Lord Byron’s Epic Poem “Don Juan,” Annotated by Isaac Asimov and Illustrated by Milton Glaser

Despite having fathered Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, Lord Byron (January 22, 1788–April 19, 1824) is best remembered for his poetry, countless collections of which have been published in the centuries since he put ink to paper. But arguably the best such volume is a rare vintage gem published by Doubleday — which also commissioned Salvador Dalí’s illustrations for the essays of Montaigne and Edward Gorey’s paperback covers for literary classics — in 1972. The lavish thousand-page tome Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan (public library) presents Byron’s Don Juan — one of the great epic poems in the English language, launching an audacious and timeless attack on greed, complacency, and hypocrisy — with annotations by beloved writer Isaac Asimov, a man of strong opinions and a large heart, and breathlessly gorgeous pen-and-ink illustrations by none other than Milton Glaser, creator of the iconic I♥NY logo and celebrated as the greatest graphic designer of our time.
What makes the pairing especially poetic is that, besides their match of cultural stature, Asimov and Glaser have in common a certain sensibility, a shared faith in the human spirit — Asimov with his religion of humanism and Glaser with his belief in the kindness of the universe.

To be sure, Asimov takes no prisoners with his annotations — or, rather, plays along with Byron — beginning with the opening verse, which reads:

FRAGMENT
I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling—
Because at least the past were passed away—
And for the future—(but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly today,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say—the future is a serious matter—
And so—for God’s sake—hock and soda water!

Beneath it, Asimov winks:

This isolated stanza has nothing to do with the poem, but it epitomizes Byron’s utter lack of reverence for anything—even himself—and therefore sets the tone of what follows, even if it is divorced from the content.

After Byron’s third stanza, which begins with “You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know” and ends “… because you soar too high, Bob, / And fall, for lack of moisture quite a dry, Bob!,” Asimov, who wears the many hats of historian, etymologist, lexicographer, literary critic, and cultural commentator, adds an entertaining and educational clarifier:

“A dry Bob” seems to have been then-current slang for intercourse without ejaculation (“lack of moisture”). The use of the phrase shocked and (of course) titillated the public and was a particularly effective way of indicating that Southey went through the motions of writing poetry without producing anything poetic.

Though most of Asimov’s annotations offer biographical and historical context, they are by no means dry or bland. He imbues his commentary with his characteristic snark: After another Byron verse that reads “And recollect a poet nothing loses / in giving to his brethren their full meed / of merits, and complaint of present days / Is not the certain path to future praise,” Asimov snidely remarks:

It is obvious that Byron emphatically does not follow his own advice, but then few people do.

Indeed, Asimov seems entranced by Byron’s contradictions. In another note, he writes:

There was a great deal of cousin-marriage in Byron’s family. But that was not all. Perhaps the most scandalous item in the Byronic array of scandal was the fact that Byron seems to have made his half-sister, Augusta, his mistress, and to have had a daughter by her. He was fascinated by his own action in this respect and dealt with incest over and over in his writing.

Asimov’s own witty and spirited irreverence comes through once again in a comment on Byron’s usage of “wh—” and “G—d” in the fourth canto, wherein Asimov adds to literary history’s finest meditations on censorship:

Like “damn,” “whore” could not be spelled out, though what sense of purity is served by a missing “o” is known only to the Devil and to censors.
[…]
“God,” like “whore,” sometimes requires a missing “o” to be acceptable to the censor. Surely only a censor’s mind could find such neatly equal embarrassment in these two words.

Asimov weaves his own reservations about religion into the annotations, remarking in one about Byron’s line “‘But heaven,’ as Cassio says, ‘is above all—'” in canto nine:

The phrase “heaven is above all” is a kind of last resort of puzzled mankind. If problems are insoluble, leave them then to God, to whom nothing (by definition) is insoluble. Thus, in Shakespeare’s Othello, when Cassio is tempted into drinking by the villainous Iago, the former quickly finds himself befuddled by alcohol and must find refuge in “Well; God’s above all…”

Above all, however, Asimov seems to peer straight into Byron’s soul, discerning his motives and intentions with equal parts clarity and compassion. In the twelfth canto, where Byron writes “I thought, at setting off, about two dozen / Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading, / If that my Pegasus should not be founder’d, / I think to canter gently through a hundred,” Asimov remarks:

Byron may well have intended to keep writing Don Juan all his life as a perfect vehicle for satirizing the age. But, alas, he was approaching the end.

