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The History of Literature
769 The European Byron (with Jonathan Gross) | The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (#3 GBOAT)
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and LitHub Radio.
- [00:09]
Jonathan Gross
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Jonathan Gross
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- [00:55]
Jack Wilson
Hello, we've got a packed show for you today with the Great Gatsby and the European Byron. And I can't stop thinking about a story I heard about Swiss theologian Carl Barth. The story goes that Barth met an astronomer at a dinner party and the astronomer said, I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend. Mr. Barth, I know you've written many books and you take your religion quite seriously, but in my opinion, all of New Testament theology can be boiled down to do unto others as you would have done unto you. And without missing a beat, Barth replied to the astronomer, and no offense to you, sir, but in my opinion, all of astronomy can be boiled down to Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are. We look at a couple of stars in the literary firmament, Gatsby and Byron, and we kind of wonder what they are too. Coming up today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Let's get to work. We start with the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. We've covered this book and this author several times. All the shows are in the archives, including Gatsby at 100, and a very early episode where Mike and I talked about Hemingway and Fitzgerald. And of course, the episode where I enraged a small number of listeners by even asking the question, was Gatsby black? Or just how black was he? That is a theory, people. And surprisingly enough, or not so surprisingly, even though I concluded that the evidence in the text was not quite there. But I did say it was an illuminating thought experiment, a whole new way to see one of the canon's permanent fixtures. Even though that was my position, I still got heat meal. Ah, well, what can one do? I try, people. I do my best. Okay, today we have A different take. Let's hear the music. The drums, the horns. Here we go. The inspiring the climax.
- [03:14]
Jonathan Gross
Foreign.
- [03:19]
Jack Wilson
We are up to number three in our series on the greatest books of all time, and once again, this would not be my choice for the third greatest book ever. But who am I to argue with thousands of voters and the critics who have compiled this list of lists? It is, in some ways, a perfect novel, although it's flawed, it's beautifully written, except for a few clunky parts, and it's often regarded as the great American novel, which it probably isn't. It's one of those rare books that is very readable, very teachable, and it inspires young people to go out and try their hand at writing inspired prose. Or at least it did in 1990 or so, when I and several friends were among those young people. We've covered this book a few times here on the podcast, and I encourage you to check those episodes out.
- [04:09]
Jonathan Gross
What I have for you today is.
- [04:10]
Jack Wilson
Something we have not covered before, the classical work that fired Fitzgerald's imagination. It's perhaps an unlikely source, but only because it's not the first thing we reach for when we reach for our Latin or Greek text today, or our translations of such. I suppose it will not surprise scholars of ancient literature or anyone who's done a little research into Fitzgerald's earliest titles for the book. No, I'm not talking about the High Bouncing Lover or Gold Hatted Gatsby, and I'm not talking about under the Red, White and Blue or among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires or on the Road to West Egg. Those were all. Those were all working titles for the book. You can see the themes of the book in all of these titles. Something about the American dream, something about new wealth, something about reaching too far was a theme that Fitzgerald loved more than any other. Probably the Midwesterner who Achieves or Overachieves and the establishments on the east coast that view that Midwesterner with distaste. Here's an upstart nouveau riche. Why doesn't he go back to where he belongs? He doesn't fit here. I haven't yet said the title that I have in mind. It was Fitzgerald's favorite of the titles. His publisher was the one who forced the issue, preferring the Great Gatsby as the title. But Fitzgerald wanted to call the book Trimalchio in West Egg, or simply Trimalchio. The title wrote on the manuscript for so long that the first galley proofs of the book show this on the COVID If you see A copy of Trimalchio by F. Scott Fitzgerald at a yard sale. Pull out your cash. Either you are looking at a facsimile copy, only 500 of which were printed, or you've stumbled across an original galley proof, which is probably worth millions. There hasn't been one for sale since 1971, as far as I know. I'm not sure how much they would go for today. A reference to Trimalchio survives in the manuscript itself, in the version we all know and love, the one you probably have on your shelf in chapter seven, we see. Actually, chapter seven begins with this. It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night. And as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. End quote. His career as Trimalchio? Who was Trimalchio? Why would this be elevated to the title of the book? His publishers said, we can't call the book Trimalchio. Americans will not know how to pronounce the word or what it refers to. Probably correct on both counts. Trimalchio comes from the classical author Petronius, whose work Satyricon gave us the word satire. Petronius was a Roman courtier in the age of Nero. His origins are a little shadowy, but he may have come from what is now southern France. He was something like an arbiter of taste for Nero, a commenter on fashion and styles. Officially, he was a member of the senatorial class, and he became a politician and consul during Nero's reign. We don't know for sure that Petronius wrote the Satyricon. The surviving ancient sources are silent, and our best evidence comes from something that was created during the Middle Ages. We do have a little more about Petronius the politician and person from the historian Tacitus, who tells us that Petronius spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties, or an amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards, returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero's intimates and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste in connection with the science of luxurious living. End quote. The science of luxurious living. It's hard. It's not hard to imagine Fitzgerald recognizing a kindred spirit preceding him. By 1850 years or so in the Satyricon, a former slave named Trimalchio has gained enormous wealth. He hosts a banquet where Trimalchio boasts of his riches and shows off his learning. Like most characters, he's deeply satirized. He's incontinent, for example, and he's an example of a wealthy upstart who doesn't know his place. Nouveau riche. Back in the first century A.D. in the Satyricon, we are introduced to Trimalchio when he's playing a game outside his banquet hall. He's described as a bald man playing a game with long haired boys. He's surrounded