Cocola.renunciations of Rhyme in Byrons Don Juan

7/28/2019 Cocola.renunciations of Rhyme in Byrons Don Juan

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Jim Cocola 841SEL 49, 4 (Autumn 2009): 841862ISSN 0039-3657

Renunciations of Rhyme inByrons Don Juan

JIM COCOLA

Carelessly I sing, George Gordon, Lord Byron proclaims nearthe midpoint oDon Juan, epitomizing the casual air that marks somany o the hundreds o ottava rima stanzas in his monumentalmock-epic.1 As the poem unolds, Byron continues to harp onthis spontaneous inventiveness, explaining that note or text, / Inever know the word which will come next, that I cannot stopto alter words once written (9.41.3278; 9.77.612). He write[s]

whats uppermost, without delay, and

never straining hard to versiy,I rattle on exactly as Id talk

With any body in a ride or walk.(14.7.53; 15.19.1502)

He thus aliates himsel with the Improvvisatore tradition inItalian letters, aecting to write less or vocation than or avoca-tion (15.20.160).2

Is this apparent spontaneity truly the mark o an amateur?Several have concluded as much. One contemporary periodical,The British Critic, dismissed Don Juanas a work o fippant dog-grel.3 Robert Southey, hardly lacking or reasons to begrudgeByron, denigrated the oul blot and act o high treason thathe ound the poem to be, condemning the very easy quality oits Hudibrastic rhymes.4 Personal vendettas aside, the notiono Byron-as-amateur persisted well beyond the Romantic period.

Among the Victorians, Matthew Arnold thought Byrons style so

slovenly, slipshod, and inelicitous as to suggest bad worksman-

Jim Cocola is assistant proessor o literature, lm, and media in the De-

partment o Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

841


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ship.5 In the twentieth century, John Churton Collins ound inByron so bad an ear as to betray an ingrained coarseness

replete with jarring notes and cacophonies that were otenhorrible, while T. S. Eliot decried Byrons schoolboy commando the language.6

Separated by generations, these more recent critiques nev-ertheless retain certain elements o the ad hominemattack thatplagued Byron throughout his lie. These latter dismissals, so otenproceeding on aesthetic grounds, also betray an implicit reactionagainst Byrons avored literary pose, described by Alan Bold asthat o a devil-may-care man-o-action who knocks o cantos with

eortless ease in his spare time.7

I this aectation o indierencehas occasioned considerable oense, it was also, or the ByronoDon Juan, a version o sel-deense. As Truman Guy Steanconcluded, one does not expect a Donny Johnny in a bedroomarce to cause a Byron to worry with a word or phrase.8

Yet, as W. H. Auden knew, rhyming is a much more arduousand worrisome (and thereore absurdly comic) task in Englishthan in Italian. Thus, the Improvvisatore who manages to rhymein English or pages and pages on end evokes a curious mixture

o admiration, astonishment, and envy, especially when able towin a air share o guaws in the process.9 I Byron thereoresucceeds in his attempts to giggle and make giggle, he does soprecisely because o the considerable eorts he has invested intothe elaborate ormal apparatus oDon Juan.10 In keeping with itscalculation o carelessness, it is a poem replete with subterra-nean revisionsi less and less thoroughly sorom rst to last.11Even as it presents an easy aade characterized by the Byronicarbitrary, the deeper strata o Don Juan reveal that Byronsmethod was anything but arbitrary and was, in act, the producto many careul choices and complex motivations.12

BYRON THE RHYMER

Renouncing some drat cantos entirely, renouncing bits andpieces o other drat lines, only then to renounce the very act orevision itsel in the later movements o the poem, Byrons renun-ciations, in their many orms, prove to be the paradigmatic gestureoDon Juan. What, specically, does Byron think to renounce inhis magnum opus? A partial list would include authority in its

various guises: starting with authorship itsel and moving on tobourgeois morality, the classicizing impulse, classical liberalism,the Enlightenment, the empire and its metropolis, the institutions


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o marriage and the monarchy, the literary establishment, and,more generally, the dominant modes in culture, politics, religion,

and society. These renunciations, ranging in tone rom the satiri-cal to the bitter to the resigned, prove consistently articulateasPeter Graham explained o Byron, he was the most eloquent ohatersand never more eective than when communicated viarhyme.13

