Don Juan E-Book

George Byron

• Herausgeber: George Byron
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan. The story, told in seventeen cantos, begins with the birth of Don Juan. As a young man he is precocious sexually, and has an affair with a friend of his mother. The husband finds out, and Don Juan is sent away to Cadiz. On the way, he is shipwrecked, survives, and meets the daughter of a pirate, whose men sell Don Juan as a slave. A young woman who is a member of a Sultan’s harem, sees that this slave is purchased. She disguises him as a girl and sneaks him into her chambers. Don Juan escapes, joins the Russian army, and rescues a Muslim girl named Leila. Don Juan meets Catherine the Great, who asks him to join her court. Don Juan becomes sick, is sent to England, where he finds someone to watch over the young girl, Leila. Next, a few adventures involving the artistocracy of Britain ensue.

Leseprobe

Don Juan

By

George Byron

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this

work is in the “Public Domain”.

HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may still be under

copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website. It is your

responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws in your country before

downloading this work.

Dedication

The First Song

The Second Song

The Third Song

The Fourth Song

The Fifth Song

The Sixth Song

The Seventh Song

The Eighth Song

The Ninth Song

The Tenth Song

The Eleventh Song

The Twelth Song

The Thirteenth Song

The Fourteenth Song

The Fifteenth Song

The Sixteenth Song

The Seventeenth Song

Dedication

Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate,

    And representative of all the race.

Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at

    Last, yours has lately been a common case.

And now my epic renegade, what are ye at

    With all the lakers, in and out of place?

A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye

Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,

Which pye being opened they began to sing’

    (This old song and new simile holds good),

‘A dainty dish to set before the King’

    Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.

And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,

    But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,

Explaining metaphysics to the nation.

I wish he would explain his explanation.

You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,

    At being disappointed in your wish

To supersede all warblers here below,

    And be the only blackbird in the dish.

And then you overstrain yourself, or so,

    And tumble downward like the flying fish

Gasping on deck, because you soar too high,

Bob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.

And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion

    (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages)

Has given a sample from the vasty version

    Of his new system to perplex the sages.

’Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,

    And may appear so when the Dog Star rages,

And he who understands it would be able

To add a story to the tower of Babel.

You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion

    From better company, have kept your own

At Keswick, and through still continued fusion

    Of one another’s minds at last have grown

To deem, as a most logical conclusion,

    That poesy has wreaths for you alone.

There is a narrowness in such a notion,

Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.

I would not imitate the petty thought,

    Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,

For all the glory your conversion brought,

    Since gold alone should not have been its price.

You have your salary; was’t for that you wrought?

    And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.

You’re shabby fellows — true — but poets still

And duly seated on the immortal hill.

Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,

    Perhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.

To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,

    And for the fame you would engross below,

The field is universal and allows

    Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow.

Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try

‘Gainst you the question with posterity.

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,

    Contend not with you on the winged’ steed,

I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,

    The fame you envy and the skill you need.

And recollect a poet nothing loses

    In giving to his brethren their full meed

Of merit, and complaint of present days

Is not the certain path to future praise.

He that reserves his laurels for posterity

    (Who does not often claim the bright reversion)

Has generally no great crop to spare it, he

    Being only injured by his own assertion.

And although here and there some glorious rarity

    Arise like Titan from the sea’s immersion,

The major part of such appellants go

To — God knows where — for no one else can know.

If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,

    Milton appealed to the avenger, Time,

If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs

    And makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,

He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,

    Nor turn his very talent to a crime.

He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,

But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

Think’st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise

    Like Samuel from the grave to freeze once more

The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,

     Or be alive again — again all hoar

With time and trials, and those helpless eyes

    And heartless daughters — worn and pale and poor,

Would he adore a sultan? He obey

The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!

    Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,

And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,

    Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,

The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,

    With just enough of talent and no more,

To lengthen fetters by another fixed

And offer poison long already mixed.

An orator of such set trash of phrase,

    Ineffably, legitimately vile,

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,

    Nor foes — all nations — condescend to smile.

Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze

    From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,

That turns and turns to give the world a notion

Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,

    And botching, patching, leaving still behind

Something of which its masters are afraid,

    States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,

Conspiracy or congress to be made,

    Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,

A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,

With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.

If we may judge of matter by the mind,

Emasculated to the marrow, it

Hath but two objects, how to serve and bind,

Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,

Eutropius of its many masters, blind

To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,

Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice;

Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,

    For I will never feel them. Italy,

Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds

    Beneath the lie this state-thing breathed o’er thee.

Thy clanking chain and Erin’s yet green wounds

    Have voices, tongues to cry aloud for me.

Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still,

And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate

    In honest simple verse this song to you.

And if in flattering strains I do not predicate,

    ’Tis that I still retain my buff and blue;

My politics as yet are all to educate.

    Apostasy’s so fashionable too,

To keep one creed’s a task grown quite

Herculean Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?

The First Song

I want a hero: an uncommon want,

    When every year and month sends forth a new one,

Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,

    The age discovers he is not the true one;

Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,

    I ’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan —

We all have seen him, in the pantomime,

Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,

    Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,

Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,

    And fill’d their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;

Each in their turn like Banquo’s monarchs stalk,

    Followers of fame, ‘nine farrow’ of that sow:

France, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier

Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,

    Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,

Were French, and famous people, as we know:

    And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,

Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,

    With many of the military set,

Exceedingly remarkable at times,

But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war,

    And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;

There ‘s no more to be said of Trafalgar,

    ’T is with our hero quietly inurn’d;

Because the army ‘s grown more popular,

    At which the naval people are concern’d;

Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,

Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

Brave men were living before Agamemnon

    And since, exceeding valorous and sage,

A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;

    But then they shone not on the poet’s page,

And so have been forgotten:— I condemn none,

    But can’t find any in the present age

Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);

So, as I said, I ’ll take my friend Don Juan.

Most epic poets plunge ‘in medias res’

    (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),

And then your hero tells, whene’er you please,

    What went before — by way of episode,

While seated after dinner at his ease,

    Beside his mistress in some soft abode,

Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,

Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.

That is the usual method, but not mine —

    My way is to begin with the beginning;

The regularity of my design

    Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,

And therefore I shall open with a line

    (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)

Narrating somewhat of Don Juan’s father,

And also of his mother, if you ‘d rather.

In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,

    Famous for oranges and women — he

Who has not seen it will be much to pity,

    So says the proverb — and I quite agree;

Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,

    Cadiz perhaps — but that you soon may see;

Don Juan’s parents lived beside the river,

A noble stream, and call’d the Guadalquivir.

His father’s name was Jose — Don, of course —

    A true Hidalgo, free from every stain

Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source

    Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;

A better cavalier ne’er mounted horse,

    Or, being mounted, e’er got down again,

Than Jose, who begot our hero, who

Begot — but that ‘s to come — Well, to renew:

His mother was a learned lady, famed

    For every branch of every science known

In every Christian language ever named,

    With virtues equall’d by her wit alone,

She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,

    And even the good with inward envy groan,

Finding themselves so very much exceeded

In their own way by all the things that she did.

Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart

    All Calderon and greater part of Lope,

So that if any actor miss’d his part

    She could have served him for the prompter’s copy;

For her Feinagle’s were an useless art,

    And he himself obliged to shut up shop — he

Could never make a memory so fine as

That which adorn’d the brain of Donna Inez.

Her favourite science was the mathematical,

    Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,

Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,

    Her serious sayings darken’d to sublimity;

In short, in all things she was fairly what I call

    A prodigy — her morning dress was dimity,

Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,

And other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling.

She knew the Latin — that is, ‘the Lord’s prayer,’

    And Greek — the alphabet — I ’m nearly sure;

She read some French romances here and there,

    Although her mode of speaking was not pure;

For native Spanish she had no great care,

    At least her conversation was obscure;

Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,

As if she deem’d that mystery would ennoble ’em.

She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,

    And said there was analogy between ’em;

She proved it somehow out of sacred song,

    But I must leave the proofs to those who ’ve seen ’em;

But this I heard her say, and can’t be wrong

    And all may think which way their judgments lean ’em,

’T is strange — the Hebrew noun which means “I am,”

The English always use to govern d — n.’

Some women use their tongues — she look’d a lecture,

    Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,

An all-inall sufficient self-director,

    Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,

The Law’s expounder, and the State’s corrector,

    Whose suicide was almost an anomaly —

One sad example more, that ‘All is vanity’

(The jury brought their verdict in ‘Insanity’).

In short, she was a walking calculation,

    Miss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from their covers,

Or Mrs. Trimmer’s books on education,

    Or ‘Coelebs’ Wife’ set out in quest of lovers,

Morality’s prim personification,

    In which not Envy’s self a flaw discovers;

To others’ share let ‘female errors fall,’

For she had not even one — the worst of all.

O! she was perfect past all parallel —

    Of any modern female saint’s comparison;

So far above the cunning powers of hell,

    Her guardian angel had given up his garrison;

Even her minutest motions went as well

    As those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:

In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,

Save thine ‘incomparable oil,’ Macassar!

Perfect she was, but as perfection is