by slaves and eunuchs who cater to his whims. He snaps his fingers and a chamber pot is brought to him by two eunuchs. He urinates into it while still playing the game. Then he barely moistens his fingers and instead of washing them and dries them on a boy's head, inside we see his bath and massage accommodations. This is a place of luxury, very Fitzgerald. Fitzgeraldian. As they walk through the place, you see that in again and again in Fitzgerald stories, just the description. We had one, the diamond as big as a Ritz, which was full of descriptions like this. There are murals that show in the back to Petronius. There are murals that show Trimalchio's rise from slavery to his current state of fabulous wealth. A sign says that any slave who leaves the premises without permission from the master will receive 100 lashes as a penalty. Now, for a former slave, we see two things. Trimalchio has gaudy, obscene wealth. And although he himself once was a slave, now that he's in a position to be master, he treats his slaves harshly. Says a lot about his character. In the dining room, appetizers are brought in. Once again, the scene is of gaudiness, performative wealth. A couch at the head of the table is reserved for Trimalchio who arrives. Let's hear from the Satyricon. Now this is chapter the 32nd. We were in the midst of these delicacies when, to the sound of music, Trimalchio himself was carried in and bolstered up in a nest of small cushions, which forced a snicker from the less wary. A shaven pole protruded from a scarlet mantle. And around his neck, already muffled with heavy clothing, he had tucked a napkin having a broad purple stripe and a fringe that hung down all around on the little finger of his left hand he wore a massive gilt ring, and on the first joint of the next finger a smaller one, which seemed to me to be of pure gold, but as a matter of fact it had iron stars soldered on all around it. And then, for fear all of his finery would not be displayed, he bared his right arm, adorned with a golden arm band and an ivory circlet clasped with a plate of shining metal. Chapter 33 picking his teeth with a Silver Quill Friends, said he, it was not convenient for me to come into the dining room just yet, but for fear my absence should cause you any inconvenience, I gave over my own pleasure. Permit me, however, to finish my game. A slave followed with a terebinth table and crystal dice, and I noted one piece of luxury that was superlative, for instead of black and white pieces he used gold and silver coins. He kept up a continual flow of various coarse expressions. We were still dallying with the relishes when a tray was brought in on which was a basket containing a wooden hen with her wings rounded and spread out as if she were brooding. Two slaves instantly approached and to the accompaniment of music, commenced to feel around in the straw. They pulled out some peahens eggs, which they distributed among the diners. Turning his head, Trimalchio saw what was going on. Friends, he remarked, I ordered peahens eggs set under the hen, but I'm afraid they're addled by Hercules. Let's try them anyhow and see if they're still fit to suck. We picked up our spoons, each of which weighed not less than half a pound, and punctured the shells, which were made of flour and dough, and and as a matter of fact, I very nearly threw mine away, for it seemed to me that a chick had formed already. But upon hearing an old experienced guest vow, there must be something good in here, I broke open the shell with my hand and discovered a fine fat fig embedded in a yolk seasoned with pepper. Chapter 34 having finished his game, Trimalchio was served with a helping of everything, and was announcing in a loud voice his willingness to join anyone in a second cup of honeyed wine, when, to a flourish of music, the relishes were suddenly whisked away by a singing chorus. But a small dish happened to fall to the floor in the scurry, and a slave picked it up. Seeing this, Trimalchio ordered that the boy be punished by a box on the ear and made him throw it down again. The janitor followed with his broom and swept the silver Dish away among the litter. Next followed two long haired Ethiopians carrying small leather bottles such as are commonly seen in the hands of those who sprinkle sand in the arena and poured wine upon our hands, for no one offered us water. When complimented upon these elegant extras, the host cried out, mars loves a fair fight. And so I ordered each one a separate table. That way these stinking slaves won't make us so hot with their crowning. Some glass bottles, carefully sealed with gypsum were brought in. At that instant a label bearing this inscription was fastened to the neck of each one. Opimian, Falernian, 100 years old. While we were studying the labels, Trimalchio clapped his hands and cried, ah, me. To think that wine lives longer than poor little man. Let's fill him up. There's life in wine, and this is the real Opimian. You can take my word for that. I offered no such vintage yesterday, though my guests were far more respectable. We were tippling away and extolling all these elegant devices when a slave brought in a silver skeleton so contrived that the joints and movable vertebra could be turned in any direction. He threw it down upon the table a time or two, and its mobile articulation caused it to assume grotesque attitudes. Whereupon Trimalchio chimed in, poor man is nothing in the scheme of things. An orcus grips us, and to Hades flings our bones. The skeleton before us here is as important as we ever were. Let's live then while we may, and life is dear. Chapter 35 the applause was followed by a chorus which by its oddity drew every eye. But it did not come up to our expectations. There was a circular tray around which were displayed the signs of the zodiac, and upon each sign the caterer had placed the food best in keeping with it. Rams vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, kidneys and lamb's fry on Gemini, a crown on Cancer, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, an African fig on Leo, on Libra, a balance, one pan of which held a tart and the other a cake. A small sea fish on Scorpio, a bull's eye on Sagittarius, a sea lobster on Capricornus, a goose on Aquarius, and two mullets on Pisces. In the middle lay a piece of cut sod, upon which rested a honeycomb with the grass arranged around it. An Egyptian slave passed bread around from a silver oven, and in a most discordant voice twisted out a song in the Manner of the mime in the musical farce called Laser Pitium. Seeing that we were rather depressed at the prospect of busying ourselves with such vile fare, Trimalchio urged us to fall. Let us fall to. Gentlemen, I beg of you, this is the only sauce. There's more after this. More food, more mistreatment of the staff, more crassness from Trimalchio. One difference from Gatsby. We don't hear that he's lovesick for the woman who got away, as we see with Gatsby and Daisy. Instead, we hear that Trimalchio is besotted with his wife, Fortunata. We'll conclude our reading of the Satyricon with chapter 37th, which in which some gossips talk about her. Chapter the 37th. I could eat no more, so I turned to my informant to learn as much as I could and sought to draw him out with far fetched gossip. I inquired who that woman could be who was scurrying about hither and yon in