancy myself a Jew, a Mahomedan, and a Christian of every profession offaith. Eternity and space are before me; but on this subject, thank Cod, Iam happy and at ease. The thought of living eternally, of again reviving, isa great pleasure (122-23). Finally, he confided to Fletcher: I am not afraidof dying, I am m ore fit to die than people think (Marchand, III, 1221). Therecord of Byron's comments on immortalityChristian or otherwiseinhis mature writings and in observations late in life ought, perhaps, to bejuxtaposed to comm ents which assert that he mocked the idea of Christianimm ortality with evidence based primarily on letters written in his youth.

McDaniel College

O T S

'The full passage can be read in Leslie Marchand's Byron s Letters and Journals,II, 98 LJ). Marchand discusses Byron's views on immortality briefly in LJ 1 14-16.

Drum mond Bone (2) and others have commented on the Calvinist superstition tha tdeformities such as Byron's lameness are, hke the mark of Cain, a sign of dam nation .


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BYRON ON IMM ORTALITY 363

^Unless noted otherwise, all citations to Byron's poetry are from leromeMcGann, ed.. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Worics, (7 vols. 1980-83). Ernest

Hartley Coleridge's 7-volume The Woriis of Lord Byron (1898-1904) is cited asColeridge, Worics. The standard practice of citing stanza/line references in poemsand dramas rather than pages in specific volumes will he followed.

^Three doctoral dissertations and one published volume are devoted to Byron'suse of the Bihle in his poetry: Arthur Ponitz, Byron und die Bibel; Harold RayStevens, Byron and the Bible: A Study of Poetic and Philosophic Development; andTravis Looper, whose study was published as Byron and the Bible: A Compendiumof Biblical Usage in the Poetry of Lord Byron. Other studies, such as Byron, TheBible, and Religion: Essays from the Twelfth International Byron Seminar, edited byHirst, also address biblical topics. None, however, focuses systematically on Byron'sthoughts about immortality. The index to volume VII of McGann's edition of Byroncites immortality only as a cross-reference.

Philip Davis (268) argues that so strong is the sense of something likepredestination in Byron that for an instant it impersonally almost frees the mindsof his protagonists in the very sight of what is still personally determined for and bythem.

'For a more detailed discussion of this see Stevens, Southey and the Satanic

School of Poetry: The Apocalyptic Tradition in Byron's Vision of Judgment'Cited by Coleridge, Works, V, 208n. The quotation comes from Anecdotes of

the Life of Richard Watson (1817), 39.'Letter to Scrope Berdmore Davis, 7 August 1811 LJ, II, 68 . As Byron wrote, his

mother's corpse lay unburied in Newstead Abbey, and his friend Charles SkinnerMatthews had recently drowned in the Cam. lohn Wingfield and lohn Eddlestonwere the others.

*For further development of this, and Byron's indebtedness to the Christianhymn, see Stevens, Christian Elements in Byron's 'Prayer of Nature' (18-20).

'Byron continues in a footnote, commenting on a reference in the poem toMonkir, who along with Nekir are inquisitors of the dead before whom a corpse undergoes .. . preparatory training for damnation (McGann, Worfcs, III, 420,note to line 748). For a more complete discussion of Byron's contrast of Islamicand Christian traditions, see Marilyn Butler, The Orientalism of Byron's 'Giaour'(78-96). For a discussion of a misreading of Byron's knowledge about the place ofwomen in an Islamic Paradise, see A. R. Kidwai and Vincent Newey, 'A VulgarError': Byron on Women and Paradise (87-88). Because the focus of this essay

is on the afterlife rather than the culture of Islam in generalespecially as Byronobserved it in Childe Harold I and II in Greece, Albania, and TurkeyI will mention

l h i h T k ( d d H ld II 73) B li


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lerome I. McGann in Fiery Dust argues that the fusion in man's natureof body and soul is mirrored in Byron's paradoxical coordination of his liberal

Socinian thought with his Catholicism (252).''McGann, Works, IV, 58,154n. For a discussion of the biblical context oi Manfred, see Stevens, Theme and

Structure in Byron's Manfred: The Biblical Basis.' Eden and the ruins of paradise, especially within the context of typology, are

central both to Byron's poetry and to his thoughts about immortality. Among thestudies that address the themes of Eden and the exile are Robert R Gleckner's Byronand the Ruins of Paradise and the more recent Fiction's Limit and Eden's Door byBernard Beatty.

