One thing that struck me as strange when reading the first canto of “Don Juan” was how much Byron writes about other romantic poets, often in a critical manner. Throughout the course, I have had a little bit of trouble understanding the relationships between these poets both on and off the page. I find it is sometimes unclear whether these figures saw each other as deeply connected in their unique relationships to the world through poetry or more so maybe as coworkers within a bit of an unorthodox profession. With this in mind, it always catches me off guard when a romantic poet criticizes another.
Throughout the first canto, Byron says a number of things about Wordsworth and other poets of his time. I will list the most notable below.
“So that their plan and prosody are eligible, Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.”
“He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued His self-communion with his own high soul,”
“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope; Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Because the first is crazed beyond all hope, The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy”
Byron’s criticism in this canto is intense. First, he is claiming that there is an element of expression in Wordsworth’s writing that is so misguided and embellished that it is simply incomprehensible. There is a clear difference in the way Byron writes compared to the other canonical poets we have read thus far. His narration gives his work a unique sense of honesty, and thus his work seems a bit less ornamental than other writers of his period. Obviously, Byron was aware of this literary directness in some sense, and it is the lack of clarity in Wordsworth’s writing that lead Byron to make the claim that Wordsworth did not achieve “His self-communion with his own high soul.” Somewhere in between the works of Milton and the works of Wordsworth, Byron lost faith in the clarity of literature due to the intricate work of authors like Coleridge and Wordsworth. In poems like “Don Juan,” I see Byron attempting to subvert this romantic intricacy with casual language and narrative simplicity in order to restore the he saw in older literature.
I’m genuinely curious if these poets that criticize others of their time are ever motivated by jealousy? Or if they actually have such a fundamental difference in beliefs that they feel compelled to say something?
My sense is that Byron is more less just being provocative here, not that he’s being sincere in his dissing of his contemporaries. He’s certainly trying to distinguish himself from them, so is partly doing it competitively, but he’s also just being ironic. Claiming to prefer Milton, Dryden, and Pope is utterly disingenuous, I think, since the latter two are pretty conservative (Toryish), and Milton is of course speaking for God. He’s sending a signal that sincerity itself is to be mocked (which is probably Wordsworth’s sin for him).