Yet, i Byron staked much o his poetic claim on a acility withrhyme, as the sel-appointed grand Napoleon o the realms orhyme, he also took a rather skeptical and at times deprecatingstance toward the very practice o rhyming (and, by extension,

toward the practice o poetry) (11.55.440). At the outset o hispoetic career, in a preace to Hours o Idleness(1807), Byron ac-knowledged that the challenge to produce any thing entirely new,in an age so ertile in rhyme, would be a Herculean task.14 A ew

years later, passing through his middle twenties, he proessed topreer action over and above writing, or which he claimed to carelittle, and least o all, rhyme.15 Sensing that no one should bea rhymer who could be anything better, Byron here consideredrenouncing rhyme altogether, declaring that there would be no

more rhyme oror rather,romme. I have taken my leave romthat stage, and henceorth will mountebank it no longer.16

Nevertheless, Byron saw t to renege repeatedly on this re-nunciation, and the rhymes oDon Juancome down to posterityas both the proo and the pudding o his most majestic inconsis-tency. Jerome J. McGann has traced this tendency to embodyan opposing mind and will that reuses to accept or assent toits poetic roots in the concluding movement oChilde HaroldsPilgrimage (1816).17 Thereater, Byrons reusals o acceptance

were so complete that he would assent to nothing, not even tohis reusal to assent. In his later works, Byrons opposing mindand will grew ever more resolute, rom Beppo(1818) to Mazeppa(1819) to Marino Faliero(1821), and nally to the unbounded seto opposing orces that became Don Juan.

As his anti-career unolded, Byrons sense o rhyme evolvedrom a perspective at once undamental and Manichean (rhymeunctioning variously as a Herculean achievement and / or a

worthless endeavor) to a stance that was nallyhow else to putitByronic. No longer compelled toward orthodoxy in rhyme,

Byron justied his looser approach by asserting that one mightas well want a Midnightall starsas rhyme all perect.18 Byron,thereore, more or lessrhymes throughoutDon Juan, a poem hedescribes as containing a given quantity o rhyme, by employing


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what he terms an irregularity o chime (11.90.715; 15.20.158).Predisposed toward imperect rhymes, Byron displayed a pro-

gressively greater openness toward eminine rhyme in his nalyears, until, in Don Juan, it came to prove the rule rather thanthe exception.19

Reusing to paper over his poetics in mock-epic mode, Byroninstead acknowledgesand even emphasizesthe very articeo the rhyming unction. That which he alluded to in a pair ocancelled marginal notes as the wicked necessity o rhyming

works in many instances to drive the narrative arc oDon Juan,whose details are thus limited by the strictures o its orm.20 Byron

conesses as much in a late stanza o the poem, describing thevery act o poetic composition as an unstable practice at hazardas the rhyme may run (13.83.662).

This hazard emerges with particular clarity in Byrons enu-merations o military heroes, valorized less or their bravery thanor their sonority. Gallantry aside, Byron acknowledged the legionso omitted French patriots with awkward monikers to be Exceed-ingly remarkable at times, / But not at all adapted to my rhymes(1.3.234). Likewise, the conjured Russian patriots whose names

proved discords o narration, which could never be tune[d] . . .into rhyme were thereore let unmentioned (7.16.121, 1212).With sense subordinated to sound, Byrons poetic mellifuous-

ness tends to teeter on the brink o meaninglessness, the poemssignicance all but trumped by its grandiloquence. This dynamicis urther ueled by Byrons ostensible indierence toward certainrhyming pairs in the course o a poem wholly given over to virtuos-ity in rhyme.21 When conronted with an objectionable situation,Byron describes it as a shame, / A libel, or whateer you please torhyme on, implicitly conessing that judgment depends to somegreater or lesser extent on a linguistic exigency not necessarily ohis own making (6.94.7478). In a more authoritative moment,he reiterates the same theme even more explicitly in his apologyor cynicism, explaining that

I I sneer sometimes,It is because I cannot well do less,

And now and then it also suits my rhymes.(13.8.5860)

In a poetics where reason can be renounced in avor o rhyme,not even grammar is sacred. So, when Byron casually and incor-rectly describes a situation in which the enemy is beat, he quali-


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es his usage with the parenthetical (Orbeaten, iyouinsist ongrammar, though / I never think about it in a heat) (7.42.324).