In his final footnote, Asimov revisits the subject of Don Juan’s intended fate:

Byron always maintained he had no plan for Don Juan, but simply improvised as he went along, taking all the world as his target. And, indeed, as we go from canto to canto, the plot grows thinner, the digressions longer, the satire deeper, so that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that no matter how long he had lived and how long written, Byron would never have finished Don Juan nor progressed enormously with the plot, even though the number of cantos had reached the century mark. At one time he said he would send Juan to every nation in turn, satirizing each in its own fashion, and have him end an extreme radical like Cloots in the Reign of Terror, or else to end by sending him either to Hell or to an unhappy marriage, whichever was worse.
And yet — I wonder if Byron might not have relented. Might he not have had Don Juan visit Hell, but have had him saved from damnation by the intercession of the shade of Haidée, surely to be found in Heaven? Might he not, then, in the end, have married Leila, the little girl he had saved at Izmail, and settled down to the blameless life of husband, father, and country squire?

Though Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan is, sadly, long out of print, I was fortunate enough to find a surviving copy of this out-of-print treasure at Heather O’Donnell’s wonderful Honey & Wax, which is a gift to bibliophiles everywhere and a heartening game-changer for the world of rare books. Copies can also be found elsewhere online as well as at some better-stocked public libraries, and are well worth the splurge or the trip.
Complement this treat with other rare artistic editions of literary classics, including Matisse’s 1935 etchings for Ulysses, Picasso’s drawings for a naughty ancient Greek comedy, William Blake’s paintings for Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Salvador Dalí’s prolific illustrations for Don Quixote in 1946, the essays of Montaigne in 1947, Alice in Wonderland in 1969, and Romeo & Juliet in 1975.

Asclepius course January 2019 Satire in 18th Century British Society:

This courses lasts for thirteen weeks in 2 hourly sessions. It costs £65. For more information ring 07592330467 or email squabs@hotmail.co.uk

The 18th century was one in which exaltation of wit and reason came to the forefront of literature in the form of both Horatian and Juvenalian satires, which, through keen observation and sharp nimbleness of thought, exposed the superficial follies and moral corruption of society during the neoclassical period in Britain. Underneath the enlightenment ideals of rationality, order and knowledge, society embraced a pervasive obsession with “decorum,” a façade of established traditions and vanities, as well as an innate sense of moral and political supremacy. Satires during this period aimed to point out the shortcomings of society through ridiculing accepted standards of thought, exposing Britain’s flaws and chastising the hypocrisy of the time. Enlightenment writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used different mediums of satire, different types of logic, and different targets of ridicule in order to shine a light on separate aspects of British society, providing much-needed criticism of the profuse moral corruption of a society that sometimes seemed to forget the true ideals of its age.

Pope and Swift, well known for their sharply perceptive works, both looked to rhetorical masters of the rational, classical past and their separate satirical archetypes for inspiration. Pope, in his The Rape of the Lock, is Horatian in tone, delicately chiding society in a sly but polished voice by holding up a mirror to the follies and vanities of the upper class. Pope does not actively attack the self-important pomp of the British aristocracy, but rather presents it in such a way that gives the reader a new perspective from which to easily view the actions in the story as foolish and ridiculous. A gentle mockery of the upper class, more delicate and lyrical than his brutal counterpart, Pope nonetheless is able to effectively illuminate the moral degradation of society to the public. Swift’s A Modest Proposal, however, is a quintessential Juvenalian satire, shockingly revealing an often-overlooked dimension of British colonialism with regards to the Irish through savage ridicule and disdainful contempt. A bitter attack, Swift’s morbid tale delineates an immoral and perverse solution to Ireland’s economical woes using bizarre yet brilliantly clear logic and a detached tone in order to attack indifference to the poor. Swift’s satirical tone, relying on realism and harshness to carry its message, is much more acerbic than his counterpart, perfectly displaying Juvenalian satire’s ability to shock and ridicule.