''lames Kennedy records Byron's comment that Catholics believed the sins ofthe heart were easily forgiven.. .by a merciful God (104). Kennedy's conversationson religion with Byron in Missolonghi are informative but not necessarily definitiveor final. Among other things, Kennedy records that Byron professed a desire tobelieve and was not satisfied with his unsettled notions on religion, objectedto Christians feuding over doctrine, questioned the doctrine of the trinity anddebated Socinian doctrine with Kennedy, professed to daily reading of the Bible,and occasionally corrected Kennedy on biblical matters. For a critical appraisal

of Kennedy's record of Byron's thoughts about religion, see Doris Langley Moore(338-52). Ernest Lovell also records some of Byron's conversations on religion.Especially relevant is Byron's comment to Isaac Nathan: they accuse me ofatheisman atheist I could never beno man of reflection, can feel otherwise thandoubtful and anxious, when refiecting on futurity (83). G. Wilson Knight, on theother hand, emphasizes Byron's Christian Virtues rather than consequences for afuture existence.

Byron cites Bishop Warburton's The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstratedon the Principles of a Religious Deist; from the Omission of the Doctrine of a FutureState of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation, asserting Warburton tobe the best text on the subject. Cited in Coleridge, Works, V, 209-lOn.

Westminster Review, II (luly 1824), 255. Cited in Marchand, Byron: ABiography, III, 122ln.

See for example immortality relating specifically to Cain's quest: II, i, 131;II ii, 177, 386, 441; and eternity : II, i, 150; II, ii, 84, 389, 432. In II, ii, referencesto Paradise are primarily to lehovah's otherworldly place, as in II, ii, 366-67.

The literature discussing Cain's various themes is extensive. Central is

Truman Guy Steffan's Lord Byron's Cain: Twelve Essays and a Text with Variants andAnnotations, who collects numerous nineteenth-century reviews and other more


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BYRON ON IMM ORTALITY 365

mind is immortal in Manfred, he goes the next step in Cain to proclaim his solitaryapotheosis, his entrance into an afterlife created by his own will (214).

^ For a more comprehensive discussion, see Stevens, Scripture and the LiteraryImagination: Biblical Allusions in Byron's Heaven and Earth" (118-35). GordonSpence, who misreads a comment I made discussing Byron's use of scripture inworking with the doctrine of the elect, has also written on the topic in Byron,Enoch, Calvin and the Deluge (66-75). lerome McGann discusses Cain andHeaven and Earth with emphasis on his Socinian thought that is paradoxicallycoordinated ... with his Catholicism (Fiery Dust, 252) but which he moved awayfrom as he matured. McGann examines Byron's use of biblical texts, especially hisdetailed knowledge of the realm of angels, noting that Byron differentiated betweencherubs (associated with knowledge) and seraphs (associated with love) (245).Azaziel and Samiasa are seraphs.

^'History of Literature (Edinburgh 1818). Cited in LJ, VIII, 38-40.^^Looper divides Byron's use of the Bible into various categoriessuch as exact

and approximate quotations, allusions, and parodies (161-65,260-66). Conversely,Dieter A. Berger argues that the comic kaleidoscope .. . expresses Byron'sfundamental doubts of an existence after death (76).

For a more complete discussion of this see Stevens, Southey and the Satanic

School of Poetry (43-46). Graham (70) suggests that Christian immortality before God seems to

prevail and that Byron expects his readers to supply the relevant verses from Psalm100.

WORKS ITED

Beatty, Bernard. Fiction's Limit and Eden's Door. Byron andthe Limits of Fiction. Ed.Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey. Totowa: NI: Barnes and Noble, 1988.1-38.

Berger, Dieter A. ' Worlds past, present or to come': Romantic Visions of PossibleWorlds and Byron's The Vision of Judgement ' Re-Mapping Romanticism:GenderTextContext. Ed. Christoph Bode and Fritz-Wilhelm Neuman.Essen, Germany: Blaue Eule, 2001. 65-77.

