Brief biography of Byron. Brief biography of George Byron

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George Noel Gordon Byron (1788–1824)

Romantic poet, thinker, member of the House of Lords. Byron belonged to an aristocratic but impoverished family, and ten years after the death of his grandfather, he inherited the title of lord.
As a student at the University of Cambridge, he published the collection Hours of Leisure (1807), and the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, published in separate editions from 1812 to 1818, brought him fame.

His poems and poems convey a complex, changeable range of feelings: from reckless rebellion to despair caused by the omnipotence of "darkness".

Byron's conflict with conformist English society, which began after his poetic debut, exacerbated an extremely unsuccessful marriage to Annabela Milbank. In January 1816, she left Byron because of his "terrible habits," by which she meant the rejection of any orthodoxy, including unquestioned moral prohibitions. The scandal was fueled by unfounded rumors about the poet's more than kindred feelings for his half-sister August Lee. She was the addressee of some of his most heartfelt poems.

In May 1816, Byron was forced to leave his homeland - as it turned out, forever. The shock he experienced became an "eternal poison" that poisoned his life in the remaining years. It left its mark on the tone of the cycle of poems "Jewish Melodies" (1815), where the metaphors of the Bible are echoed, on the poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" (1816), the dramatic mysteries "Manfred" (1817) and "Cain" (1821 G.).

Byron's poems, built as a lyrical confession of a character that combines the features of an outstanding personality and a type that testifies to the beliefs and illnesses of the era, have become a literary event.

In Switzerland, where the first months of exile passed, and then in Italy, Byron experienced a creative upsurge, starting in the autumn of 1817 with the poetic chronicle Don Juan. Passionate love for Countess Teresa Guiccioli, deprived of the opportunity to join her fate with Byron, contributed to the poet's rapprochement with the Carbonari and active participation, together with her father and brothers, in the Italian liberation movement. With the beginning of the Greek uprising against Ottoman rule, Byron subordinated his life to the struggle for the liberation of Hellas, at his own expense gathering and arming a detachment with which he arrived at the scene.

His untimely death, the result of a developed fever, was mourned by all of advanced Europe.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) is rightfully considered a great English poet. His work is inextricably linked with the era of romanticism. He arose in Western Europe late 18th - early 19th century. This new direction in art was the result of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment associated with it.

progressively thinking people were dissatisfied with the results of the revolution. In addition, political backlash intensified. As a result, the romantics were divided into two camps. Some called on the European society to return to the patriarchal way of life, to medieval traditions and to abandon the solution of sore problems. Others called for the continuation of the cause of the French Revolution and the realization of the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity.

Byron joined the second camp. He sharply denounced the colonial policy of the British government, opposed the suppression of freedoms and the adoption of cruel anti-people laws. This caused dissatisfaction among the ruling circles. A hostile company began against the poet in 1816, and he was forced to leave England forever. In a foreign land, the exile actively participated in the struggle of the Italian Carbonari and Greek rebels for independence.

Pushkin considered the rebel poet a genius. The Englishman was very popular with the Decembrists. The Russian critic Belinsky did not bypass him with his attention. He spoke of Byron as a great poet who made a huge contribution to world literature.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Our hero was born on January 22, 1788 in London. Both on the part of his father, John Byron, and on the part of his mother, Catherine Gordon, the boy came from the highest English and Scottish aristocracy. However, his childhood was spent in conditions of extreme poverty.

The father of the child, being a guards officer, lived extremely wastefully. Per short term he squandered two large fortunes - the first wife and the second, who was the mother of the boy. From his first marriage, John had a daughter, Augusta. She was brought up by her grandmother, and her friendship with her half-brother began only in 1804.

Shortly after the birth of the boy, the parents separated. My father went to France, where he died. And the early childhood of the child passed in Scotland in the city of Aberdeen. There he entered the Grammar School. When the boy finished the 3rd grade, a message came from England. It said that a great-uncle had died. Our hero inherited the title of lord and the family estate of Newstead Abbey, located in Nottingham County.

Both the estate and the castle were in a state of disrepair, and there was no money to restore them. Therefore, the boy's mother rented out Newstead Abbey, and she herself settled with her son nearby in Southwell.

The childhood and adolescence of the great English poet were overshadowed not only by poverty. The point was that the boy was lame from birth. Doctors invented devices for his lameness, but it did not go away. The mother, who had an unbalanced character, in the heat of quarrels reproached her son for his physical handicap. This brought the young man severe moral suffering.

In 1801, George entered a boarding school for children from noble families in Harrow. This school trained future politicians and diplomats. In the same class with Byron, Robert Peel (1788-1850), the future Minister of the Interior, and then the Prime Minister of England, studied.

In 1803, at the age of 15, our hero fell in love with Mary Chaworth while on vacation. She was 2 years older, and young people spent a lot of time together. But the friendship did not end with a wedding, but love tormented the romantic soul of the poet for many years.

In 1805, the young man entered the University of Cambridge. This is a time of fun, pleasure and mischief. In addition, the young man is intensely involved in sports. He is fond of swimming, boxing, horseback riding, fencing. Subsequently, he became one of the best swimmers in England. The future poet also developed a passion for reading. Soon everyone noticed that the young man had a phenomenal memory, as he was able to memorize the text in pages.

The young man published his first collection of poems in 1806, as a student. He called it "Flying Sketches". The second collection appeared in 1807 and was called Poems on Various Occasions. In the same year, the third collection of poems, Leisure Hours, saw the light of day.

In 1808, an anonymous review appeared in the Edinburgh Review, in which an unknown reviewer mercilessly ridiculed the young poet's work. He bluntly wrote that the young man did not own literary language and that it was better for him to learn poetry than to write his clumsy works. In response to this, George published the poem "British Bards" in 1809. The product sold out instantly. It went through 4 editions.

At the end of 1809, our hero went on a 2-year journey. At this time, he completed the poem "In the footsteps of Horace" and wrote travel notes in verse. This journey of 1809-1811 was of great importance for the development of the poetic gift and creativity of the great poet. The journey began from Portugal, then the young man visited Spain, the island of Malta, Greece, Albania, left for Constantinople and returned to Greece. At the end of the summer of 1811, the traveler returned to England, learned about the serious illness of his mother, but did not find her alive.

Charles Gordon retired to Newstead and began work on the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. But when the poem was ready, editor Murray demanded that stanzas of a political nature be excluded from it. But the poet refused to change anything.

Later years of life

Soon our hero took his inherited seat in the House of Lords. At this time, the Luddite movement was widespread in England. It was expressed in the protest of weavers against weaving machines. Automation manual labor left many of them unemployed. And for those who remained to work, wage. Therefore, people destroyed the machines, seeing in them the root of evil.

The government prepared a law according to which the death penalty was due for the destruction of machines. George Gordon Byron spoke in Parliament categorically protesting against this law. He stated that the state should protect the interests of the majority of citizens, and not a handful of monopolists. But, despite the protests, in February 1812 the law was passed.

After that, real terror against weavers began in the country. They were condemned to death by hanging, long terms conclusions and exiled. The poet did not stand aside and published an angry ode that denounced the authors of the cruel law.

Since 1813, our hero has been creating a whole series of romantic poems. These are Gyaur (1813), Bride of Abydos (1813), Corsair (1814), Lara (1814), Siege of Corinth (1816). In the literature, they were designated as "Eastern".

In January 1815, Charles Gordon tied the knot with Annabelle Milbank. She came from a patriarchal aristocratic family. The wife was against the public activities of her husband, which clearly contradicted the main line of the government. As a result of this, disagreements arose in the family.

