English Language and Literature Vol. 58 No. 3 (2012) 379-94 Byron’s Reworking of Thomas Campbell: Unfolding Gloom in Darkness Jie-Ae Yu I One of the literary newspapers of Byron’s time, The London Chronicle dated 17 July 1816, recorded that this year, when Byron composed Darkness, was conceived by contemporary people as the “time without summer” (7). The documentation of this historical archive instances a vivid meteorological description of the “inexplicable weather” and “bizarre blackness” which brought about cold temperatures across all the European countries (12-13). Most scientists, who ardently searched for the main cause of the awful weather, discovered that large spots may now be seen upon the sun’s disk, and that these horrid atmospheric conditions also provoked the “ridiculous apprehensions and absurd predictions” of many inhabitants (Paley 15-16). Unacknowledged to the multitude of the time, the loathsome weather was actually aroused from the “volcanic ash” which spread from the sudden eruption of Mount Tambora located in Indonesia (Vail 187-88). According to one of Byron’s letters dated 8 September 1816, the poet who temporarily stayed in Switzerland in June- July 1816 did experience this repugnant condition whereby he captured the inspiration of procreating the poem Darkness (Byron’s Letters and Journals 5: 91-92). In addition to this circumstantial occurrence which affected Byron’s writing, it was his close literary relationship with Thomas Campbell, one of the Romantic poets renowned in London high society. Campbell wrote The Last Man in 1806, before Byron composed Darkness in 1816. Campbell was one of the few contemporary poets whom Byron revered, as he declared in a satirical poem, The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Byron had a great estimation of Campbell as a poet and editor next to Walter Scott and Samuel Rogers, particularly for his classical poem The Pleasures of Hope written in 1799 (Byron’s Letters and Journals 3: 107). Numerous textual evidences of Byron’s Darkness 380 Jie-Ae Yu show that Byron did acknowledge Campbell’s The Last Man before the composition of the poem in July-August 1816. Yet, Byron’s Darkness reveals his creative reconstruction of Campbell’s work into his poem in accordance with his persistent conception of distress and bleakness prevalent both in the human mind and the world. With regard to the critical receptions of Darkness, few literary review- ers during Byron’s time explored the poem, but the same work drew the interest of some critics in our time despite its small scale. Modern com- mentators, for instance Caroline Franklin, Morton Paley, and Terence Hoagwood, have explored the poem with the following views: “the inevitable extinguishing of the light of the human mind” (Franklin 101), “Byron’s satirical response to the millennial vision” (Paley 108), and “the writer’s dreary thinking of established conceptions” (Hoagwood 97- 98). Among modern reviewers, it was Jane Stabler who pointed out the “resemblances” between The Last Man and Darkness. However, she raised this thought-provoking issue only in a few lines, tracing Campbell’s unreserved articulation about Byron’s “obvious acknowledg- ment” of his poem The Last Man (41). She did not expand her own intrigu- ing suggestion with coherence and elaboration in her subsequent writings. My contention is that in spite of the useful commentaries on Darkness, reviewers have paid little attention to Byron’s inventive reconstructions of Campbell’s The Last Man in the work. I would argue that the poet reuses Campbell’s work while pursuing his sustaining notions of distress and gloom, which he also expands in other various poems written in 1816—the wretched, turbulent year for the author after his self-exile from England. The article will examine how Byron productively adopts Campbell’s poem into his work by deploying his persistent conception of murkiness, unique structural pattern, and efficient images. While dealing with this matter, the article will refer to Byron’s previous work “My Soul is Dark” (1814) and other 1816 writings where he unravels his relentless contemplations and psychological dispositions to turmoil, bleakness, and devastation. II One of the important features of Byron’s poem “My Soul Is Dark” (1814) is to foreground the germ of the thematic motif of gloom which he significantly develops in his later poem Darkness. In this earlier work, Byron’s Reworking of Thomas Campbell 381 the writer investigates how the poetic speaker conceives inner chaos and responds to such struggle deeply grained in his heart. The main situation of the poem is that the speaker reveals a deep sorrow to a minstrel play- ing harp, in order to require a prompt consolation for his heavy, turbulent heart. According to the tone of the commencing stanza, the speaker believes in