The Rape of the Lock assimilates the masterful qualities of a heroic epic, yet is applied satirically to a seemingly petty egotistical elitist quarrel. During this time of literary prosper, epic poems such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost were held in high regard, due to their significant subject matter, compelling heroes, and rich text. Pope follows this grand form in The Rape of the Lock, ultimately achieving a whimsical mock epic through his mélange of the trifling and timeless. Despite the likeness to historical epic pieces, this work displays a light and playful tone, which illuminates the idiosyncratic nature of the poem’s central conflict, the Baron stealing, or “raping”, Belinda’s illustrious lock of hair. “The meeting points the sacred hair dissever from the fair head, forever and forever! Then flashed the living lightening from her eyes, and screams of horror rend the affrighted skies” (Pope 153-156). This embellished and exaggerated quotation is representative of the fundamental elements of Horatian satire used in this mock epic. Personification is employed to place emphasis on the seemingly transcendent effects of Belinda’s terror, as her screams “rend the affrighted skies.” As read, this example makes a mockery of the traditional epic, suggesting that the removal of Belinda’s lock has detrimental and almost divine implications. Pope uses personification extensively throughout, to add to the heroic colouring of the poem and in general elevating the subject matter.

In contrast to Pope’s epic style in The Rape of the Lock, Swift models his A Modest Proposal after a traditional staid economic proposal for the purpose of inclusion in British governmental policy. Swift, however, spins the standard on its head, shaping his daring proposal on the basis of ruthless, uninhibited economic gain at the expense of the Britain’s Irish colony. When the proposal was published anonymously in 1729, Ireland was in a state of distraught after essentially being “eaten”, or consumed by the British Empire. The protestant British completely suppressed the Catholic Irish population, and utterly neglected to consider the welfare of the significantly large impoverished population. As a result, Swift composed this harsh satirical proposal, suggesting that the Irish sell their children as food, in order to escape their economic despair. “The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders” (Swift 1115). This quotation is demonstrative of Swift’s economist persona, and leads the reader to believe that the proposal is serious in nature, and is meant to be interpreted literally. Other than his use of true Juvenalian satire, and inherent irony, Swift neglects to apply other literary devices to the proposal, due to its formal, academic nature.

Evidently, both Pope and Swift had a motive behind composing their two compelling yet divergent satirical works. Pope fashioned the characters of Belinda and the Baron as representations of Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre, Catholic British aristocrats who possessed an infatuation with decorum during the neoclassical period. These characters represent the facsimile of 18th century British personal ideals, and thus take the roles of pseudo-heroes in The Rape of the Lock. More apparent than Swift’s A Modest Proposal, Pope uses his elaborate mock epic to serve as a metaphor for the vain and superficial period in British history. The poem was intended to grasp the attention of aristocrats and society in general, compelling them to humorously realize their shortcomings, and spark a cultural shift. However, Swift’s A Modest Proposal is politically motivated, and undermined the British Empire’s colonization and treatment of the Irish. The proposal is presented in fine logical sequence and is seemingly well calculated. The “shock value” behind the suggestions and hidden accusations served as a testament to the moral inadequacies and limitless political behavior of the British. The work was deliberately published anonymously so Swift could avoid severe personal implications.

These two works of satire express their authors’ profound dissatisfaction with their society. Literature that pushes for reform of any kind, social or political, acts, along with entrenched tradition itself, as a dialectic force; it is the synthesis of that which is and that which is wanted that nudges society to a certain direction. Both Pope and Swift used their considerable literary talents to illuminate contemporary society, forcing them to acknowledge the shortcomings of the Neoclassical period. Through The Rape of the Lock and A Modest Proposal, Pope and Swift respectively aspired to influence the British mindset of their age and inspire it to move forward into a new era of true enlightenment with regards to social and political morality.

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References

Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock.” Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, S. & Stillinger, J. 2000, The Norton anthology of English literature, 8th edn, Norton, New York. 

Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, S. & Stillinger, J. 2000, The Norton anthology of English literature, 8th edn, Norton, New York.