In December 1815, the couple had a daughter, Ada Augusta. And in January 1816, the wife left her husband without even explaining the reason for the breakup. The wife's parents immediately became the initiators of the divorce proceedings. At the same time, our hero wrote a number of works about Napoleon. In them, he expressed the opinion that England, waging war against France, brought a lot of grief to her people.

Divorce and incorrect political views became the reason for the persecution of the poet. The newspapers so inflated the scandal that George Gordon could not even go out into the street. On April 26, 1816, he left his homeland forever. His last poem, written in England, was "Stans to Augusta" - a half-sister, who all the time was a support for her brother and supported his creative spirit.

At first, our hero wanted to live in France, and then in Italy. But the French authorities only allowed to pass through the country, not stopping in the cities. Therefore, Byron went to Switzerland and settled on the shores of Lake Geneva. This is Villa Diodati. It was in Switzerland that the meeting with the poet Shelley took place, and their friendship began.

The Swiss period lasted from May to October 1816. During this time, the poems "Sleep", "Darkness", "Prisoner of Chillon" were written. The poet also set about creating the poem "Manfred" and wrote the 3rd canto of "Childe Harold". Then our hero went to Venice, where he met Countess Guiccioli and fell in love with her. The woman reciprocated, but she was married and soon left with her husband for Ravenna.

In 1819, the poet moved to Ravenna after his beloved. Here he took an active part in the Carbonari movement. In 1821, the Carbonari began to prepare for an uprising. But it never started because of the betrayal of some members of the organization.

In the same 1821, Charles Gordon moved to Pisa, where he began to live with the already divorced Countess Guiccioli. Shelley also lived in the same city, but the poor fellow drowned in the autumn of 1822. From 1821 to 1823, Byron wrote "Marino Faliero", "Two Foscari", "Sardanapal", "Cain", "Heaven and Earth", "Werner", and the drama "Transformed Freak" was also started. She remained unfinished. From 1818 to 1823 the poet wrote his famous Don Juan. But this greatest creation also remained unfinished.

Byron interrupted work to take part in the fight Greek people for your independence. In the autumn of 1822, George Gordon and his beloved moved to Genoa, and in December 1823 he left for Missolonghi.

But in Greece, as in Italy among the Carbonari, there was no unity in the ranks of the rebels. Our hero spent a lot of energy trying to rally the rebels. He began a great organizational work to create a rebel army. The poet's life was very tense, and then he caught a cold. On the day of his 36th birthday, he wrote the poem "Today I turned 36 years old" and was very worried about the illness of his daughter Ada.

However, a letter soon arrived. It was reported that the daughter had recovered. To celebrate, George Gordon Byron mounted his horse and went for a walk. But as luck would have it, it started to rain heavily. For a poet with a cold, he became fatal. On April 19, 1824, the man died in the prime of his life. Thus ended the life of one of the greatest poets the first quarter of the 19th century, which today is rightfully considered the pride of England.

Byron George Noel Gordon

1788.22.01 - was born in London. The offspring of an ancient aristocratic, but impoverished family. From the age of ten, having inherited the title of lord, he lived with his mother in a hereditary castle. He studied at a closed privileged school, then - at the University of Cambridge. Childhood, like Byron's whole life, was overshadowed by lameness, which served him as a kind of incentive for self-affirmation. Byron from a young age was proud that he was no different from his peers either in games or in fights. He began to write his first poems at the age of 12. Released in 1806-1809. youth collections (in particular, "In the hours of leisure") caused criticism in the press. In response, Byron in 1809 published a satirical poem "English Bards and Scottish Reviewers", in which he paid "according to merit" to critics.

1809 - became a member of the House of Lords.

1809-1811 - goes on a long journey, visits Portugal, Spain, the island of Malta, Albania, Turkey, Greece.

1811 - return to England, death of mother.

1812 - delivers a fiery speech in the House of Lords in defense of Luddite workers (indentured workers who broke cars, in which they saw a threat to remain unemployed themselves), opposes the death penalty for the destruction of machines.

1812 - the first two songs of the poem "Child Harold's Pilgrimages" were published, where the stages of Byron's journey through the Middle East and Southern Europe were recreated (the work was written in the form of a poetic travel diary). The hero of the poem is a young man disappointed in life, mourning the collapse of ideals and the lack of freedom. The popularity of The Pilgrimage is such that Byron becomes a living legend. "Songs" attracts unprecedented attention of readers to it.

1813-1814 - poems "Gyaur", "Abydos Bride", "Lara", "Corsair", "Siege of Corinth", "Parisina".

1813 - Byron's fame goes beyond his country, translations into other languages ​​​​appear. The appearance of the first translations into Russian also dates back to this time.

1815 - Married to Anna Isabella Milbank, heiress of Lord Wentworth.

1816 - despite the birth of a daughter, there is a break with his wife. Byron leaves England, travels around Europe: Switzerland and Italy. For some time he lives in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva. Acquaintance and close friendship with the romantic poet P. B. Shelley. Creates a multitude lyric poems, finishes "Pilgrimage ...", writes the poem "Prisoner of Chillon".

1817 - the philosophical and symbolic poem "Manfred", the hero of which despises power, success, breaks with religion, but individualism affects his character even more than the heroes of oriental poems.

1817-1820 - lived in Venice. He published the poems Tasso's Complaint*, Mazeppa, the third and fourth cantos of the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the satirical poem Beppo, the political poem Dante's Prophecy, in which he called on Italians to fight for national independence and freedom.

1820-1821 - lived in Ravenna, where he became an active member of the Carbonari organization. He wrote the poetic tragedies "Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice", "Sardanapal", "Two Foscari", "Cain".

1822 - in Pisa he created the family-psychological drama "Werner", a parody poem "Vision of the Court".

1823 - utopian poem "Island", political satire "The Bronze Age".

1818-1824 - worked on the poetic novel "Don Juan" (16 chapters, the 17th is not finished). Against the backdrop of exotic nature and romantic adventures of the hero, the author denounces his contemporary society. Instead of the "man and the world" problem, which was previously characteristic of the poet, in "Don Juan" the problem of "man and environment" arises, bringing Byron's work closer to realism.

1823 - goes to Greece to take part in the struggle of the Greek patriots against the Turks. He dedicated his poems “Song to the Souliots”, “From a Diary in Kefalonia”, “Last Words about Greece” and others to the struggle of the Greeks.

1824 - died as a result of a severe cold in Missolungi. Byron's memory was honored in Greece with national mourning. Byron's lungs (as the receptacle of the poet's spirit) are buried in Greece, while the body rests in the "poets' corner" in Westminster Abbey in London ("the national tomb", the cemetery of the most famous people England).

Byron is the most famous English romantic poet who played an outstanding role in the social and literary life of Europe. Byron's influence on world (including Russian) literature is enormous. Byron's name is associated with the public mindset in European literature of the early 19th century. called Byronism, which was associated with individualism, emphasized disappointment in public life, a special interest in exotic countries, a rebellious spirit, love of freedom, and a willingness to fight on the side of oppressed peoples. Byron's works were translated into Russian by V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, A. A. Blok, I. S. Turgenev, V. Ya. Bryusov, I. A. Bunin, Vyach. Ivanov, and others.


