Lord Byron: "My Mind Is A Fragment"

Happy 225th, Lord Byron!  The portions of this entry will move fragmentally, in honor of his Lordship.

200 years ago today, Lord Byron turned 25, footloose, if not exactly carefree in London.  I've been reading around in his letters, his journal from later in 1813, and a bit of poetry composed around that time to enjoy Byronic wit, self-absorption, and poetic talent.  I want to share a few bits from (or about) Byron's “The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale,”  composed in pieces, fragmentary by design, from later in his 25th year, 1813, begun in March and published in early June.  ["Giaour" rhymes with "tower".]

Opening Lines: No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian’s grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,*
First greets the homeward-veering skiff,
High o’er the land he saved in vain—
When shall such hero live again?

*A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulcher of Themistocles. [Byron’s note]

My note:  The concern for the missing hero, the lost hero, the failed hero haunts the works, poetic and dramatic.   Byron’s excellent Don Juan opens with a call for a hero too, for none of the potential heroes of the period really qualify; he is forced to turn to the old seducer Don Juan (which for Byron & the English of  the time rhymes, quixotically perhaps for us, with “true one").


A favorite passage:
The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes,
   Is like the Scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly search’d by thousand throes,
    And maddening in her ire,
One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourish’d for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain.—
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt by fire;**
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!—

**Alluding to the dubious suicide of the scorpion, so placed for experiment by gentle philosophers.  Some maintain that the position of the sting, when turned towards the head, is merely a convulsive movement; but others have actually brought in the verdict ‘Felo de se’. The scorpions are surely interested in a speedy decision of the question; as, if once fairly established as insect Catos, they will probably be allowed to live as long as they think proper, without being martyred for the sake of an hypothesis.

My note: I like the contrast between the poetic and the prosaic, between the melodramatic verse and the contrasting skeptical/satirical explanation.

Finally, a line from Byron's journal of 1813:

For my part, I adhere (in liking) to my Fragment.  It is no wonder that I wrote one -- my mind is a fragment.

--Byron's Letters & Journals: Volume 3: 1812-1814 -- 'Alas! The Love Of Women!',
edited by Leslie A. Marchand,
Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA,
1974.