Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life

O'Brien's biography of Byron is refreshing in this era of biographers who think we need to know what their subject ate for breakfast (and in fact, O'B manages to get across in one sentence that Byron didn't really eat breakfast . . . unsurprising!). Having plunged into this book immediately after finishing Marquand's Lord Byron: Selected Letters I am impressed by when O'B chooses to pause and highlight. I had a blissful readerly moment when the very day I listened to Canto 3 of Sir Harold, I read her own description of Byron's trip over the Alps that resulted in the canto--so stunning that it stands out like a brilliant jewel in the poem. No point in gilding this lily, Byron, by our modern standards was, for all his brilliance, wit and show more charm, monstrously self-indulgent, arrogant. But she doesn't, any more than Marquand did, linger over his flaws, his sexual passions, his temper fits, his neglect of his children (and I find myself wondering how many people have a teaspoon of Byronic genes all unknowing) and like Marquand she allows him the space in which to be flawed than we would not allow today. I think O'B was going for a quickly sketched portrait, the feel of the man, pathos, brilliance and awfulness. Make no mistake, besides possessing abundant physical beauty and charm--he was brilliant--anything he read or thought about was in his brain permanently and available when he was struck by the muse. This must be so as he wrote his best work in short bursts). In some ways I almost shudder to think what a caged spirit his would be today, taking his bi-polar meds, talking to his shrink several times a day, paying alimony, being arrested for his debts . . . It's a question, isn't it? I think Byron was, by and large, miserable a huge amount of the time and tried to be decent, tried to find ways to survive and often (usually?) failed. He was well aware, which comes through in his letters and journals, that he was terrible at sustaining relationships. Anyway, he was, for all that, as decent a man as he was able to be--one of his rules was never to insist on sex with anyone unwilling (rarely a problem until the very end and then he suffered.) He also tried to isolate himself when he was in a bad place. I expect he truly was mad, bad and dangerous to know, but I wish I could have had a glimpse of him at least. I will just add that the person who came to my mind (and surprised me too) in our present culture was Michael Jackson. ***** show less

Might as well get it out of the way from the beginning: Charles Gordon, Lord Byron, was a bad boy. Today we would consider him a serial rapist, pedophile, bankrupt, political meddler, philanderer, adulterer, effete, alchoholic, bearer of sexually transmitted diseases, slanderer, and libeller. Back in the early 19th century he would also have been considered a criminal for committing incest and sodomy, although sodomy today doesn't have the same cache it once did, except maybe in Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This is the poster boy for the Romantic Movement and possibly the first celebrity in the modern sense. This is the man your kids are studying in those demure liberal arts colleges in New England. And like modern celebrities, he got away show more with it all.

In "Byron in Love," Edna O'Brien captures much of the hero worship that accompanied him from his early 20's right up until his death after catching a cold at 37.

Although he was born into wealth, a libertine father drove his family into poverty. Then, with the death of an heirless uncle, he inherited the title and accompanying wealth. At the age of 10! Sort of like winning the lottery. In a big way.

Already in his teens he fathered a bastard, compensated for a birth deformity by learning how to fight with his fists at boarding school, and keep within close reach a boxing coach. Bully? You might say that.

He took his seat in the House of Lords and made a few speeches championing liberal causes. And he was always one step ahead of his creditors. Of which there were many.

And he wrote. For the day, he wrote shocking and shockingly beautiful poetry. And this drove the girls (and the boys) crazy. So crazy in fact, the Pope sent spies to trail him during his years in Italy seducing maidens and matrons alike. show less