the cathartic effect of the music, whereby his “tears” can “cease to burn” his painful “brain” (7-8). Despite his great expectation for the change of his mood into a light one, what he actually finds is the irreducible working of the internal blackness and disturbance inherent within his mind. As Jean-Paul Forster usefully commented, one of the author’s main concerns in this poem is to concentrate on unveiling the “inmost recesses” of human heart (72). The gloomy state is so overwhelm- ing that it exploits the speaker’s ardent wish for turning himself away from the current, undesirable moment. Contrary to his intention to have a psy- chological relief, he rather plunges into the nadir of dark and despondency: My soul is dark—Oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs over mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear, That sound shall charm it forth again; If in these eyes there lurk a tear, It will flow, and cease to burn my brain. (1-8) In the Early Tales such as The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, and The Bride of Abydos written between 1812 and 1814, Byron uncovers the protagonists’ repressed manner in which they do not spell out why they have been enduring the long-term pain in their unpleasant heart. They usually lock up their past experiences charged with guilt and remorse, intensely forbearing the present darkness in their internal sphere. In con- trast with this way of treating the buried aspect of the protagonists in the Turkish Tales, the speaker of “My Soul is Dark” vigorously unravels his present sorrow, having realized that the sad music is more beneficial to undertake his melancholic mood than the “melting murmurs.” His earnest wish for the minstrel is indicated in these lines: “bid the strain be wild and deep, / Nor let thy notes of joy be first / I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, / Or else this heavy heart will burst” (10-13). Unlike the “impossibility of articulation” (Curtis 103) evident in the main figures of the Tales, the speaker of “My Soul is Dark” is straightforward in reveal- 382 Jie-Ae Yu ing his inner dreariness. He now implores the same minstrel to procreate “wild and deep” sound instead of begetting “joyful” notes for taking relief from his mournful bosom. The poet establishes and intensifies the gloom inherent within the speaker by means of depicting his own direct revelation of the interior turmoil and frustration. The outspoken attitude of the speaker’s internal sphere contributes to featuring a remarkable transition in Byron’s poetical world, in that he does not evade the harsh moment but undergoes it as one part of the inevitable condition which “hath been by sorrow nursed / And ached in sleepless silence, long” (13-14). As Martin Garrett beneficially pointed out, one of Byron’s poetic concerns is to investigate a main figure who has been “haunted by his tortured feelings” (47). The irresistible sense of “doom” deeply entangled in the speaker’s mind is noticeable, for the poet extends this conception of sustaining distress to his other 1816 poems. In Darkness he broadens the scale and manner of depicting his persistent idea on the gloomy thought, by reworking The Last Man written by Campbell. Darkness is obviously the author’s continuing elaboration on the thematic motif of gloom explored in “My Soul is Dark,” but he expands the personal and internal sphere of the previous short poem into the cosmic and external range of darkness in the longer work. Byron still includes the interior aspects of the multitude in the prolonged poem, but what he primarily considers is the social and cosmic facets in dealing with the subject of murkiness. With regard to the contextual evidence for Byron’s awareness of Campbell’s work, Campbell himself mentioned Byron’s recognition of what he previously wrote in The Last Man. In 1817 Campbell revealed the similitude between The Last Man and Darkness to Byron’s close friend, Thomas Moore: the fact is, many years ago I had the idea of this Last Man in my head, and distinctly remember speaking of the subject to Lord Byron. I recognised, when I read his poem ‘Darkness,’ some of the traits of the picture which I meant to draw. On soberly considering the matter, I am entirely disposed to think Lord Byron has intentionally taken the thoughts. (Beattie 423) As Jane Stabler keenly but shortly remarked, Campbell’s reception of Byron embedded a “rancor” in accordance with the tone of his conversa- tion with Moore (41). Although Campbell clearly noticed the similarity between his work and Byron’s poem, he little mentioned the detailed Byron’s Reworking of Thomas Campbell 383 aspects of the resemblance. This raises a thought-provoking question about in what sense Byron adopts Campbell’s The Last Man and how his poem departs from the previously written work.