Mazeppa The title of several pieces by Liszt, taken from a poem of Victor Hugo. The earliest version of the musical material is the D minor study from the juvenile Étude en douze exercices (1825), revised in 1837 as 12 grandes études; none of these pieces has any descriptive title. The D minor study from this set was elaborated ten years later and published separately with the title Mazeppa; it retained this appellation in the final revision of all 12 études, published in 1851 as Études d'exécution transcendante. Liszt also used an orchestrated version of this music as part of his symphonic poem Mazeppa (1851–4), which includes additional material from the Arbeiterchor. 3/16/2017 Mazeppa (Byron) - Wikipedia Mazeppa (Byron) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mazeppa is a narrative poem written by the English romantic poet Lord Byron in 1819. It is based on a popular legend Mazeppa about the early life of Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), a Ukrainian gentleman who later became Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks.[nb 1] According to the poem, the young Mazeppa has a love affair with a Countess Theresa while serving as a page at the Court of King John II Casimir Vasa. Countess Theresa was married to a much older Count. On discovering the affair, the Count punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting the horse loose. The bulk of the poem describes the traumatic journey of the hero strapped to the horse. The poem has been praised for its "vigor of style and its sharp realization of the feelings of suffering and endurance".[1] This poem also inspired Alexander Pushkin to write his poem Poltava as an answer to Byron's poem. Published within the same covers with "Mazeppa" was the short story "A Fragment", also known as "Fragment of a Novel" and "The Burial: A Fragment", one of the earliest vampire stories in English. Overview Author Lord Byron The poem opens with a framing device: Mazeppa and the Original title Mazeppa Swedish King Charles XII, together with their armies, are retreating from the Battle of Poltava, where they were Country United Kingdom defeated by the Russians. Exhausted and war-weary, the two Language English men set up camp for the night. (Stanzas 1–2) The King Genre Narrative poem, Romanticism admires Mazeppa's horsemanship, and Mazeppa offers to tell him how he learnt this skill (Stanza 4).The poem then Publisher John Murray switches to the first person. Mazeppa describes his youth and Publication date 1819 his service as a page to King John II Casimir in Poland. (Stanza 4). He becomes acquainted with Theresa, a beautiful Orientalized woman who "had the Asiatic eye" (l. 208). She is married to a Count who is thirty years her senior (l. 155). Mazeppa falls passionately in love with her (l. 266-7), is unable to control his passions (l. 290–295), and they meet at night and consummate their love. (l. 298–300) However, the Count's men catch them together (l. 325-6) and bring him to the Count. The Count orders an unusually cruel punishment: Mazeppa is to be tied naked to a steed, which is then to be taunted and set loose. (Stanza 9) Stanzas 10 to 18 recount the steed's flight across Eastern Europe, emphasising the pain, suffering and confusion that Mazeppa feels. However, the horse has seemingly limitless energy. Mazeppa nearly dies twice. In Stanza 13, he describes himself "full in death's face" (l. 557), but is restored when the horse swims through a river. Stanza 18 concludes with a description of "an icy sickness" and his vision of a raven flying overheard, ready to feast on his corpse. However, in Stanza 19, Mazeppa awakes to find himself in bed, with his wounds being tended by a "Cossack Maid" (l. 817). In the final stanza, Mazeppa's narrative ends. The poet-narrator describes Mazeppa preparing his bed for the evening. The King is already asleep (l. 867 – 880) Sources and Inspiration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazeppa_(Byron) 1/5 3/16/2017 Mazeppa (Byron) - Wikipedia There are historical sources which verify that Ivan Mazepa served in the Polish Court to John II Casimir. However, it is unclear why he left Poland in 1663 and returned to his homeland Ukraine. There is no historical evidence to support that Mazepa was exiled from Poland because of a love affair, or that he was punished by being strapped to a wild horse.[2] However, this colourful legend was in circulation before Byron published his poem. Voltaire repeats it in History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1731). This appears to have been Byron's main source for his poem: his 'Advertisement' to the poem includes three long quotations from this work. Several critics have also speculated that Byron was familiar with the Mémoires d'Azéma (1764) by the French writer André Guillaume Contant Dorville, as there are significant similarities between the plot of that novel and of Byron's poem.