Born January 22, 1788 in London. His mother, Katherine Gordon, a Scottish native, was the second wife of Captain D. Byron, whose first wife died, leaving him a daughter, Augusta. The captain died in 1791, having spent most of his wife's fortune. George Gordon was born with a disfigured foot, because of which he developed a painful impressionability from early childhood, aggravated by the hysterical disposition of his mother, who raised him in Aberdeen on modest means. In 1798, the boy inherited from his great-uncle the title of baron and the family estate of Newstead Abbey near Nottingham, where he moved with his mother. The boy studied with a home teacher, then he was sent to private school at Dulwich, and in 1801 at Harrow.

In the autumn of 1805, Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he met D.K. Hobhouse (1786-1869), his closest friend until the end of his life. In 1806, Byron published for a narrow circle the book Fugitive Pieces. Hours of Idleness followed a year later; along with imitative poems, there were also promising poems in the collection. In 1808, the Edinburgh Review ridiculed the author's rather arrogant preface to the collection, to which Byron responded with venomous lines in the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1809).

In London, Byron ran into several thousand pounds of debt. Fleeing from creditors, and also, probably, in search of new experiences, on July 2, 1809, he set off with Hobhouse on a long journey. They sailed to Lisbon, crossed Spain, from Gibraltar reached Albania by sea, where they paid a visit to the Turkish despot Ali Pasha Tepelensky, and proceeded to Athens. There they spent the winter in the house of a widow, whose daughter, Teresa Macri, Byron sang in the form of an Athenian maiden. In the spring of 1809, on his way to Constantinople, Byron swam across the Dardanelles, which he later boasted of more than once. He spent the following winter again in Athens.

Byron returned to England in July 1811; he brought with him the manuscript of an autobiographical poem written in Spencer stanza, which tells of a sad wanderer who is destined to know disappointment in the sweet hopes and ambitious hopes of youth and in the journey itself. Child Harold's Pilgrimage, published in March of the following year, glorified Byron's name overnight. His mother did not live to see this - she died on August 1, 1811, and a few weeks later news came of the death of three close friends. 27 February 1812 Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords - against the Tory bill on the death penalty for weavers who deliberately broke the newly invented knitting machines.Childe Harold's success provided Byron with a warm welcome in Whig circles.He made acquaintance with T. Moore and S. Rogers and was introduced to the daughter-in-law of Lord Melbourne, Lady Caroline Lam, who became the poet's mistress and did not hide it at all.

In the footsteps of Childe Harold, Byron created the Oriental Poems cycle: The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos - in 1813, The Corsair and Lara - in 1814. The poems abounded in veiled hints of an autobiographical nature . The hero Giaur hastened to be identified with the author, saying that in the East Byron was engaged in piracy for some time.

Anabella Milbank, Lady Melbourne's niece, and Byron occasionally exchanged letters; in September 1814 he proposed to her, and it was accepted. After the wedding on January 2, 1815 and a honeymoon in Yorkshire, the newlyweds, obviously not made for each other, settled in London. In the spring, Byron met W. Scott, whom he had admired for a long time, and together with his friend D. Kinnard joined the subcommittee of the board of the Drury Lane Theater.

Desperate to sell Newstead Abbey to pay off debts that amounted to almost £30,000, Byron became embittered and sought oblivion in walking the theaters and drinking bouts. Frightened by his wild antics and transparent allusions to his half-sister Augusta - she came to London to keep her company - Lady Byron innocently thought that he had fallen into madness. On December 10, 1815, she gave birth to Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada, and on January 15, 1816, taking the baby with her, she left for Leicestershire to visit her parents. A few weeks later, she announced that she would not return to her husband. Apparently, her suspicions about Byron's incest and homosexual relationships before marriage were confirmed. Byron agreed to separation by court order and sailed for Europe on 25 April. For the summer he rented the Villa Diodati in Geneva, where P. B. Shelley was his frequent visitor. Here Byron completed the third song of Childe Harold, which developed already familiar motives - the vanity of aspirations, the fleetingness of love, the vain search for perfection; wrote The Prisoner of Chillon and began Manfred. Byron had a short relationship with W. Godwin's adopted daughter Claire Clairmont, who lived in the Shelley family, on January 12, 1817, their daughter Allegra was born.

September 5, 1816 Byron and Hobhouse went to Italy. In Venice, Byron studied Armenian language, visited the theater of the Countess Albrizzi and her salon, and in the spring of 1817 reunited with Hobhaus in Rome, examined the ancient ruins and completed Manfred, a drama in verse on a Faustian theme, in which his disappointment takes on universal proportions. Returning to Venice, based on impressions from a trip to Rome, he wrote the fourth song of Childe Harold - a piercing embodiment of the ultimate romantic longing. In the summer, he met the "gentle tigress" Margarita Konya, the wife of a baker. Byron returned to Venice in November, having already written Beppo, a brilliant, ironic satire in Italian octaves on Venetian manners. In June of the following year he moved to the Palazzo Mosenido on the Grand Canal; there the ardent Margarita of Cogni settled down as a housekeeper. Byron soon took baby Allegra under his wing and began a new satire in the spirit of Beppo called Don Juan.

The sale of Newsted in the autumn of 1818 for £94,500 helped Byron get out of debt. Immersed in sensual pleasures, getting fat, let go of his long hair, in which gray hair broke through - this is how he appeared before the guests of the house. He was saved from debauchery by love for the young Countess Teresa Guiccioli. In June 1819 he followed her to Ravenna, and at the end of the summer they arrived in Venice. In the end, Teresa was persuaded to return to her aging spouse, but her pleas again led Byron to Ravenna in January 1820. He settled in the Palazzo Guiccioli, where he brought Allegra. Teresa's father, Count Gamba, obtained permission from the Pope of Rome for his daughter to live separately from her husband.

Stay in Ravenna was for Byron unprecedentedly fruitful: he wrote new songs of Don Juan, Dante's Prophecy (The Prophecy of Dante), a historical drama in verse by Marino Faliero, translated L. Pulchi's poem Big Morgante. Through the intermediary of Count Gamba and his son Pietro, during the autumn and winter, he actively participated in the conspiracy of the Carbonari, members of the secret political movement against Austrian tyranny. In the midst of the conspiracy, Byron created a drama in verse Sardanapalus (Sardanapalus) - about an idle voluptuary who is moved by circumstances to a noble deed. The threat of political upheaval was one of the reasons that forced him on March 1, 1821 to place Allegra in a monastery school in Bagnacavallo.

After the uprising was defeated, Gamba's father and son were expelled from Ravenna. In July Teresa had to follow them to Florence. Shelley persuaded Byron to visit him and Gamba in Pisa. Prior to leaving Ravenna (in October), Byron wrote his most wicked and unusual satire, The Vision of Judgment, a parody of the Poet Laureate R. Southey's poem praising King George III. Byron also completed the verse drama Cain, which embodied his skeptical interpretation of biblical stories.

In Pisa, a circle of Shelley's friends gathered at Byron's Casa Lafranchi. In January 1822, Byron's mother-in-law, Lady Noel, died, leaving him £6,000 in her will on the condition that he take the name Noel. Allegra's death in April came as a heavy blow to him. A fight with a dragoon, in which he and his Pisan friends unwittingly turned out to be involved, forced the Tuscan authorities to deprive Gamba of political asylum. In May, Byron moved with them and Teresa to a villa near Livorno.