such a fashion. She's called Fortunata, he replied. She's the wife of Trimalchio, and she measures her money by the peck. And only a little while ago, what was she? May your genius pardon me, but you would not have been willing to take a crust of bread from her hand. Now, without rhyme or reason, she's in the seventh heaven and and his Trimalchio's factotum. So much so that he would believe her if she told him it was dark when it was broad daylight. As for him, he don't know how rich he is, but this harlot keeps an eye on everything. And where you least expect to find her, you're sure to run into her. She's temperate, sober, full of good advice and has many good qualities. But she has a scolding tongue, a very magpie on a sofa. Those she likes, she likes, but those she dislikes, she dislikes. End quote. It would appear that Fitzgerald read or at least knew about Petronius as far back as 1919 or 1920, when his novel this side of paradise was published. Petronius is mentioned along with Rabelais, Boccaccio and Suetonius as canonical authors known for their racier sections. But it's more likely that Petronius and Trimalchio became more prominent in 1921 and 1922, when Fitzgerald's friend Thomas R. Smith, an editor at a publishing house called Liveright, commissioned a translation of Petronius that became prominent thanks to obscenity charges and a high profile lawsuit and attempted ban of the book the Band failed, with the presiding judge Charles Oberweger writing the Satyricon is a keen satire on the vulgarity of mere wealth, its vanity and grossness, the author of which was interested in the intellectual pursuits as well as in the vices and follies of his own evil times. The worship of the flesh and its lusts alternately disgusted and fascinated him. End quote. There's another parallel. Trimalchio made his money exporting wine. Shades of Gatsby, who began his career as a bootlegger. But let's go back to that judicial opinion. The worship of the flesh and its lusts alternately disgusted and fascinated the author. A writer, looking back on Fitzgerald, would be hard pressed to write a more apropos sentence. And as much as I kid Fitzgerald about his often wayward titles, also during this period he was struggling from the failure of his Broadway play, which was titled I kid you not, the Vegetable. In this case, I'll tip my cap. Trimalchio or Trimalchio or Trimal Trimalchio or. However, the publisher worried that we might butcher the pronunciation. We plebes. I think it would have done just fine as a title. It's hard to imagine a world without the Great Gatsby. But if we do have to go down that road to West Egg and a little beyond, I can supplement my journey with a copy of Trimalchio. And literature would still have its equilibrium of vices and follies and strong candidates for the great American novel, too. That's a little bit on the Great Gatsby, our number three book on the list of greatest books of all time. What will be numbers 2 and 1? We will get to those soon, dear listeners. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, maybe check out the Great Gatsby again. It pays. Rereading and it's not long. Or maybe one of the other books on the list so far, like 100 Years of Solitude, a very popular book with our listeners. Or the Odyssey, in preparation for the Christopher Nolan film, which is coming out this year in IMAX and which looks excellent. I recommend the Daniel Mendelssohn translation, which is new. And I also recommend our episode featuring our interview with Daniel to whet your literary appetite. Moving on. Lord Byron was a product of England who was exported across Europe. Sometimes he exported himself, living in Italy for seven years. Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, in Venice, with trips all around, of course to Rome, elsewhere. And eventually he lived. He moved into Greece, where he died during campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence. Byron packed his 36 years with living. It was mad, bad and dangerous to know, perhaps, but dangerous to talk about on a podcast. Not so much more illuminating than dangerous, I should say. Jonathan Gross joins us for a wide ranging discussion after this.
- [23:37]
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- [25:23]
Jack Wilson
Okay.
- [25:24]
Jonathan Gross
Joining me now is Jonathan Gross, who is professor of English at DePaul University and joint President of the International association of Byron Societies. He's also the author of several books.
- [25:34]
Jack Wilson
Including the Erotic Liberal.
- [25:37]
Jonathan Gross
He's here today to discuss his new book, the European Byron Mobility, Cosmopolitanism and Chameleon Poetry. Jonathan Gross, welcome to the History of Literature.
- [25:48]
Jack Wilson
Great.
- [25:49]
Jonathan Gross
Thanks very much. It's good to be here.
- [25:51]
So when did you first encounter Byron and or his poetry and what in.
- [25:57]
Jack Wilson
Particular appealed to you?
- [26:00]
Jonathan Gross
I came across Byron in college. It was a class my sophomore year on Charlotte Harold's Pilgrimage and Mary Shelley's the Last man, and there was a copy in the bookstore of Byron's Poetry in Red. It was the Gleckner edition, wrapped in cellophane and it caught my eye and that was really my introduction. I'd never read any Byron in high school.
- [26:22]
And did the poetry at some point send you to the biography?
- [26:28]
You know, the work that really did it for me was Don Juan.
- [26:30]
Oh, yeah.
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I've very rarely ever sat all night and read something through, but I did with this poem. And it was the cynicism, actually, it was the irony and his insights into life. Even though I was only 18 years old at the time, it had a wisdom to it. And he spoke directly to me, even though it was 200 years later. It was a remarkable feeling of freshness. He really was a genius, and it's one of the reasons why he affected so many people in Europe.
- [26:59]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. It's that.
- [27:01]
Jonathan Gross
It's that charisma and it does feel. It does feel like a very modern voice and almost the type of person we might expect to encounter today. It must have felt similar to the people of his era.
- [27:17]
Yeah, I mean, a lot of British writers have remarkable careers. They study Greek and Latin. By the time they're 10 or 11 years old, they've read more than most Americans have their whole life sometimes. And he read so much when he was young, including Turkish history, Greek history, translating the Aeneid, and this is in Euryalus episodes, foot races. And all these things are having a profound effect on his ideas about male friendship and the Greeks, Plato. Every time I thought, as I would pass each decade, that I'd catch up to him. He died when he was 36. I'm still scrambling. And that's not just some kind of modesty. I am now 62, and literally he surprises me with his understanding of Poland, of Hungary, of the Ottoman Empire, of Spain, of. And that's what genius is, when someone lives for only 36 years and manages to produce what he produced.
- [28:16]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [28:16]
Jonathan Gross
Well, that takes us right into your title, so let's start with just the terms that you set forth here.
- [28:23]
Jack Wilson
What do you mean by mobility with respect to Byron?
