George Gordon Byron

GEORGE GORDON BYRON

(1788-1824)

Shapovalov Alexander

Form 10 A

School № 2

The great English revolutionary poet George Gordon Byron was born in 1788in an old aristocratic family. His mother came of a rich Scottish family. His father was a poor army officer who spent his wife's money very soon and died when the boy was three years old. The family lived in Scotland, where the boy went to a Grammar school. He liked history and read much about Rome, Greece and Turkey. "I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, since I was five years old." The boy was born lame, but he liked sports and trained every day. He could ride a horse very well, was a champion swimmer, a boxer and took part in athletic activities.

In 1798 Byron's grand-uncle died and the boy inherited the title of lord, and the family estate, New stead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The family came to live there and George was sent to Harrow School where boys of_ aristocratic families got their education.

Byron's first days at that school were unhappy. As he was lame the children laughed at him. But soon the boys began to like him because he read much and knew many interesting facts from history. He wrote poems and read them to his friends.

A schoolboy of sixteen, he fell in love with a girl, Mary Ann Chaworth, whose father had been killed in a duel by the poet's grand-uncle. But the girl did not like Byron and later married another man. Byron could not so easily forget her and his love for her gave a sad colouring to all his future life. In the poem "Dream" the poet speaks about his love.

And both were young, and one was beautiful:

And both were young, yet not alike in youth,

As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,

The maid was on the eve of womanhood:

The boy had fewer summers, but his heart

Had outgrown his years, and to his eye

There was but one beloved face on earth,

And that was shining on him.

И оба были юны, но моложе

Был юноша; она была прекрасна

И, словно восходящая луна,

К расцвету женственности приближалась.

Был юноша моложе, но душой

Взрослее лет своих, и в целом мире

Одно лицо любимое ему

Сияло в этот миг.

(Перевод М. Зенкевича)

At seventeen Byron entered Cambridge University and there his literary career began.

It was the time after the first bourgeois revolution in France when the reactionary governments of Europe were trying to kill freedom.⁴ The European nations were struggling against Napoleon for their independence. The industrial revolution developed in Eng-land and many people lost their work.

Byron hated exploitation and sympathized with the working class. In 1807, when he was a student, he published his first collection of poems "Hours of Idleness". The critics attacked Byron in the leading literary magazine of that time "Edinburgh Review". In a year Byron answered to the critics in his first satire "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". In the spring of 1808 Byron graduated from the University.

In 1809 he went traveling and visited Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey. In his travels over Europe the poet saw exploitation the same as in his country. Byron described his travels in a long poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". The first two cantos (parts) of the poem were published in 1812 and made Byron famous. "I woke one morning and found myself famous," says the poet about his success.

Byron inherited also the right to be a member of Parliament. In his first speech in the House of Lords Byron defended the English proletariat. He accused the government of the exploitation of workers.

In 1815 Byron married Miss Isabella Milbanke, a cold and pe-dantic woman. They had a daughter, Augusta Ada, whom Byron loved very much. But he was not happy in his family and soon left his wife. Byron's revolutionary speeches in Parliament and the divorce helped his enemies to begin an attack against the poet. Byron was accused of immorality and had to leave England. He went to Switzerland. There Byron met Percy Bysshe Shelley and the two poets became friends.

In 1817 Byron went to Italy where he lived until 1823. Italy was under the rule of the Austrians at that time. The poet joined the Carbonari, a revolutionary organization, that was struggling ior the national independence, of Italy. In one of his poems Byron wrote: "When a man has no freedom to fight for at home, let him fight for that of his neighbors."

In Italy Byron wrote many of his best poems: "Don Juan"-(1819-24) -- a satire on bourgeois and aristocratic society, and "Cain"'⁴ (1821). During the same period he wrote his satirical masterpieces "The Vision of Judgement" (1822) and "The Age of Bronze"⁷ (1823). In "Don Juan" Byron says: "I will teach, if possible, the stones to rise against earth's tyrants.", When the Carbonari movement⁹ was ended Byron went to Greece and joined the people in their struggle for independence against Turkey. The struggle for national independence had become the aim of Byron's life. In that struggle he showed himself as a good military leader.

In the Greek town of Missolonghi Byron fell ill with typhus and died in April 1824. His friends brought Byron's body ⁱ³ to England. They wanted to bury him in Westminster Abbey, where many of England's great writers are buried. But the English govern-ment did not let them do it and Byron was buried in Newstead, his native place. Byron's death was mourned by the progressive people all over Europe. A. Pushkin, the great Russian poet, devoted a part of his poem «К морю» to Byron as a poet of freedom.