Byronic Hero and Human Sympathy Term Paper

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Reason and science were replacing the imaginative and poetic view of life. The Romantic poets opposed the increasingly mechanical and scientific world and one of the ways that they expressed their opposition can be seen in the adoration of nature.

Byron was the most cynical and radical of the Romantic poets. He was unlike many of the other poets in the Romanic movement in that he was extremely realistic and had no illusions about reality and the negative side of human life and nature. He saw mankind as essentially "fallen." In his poems he often attacks what he considered to be the illusions and pretensions of the other Romantic poets. The Byronic hero therefore struggles in a universe which is essentially without divine guidance. He relentlessly interrogates the human situation.

This process of interrogation and the search for a higher form of existence produces a conflict within his poetic works - between the need for authenticity and meaning and the demands and strictures of being human and living in society. This also produces the mixture of passion and yearning as well as pathos in his heroes.

We can see something of this conflict in Canto One of Don Juan, where the hero is depicted as a child. This in turn leads to the tension between the ideals and the reality of these ideals in the hero. "By showing Juan in his childhood Byron demythologizes the story and gives instead a psychological sketch of the effects of environment on character" (Holstad S.C.) In Manfred, we also have a hero who is an outcast from society and a solitary figure.

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We too feel sympathy for the figure in his anguish of mind - but we are also aware pf the "...iron resolution of his will." (Byron)

The conflict within Byron between the ideal and the real, as expressed through the heroes in his work, is never an escape or a flight from reality. Through his heroic ideals and poetic figures Byron seeks to confront and transcend common reality, and not to avoid the tragedy of the human condition.

Byron's modernity rests in his clinging to an ideal without deluding himself with a transcendental belief in "dreaming true," and in his insistence upon seeing the world as it is (not always steadily and whole, but generally with a vision unclouded by the wish) without losing his interest in the romantic dream or discounting it. The most completely realistic of all the romantics, he accepted the romantic urge as a part of human nature without pretending it was more than a dream.

Marchand 164)

The above quotation points to the fact that Byron was essentially a realist in his confrontation with reality. Byronic heroism therefore lies in this confrontation with the reality of fallen humanity and the immensity of the human condition. The Byronic hero attempts to overcome the obstacles and the barriers to his idealism. This however always leaves the hero alienated and isolated from the mainstream of humanity and struggling within himself. The element of human sympathy is part of the complex artistic vision of the poet. This vision also implies a deep sympathy and concern for the human condition in his work......

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