Read for #TheIrishReadathon 2020
Byron in love - the nobility, arrogance and sheer theatre of Byron's life.
Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his gigantic flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal.
Everything about Lord George Gordon Byron was a paradox - insider and outsider, beautiful and deformed, serious and facetious, profligate but on occasion miserly, and possessed of a fierce intelligence trapped forever in a child's magic and malices. He was also a great poet, but as he reminded us, poetry is a distinct faculty and has little to do with the individual life of its creator.
Edna O'Brien's exemplary biography focuses upon the diverse and colourful women in Byron's life.
To be honest, I didn't know much about Byron until I read this book. I thought he was a poet, romantic, a bit fluffy probably - that's how wrong I was.
This biography is mostly centered around Byron's love life and what a love life he had - claiming more than 200 lovers ! Men, women, the important moment for him was the falling in love. As soon as daily life set in, he wasn't interested any more. Except for his sister, of course, the one woman he couldn't legally live with, even if he had a child with her. He didn't care much about his children, either. Apparently, he cared a lot about his animals, his colourful menagerie followed him everywhere he went, even abroad.
I didn't know about his foot and how much it weighed on his life, I didn't know he loved men as well as women, I didn't know he always carried his guns with him, even at home, I didn't know he spent so much time abroad. To sum it all, like I said, I knew almost nothing about him.
After reading this book, I know a lot more and really, if I could ever meet him in real life, I'd immediately get away as I could ! I bet he was handsome, had a sweet voice and probably a lot of charm, but the man was really insufferable. Like those geniuses that, because they are geniuses, believe they can get away with anything. He was capable, however, of generosity as much as he was of cruelty but his generosity impressed me a lot less than his cruelty.
When I closed this book, I felt mostly relieved that this was over, I felt like I'd been running a marathon trying to catch up with this larger than life character ! I gave it 3 stars instead of more because there were times in the book that I liked a lot better than others, ups and downs in the way it was written. And I would have loved to know more about Shelley, Percy and Mary, and their friendship instead of reading about it only near the end.
It's also funny because I read Trelawny's biography last century and remember loving it. Somehow, it seems Edna O'Brien doesn't like him much, which makes me want to re-read that book to see what I could have missed !
Do I want to read Byron's works now ? I'm not sure. Maybe. I know his "She walks in beauty" poem like everyone, and the quotes in the book were... not bad, but the man himself threw me off a bit. I'll see if I find something at the library, but I'm in no hurry.
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