On July 1, L. Hunt joined Byron and Shelley to edit the short-lived Liberal magazine with them. Shelley drowned a few days later, leaving Byron in charge of Hunt, his ailing wife, and six uncontrollable children. In September, Byron moved to Genoa and lived in the same house with both Gamba. The Hunts followed and settled with Mary Shelley. Byron returned to work on Don Juan and by May 1823 completed the 16th canto. He chose the legendary seducer as the hero and turned him into an innocent simpleton who is harassed by women; but also hardened by life experience, he still remains normal in his character, worldview and actions, reasonable person in a crazy crazy world. Byron consistently leads Juan through a series of adventures, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, from the “platonic” seduction of a hero in Spain to idyllic love on a Greek island, from a slave state in a harem to the position of a favorite of Catherine the Great, and leaves him entangled in the nets of a love affair in an English country house. Byron cherished the ambitious plan to bring his picaresque novel in verse to 50, if not more songs, but managed to complete only 16 and fourteen stanzas of song 17. Don Juan recreates the full range of feelings; sparkling, cynical, sometimes bitter satire unmasks hypocrisy and pretense.

Tired of an aimless existence, longing for vigorous activity, Byron seized on the offer of the London Greek Committee to help Greece in the war of independence. On July 15, 1823, he left Genoa with P. Gamba and E. J. Trelawney. He spent about four months on the island of Kefalonia, awaiting instructions from the Committee. Byron gave money to equip the Greek fleet and at the beginning of January 1824 joined Prince Mavrokordatos in Missolungi. He took under his command a detachment of Souliotes (Greek-Albanians), to whom he paid monetary allowances. Sobered by the strife among the Greeks and their greed, exhausted by illness, Byron died of a fever on April 19, 1824.

Lord Gordon Byron, since 1822 - Noel Byron, since 1798 - 6th Baron Byron(English) George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron; commonly referred to simply Lord Byron (Lord Byron)

English romantic poet who captivated the imagination of all Europe with his "gloomy selfishness"

George Byron

short biography

George Noel Gordon Byron, who is often referred to as Lord Byron, a poet who became famous throughout the world for his romantic works, was born in London on January 22, 1788 in the family of an aristocrat who squandered his fortune. As a child, he ended up in Scotland, in Aberdeen, in his mother's homeland, where she and her son had gone away from her adventurer-husband. Byron was born with a physical handicap, limped, and this left an imprint on his entire future life. The difficult, hysterical nature of his mother, aggravated by poverty, influenced the formation of him as a person.

When George was 10 years old, in 1798 their small family returned to England, to the Newstead family estate, which, along with the title, he inherited from his deceased great-uncle. In 1799, he studied at a private school for two years, but not so much studied as he was treated and read books. Since 1801, he continued his education at Garrow College, where his intellectual baggage was significantly replenished. In 1805 he became a student at Cambridge, but no less, if not more than studying the sciences, he was attracted to other aspects of life, he had fun: he was drinking and playing cards at friendly feasts, he mastered the art of horse riding, boxing, and swimming. All this required a lot of money, and the debts of the young rake grew like a snowball. Byron never graduated from the University, and his main acquisition of that time was a strong friendship with D.K. Hobhouse, which lasted until his death.

In 1806, Byron's first book, published under a false name, "Poems for Various Occasions", was published. Having added more than a hundred more poems to the first collection, he released a year later, this time under own name, the second - "Leisure Hours", opinions about which were diametrically opposed. His satirical rebuff to critics, English Bards and Scottish Reviewers (1809), received a wide response and became a kind of compensation for the blow to pride.

In June 1809, Byron, along with the faithful Hobhouse, left England - not least due to the fact that the amount of his debt to creditors increased catastrophically. He visited Spain, Albania, Greece, Asia Minor, Constantinople - the journey lasted two years. It was during this period that the poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" was begun, the hero of which was largely identified by the public with the author. The publication of this particular work in March 1812 (Byron returned from a trip in July 1811) became a turning point in his biography: the poet suddenly woke up famous. The poem became famous throughout Europe, gave rise to new type literary hero. Byron was introduced into high society, and he plunged into secular life not without pleasure, although he could not get rid of the feeling of awkwardness due to a physical defect, hiding it behind arrogance. His creative life was also very eventful: Gyaur (1813), Bride of Abydos (1813), Corsair (1813), Jewish Melodies (1814), Lara (1814) saw the light of day.

In January 1815, Byron married Annabella Milbank, in December they had a daughter, but family life did not work out, the couple divorced. The reasons for the divorce were overgrown with rumors that reflected poorly on the reputation of the poet; public opinion was not in his favor. In April 1816, Lord Byron left his homeland, never to return there again. In the summer he lived in Geneva, and in the fall he moved to Venice, and many considered his way of life there to be immoral. Nevertheless, the poet continued to write a lot (4th song of Childe Harold, Beppo, Ode to Venice, 1st and 2nd song of Don Juan).

April 1819 gave him a meeting with Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who was his beloved woman until the end of his life. Circumstances forced them to periodically change their place of residence, among which were Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, to experience many events, but Byron was still very creatively active. During this period, he wrote, for example, "Dante's Prophecy", "The First Song of Morgante Maggiore" - 1820, "Cain", "Vision doomsday"(1821), "Sardanapal" (1821), "The Bronze Age" (1823), the songs of "Don Juan" and others were written one after another.

Byron, who never knew the measure of desires, striving to get as much as possible from life, fed up with the available benefits, was looking for new adventures and impressions, trying to get rid of deep spiritual anguish and anxiety. In 1820 he joined the movement of the Italian Carbonari, in 1821 he unsuccessfully tried to publish the Liberal magazine in England, and in July 1823 he enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity to leave for Greece to participate in the liberation struggle. To help the local population throw off the Ottoman yoke, Byron spared no effort, no money (he sold all his property in England), no talent. In December 1923, he fell ill with a fever, and on April 19, 1824, a debilitating illness put an end to his biography. The poet, whose soul never knew peace, was buried at Newstead, the family estate.

Biography from Wikipedia

Lord Gordon Byron, from 1822 - Noel-Byron, from 1798 - 6th Baron Byron (English George Gordon Byron (Noel), 6th Baron Byron; January 22, 1788, London - April 19, 1824, Missolungi, Ottoman Greece), commonly referred to simply as Lord Byron (Lord Byron) is an English romantic poet who captivated the imagination of all Europe with his "gloomy selfishness." Along with Percy Shelley and John Keats, he represents the younger generation of British Romantics. His alter ego Childe Harold became the prototype for countless Byronic heroes in literature. different countries Europe. The fashion for Byronism continued after Byron's death, even though by the end of his life in the verse novel "Don Juan" and the comic poem "Beppo" Byron himself switched to satirical realism based on the legacy of Alexander Pope. The poet took part in the Greek War of Independence, national hero Greece.

Name

Gordon- the second personal name of Byron, given to him at baptism and coinciding with his mother's maiden name. Byron's father, claiming his father-in-law's Scottish possessions, used "Gordon" as the second part of the surname (Byron-Gordon), and George himself was enrolled in the school under the same double surname. At the age of 10, after the death of his great-uncle, George became the Peer of England and received the title " Baron Byron”, after which, as is customary among peers of this rank, his usual everyday name became“ Lord Byron" or simply " Byron". Subsequently, Byron's mother-in-law bequeathed property to the poet on the condition that she bear her last name - Noel(Noel), and by royal patent, Lord Byron was allowed, by way of exception, to bear the surname Noel before the title, which he did, sometimes signing "Noel-Byron." Therefore, in some sources, his full name may look like George Gordon Noel Byron, although he never signed with all these names and surnames at the same time.