[3] Byron's references to Mazepa's participation, in the Great Northern War "Mazeppa" by Théodore Géricault ca. alongside Charles XII, and their eventual defeat, are historically 1823; based on Byron's poem. accurate. Analysis Many critics see Mazeppa as a transitional work in Byron's oeuvre. Its dates of composition (1818–1819) place it between the earlier Eastern tales such as The Prisoner of Chillon (1817), which describe agonised, maudlin Byronic heroes and the later satirical, ironic Don Juan (1818– 19). Leslie Marchand argues that Mazeppa is a partly unsuccessful work, as it is torn between high emotion and lighter irony.[1] Mark Phillipson also sees Mazeppa as a transitional work of a "mongrel genre, the historical verse-romance". He argues that the poem is characterised by "moral ambivalence", and it remains unclear whether Mazeppa is a sympathetic hero or not.[4] Horace Vernet (1789–1863) The question of whether the audience is expected to sympathise with Mazeppa has long been a subject for critical discussion. W.H. Marshall (1961) argues that Mazeppa is entirely unsympathetic: a "garrulous and egoistic old man" who never atones for his crime and whose hackneyed description of his passion for Teresa "becomes tedious at once".[5] Jerome McGann (1968) takes the opposite view, arguing that Mazeppa's "wild ride" acts as an initiation process which makes him into a mature hero who is able to restrain his passions, unlike King Charles. He compares Mazeppa to Meursault, the existentialist hero of Albert Camus' novel The Stranger (1942).[6] Hubert Babinski (1974) also offers a sympathetic reading of the character Mazeppa, pointing out his kindness to Charles and the horses in the opening and closing chapter. Babinski suggests that the hero Mazeppa is "one of Byron's most realistic creations, heroic within the bounds of human potential" and that he is a "fine specimen of a man".[7] He further argues that Mazeppa's death-in-life experiences during his "wild ride" are central to the poem's meaning and symbolic of the possibilities of human transformation and rebirth. He argues that the French painters who took up the Mazeppa theme further developed this idea.[8] More recent interpretations have attempted to apply the insights of critical theory to the poem. Zbigniew Bialas (1999) offers a Saidian postcolonial reading, suggesting that Byron orientalises Eastern Europe and attempts to stamp an identity on Mazeppa, who nonetheless evades fixed national and political identities.[9] Meanwhile, Jane Stabler (2004) reads the poem through the prism of postmodern theory, suggesting that uses Byron's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazeppa_(Byron) 2/5 3/16/2017 Mazeppa (Byron) - Wikipedia Mazeppa as an example of a poem which "draws attention to the fictive contours of history".[10] More recently, Thomas McLean (2012) considers Mazeppa "Byron's Polish poem" in light of the British fascination with Tadeusz Kosciuszko and sees Mazeppa as an empowering figure for Europe's other smaller nations.[11]> Literary significance and reception Babinski points out that although Mazeppa received a flurry of reviews upon publication, later critics of Byron have rarely addressed the poem.[12] Certainly there is less scholarship on Mazeppa than many of Byron's other narrative poems, and Mazeppa does not appear in Byron anthologies such as the 1978 Norton Critical Anthology.[13] However, Byron's poem was both popular and influential in the romantic period. The French poet Victor Hugo acknowledged Byron when he produced his own poem 'Mazeppa' for his 1829 collection Les Orientales, which in turn became the literary inspiration for a Transcendental Étude and a symphonic poem by Franz Liszt. Several French artists produced paintings depicting Mazeppa's "wild ride" including Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, and Claude-Joseph Vernet. Nathaniel Currier and Ives has painted 4 paintings about Mazeppa around 1846 : "Mazeppa", "Mazeppa 2", "Mazeppa 3" and "Mazeppa 4". Paintings are exhibited in The Bridgeman Art Library.[14][15] Currier and Ives published an illustrated edition of Byron's poem in 1846. The American lithographer Nathaniel Currier, has painted 4 paintings about Mazeppa around 1846 : "Mazeppa", "Mazeppa 2", "Mazeppa 3" and "Mazeppa 4". John Frederick Herring, an English painter, has also painted several paintings about Mazeppa : around 1833, he painted "Mazeppa Surrounded by Horses" and "Mazeppa Pursued by Wolves" and in 1842 "MAZEPPA". In Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin's narrative poem Poltava (1828–29) deals with a later stage of Ivan Mazepa's life, his switching of allegiance from the Russians to the Swedes and his defeat in the Battle of Poltava. Pushkin's poem, which opens with an epigraph from Byron's Mazeppa, later became the subject of an opera by Tchaikovsky.