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Don-Juan Canto III Annotated Don Juan CANTOÛ III Gordon, Lord Byron Annotations by Peter Gallagher¤ April, 2015 You can find the free audio-book of Canto 1 of Don Juan on the iBooks Store Û ¤ [email protected] Canto 3 I Hail Muse ] Finally, at the start of Canto III, Byron gets around to invoking the Muse: the traditional way to start an Epic poem HAIL, Muse! et cetera.—We left Juan sleeping, and, briefly, to foreshadow its subject. But Byron’s invocation is no Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast, more than a sardonic nod to the idea; a sort of poetic blasphemy. Compare, for example, Homer’s Iliad (first seven lines), or Odyssey And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping, (first ten lines) or Virgil’s Æneid (first eleven lines). Or, again, And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest Paradise Lost, where Milton’s invocation to his “Heavn’ly Muse” occupies the first twenty-six, breathless, lines. To feel the poison through her spirit creeping, Byron’s first draft of Canto III, before he split it into two Can- Or know who rested there, a foe to rest, tos, began with a nine-verse attack on Wellington; later moved Had soiled the current of her sinless years, to Canto IX. This verse, in that earlier draft, began: “Now to my Epic. ” And turned her pure heart’s purest blood to tears! A foe to rest ] The “foe to rest” refers to the “who” of the previous sentence. It is “Love”, addressed in the next verse, that II rests in her heart and has “soiled the current of [Haidee’s] sinless years. ”. In the manuscript, Byron used a semi-colon before “A foe” that some editors have turned into a period and others into a Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours comma. Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers, And made thy best interpreter a sigh? Cypress branches ] The cupressus sempervirens — the “ever- living” cypress, a pencil pine — is also known as the “graveyard ” As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers, cyprus. It has been planted near graves since early classical times, And place them on their breast—but place to die— probably because individual trees may live for a thousand years Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish or more to mark the place. Here, the cypress wreath symbolises Byron’s claim that it is “fatal to be loved” Are laid within our bosoms but to perish. III In her first passion Woman loves her lover, In all the others all she loves is Love, All she loves is love ] These two lines are a near translation of one of Rochefoucauld’s Maxims; No.147. In fact, for all his Which grows a habit she can ne’er get over, raillery at love and marriage in the next few verses, Byron drafted And fits her loosely—like an easy glove, these lines during weeks when he and the Countess Guiccioli were briefly, happily, “playing house” in a palace he rented at La Mira, As you may find, whene’er you like to prove her: on the land-side of Venice. Teresa — accompanied by Byron with One man alone at first her heart can move; the agreement of her husband — was allegedly receiving medical She then prefers him in the plural number, treatment, while the Count remained in Ravenna. Not finding that the additions much encumber. Fits. like an easy glove ] Proverbial. A pun on “habit”, in the (French) sense of an outfit of clothing. The French epithet to ’have the gloves’ (“d’en avoir les gants”) of something means to IV have it’s first benefits, including in the sense of taking a woman’s virginity. In the 18th C. “avoir eu les gants d’une femme” meant to have recently enjoyed her sexual favours. Balzac uses the verb I know not if the fault be men’s or theirs; “enganter” meaning to seduce. But one thing’s pretty sure; a woman planted Prove her ] That is, to test or try. (Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers)— Additions ] A “plural number” is a syntactical, not a mathemat- After a decent time must be gallanted; ical, construct: “they” rather than “him”. Additions here are not Although, no doubt, her first of love affairs the stuff of arithmetic proofs but simply more. Is that to which her heart is wholly granted; Planted ] Literal translation of the Italian word piantare, mean- ing “abandoned” or, here, “forsaken.” Byron uses the word in one Yet there are some, they say, who have had none, of his letters But those who have ne’er end with only one. Yet there are some. ] Another maxim from de Rochefou- cauld, No.73. Canto 3 lines 33 — 64 V ’T is melancholy, and a fearful sign Of human frailty, folly, also crime, Also crime ] Adultery remained a crime many European coun- tries until the 1970s. It is still a crime in islamic states and in That Love and Marriage rarely can combine, several states of the USA. Although they both are born in the same clime; Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine— A sad, sour, sober beverage—by Time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour Down to a very homely household savour. VI There’s something of antipathy, as ’t were, Between their present and their future state; Their present and. future state ] “Their” refers to love and marriage from the previous verse. Their antipathy is covered A kind of flattery that’s hardly fair up by “a kind of flattery.” Is used until the truth arrives too late— Yet what can people do, except despair? The same things change their names at such a rate; For instance—Passion in a lover’s glorious, But in a husband is pronounced uxorious. VII Men grow ashamed of being so very fond; They sometimes also get a little tired (But that, of Tis´ so nominated in the bond ] Byron means the oaths of the marriage contract in the Book of Common Prayer: “. ’till death us course, is rare), and then despond: depart” (changed by the Puritans to “. do part” after 1662 ). Yet The same things cannot always be admired, he takes this quote from The Merchant of Venice (Act IV, i:258) in which the “bond” is Shylock’s mortgage on a pound of Antonio’s Yet ’t is “so nominated in the bond”, flesh. That both are tied till one shall have expired. Mourning ] That is, to bear the expense of new mourning livery Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning and house dress for the servants. Our days, and put one’s servants into mourning. VIII There’s doubtless something in domestic doings Which forms, in fact, true Love’s antithesis; Romances paint at full length people’s wooings, But only give a bust of marriages; For no one cares for matrimonial cooings, There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss: Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life? If Laura had been Petrarch’s wife f Francesco Petrarca (1304-74) wrote scores of sonnets to a married woman named “Laura” (possibly Laura di Audiberto di Noves, depicted here) whom he first saw in a church in Avignon where his family had followed the Papal court. It is doubtful they had any rela- tionship. Petrach never married but had two illegitimate chil- dren. He was a celebrated poet during his lifetime — mainly for a Latin epic poem celebrating the Roman general Scipio Africanus — and a friend of Boccaccio whom Byron admired and mentions later in Canto III. Canto 3 lines 65 — 96 IX All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage; All tragedies are finished by a death. ] This couplet has become proverbial; although other writers employ the same idea. The future states of both are left to faith, Byron is not drawing attention here to theatre, however, but to the For authors fear description might disparage unwillingness of (other) writers to examine marriage — including The worlds to come of both, or fall beneath, their own — because it is too risky. And then both worlds would punish their miscarriage; So leaving each their priest and prayer-book ready, Death. Lady ] “Death and the Lady” was the title of a senti- mental ballad first published a hundred years before Canto III, but They say no more of Death or of the Lady. still well known in the 1820’s. X The only two that in my recollection, Have sung of Heaven and Hell, or marriage, are Dante and Milton ] The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri and Paradise Lost by John Milton are epic poems that treat of Heaven Dante and Milton, and of both the affection and Hell, but have little to say about marriage. Dante married Was hapless in their nuptials, for some bar Gemma Donati in 1285 at the age of 20 and had several children Of fault or temper ruined the connection with her. But he maintained a life-long, platonic, attachment to Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of a Florentine banker, whom he (Such things, in fact, it don’t ask much to mar); immortalised in his poem. She died in 1290 at the age of twenty- But Dante’s Beatrice and Milton’s Eve four. One character in the Divine Comedy speaks of his “fierce wife” (Inferno, XVI), but he is Jacopo Rusticucci, a sodomite.
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