- [28:27]
Jonathan Gross
Well, that takes us right back to Don Juan, which is what I call the English Cantos, and he's describing a party at an English country home, and there's a woman named Lady Adeline Amundeville. And I'm going to. Is it okay if I read from the poem?
- [28:40]
Sure.
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So, though this was most expedient on the whole and usual, Juan, when he cast a glance on Adeline while playing her grand role, which she went through as though it were dance, betraying only now and then her soul by a look scarce, perceptibly askance of weariness or scorn began to Feel some doubt how much of Adeline was real. So well, she acted all in every part, by turns. With that vivacious versatility. Which many people take for want of heart. They err. Tis merely what is called mobility. A thing of temperament and not of art. Though seeming so from its supposed facility. And false, though true. For surely they're sincerest. Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest. He has a footnote, and he says in French, mobility. I'm not sure that mobility is English. But it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates. Though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. He's talking about England. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions. So that's the definition of mobility. An excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions. At the same time, without losing the past. And is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor. A most painful and unhappy attribute.
- [29:57]
Yeah.
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So, Mrs. Dalloway in Virginia Wolf. The ability to be pleasing to everybody. Without losing the essential core of your personality. Does it make you a hypocrite that you can be polite to people, Pretend to be interested when you're bored. Flirt with a young man while serving food and your husband is at the dinner table. Seem to be sympathetic to everybody.
- [30:20]
Right. Is that what he means by susceptibility?
- [30:23]
An excessive susceptibility of immediate impression? So it's like enthusiasm.
- [30:29]
Okay, so it's the ability to move from one thing to another. And to be different things for different people.
- [30:38]
Yes, that's part of it. It's almost like being too reactive. Totally alive to the beauty of everything. So you don't know whether to be a wig or a Tory. To be in love with a man or a woman. He was, I guess, in some ways thought to be bisexual. But the point is just more the Eros, that desire attracts him to everybody. And he's sympathetic to them. And she. It's actually a character he's talking about Lady Adelina Mundeville. Whose very name has that idea of abundance. Or Amundeville, you know, much of something, you might think maybe, of Zelig. You know, Woody Allen's film seems to appear everywhere. He's doing this, he's doing that. I mean, he just. And that's very much Don Juan. He shows up in five different countries. He's a courtier, a diplomat. Women fall in love with him, and he has to react to their enthusiasm. And he enters into these relationships. This first one, she's 21, he's 16. We would call that statutory rape today. And he blows up a whole marriage. Julia writes a letter to him and she blames facetiously him for the affair. She knows that she's in part the reason why this happened. But then he goes off and he's sold on a slave ship and he goes to Ottoman Empire and he's seduced yet again by Gubaez, who's a sultana. And you know, he's a very attractive young man. So he keeps falling in love or being fallen in love with. And he makes these impressions on people and he enters into their culture and sees their beauty and he's really, I guess, in love with beauty in that way.
- [32:09]
And yet he says even though it's sometimes apparently useful, it's actually a most.
- [32:14]
Jack Wilson
Painful and unhappy attribute.
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Jonathan Gross
So he's saying these people who are sort of shape shifting here or able to be different things as they travel through life, it's actually I guess maybe covering up a kind of emptiness or, or maybe it's too giving and they, it hollows people out. Or how would you explain what Byron is saying there?
- [32:37]
Yes, I guess psychiatrists today would call these people pleasers. It hollows them out, as you say, because they give so much to people. But are they being true to themselves? If someone agrees with everything you say, you begin to suspect them. Like, who are you? Are you just mirroring back what I say to you? And that's what a person with mobility has, is that chameleon quality to change colors depending upon who they're talking to. That other phrase, you know, chameleon poetry comes from John Keats where he compares a poet to a chameleon that can fit into any environment without being anything themselves. He says Shakespeare had that quality more than any other poetry. That quality of negative capability of seeing two sides to things without committing yourself to either one of them and pleasing people by being just like them. Cosmopolitan, you know, stepping in. You're British, but you can see the virtues of the Spanish, of the Greeks, of the Russians, even of the English.
- [33:35]
Right, okay, so how do we relate this to Byron? I mean, is this kind of a self confession? He certainly traveled quite a bit. He certainly did a lot of different things and encountered a lot of different people. Is this something he observed in others? Or do you think this is something he was concerned about in terms of himself?
- [33:56]
Well, he was born in Aberdeen. Maybe he actually was born in London. But he was brought up in Aberdeen with a single mother. His father was no longer in the picture. He became a lord at the age of 10 so he was impoverished. His mother was obese and alcoholic, beat him, chased him around the table, saying he would turn out to be a true Byron like his father. So he had a very difficult upbringing. The only child. His mother would do anything for him. Catherine Byron, she loved him, she adored him. He wrote her these loving letters when he traveled throughout Europe. But he also spent a lot of money in college, decorated his rooms. He had a bear sit for a fellowship, as he put it, at Cambridge. He had lots of animals throughout his life. He liked to break rules. He was a rebel. And he was at one point overweight. And then when he went to college, he lost great deal of weight and then suddenly became very attractive. So he'd lived every life, the life of an overweight boy with a bad haircut who girls rejected and then a heartthrob who everybody was in love with. And he had been poor, he'd been a lord. He was half Scott, half English. And one of his great admirers was Walter Scott, you know, the great Scottish writer who wrote Waverly and Ivanhoe and so many other really wonderful works. They were very close friends.
- [35:10]
But do you think he was unhappy?
- [35:12]
Oh, yeah, that's exactly it, yeah. I think being mobile, being cosmopolitan. He has this wonderful quotation at the beginning of Child Harold's Pilgrimage where he's quoting a French writer, Montbron le Cosmopolitan. That's the epigraph to Childe Harold and it says something to the effect that I hate my country, but seeing all these other countries, I've learned to reconcile myself to it. The Byronic hero is certainly full of the sadness, really. Weltschmirt was a term the Germans used, world sadness for everything that was going on. He felt people's pain, he was mobile in that way. And his empathy led him to be quite depressed. He also had a slight disfigurement. His. His foot maybe was club footed, so he couldn't walk. I mean, he would travel by horse a lot. And he became an excellent swimmer and people made fun of him because he was deformed. He wrote a play called the Deformed Transformed about his disability. So Byron became a swimmer, very gifted swimmer. Yeah, who swam from Sesos to Abydos with a copy of Ovid's Heroides in front of him. Yeah, he's really quite a character.
