And Of The Other Villains?
Every English teacher I've encountered so far has seen fit to speak disparagingly of Byron, portraying him at best as a free spirit who made numerous mistakes, and at worst as an amoral curmudgeon. While Byron was definitely not a model of morality, religious or otherwise, it strikes me as odd that he would be the bone to chew on, when there are plenty of other grim figures in literary history. Such be the price of fame.
“Nowadays things often start this way, the end at the beginning I mean. In the old days people had to wait years before they were allowed to go to bed and then found out that they didn’t really like each other, it had all been a mirage of their glands. If you start the other way round you won’t need to find out whether you really care.”--Arthur Koestler, Arrival and Departure
[ ... ]
“The whole point is that if you knock a woman about for long enough and get on her nerves and wear her down, there comes a moment when she suddenly feels how silly all this struggling and kicking is, so much ado about nothing.”
Am I saying that rape should be taboo in literature? Definitely not! But if you're going to bother raving about the amorality of select authors in the first place, at least develop a frame of reference that doesn't make you look a little silly, and a known rapist writing on rape constitutes something 'more' than Byron's semi-solipsistic angst.
Postscript -- I've never read Koestler, and don't know much about his themes or literary philosophies. If one wishes to attack Byronian "will to power" or clumsy satire (a la The Vision of Judgement), go to, good fellow; but must we be subjected to these repetitive character studies?
3 responses:
I'm a bit confused here. There's surely enough in Byron's *work* that's bad for it to be worth chewing on a bit, given his stature -- his personal life needn't enter into it except insofar as it informs his writing. Koestler on the other hand, no matter bad a person he might have been, kept that out of his writing except in a few cases. Those cases such as _Arrival and Departure_ deserve criticism for their *content*; the fact that it arises from firsthand experience is neither here nor there. Wagner was a dispicable person, but that has nothing at all to do with criticizing his music.
That's my point exactly. Even after all these years, there's still a cult of character around Byron. It just struck me as odd that he would be the banner of "bad" authors when there's much "worse" out there.
I guess my confusion was just that I think it's justifiable (though disputable) to say that Byron was "worse" than Koestler as judged by their *works*, though not necessarily by their lives. So Koestler being a rapist doesn't really get him off the hook on that score.
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