Origin

His ancestors, natives of Normandy, came to England with William the Conqueror and, after the battle of Hastings, were rewarded with rich estates taken from the Saxons. The original name of the Byrons is Burun. This name is often found in knightly annals of the Middle Ages. Already under Henry II, one of the descendants of this family changed, in accordance with the pronunciation, his surname to the surname Byron. The Byrons rose especially under Henry VIII, who, during the abolition of the Catholic monasteries, endowed Sir Byron with the nickname "sir John the small with a big beard" (sir John the little with the Great Beard) estates of the wealthy Newstead Abbey in Nottingham County.

Newstead Abbey, destroyed during Tudor secularization - Byron family property

In the reign of Elizabeth, the Byron family died out, but the surname passed to the illegitimate son of one of them. Subsequently, during English revolution, The Byrons distinguished themselves by their unwavering devotion to the house of the Stuarts, for which Charles I raised a representative of this family to the rank of a peer with the title of Baron Rochdel. One of the most famous representatives of this family was Admiral John Byron, famous for his extraordinary adventures and wanderings in the Pacific Ocean; the sailors, who loved him, but considered him unlucky, nicknamed him "Foulweather Jack" (Foulweather Jack).

The eldest son of Admiral Byron, Captain John Byron (1756-1791), was a reveler and a spendthrift. In 1778 he married the former Marquise of Comartin. She died in 1784, leaving John a daughter, Augusta (later Mrs. Lee), who was later raised by her mother's relatives.

After the death of his first wife, Captain Byron remarried, according to calculation, to Catherine Gordon (d.1811), the only heiress of the wealthy George Gordon, Esq. She came from the famous Scottish family of Gordons, in whose veins the blood of Scottish kings flowed (along the line of Annabella Stewart). From this second marriage, the future poet was born in 1788.

Biography

The poverty into which Byron was born, and from which the title of lord did not relieve him, gave direction to his future career. When he was born (in Hall Street, London, January 22, 1788), his father had already lost the family fortune, and his mother returned from Europe with the rest of the fortune. Lady Byron settled in Aberdeen, and her “lame boy,” as she called her son, was sent to a private school for a year, then transferred to a classical gymnasium. There are many stories about Byron's childhood antics. The Gray sisters, who nursed little Byron, found that they could do anything with caress to him, but his mother always lost her temper at his disobedience and threw anything at the boy. He often responded to his mother's outbursts with ridicule, but once, as he himself says, they took away the knife with which he wanted to stab himself. He did poorly at the gymnasium, and Mary Gray, who read psalms and the Bible to him, did him more good than the gymnasium teachers. When George was 10 years old, his great-uncle died, and the boy inherited the title of Lord and the Byron family estate - Newstead Abbey. Ten-year-old Byron fell so deeply in love with his cousin Mary Duff that, upon hearing of her engagement, he fell into a hysterical fit. In 1799 he entered Dr. Gleny's school, where he stayed for two years and nursed his bad leg all the time, after which he recovered enough to put on boots. During these two years he studied very little, but he read the entire rich library of the doctor. Before leaving for school in Harrow, Byron fell in love again - with another cousin, Marguerite Parker.

In 1801 he left for Harrow; dead languages ​​and antiquity did not at all attract him, but on the other hand he read all the English classics with great interest and left school with great knowledge. At school, he was famous for his chivalrous attitude towards his comrades and for the fact that he always stood up for the younger ones. During the holidays of 1803, he fell in love again, but this time much more seriously than before - in Miss Chaworth, a girl whose father was killed by "bad Lord Byron". In the sad moments of his life, he often regretted that she had rejected him.

Youth and the beginning of creativity

At the University of Cambridge, Byron deepened his scientific knowledge. But more than that, he distinguished himself by the art of swimming, riding, boxing, drinking, playing cards, etc., so the lord constantly needed money and, as a result, "got into debt." In Harrow, Byron wrote several poems, and in 1807 his first book, Hours of idleness, appeared in print. This collection of poems decided his fate: by releasing the collection into the world, Byron became a completely different person. Ruthless criticism of Leisure Hours did not appear in the Edinburgh Review until a year later, in which the poet wrote a large number of poems. Had this criticism appeared immediately after the publication of the book, Byron might have abandoned poetry altogether. “Six months before the appearance of ruthless criticism, I composed 214 pages of a novel, a poem of 380 verses, 660 lines of Bosworth Field and many small poems,” he wrote to Miss Fagot, with whose family he was friendly. “The poem I have prepared for publication is a satire.” With this satire he replied to the Edinburgh Review. Criticism of the first book upset Byron terribly, but his answer - "English Bards and Scottish Critics" ("English Bards and Scotch Reviewers") - he published only in the spring of 1809. The success of the satire was enormous and was able to satisfy the wounded poet.

First trip

In June 1809, Byron set out on a journey. He visited Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor, where he swam across the Dardanelles, which he was very proud of later. It can be assumed that the young poet, having won a most brilliant victory over his literary enemies, went abroad contented and happy, but this was not so. Byron left England in a terribly depressed state of mind, and returned even more oppressed. Many, identifying him with Childe Harold, assumed that abroad, like his hero, he led a too immoderate life, but Byron both printed and verbally protested against this, emphasizing that Childe Harold was only a figment of the imagination. Thomas Moore spoke in Byron's defense that he was too poor to support a harem. In addition, Byron was not only worried about financial difficulties. During this time he lost his mother, and although he never got along with her, he was nevertheless very mournful.

"Childe Harold". Glory

On February 27, 1812, Byron delivered his first speech in the House of Lords, which was a great success: “Is there not enough blood [of rebels] on your penal code that more must be shed so that it cries out to heaven and testifies against you?” "The swarthy race from the banks of the Ganges will shake your empire of tyrants to the ground."

Two days after this performance, the first two songs of "Childe Harold" appeared. The poem was a fabulous success, and 14,000 copies of it were sold in one day, which immediately put the author among the first literary celebrities. “After reading Childe Harold,” he says, “no one will want to listen to my prose, just as I myself don’t want to.” Why "Childe Harold" was such a success, Byron himself did not know and said only: "One morning I woke up and saw myself famous."

Childe Harold's journey captivated not only England, but all of Europe. The poet touched upon the general struggle of that time, speaks with sympathy of the Spanish peasants, of the heroism of women, and his ardent cry for freedom resounded far, despite the seeming cynical tone of the poem. At this difficult moment of general tension, he also recalled the lost greatness of Greece.

Savor

He met Thomas Moore. Until that time, he had never been in the big world, and now he indulged with enthusiasm in the whirlwind of secular life. One evening, Dallas even found him in court dress, although Byron did not go to the court. In the big world, the lame Byron (his knee was a little cramped) never felt free and arrogance tried to cover up his awkwardness.

In March 1813, he published the satire "Waltz" without a signature, and in May he published a story from Turkish life "Gyaur", inspired by his trip to the Levant. The audience enthusiastically accepted this story of love and revenge and greeted the poems The Bride of Abydos and The Corsair, which were published in the same year, with even greater enthusiasm. In 1814 he published "Jewish Melodies", which had a tremendous success and was translated many times into all European languages, as well as the poem "Lara" (1814).

In his views on the progress and development of society, Lord Byron was a Luddite. This is evidenced by his first speech, delivered in the House of Lords in February 1812. In it, he defended and in many ways justified the followers of Ned Ludd.

Marriage, divorce and scandal

In October 1812, Byron proposed to Miss Anna Isabella Milbank, daughter of Ralph Milbank, a wealthy baronet, granddaughter and heiress of Lord Wentworth. “A brilliant party,” Byron wrote to Moore, “although I did not propose because of this.” He was refused, but Miss Milbank expressed a desire to enter into correspondence with him. In September 1814, Byron repeated his proposal, and it was accepted, and in January 1815 they were married. As he confessed to her aunt, his debts and stormy romances made his life so difficult that if Anna (Anabella) refused, he would have married any other woman who would not cause disgust. Because of his wife's hobbies in mathematics, Byron called her "the princess of parallelograms" and "mathematical Medea".