- [36:19]
Right. So when we're talking about mobility, is this something that we see in other romantic poets and writers or is it really specific to Byron?
- [36:32]
Well, the funny thing is he did not really like John Keats, but again, Keats Came up with that idea of the chameleon poet. And Shakespeare is a poet who could enter into the mind of Imogen or a villain like Richard iii or heroine like Cordelia. He could throw himself into different characters. And to be a good playwright, you have to do that. You have to have that imaginative capability. So I would say in a strange way, he was closest to Keats in that, holding that up as something worthwhile. The opposite of that is Wordsworth's egotistical sublime. That Wordsworth can only be Wordsworth, like kind of a Norman Mailer, or people that just always have to be themselves. People think that was true of Byron, that he kept on writing the same hero over and over again. The jar, the Corsair, it's all him. But I think what they miss is that he could write women characters quite well, unlike Philip Roth, let's say. I mean, he could throw himself into a Julia, a Catherine the Great. He empathized. And that's one of the reasons why so many women loved him, I think, too, is that he understood Madame de Stael, for instance, was his close friend, even though people thought she in a very sexist way, that he said rather sexist things about her, that she always has a pen behind her ear and mouth is full of ink and so on. But he followed her advice to stick to the East. And he befriended brilliant women he loved, really intelligent women, like Lady Melbourne Elizabeth Milbank, who he had a correspondence with when he was 24. She was 62 and 40 year age difference. But they wrote some of the most moving letters to each other about gender, about men and women. So, you know, I think he's very different than Coleridge. He admired Coleridge a great deal. He helped Coleridge become famous with Chris Debell. He helped Coleridge get published with John Murray, his publisher. He did really kind things for people. Coleridge was an alcoholic and a drug addict by the time Byron came across him. And it was customary to think of Wordsworth as the great poet, but Byron felt that Coleridge had been hard done by and that Coleridge was really the gifted one. And very quietly, he made sure that Coleridge was taken care of, even though Coleridge didn't really appreciate it. It reminds me of Keith Richards and Chuck Berry in some ways. A strange analogy, but someone who is trying to help somebod who doesn't really want to be helped, who thinks they're better than the person helping them. And of course, a lot of that is justified. Coleridge was a genius, but Byron at least was willing to help out people when he could. And he did a lot for people, including the Greeks. He funded an entire revolution out of his own pocketbook. He's not always given credit for that.
- [39:07]
So what motivated him to do so much traveling? Was he searching for something? Was he running away from something?
- [39:14]
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a really good Byron critic named Stephen Minta who did a book on the footsteps of Byron. It's called On a Voiceless Shore. And I remember Stephen Minta was in Missolonghi where Byron died. And he said that what he most liked about Byron was that outwardness, that interest in other countries and other cultures. And you could say that is exactly what made him unique. Yes, Keats died in Italy, but he was already at the end of his life. It was Byron that became a poet. Because of those experiences abroad, it's really hard to. I mean, Coleridge went to Malta, but Coleridge did not write a poem because he went to Malta. Coleridge uses imagination to write, like Ann Radcliffe. But Byron was inspired by writing at the scene, like Shelley in the baths of Caracalla. You know, Percy Shelley writes Prometheus unbound in Rome. And Byron, they were very good friends, and they would read La Nouveau Heloise by Rousseau in a boat in Switzerland together in 1816. He was like electricity. I mean, I think in many ways he inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. She says as much in her introduction to the book. He challenged people to live up to what they could be. Even whole countries to live up to their best nature, like the Greeks. You know, you were once free. You should throw off these oppressors. He says the same thing to the Spanish.
- [40:34]
So was it that home was not enough for him, that he needed kind of more and more challenges and just the excitement of the new, and needed a big enough canvas for himself to paint himself as a character on.
- [40:49]
He said, I hate a writer who is all writer. So it wasn't like Byron was going around trying to become a great writer. He had a low esteem for writers. He called them scribblers. And he even said, pay your tradesmen. I am none. He's not writing for money. He championed the underdog. He didn't want to be a professional author. He wanted to be a man of the world. And that can sound pretentious or. But it really wasn't. He wrote a very moving letter to Catherine Byer and his mother, saying that we can best learn our limitations by studying other countries, and we can overcome our bigotry by seeing that Muslims are just like we are. And those are very moving passages. He was one of the few to really make it to Istanbul and to see people for who they were instead of judging from books like many of his contemporaries did. He thought you had to actually go to these countries and not condescend to the Italians because they're Catholics and be bigoted against Catholicism because you happen to be Calvinist or Protestant or anti Semitic. I mean, he wrote Hebrew melodies at a time when that was not really done. 1816, he collaborated with Isaac Nathan, a musician who later became the father of Australian music. Isaac Nathan left him a matzah and they parted from England. Byron was kicked, literally kicked out of the country. Just canceled, so to speak, because of all the rumors about what he had done or not done. A lot of jealousy, envy, hatred. He got himself into trouble of course, too. He probably was more licentious, slept around more than he should have. But he was curious to taste life, you know, to really experience as much as he could. And he put it in his work. But I do think he came from pain. I think it came from a certain restlessness.
- [42:34]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [42:34]
Jonathan Gross
Okay, let's take a quick break and come back with more from Jonathan Gross.
- [42:51]
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- [43:10]
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- [43:46]
Jack Wilson
Foreign.
- [43:51]
Jonathan Gross
Okay, we're back. So Jonathan, as Byron was traveling around, how did he view himself? Did he think of himself as.