Bone, Drummond. Byron. Tavistock, Devon: Northcote, 2000.Brewer, William D., ed. Contemporary Studies on Lord Byron. Lewiston, Wales:


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Byron, George Gordo n, Lord. Byron s Letters and Journals. Ed. Leslie A.Marchand. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973-1982.

. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works. Ed. lerome I. McG ann. 7 vols.Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980-1993.. The Works o f Lord Byron. Ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 7 vols. London:lohn Murray, 1898-1904.

Cochran , Peter. The Vision of Blasphemous ludgement.Keats-Shelley Review 9(1995): 37-50.

Davis, Philip. ' I leave the thing a problem, like all things ': On Trying to Catch Upwith Byron. Byron and the Limits of Fiction. Eds. Bernard Beatty andVincent Newey. Totowa, NI: Barnes and Noble, 1988. 242-84.

Eisl, Maria Emanuela. Lord Byron and His Religious Pronou ncements in CainDon Juan and A Vision of Judgment. Studies in Nineteenth CenturyLiterature. Ed. lames Hogg. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik andAmericanistik, 1981. 26-62.

Fairchild, Hoxie Neale. Religious Trends in English Poetry. 5 vols. New York:Columbia UP, 1939-1958.

Gleckner, Robert F. Byron and the Ruins of Paradise. Baltimore: lohns Hop kinsUP, 1967.

Graham, Peter W. Lord Byron. New York: Twayne, 1998.Guiccioli, Countess Theresa. My Recollections o f Lord Byron. Trans. Hubert

E. H. lerningh am. New York: Harper, 1869.Hirst, Wolf Z. Byron the Bible and Religion: Essays from the Twelfth

International Byron Seminar. Newark: Delaware UP, 1991.Kennedy, lames. Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron. London: lohn

Murray, 1830.Kidwai, A. R., and Vincent Newey. ' A Vulgar Error': Byron on Women and

Paradise. The Byron Journal. 21 (1993): 87-88.Knight, G. Wilson. Lord Byron: Christian Virtues. New York: Oxford UP, 1953.Longford, Elizabeth. The Life of Byron. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.Looper, Travis. Byron and the Bible: A Compendium of Biblical Usage in the Poetry

of Lord Byron. Metuchen, NI: Scarecrow Press, 1978.Lovell, Ernest I., Ir. His Very Self and Voice. New York: Macmillan, 1954.McGann, lerome I. Fiery Dust: Byron s Poetic Development. Chicago: Chicago UP,

1968.Marchand , Leslie A. Byron s Poetry: A Critical Introduction. London: lohn

Murray, 1965.. Byron: A Biography 3 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1957.


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Ponitz, Arthur. Byron und die Bibel. Wieda I, Th: Thomas & Hubert, 1906.Riley, Terrance. 'Churchill's Grave': Byron and the Monumental Style.

Contemporary Studies on Lord Byron. Ed. William D. Brewer. Lewiston,Wales: Edwin Mellen, 2001.

Schock, Peter A. The Satanism of Cain in Context: Byron's Lucifer and the WarAgainst Blasphemy. Keats-Shelley Journal 44 1995): 182-215.

Scofield, C. L, ed. The Holy Bible: Authorized King James Version. New York:Oxford UP, 1909.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Adonais. English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins.San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, lovanovich, 1967. 1050.

Spence, Gordon. Byron, Enoch, Calvin, and the Deluge. Byron Journal 27(1999): 66-75.

Stefi an, Truman Guy. Lord Byron's Cain: Twelve Essays and a Text with Variantsand Annotations. Austin: U of Texas P, 1968.

Stevens, Harold Ray. Byron and the Bible: A Study of Poetic and PhilosophicDevelopment. U of Pennsylvania Dissertation, 1964. Christian Elements in Byron's 'Prayer of Nature?' Christianity andLiterature 25:3 1976): 18-20. Scripture and the Literary Imagination: Biblical Allusions in Byron's Heaven

and Earth Byron, The Bible, And Religion. Ed. Wolf Z Hirst. Newark:Delaware UP, 1991. 118-35. Southey and the Satanic School of Poetry: The Apocalyptic Tradition inByron's Vision of Judgment UNISA English Studies 3 (September 1968):37-46. Theme and Structure in Byron's Manfred: The Biblical Basis. UNISAEnglish Studies 11:2 (1973): 15-22.


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