In December 1815, Byron had a daughter named Ada, and the following month Lady Byron left her husband in London and went to her father's estate. On the way, she wrote her husband an affectionate letter, beginning with the words: "Dear Dick", and signed: "Your Poppin." A few days later, Byron learned from her father that she had decided never to return to him again, and after that Lady Byron herself informed him of this. In April 1816, a formal divorce took place. Byron suspected that his wife had separated from him under the influence of her mother. Lady Byron took full responsibility. Before her departure, she called for a consultation with Dr. Boglia and asked him if her husband had gone crazy. Bogli assured her that it was only her imagination. After that, she told her family that she wanted a divorce. The reasons for the divorce were expressed by Lady Byron's mother to Dr. Leshington, and he wrote that these reasons justified the divorce, but at the same time advised the spouses to reconcile. After this, Lady Byron herself visited Dr. Leshington and told him the facts, after which he also did not find reconciliation possible.

The true reasons for the divorce of the Byron spouses forever remained mysterious, although Byron said that "they are too simple, and therefore they are not noticed." The public did not want to explain the divorce by the simple reason that people did not agree on the characters. Lady Byron refused to disclose the reasons for the divorce, and therefore these reasons turned into something fantastic in the imagination of the public, and everyone vied with each other trying to see crimes in divorce, one worse than the other (there were rumors about the poet's bisexual orientation and about his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta ). The publication of the poem "Farewell to Lady Byron", published by one indiscreet friend of the poet, raised a whole pack of ill-wishers against him. But not everyone condemned Byron. One employee of the Courier stated in print that if her husband had written such a “Farewell” to her, she would not be slow to rush into his arms. In April 1816, Byron finally said goodbye to England, where public opinion in the person of the "lake poets" was strongly opposed to him.

Life in Switzerland and Italy

Villa Diodati, where Byron, Shelley, his wife Mary and J. Polidori lived in 1816

Before leaving abroad, Byron sold his Newstead estate, and this gave him the opportunity not to be weighed down by constant lack of money. Now he could indulge in the solitude he longed for. Abroad, he settled in the Villa Diodati on the Geneva Riviera. Byron spent the summer at the villa, making two small excursions around Switzerland: one with Gobgauz, the other with the poet Shelley. In the third canto of Childe Harold (May-June 1816) he describes his trip to the fields of Waterloo. The idea to write "Manfred" came to him when he saw the Jungfrau on his way back to Geneva.

In November 1816, Byron moved to Venice, where, according to ill-wishers, he led the most depraved life, which, however, did not prevent him from creating a large number of poetic works. In June 1817, the poet wrote the fourth song of "Childe Harold", in October 1817 - "Beppo", in July 1818 - "Ode to Venice", in September 1818 - the first song of "Don Juan", in October 1818 - " Mazepa", in December 1818 - the second song of "Don Juan", and in November 1819 - 3-4 songs of "Don Juan".

In April 1819 he met Countess Guiccioli and they fell in love. The countess was forced to leave with her husband for Ravenna, where Byron went after her. Two years later, the father and brother of the Countess, the Counts of Gamba, who were involved in a political scandal, had to leave Ravenna along with the Countess Guiccioli, already divorced at that time. Byron followed them to Pisa, where he still lived under the same roof with the countess. At this time, Byron grieved over the loss of his friend Shelley, who drowned in the Gulf of Spice. In September 1822, the Tuscan government ordered the Counts of Gamba to leave Pisa, and Byron followed them to Genoa.

Byron lived with the countess until his departure for Greece, and during this time he wrote a lot. During this happy period of Byron's life, the following works of his appeared: “The First Song of Morgante Maggiore” (1820); "The Prophecy of Dante" (1820) and the translation of "Francesca da Rimini" (1820), "Marino Faliero" (1820), the fifth canto of "Don Giovanni" (1820), "Sardanapalus" (1821), "Letters to Bauls" ( 1821), "Two Foscari" (1821), "Cain" (1821), "Vision of the Last Judgment" (1821), "Heaven and Earth" (1821), "Werner" (1821), sixth, seventh and eighth songs " Don Juan" (in February 1822); the ninth, tenth and eleventh songs of Don Juan (in August 1822); The Bronze Age (1823), The Island (1823), the twelfth and thirteenth songs of Don Juan (1824).

Trip to Greece and death

Quiet family life, however, did not save Byron from longing and anxiety. He too greedily used all the pleasures and the glory he received. Soon satiety set in. Byron suggested that it had been forgotten in England, and at the end of 1821 he negotiated with Mary Shelley for a joint publication English magazine"Liberal". However, only three issues were published. However, Byron really began to lose its former popularity. But at this time, a Greek uprising broke out. Byron, after preliminary negotiations with a committee of philhellenes formed in England to help Greece, decided to go there and with passionate impatience began to prepare for his departure. At his own expense, he bought an English brig, supplies, weapons and equipped five hundred soldiers, with whom he sailed for Greece on July 14, 1823. Nothing was ready there, and the leaders of the movement did not get along much with each other. Meanwhile, the costs grew, and Byron ordered the sale of all his property in England, and gave the money to the right cause of the insurgency. Of great importance in the struggle for the freedom of Greece was Byron's talent in uniting the uncoordinated groups of Greek rebels.

In Missolonghi, Byron fell ill with a fever, continuing to devote all his strength to the struggle for the freedom of the country. On January 19, 1824, he wrote to Hankop: “We are preparing for an expedition,” and on January 22, his birthday, he entered Colonel Stanhope’s room, where there were several guests, and cheerfully said: “You reproach me for not writing poems, but I just wrote a poem. And Byron read: "Today I turned 36 years old." Constantly ill, Byron was very worried about the illness of his daughter Ada. Having received a letter with good news about her recovery, he wanted to go for a walk with Count Gamba. During the walk, a terrible rain fell, and Byron finally fell ill. The last words of the poet were fragmentary phrases: "My sister! my child! .. poor Greece! .. I gave her time, fortune, health! .. now I give her my life!

April 19, 1824, at the age of 37, George Gordon Byron died. Doctors performed an autopsy, removed the organs and placed them in embalming urns. They decided to leave the lungs and larynx in the church of St. Spyridon, but soon they were stolen from there. The body was embalmed and sent to England, where it arrived in July 1824. Byron was interred in the family vault at Hunkell Thorkard Church near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

Pansexuality

The intimate life of Lord Byron caused a lot of gossip among his contemporaries. He left his native country amid rumors about an impermissibly close relationship with his half-sister Augusta. When Countess Guiccioli's book about Lord Byron appeared in 1860, Mrs. Beecher Stowe spoke in defense of his wife's memory with her "The True History of the Life of Lady Byron", based on the deceased's story, allegedly passed on to her in secret, that Byron allegedly was in "criminal connection" with his sister. However, such stories fully corresponded to the spirit of the era: for example, they form the main content of Chateaubriand's autobiographical novel "Rene" (1802).

In 1822, Byron handed over his memoirs to Thomas Moore with instructions to publish after his death. However, a month after his death, Moore, J. Hobhouse, and Byron's publisher J. Murray jointly burned the notes because of their merciless honesty, and probably at the urging of Byron's family. This act caused a flurry of criticism, although, for example, Pushkin approved of it.