- [43:58]
Jack Wilson
As British or English?
- [44:00]
Jonathan Gross
English slash Scottish or European. Or did he have an identity that was based on kind of a conception of. Of who he was and how he fit into the world?
- [44:12]
Yeah, he wanted to be like Lawrence of Arabia, like many British people. He wanted to be exotic. He didn't want to be parochial. He thought Wordsworth was a. A lake poet and he preferred oceans to lakes, as he put it. He didn't want to be a regionalist, so followed the example of William Beckford and went to Portugal. Beckford was also exiled from his country for reputed affairs with a young man. And so Byron was interested in this idea of exile. And he even addresses Beckford in Portugal through his novel Vatek, which was an orientalist novel that influenced Byron a great deal. He took a number of his leading names of characters. Manfred the giaour came from William Beckford's Vatek. There's a portrait of him in Albanian dress. It's very famous. So that gives you an example of wearing a costume, mustachios, as he put it, and Albanian outfits to step into another culture. And so his portraits, I think, tell us a lot about how he wanted to look at himself. There was the Westall portrait, which is. He's holding his hand and his face, rather, and he's in profile, he looks very pale. Carolyn Lamb said, that pale face will be my fate. So there was something about his paleness. And he described various people as an alabaster lit from within. But that could be used to describe him. He was almost vampiric in his whiteness and his raven hair, very dark hair and a very strong jawline, but also very. He was one of the first people to introduce this idea of the vampire into literature. In the jar in an opening scene that's. That's very famous. So his imagination was just incredible. But he saw himself, you know, when he was in Italy, he had learned Italian. He could speak Italian fluently. He went to an Armenian convent and learned Armenian as much as he could have it. He learned languages when he traveled, he would study them. But the most impressive thing is he was writing letters in Italian to Teresa Guiccioli, love letters. And it's just very impressive.
- [46:15]
It's so interesting because this is kind of a new side of Byron to me. I think of him being such a figure and he makes such an impression on people, as you mentioned, Caroline Lamb. And there's so many quotes of people who meet him and are just kind of blown away. He's got. Got such a strong pull, gravitational pull. And I just would. Would have thought that when he's in another country that people would say, oh.
- [46:42]
Jack Wilson
Yes, there's the English poet who lives.
- [46:44]
Jonathan Gross
Up on the hill in the villa kind of thing. And it sounds almost more like he's more blending into the. The culture and. And is able to. To be part of it where he's not standing apart from the culture.
- [46:58]
Jack Wilson
Is that.
- [46:58]
Jonathan Gross
Is that fair?
- [47:00]
Yes, I think so. I mean, he lived in Venice, he lived in Ravenna. Instead of judging the Italians, he would join with them and in their festivals. And he was loved because he was not condescending. One thing, and I hope this isn't unfair to the British, but one thing he thought about the British was that they could never leave their country behind. They wore, as my father used to say, socks at the beach. Yeah, they were always British. They always kept their British ways. Even Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness talks about this as a character, an accountant who can't let his British traits go. And some would call that firmness. It's the opposite of mobility. Whereas Byron would do just the opposite. You know, he dressed as they dressed. He would sing Rossini in the shower when he was writing Don Juan. Yeah, he really enjoyed other cultures and he enjoyed beautiful women. I mean, he wrote she Walks in Beauty like the Night, which, that poem. When people know very little about Byron, they know that lyric. It's one of his most famous ones. Another one is when we two parted in silence and tears. Beautiful lyric. So he was capable of a lot of feeling. And he had two sides, you could say cynical side. And then. But before that a very romantic side. So Childe Harold and the Eastern Tales are that romantic side. And then he started to become a little more ironic. He always had irony, but he really started to employ it in works like Manfred and Beppo is probably the real turning point. He makes facetious remarks about the carnival and about a woman not wanting her husband to return after many years. So, you know, he's very quietly facetious about marriage in a way that appealed to Oscar Wilde who wrote, you know, an ideal husband. So he kind of struck the imagination of people who had lived in society but then could step outside society's norms at the same time. He wasn't afraid to mock Italians, but he was not bigoted against them in a way. I think that Percy Shelley sometimes was. Would write nasty things in his letters about, you know, I won't repeat the stuff he writes, but, you know, people have lost the gait and physiognomy of man. Percy Shelley was pretty homophobic and also, you know, talked about garlic breathed peasant women that Byron would sleep with. The stuff that made Percy Shelley look rather parochial and not quite the idealistic utopian that everyone takes him for.
- [49:16]
Now, when Byron would land in a country or start to adopt one of these. I don't know if Persona is the right word, but when he would start to embrace the local culture, I'm assuming that he would rely on the literature to help him get up to speed, so to speak. And is that accurate? Was he. Was he pulling in different literary traditions and the histories and so forth of each country where he was trying to establish himself?
- [49:51]
Yeah, I think the fact that he had Greek and Latin as a young man made him really susceptible to the Greeks and Greek literature, a lot of language study, translations of the Aeneid that he did when he was very young. And he read more history than anybody else. He was a great history reader, and that's probably what made him a great poet. Any of his poems, they were called historical dramas for a reason, because they took up very complex moments in time, like Marino Faliero. If you go to Venice, you can see that there's one Doge who has a screen over their face. He's so dishonored that he's not allowed. You're not allowed to look at a picture of him. And Byron was attracted to these underdogs. Marino Faliera was one Duke Foscori. People that go through extreme punishments, like the prison of Chillon. If you go to Switzerland, you can still see where someone wrote Byron's name in this jail cell where a man died. Or Tasso, the lament of Tasso that Delacroix turned into a painting. Byron was really depressed. He had separated from his wife. He had left England. He felt like his reputation was in tatters. And Percy Shelley tried to calm him by reading passages from Wordsworth. And that resulted in Canto 3 of Childe Harold, which has a lot of appreciation of nature that's very wordsworthy.
- [51:06]
And so in your book, you talk about his. You consider his debt not only to English writers, but to Irish and Italian and French writers as well.