Lord Byron poeta e puttaniere

Lord Byron: poeta e puttaniere. Quando si innamora un poeta le conseguenze possono essere drammatiche. Se il poeta poi è un inglese le cose sono destinate a complicarsi. Nel caso di Lord Byron le connessioni sono davvero infinite ed inimmaginabili: il soggetto conduce strani affari con aristocratiche gentildonne del tempo; mantiene relazioni con attrici e attricette, serve e servette; ammiratrici plagiate; prostitute d'accatto; una relazione incestuosa con la sorellastra; un matrimonio breve e disastroso. E questo per dire solamente del rapporto con le donne. E' un miracolo che un libertino del genere trovasse anche il tempo per scrivere poesia. E che poesia! Parlo di Lord Byron, uno dei più grandi poeti show more romantici inglesi. Migliaia di pagine di versi scintillanti, musicali, irrepetibili. Viaggi avanti ed indietro sul continente e in Medio Oriente. Riusciva a mentenere relazioni con innumerevoli amici. Aveva conoscenze improvvisate. Scriveva lettere, teneva diari, leggeva libri di ogni specie, praticava il pugilato, l’equitazione, il nuoto. Era un gran bevitore, come ogni inglese d’hoc. Trovava il tempo per deprimersi fino alla paranoia. Negli ultimi anni si unì alla lotta di liberazione in Italia ed in Grecia. Amava circondarsi di animali come scimmie, pappagalli, cacachi, cani, un airone, un caprone, e quando era studente a Cambridge ebbe come amico di stanza un orso. Tutto ebbe inizio dalla sua fanciullezza che fu simile ad un romanzo di ambiente gotico. Sua madre, Caterina Gordon, era una ereditiera scozzese che sposò un signore chiamato “Byron Jack il matto”, un aristocratico il quale ben presto consumò tutti i suoi soldi e scappò in Francia. Diede luce a George Gordon, figlio unico, tutta sola, in una stanza di affitto a Londra. Caterina fu donna intemperante ed imprudente, quasi ad anticipare il suo futuro George. Tutti i biografi la trattano male. Va detto che non fu mai amata dal suo figliolo il quale la incolpò della sua menomazione fisica alla gamba per le strette fasciature dei corsetti indossati durante la gravidanza. Il famoso “piede di porco” di Byron. All’età di dieci anni, alla morte di un suo pro-zio, un lord sospettato di assassinio, ereditò il titolo e divenne sesto barone Byron e la Newstead Abbey , una fantastica e cadente residenza nella contea del Nottinghamshire, con tutti i suoi fantasmi. Una delle principali caratteristiche di Byron è quella di essere passato alla storia come un grande difensore della libertà dei singoli e dei popoli. In effetti ostentò per tutta la sua esistenza una fortissima consapevolezza del suo rango di nobile fino a sfiorare il razzismo. Fin da ragazzo ebbe modo di mettere in luce le sue prepotenti predisposizioni sessuali per cugine, servi di entrambi i sessi, compagni di studi, coi i quali poteva manifestare le sue manie che erano spesso perversioni. All’età di 24 anni pubblicò il “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” che lo rese famoso. “Una mattina mi svegliai e mi ritrovai famoso” ebbe a scrivere. Una vera e propria “toccata e fuga” con le donne, come la definisce l’autrice di questa nuova biografia ha abilmente tracciato il percorso sentimentale che Lord Byron uomo intraprese nei suoi contatti con l’altro sesso, anche se evita ogni riferimento alla evidente eterosessulità del personaggio. Nel suo lavoro ella cerca di provare che Byron “understood” - “capì” - le donne perchè esse volevano il sesso e lui era in grado di darglielo per poi abbandonarle al loro destino. Un’analisi del genere non può essere del tutto accettata se si pensa che le donne, allora come oggi, aspirano ad avere sicurezza, protezione, partecipazione, anche attraverso il sesso. Il carattere fortemente possessivo, carismatico ed autoritario del poeta, anche alla luce dei comportamenti del tempo, le mettevano in una condizione di inferiorità che però nulla toglieva alla loro aspirazione ad avere un rapporto equilibrato con chi aveva intenzione di partecipare a a scelte comuni. L’autrice di questa biografia, a mio parere, si è lasciata troppo prendere la mano dalla sua vena narrativa tendente a romanzare vicende e situazioni. E’ facile vedere Byron come un imperterrito sadico narcisista, aggressore di donne insipide e puttane. In fondo esse, come del resto tutti gli uomini, e in questo caso lo stesso Poeta, non erano altro che persone, maschi o femmine, in cerca di sesso inteso come relazione, incontro, convergenza. Tutta l’opera poetica di Lord Byron sta a dimostrarlo. Ma all’autrice questo non interessa visto che il senso del suo libro sembra essere stato soltanto il tema dell’amore byroniano, inteso come tormentato sentimento esistenziale. Ricordiamo che quando questo grande poeta e puttaniere morì aveva soltanto 36 anni e si può dire che aveva vissuto troppe vite.
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La passione per l’Italia come luogo di bellezza e trasgressione è stata da sempre alla ribalta nel mondo dell’arte e della letteratura. Una bellezza che può essere anche sinonimo di dannazione. Una condizione che ancora oggi sembra essere il suo destino... show less

Lady Caroline Lamb wrote in her journal that Byron was, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” I tried to use a gentler variation of this line in my younger days when a woman began making matrimonial sounds. However, I had no idea exactly how bad, how mad, and how dangerous Byron was!

The generally reliable O’Brien has spun an absorbing tale of a man who literally had to drive women away from him with insults, protestations that he loved someone else, and transcripts of love letters he received from other women.

O’Brien’s occasionally witty narrative has a lot of interesting information. Unfortunately this “uncorrected proof” has errors typical of galleys, so I plan on getting a copy when Norton publishes it in June. show more O’Brien’s prose enchants on every page, it flows with the lyricism characteristic of her fiction. Even a reader not a fan of the Romantic poets, who knows little of Byron but cares about poetry, literature, and the psyche of a writer, must place this slim volume high up on a list of books “to be read.”

My biggest criticism concerns the lack of attributions to quoted material. Not even a bibliography appears at the end. Four stars for that minor lapse.

I think I will read more of her novels and her biography of James Joyce.

--Jim, 3/10/09 show less

Though well-written, this book merely recounts in repetitive fashion a truly boring and dissolute existence.

I gave up just short of midway when I did not want to learn the fate of the bear or wolf he had so cruelly enslaved.

During his own lifetime Lord George Gordon Byron achieved archetypal status as a romantic rebel, providing us with a model for the sensitive, yet selfish artist that continues to influence popular ideas about cultural celebrities. O’Brien’s book, as she writes in her introduction, is less of an attempt to compete with the much larger critical biographies of Byron, but rather an attempt ‘to follow him in his Rake’s Progress and his Poet’s Progress.’ Sadly, however, O’Brien makes no serious attempt to connect the themes of his poetry to themes of his life, nor does she offer any real insight of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mores that helped to create Byron’s sexual proclivities and his aesthetics. To add to that, show more her writing is cluttered, too cluttered at times to help a reader keep track of all the names of people who enter into Byron’s life. Nevertheless, that life certainly remains an interesting one and worth reading about elsewhere. show less

Just read Edna's autobiography. Her work seems to be well regarded s I 'll give her a whirl. Tried a tv show with Helen Mirren and didn't like it. I'm trying a nonfiction first.. This book was ok. I knew nothing about Byron. A charming but unpleasant person. I don't know if the women he seduced were attractive or not. He seems to be impossible to say no to. The whole story seems peculiar to me.