Published in the 20th century, Byron's diaries reveal a picture of a truly pansexual sexual life. Thus, the port town of Falmouth was described by the poet as “a charming place” offering “Plen. and optabil. coit." (“multiple and varied sexual intercourses”): “Hyacinths and other flowers of the most fragrant quality surround us, and I intend to collect a smart bouquet to compare with the exotic we hope to meet in Asia. I will even take one sample with me.” This sample turned out to be a young handsome Robert Rushton, who "was Byron's page as Hyacinth was Apollo's." In Athens, the poet liked a new favorite - fifteen-year-old Nicolo Giraud. Byron described the Turkish baths as "a marble paradise of sherbet and sodomy."

After Byron's death, the erotic poem "Don Leon" began to diverge in the lists, telling about the same-sex relationships of a lyrical hero, in which Byron was easily guessed. The publisher William Dugdale spread the rumor that it was Byron's unpublished work, and under the threat of publishing the poem, tried to extort money from his relatives. Modern literary scholars call the real author of this "free-thinking" work George Colman.

family fate

The poet's widow, Lady Anna Isabella, spent the rest of her long life in seclusion, completely forgotten in the big world, doing charity work. Only the news of her death on May 16, 1860 awakened memories of her.

Lord Byron's legitimate daughter, Ada, married the Earl William Lovelace in 1835 and died on November 27, 1852, leaving two sons and a daughter. Known as a mathematician and creator of Charles Babbage's description of the computer. It was recognized that the algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers on an analytical engine, described by Ada in one of his comments on this translation, is the first program to be reproduced on a computer. For this reason, Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer. The programming language Ada, developed in 1983, is named after her.

The eldest grandson of Lord Byron, Noel, was born on May 12, 1836, served briefly in the British Navy and, after a violent and chaotic life, died on October 1, 1862 as a worker in one of the London docks. The second grandson, Ralph Gordon Noel Milbank, was born on July 2, 1839, after the death of his brother, who inherited the barony of Wentworth from his grandmother shortly before his death, entered into the rights of Baron Wentworth.

The nature of creativity and influence

Byron's poems are more autobiographical than those of other English Romantics. He sharper than many felt the hopeless discrepancy between romantic ideals and reality. The realization of this discrepancy did not always plunge him into melancholy and despondency; in his last works, the removal of masks from people and phenomena does not cause anything but an ironic smile. Unlike most romantics, Byron respected the heritage of English classicism, puns and biting satire in the spirit of Pope. His favorite octave predisposed to lyrical digressions and games with the reader.

In Victorian England, Lord Byron was almost forgotten: his popularity was no match for the posthumous success of Keats and Shelley. “Who reads Byron these days? Even in England! exclaimed Flaubert in 1864. In continental Europe, including Russia, the peak of Byronism came in the 1820s, but by the middle of the 19th century the Byronic hero had become smaller and became the property of mainly mass and adventure literature.

Everyone started talking about Byron, and Byronism became a point of insanity for beautiful souls. From that time on, little great people began to appear in our crowds with the seal of a curse on their foreheads, with despair in their souls, with disappointment in their hearts, with deep contempt for the "insignificant crowd." Heroes suddenly became very cheap. Every boy whom the teacher left without dinner for not knowing the lesson consoled himself in grief with phrases about the fate pursuing him and about the inflexibility of his soul, struck but not defeated.

Artworks

  • 1806 Poems on Various Occasions and Fugitive Pieces
  • 1807 - Leisure Hours ( Hours of Idleness)
  • 1809 - English bards and Scottish reviewers ( English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)
  • 1813 - Gyaur ( The Giaour, text on Wikisource)
  • 1813 - Abydos bride
  • 1814 - Corsair ( The Corsair)
  • 1814 - Lara ( Lara)
  • 1815 - Jewish Melodies ( Hebrew Melodies)
  • 1816 - Siege of Corinth ( The Siege of Corinth; original text in Wikisource)
  • 1816 - Parisina ( Parisina)
  • 1816 - Prisoner of Chillon ( The Prisoner of Chillon, original text on Wikisource)
  • 1816 - Dream ( The Dream; original text in Wikisource)
  • 1816 - Prometheus ( Prometheus; original text in Wikisource)
  • 1816 - Darkness ( Darkness, text on Wikisource)
  • 1817 - Manfred ( Manfred, original text on Wikisource)
  • 1817 - Tasso's Complaint ( The Lament of Tasso)
  • 1818 - Beppo ( Beppo, original text on Wikisource)
  • 1818 - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, original text on Wikisource)
  • 1819-1824 - Don Juan ( Don Juan, original text on Wikisource)
  • 1819 - Mazepa ( Mazeppa)
  • 1819 - Dante's Prophecy ( The Prophecy of Dante)
  • 1820 - Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice ( Marino Faliero)
  • 1821 - Sardanapal ( Sardanapalus)
  • 1821 - Two Foscari ( The Two Foscari)
  • 1821 - Cain ( Cain)
  • 1821 - Vision of the Court ( The Vision of Judgment)
  • 1821 - Heaven and Earth ( Heaven and Earth)
  • 1822 - Werner, or Legacy ( Werner)
  • 1822 - The Transformed Freak ( The Deformed Transformed)
  • 1823 - Bronze Age ( The Age of Bronze)
  • 1823 - Island, or Christian and his comrades ( The Island)

Russian translations of the 19th century

Almost all Russian poets, starting from the 1920s, translated Byron; but these translations, scattered in magazines and individual publications, remained inaccessible to the Russian reading public. NV Gerbel collected and published some of them in 1864-1867. in St. Petersburg 5 volumes under the title: "Byron in the translation of Russian poets", and in 1883-1884 the 3rd edition was published, a three-volume book with bibliographic lists at the end of each book and a biography of Byron written by I. Sherr. Byron's poetic works were collected in the translation of the best Russian poets: Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Batyushkov, Lermontov, Maykov, Meiya, Fet, Pleshcheev, Shcherbina, Gerbel, P. Weinberg, D. Minaev, Ogarev and many others. Translations not included in Gerbel's:

  • "Prisoner of Chillon" - V. Zhukovsky;
  • "Gyaur" - M. Kachenovsky ("Bulletin of Europe", 1821, No. 15, 16 and 17, prose translation);
  • N. R. (Moscow, 1822, in verse);
  • A. Voeikov (“News Literary”, 1826, September and October, prose translation);
  • E. Michel (St. Petersburg, 1862, prose);
  • V. Petrov (original size, St. Petersburg, 1873);
  • "Sea Rogue"(Corsair) - A. Voeikova ("New Lit.", 1825, Oct. and Nov.; 1826, January, prose);
  • V. Olina (St. Petersburg, 1827, prose);
  • "Mazepa"- M. Kachenovsky (prose, "A selection from the writings of Lord Byron", 1821);
  • A. Voeikov (“News of Literature”, 1824, November, prose);
  • J. Grota ("Contemporary", 1838, vol. IX);
  • I. Gogniev (“Repertoire and Pantheon”, 1844, No. 10; reprinted in the “Dramatic Collection”, 1860, book IV);
  • D. Mikhailovsky (“Contemporary”, 1858, No. 5);
  • "Beppo"- V. Lyubich-Romanovich ("Son of the Fatherland", 1842, No. 4, free translation);
  • D. Minaeva ("Contemporary", 1863, No. 8);
  • "Abydos Bride"- M. Kachenovsky ("Bulletin Evr.", 1821, No. 18, 19 and 20, prose);
  • I. Kozlova (St. Petersburg, 1826, in verse, reprinted in his "Poems");
  • M. Politkovsky (Moscow, 1859, alteration);
  • "Childe Harold"- the only complete translation was made by D. Minaev (“Russian Word”, 1864, Nos. 1,3,5 and 10, corrected and supplemented by the room at Gerbel);
  • P. A. Kozlova (“Russian Thought”, 1890, No. 1, 2 and 11);
  • "Manfred"- complete translations: M. Vronchenko (St. Petersburg, 1828);
  • O. ("Moscow Bulletin", 1828, No. 7);
  • A. Borodin ("Pantheon", 1841, No. 2);
  • E. Zarin ("Bib. for Reading", 1858, No. 8);
  • D. Minaev ("Russian Word", 1863, No. 4);
  • « Cain"- full translations: D. Minaev (by Gerbel); Efrem Baryshev (St. Petersburg, 1881); P. A. Kalenova (Moscow, 1883);
  • « Heaven and earth» - full transl. N.V. Gerbel in his "Pol. collected poems. (Vol. 1);" Two Foscari"- E. Zarina ("Bible for Reading", 1861, No. 11);
  • "Sardanapalus"- E. Zarina ("B. for Ch.", 1860, No. 12);
  • O. N. Chyumina (“Artist”, 1890, books 9 and 10);
  • "Werner"- Unknown (St. Petersburg, 1829);
  • "Don Juan on Pirate's Island"- D. Mina ("Russian Vestn.", 1880; otdel. 1881);
  • "Don Juan"- V. Lyubich-Romanovich ( songs I-X, free translation, 2 volumes, St. Petersburg, 1847);
  • D. Minaeva (songs 1 - 10, "Contemporary", 1865, No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10; his own, songs 11 - 16 by Gerbel, vol. II, 1867); P. A. Kozlova (vols. I and II, St. Petersburg, 1889; published in 1888 in Russian Thought);
  • translations of Russian poets from Byron are also placed in the book by N. Gerbel: "English poets in biographies and samples" (St. Petersburg, 1875).

Inspired by Byron

Manfred on the Jungfrau. F. M. Brown, 1842

Screen adaptations

  • The film "Lady Caroline Lamb"
  • Movie "Gothic"

Musical Theatre

  • 1838 - Le Corsaire (ballet), composer G. Gdrich
  • 1844 - "Two Foscari" (opera), composer G. Verdi
  • 1848 - Le Corsaire (opera), composer G. Verdi
  • 1856 - Le Corsaire (ballet), composer A. Adan
  • 1896 - "Geda" (opera), composer Z. Fibich

Symphonic music

  • 1848-1849 - Overture and stage music for the poem "Manfred", composer Robert Schumann
  • 1886 - "Manfred", composer P. Tchaikovsky
  • 1834 - "Harold in Italy", a symphony with a solo viola, composer G. Berlioz.

In contemporary music

  • 2011 - based on the poem "Manfred", the group "Viscount" wrote a song that was released on the album "Do not submit to fate!".

Painting

  • Byron's works inspired a number of paintings by Eugène Delacroix, including The Death of Sardanapalus.

Memory

Byron is featured on numerous postage stamps.

In 1924, the new city of Viron, a suburb of Athens, the capital of Greece, was named in memory of Lord Byron.

To the cinema

  • "Prince of Love" / A Prince of Lovers (1922). In the role of Byron - Howard Gay / Howard Gaye.
  • "Handsome Brummel" / Beau Brummell (1924). Starring George Beranger.
  • "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935). Starring Gavin Gordon.
  • "Bad Lord Byron" / The Bad Lord Byron (1949). Starring Dennis Price.
  • "Lady Caroline Lamb" / Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). Starring Richard Chamberlain.
  • "Shelly" / Shelley (1972). Starring Peter Bowles.
  • Byron libérateur de la Grece ou Le jardin des héros (1973). In the role of Jean-François Poron / Jean-François Poron.
  • "Athanates histories agapis". Series, Greece (1976). In the role of Nikos Galanos / Nikos Galanos
  • "I Remember Nelson" (TV series) / "I Remember Nelson" (1982). In the role of Sylvester Moran / Sylvester Morand
  • Jazzin" for Blue Jean (1984) As David Bowie.
  • "Gothic" / Gothic (1986). As Gabriel Byrne
  • "Frankenstein Unchained" (1990). Byron - Jason Patric
  • "Ballad for the Demon" / Μπάυρον: Μπαλλάντα για ένα δαίμονα (Greece, Russia, 1992, director Nikos Koundouros). Starring Manos Vakousis.
  • TV series "Highlander" (France-Canada). Episode of The Modern Prometheus (1997). In the role of Jonathan Fez / Jonathan Firth.
  • "The Demon Realm" / Pandaemonium(2000). As Guy Lankester / Guy Lankester
  • Byron (UK, 2003, directed by Julian Farino as Johnny Miller).
  • Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster (2003). Starring Stephen Mangan.
  • "That Handsome Brummel" (UK, 2006, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, as Matthew Reese).
  • "Living with Frankenstein" / "Living with Frankenstein" (TV series, 2012). Starring Steve Bryan.
  • "Frankenstein and the Vampire" / Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night (2014). Starring Rob Hips.
  • "Mary Shelley" / Mary Shelley (2017). Starring Tom Sturridge.

monuments

In Athens

At the Danish Museum

in Italy

in Italy

Literature

Biographies and biographies

  • Alexandrov N. N. Lord Byron: His Life and Literary Work. - St. Petersburg. : Ed. F. Pavlenkova. - 96 p. - (ZhZL; Issue 62). - 8100 copies.
  • Morua A. Byron. M.: Young Guard, 2000. - 422 p. ("ZhZL").
  • Edna O'Brien Byron in love M.: Text, 2012. - 219 p. ("Collection").
  • Macaulay T. B. Macaulay on Lord Byron // Russian Bulletin. 1856. T. V. Book. II
  • Moore T. Life of Lord Byron / Ed. N. Tiblena and Dumshina. SPb.: Ed. Wolf, 1865;
  • Lord Byron // Essays on England. SPb.: Ed. Wolf, 1869.
  • Pushkin A. S. About Byron // Pushkin A. S. Works. St. Petersburg: Society for assistance to needy writers and scientists, 1887. V. 5.
  • New information about Byron's marriage relations // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1870, no. 1.
  • Weinberg P. Byron // European classics in Russian translation: With notes and biographies / Ed. P. Weinberg. SPb., 1876. Issue. VIII.
  • Miller O. The fate of Lord Byron // Bulletin of Europe. 1878. Book. 2; four.
  • Sherr I. Lord Byron [: biogr. feature article] // [ Byron] The works of Lord Byron in translations of Russian poets / Ed. ed. N. V. Gerbelya. [? SPb.], 1864. T. I.
  • Spasovich V. Centenary of Lord Byron / Per. from Polish / Pantheon of Literature. 1888. No. 2.
  • Brandes, Georg. Byron and his works / Perev. I. Gorodetsky// Pantheon of Literature. 1888. No. 3; four; 5.
  • Spasovich V. Byronism in Pushkin and Lermontov: From the era of romanticism // Bulletin of Europe. 1888, No. 3; four.
  • Kurginyan M.S. George Byron: A Critical Biographical Sketch. M., 1958. - 216 p.
  • Klimenko E. I. Byron: Language and style: A guide to the course of English stylistics. M .: Publishing house of literature in foreign languages, 1960. - 112 p.


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