- [51:17]
Yes. I mean, what's not understood, really, is how much he appealed to Mary Shelley. In the Last man, she wrote a novel in which he had died, and she writes a loving portrait of Byron. She calls him Alba and remembers how he used to sing in the gondola. And she and Percy Shelley knew he was a genius, and he was very generous to them when they were broke. Mary Shelley had no money. He gave her money. He helped her get home. He paid for Lee Hunt to come to Italy to work on a magazine called the Liberal that he edited with Percy Shelley. Percy drowned shortly after that, and he went on to edit it with Leigh Hunt, who was jealous of Byron, like a lot of people were, and wrote a nasty, nasty biography of Byron, one of the first ones that appeared. So many people bit the hand that fed them, and Byron was often that hand that was feeding them.
- [52:02]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [52:03]
Jonathan Gross
So it's clear what a figure he was and how remarkable he was as a person. What did they see in his poetry? What stood out about his poetry? Why did Byron's poetry matter so much to his contemporaries?
- [52:16]
Yeah, that's a really good question. They're better Byron critics than I am. I mean, modesty. Seriously. Jerome again is the major North American Byron critic. Leslie Martian wrote a three volume biography of him. There's no quick answer to that question. But what I've learned from the best critics, including Bernard Beattie in England and many others, is that at the time of the French Revolution when all hopes were gone and there was a reactionary government and Napoleon had entered onto the scene, people were disenchanted. And he captured that spirit of disenchantment and put it into words. Especially the younger generation. You had Goethe's Sorrows, a young verter and. And Byron took up the mantle for his generation. So there are three, two generations, right? There's Wordsworth, Coleridge and Robert Southey. And then the next generation is really Byron and Shelley and Keats. He's the younger generation of Romantic poets reacting to those who were disappointed by the French Revolution and then became reactionaries. So it's a little bit like writing a poem about Steve Jobs. He was once a hippie and then he became a hypocrite, right? For some people that he was. He's all for free love or these kind of hippie ideas. And then to Kurt Cobain he was a sellout in some ways. He became. And that's. Some people thought that Wordsworth and Coleridge were sellouts. They became Church of England people, they became conservatives and they started really Tories. Worth becomes poet laureate. It's probably slightly unfair, but Byron calls him a stamp collector and he needed a job, he wasn't a lord. Wordsworth needed some employment. But Coleridge is a little less forgivable. He starts to become quite reactionary in his politics. And Bob Southey is worst of all. Robert Southey, who had been against the slave trade, suddenly just becomes the worst sort of reaction. And you see that young people have one set apart, politics when they're young and then when they get older, they change. So maybe he captured the younger generation's anger with Wordsworth could write Tintern Abbey and then become a government hack, a laureate. You know, you have to watch out for poet laureates because they will do what the presidents want them to do. They'll say what the governments tell them to say.
- [54:37]
And that suggests something a little bit narrow of people who are immersed in poetry and are looking at Byron as someone who's going to carry a different flag from. From the older generation. But he was also kind of like a bestseller. Do you think it's the same? Would you give the same answer if I asked you what he represented to the general public, or were they also responding to this idea?
- [55:02]
Jack Wilson
Well, here's something fresh.
- [55:03]
Jonathan Gross
Here's somebody who. Who hasn't given up his ideals and so on. Or was there something that appealed to them that was a little different from what you've talked about with the poets?
- [55:15]
Well, it took real credit to the reading public that he was a bestseller. It's hard to imagine someone writing about the kinds of things he wrote about that were so erudite. It's hard to teach him in colleges today because people don't have the background in history. And to be fair, the reading public is actually not so bad. They often choose historical novelists, whether it's Leon Uris that people will condescend to. But a lot of people learn from these novelists things they would never learn from a dry historian. And you could say that he educated people about Greece and Europe and they liked. Because he was a travel writer. In the end of the day, that's what it was. You know, whether it's. I'm trying to think of other modern writers who serve that function, but they learned about these countries through his poetry. A lot of Charles Harold is set pieces about everything you might want to look at if you go to Rome. Famous statues, what's in Venice? And here's a poet telling you what to see.
- [56:14]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [56:15]
Jonathan Gross
So erudite that he brings it all to life. The maid of Saragossa is this woman who arms a cannon and is braver than the men around her. So he just had a way of telling historical stories that is a great storyteller.
- [56:30]
Yeah.
- [56:31]
He wrote against Bo fights. He wrote in favor of animals. He wrote a great poem to his dog when the dog died. Boson. And built a monument to his dog, saying the dog was greater, more faithful than any man would ever be. So he's a great lover of animals and that kind of empathy. I think he appealed to people, as Adam Miskevich, the Polish poet, said, because he doesn't lie. He wasn't a liar. Some people mouthed pieties and he didn't. He wasn't afraid to say uncomfortable truths.
- [57:03]
And there's also a quality to his poetry that's accessible, that even though he's as erudite as you suggested, he sounds almost colloquial sometimes in his poetry. It feels like he's just talking to a friend rather than putting on a starched shirt and pulling out a fancy quill pen and getting ready to write engraved poetry into a piece of paper. It feels like he's almost like he's talking to us or he's writing us.
- [57:37]
Jack Wilson
A letter or something.
- [57:39]
Jonathan Gross
Yeah, and his wisdom lives on. Like, I remember it was a professor I had in college who quoted from memory this stanza, which I'm just going to read, if that's okay. When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, let him combat for that of his neighbors. Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome and get knocked on the head for his labors to do good to mankind and is a chivalrous plan and is always as nobly requited. Then battle for freedom wherever you can. And if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted. Everybody can understand that. He's even cynical about being a lord. How do people become lords? They kill lots of people and they get estates. If not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.
- [58:19]
Yeah, it's kind of irreverent.
- [58:21]
Yeah, that's a great word for it. So he was a great unmaster of hypocrisy. And that's why I think he appealed to so many people. He was not a. What's the term for that? A server. So many people. Time server. He gave three speeches in Parliament, and one of them, he got kicked out of Parliament because he wasn't afraid to tell things as they really were. And he defended the frame breakers. The frame breakers were Luddites, the original people who were against technology. People who were. They were weavers. They were getting out of work because industrialization was making them irrelevant. And he defended them because there had been a riot and all the Conservative lords and the House of Lords thought they should be hung. If you call, you know, you commit a crime, you break a loom, then capital punishment. And Byron says in that speech, are you aware what you owe to a mob? It's a great line. So he could say that, but then he could also talk about mobocracy. And he called democracy the worst of all forms of government. He was complex, you know, he was not afraid to point out the limitations of everything, of aristocracy, of democracy, of rich people, of poor people, of liberals, just hypocrites. So he was very good, like Moliere and Voltaire and even Rousseau of exposing this kind of stuff.
- [59:43]
Okay, well, you've intrigued me and I think a lot of listeners as well. So if Someone is new to Byron or hasn't read them maybe since college or something. Where would you recommend that they start? What should they pick up?
- [59:57]
That's a great question and it's a really hard one to answer but it depends on what kind of person you are. I think if you're idealistic or you believe in love, then you should start with his lyrics, which are beautiful. No one could write a love poem like Byron so I would start with the shorter poems. If you like prose, read his letters, which are some of the best letters in the English language for their honesty and their portrait of foreign countries and they're just teeming with life. They were worth quite a lot of money each letter and they're collected by Leslie Marsh in a 12 volume edition. So it really depends upon the person that maybe that's a cop out. But I think because I was rather cynical when I was young, I read Don Juan, it really appealed to me. Child Harrow was tough going because I just didn't know anything about the history of Spain and I even thought it was a bad poem when I first read it. I thought it's really disorganized and maybe he only became famous because he was a lord. Some people will argue that, you know, it helped that he was really good looking, he was young and he had a lot of money and I know, you know, academics who don't like Byron, who think he got over because of that, you might say that it would really be wrong, but you might say that about child Harold Cantos 1 and 2 to be honest with you, I felt that way a little bit as a college student. But when you get to Canto 3 and he's suffered now and he's in exile, the whole game changes and he becomes a different kind of writer and he's feeling everything he's gone through. He opens by talking about his separation from his daughter and how he will never see her again. And he was right, he never saw his daughter again. The British government, in many ways he, he lost custody of his child. So I guess one of the great insights. I said he was a really good historian, but he was a great psychologist and that's what Don Juan has. And it's not fair to just call it cynical because it's full of a lot of beautiful passages. The Isles of Greece, for instance, is one of the famous passages for Phil Hellenists, people who love Greece and wanted Greece to be free. You could be very inspired by reading Byron. So maybe if you travel you might read a poem that's set in that country. Some of his short poems, the GIAR is tough going. It's a really sophisticated poem, but the Corsair is a lot of fun. Coetzee, the novelist, wrote a book called Disgrace that might get you into it. To think about what it is like to teach Byron and maybe to misread Byron really is because that character doesn't really understand Byron, but he thinks he's a Byronist. He thinks he's a seducer women. He's really a middle aged lech.
- [62:28]
Yeah, yeah.
- [62:29]
So a lot of people went down bad paths thinking they were just like Byron. It's hilarious to think of that. Edward Trelawney, many of them would dress up like him, would think they were like him. John Polidori would even write tales like the Vampire that were hack novels and try to use Byron's fame to become famous themselves. I hope I haven't done that.
- [62:50]
Speaking of vampires.
- [62:52]
Yes, right, right, exactly.
- [62:54]
I guess we all are in some sense. Maybe this podcast has been doing that for the past 10 years.
- [62:59]
Oh, in a good way, though. You really, I think, take a non academic approach to these writers. I was listening to several of your podcasts and really do a good job. Like going to England, I guess you're going to take some people to England, right? You read Jane Austen and then you want to see Beth.
- [63:12]
Jack Wilson
The same thing.
- [63:13]
Jonathan Gross
You read Byron and then you want to see Italy and Spain. And I think if you read Child Harold, you'll want to see the world just like he did.
- [63:21]
Jack Wilson
Okay, well, the book is called the.
- [63:23]
Jonathan Gross
European Mobility, Cosmopolitanism and Chameleon Poetry.
- [63:28]
Jack Wilson
Jonathan Gross, thank you so much for.
- [63:29]
Jonathan Gross
Joining me on the History of Literature.
- [63:32]
Thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity. I think you're doing a great thing for literature and this wonderful podcast.
- [63:39]
Jack Wilson
Thank you. That was nice of Jonathan to say. It caught me off guard a little bit. If you could detect that, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Jonathan Gross. Byron traipsing across Europe, doesn't that make you want to travel, people? Well, you can. You can travel with us. In May of this year, we're going to be headed to Literary England. Remember to sign up for that. If you'd like to join us on that tour, learn more by following the links in our show notes or find the itinerary@historyofliterature.com we're also still taking advice on the best independent bookstores in your community. Let us know which ones you love and why you love them. We would love to hear from you and spread the love around. On Monday, we're going to look at Shakespeare and civility and we've got a history of aphorisms around the corner and John Ruskin on learning to see and the Cherokee novelist who wrote about Mexicans. And we'll have we are going to have all of that and more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [65:01]
Jonathan Gross
Foreign.
- [65:16]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Hi, I'm Raj Panjabi Johnson, head of identity content at HuffPost.
- [65:20]
Jonathan Gross
And I'm Noah Michelson, head of HuffPost Personal.
- [65:22]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
We're also the host of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [65:29]
Jonathan Gross
Each week we're talking to experts in their field who are definitely doing things right about the topics you could use a helping hand with, whether it's making.
- [65:35]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
New friends, getting your protein fix, or keeping your car out of the mechanic.
- [65:39]
Jonathan Gross
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Wherever you get your podcasts and its.
- [65:45]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Full video episodes on YouTube.