Here as elsewhere, the ormalities o the Queens English give wayto the elicities o vernacular usage.22 In the current oDon Juan,so oten moving against the standards o conventional wisdom,rhyme unctions as a good old steam-boat which keeps versesmoving / Gainst Reason (9.74.5889).23 As such, or Byron,sound unctions not so much as an echo to the sense, ater Al-exander Popes injunction, but rather, in line with W. K. Wimsatt

Jr.s precept, as a potential inversion o sense, i not, even moreradically, as the very nullication o sense.24

BYRON THE RENOUNCER

In ideological terms, Byrons renunciations in Don Juanarerampant and unrepentant, a act allowed by Byron himsel, whodescribed his poem as one that was bitter in politics.25 His latercritics have echoed this notion. George M. Ridenour described Don

Juanas a poem o reaction, and McGann styled it as a poemthat repudiates ormality in both literary and societal terms.26

Philip Hobsbaum, meanwhile, labeled Byron as the greatest andlast exponent o the subversive mode in verse, whose poeticpractice equals a debunking process accomplished throughan extent o wild rhyming.27 Finally, according to Jenni Calder,Byrons reaction, his repudiation, and his subversion necessarilyevolved rom his sense that decent citizenship within the limitso a hypocritical society was not acceptable.28

To renounce, then, became natural or Byronbut to openlyrepudiate was never a simple aair.29 While sometimes inclined to

open disputation, an elliptical implication o dissent oten provedthe more expedient path. Among Byrons avored methods oimplied renunciation, equivalent rhyme served as a particularlycommon (though not always subtle) technique, joining words thatsound more or less alike in order to enjoin more or less similarmeanings.30 This theory o equivalent rhyme emerges most clearlyin Byrons argument that Kiss rhymes to bliss in act as well as

verse, simultaneously suggesting the actuality and the articialityo the associative echo between the rhyming pair (6.59.471).31

Byron pursues these rhymes o act as well as verse through-outDon Juan, using verse as a coded index to advance the act ohis renunciation toward societys most venerable establishmentsand its most venerated institutions. Thus, Byron wryly mocksantiquity and enlightenment alike, via such equivalent rhymes as


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intellectual / hen-peckd you all, Plato / potato, illumina-tion / hallucination, Pooh! / True, and schools / ools

(1.22.175, 176; 7.4.26, 28; 7.44.346, 348; 15.1.7, 8; 15.17.135,136).32 Such encoded renunciations reinorce Byrons more explicitrenunciations o classical antiquityto the eect that time willdoubt o Rome and in the suggestion that Were things but onlycalld by their right name, / Caesar himsel would be ashamedo Fame (4.101.8; 14.102.8156).

Equivalent rhymes also work to reinorce Byrons disavowal oreligion. In what must be an unprecedented predilection amongEnglish poets, Byron tends to rhyme God most requently with

odd (1.27.215, 216; 8.104.826, 828; 10.32.249, 251), irrever-ently pairing resurrection with dissection (1.31.247, 248). Themost blasphemous sets o Byrons triple rhymes include Missal/ this all / kiss all and Vanity / Christianity / inanity(1.46.361, 363, 365; 7.6.41, 43, 45). Lest these sets seem coin-cidental, consider Byrons running satire on scriptural tropes, asin the enumeration o Don Juans lineage translated into the lan-guage o Genesis or in the comparison o Haides piratical atherto Simon Peter, as a sher . . . o men (1.9.712; 2.126.1001).

I Byrons enthusiasm or the churchs orthodoxies was nevermore than lukewarm, he elt even more coolly disposed toward themorals o the respectable, polite society rom which he emerged.33

Thus Julia, Juans rst paramour, by turns saint and sinner, issized up in the rhyme repented / consented, and Byrons on-going satire o matrimony nds its culmination in the late rhymemarriage / miscarriage (1.117.935, 936; 14.56.447, 448).Nobility ares little better, given Byrons penchant or rhyminglord with abhorred and, even more pointedly, with whored(1.65.513, 515; 6.90.714, 716; 9.54.425, 427; 11.75.78). Otheroccasional rhymes that bash the aristocracy include trouble/ noble, asses / high classes, and good society / moralinebriety (11.74.591, 592; 11.84.671, 672; 13.35.279, 280).34

Such disavowals o polite society did not stop with the pettynobility, but extended even unto royalty itsel. Byrons send-up othe Russian monarch Catherine is best summed up in the levelingrhyme Empress / Sempstressa leveling echoed in the Eng-lish cantos via the rhyme underlings / kings (9.77.615, 616;11.40.313, 315). Suggesting that monarchs shrink rom rhymes

Save such as Southey can aord to give, Byron casts himselas the very antipode o the Court and its courtiers, declaring Somuch the better!I may stand alone, / But would not change myree thoughts or a throne (10.37.292; 11.90.71920).


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From the distance o exile, Byron also took aim at the vain-glorious seat o empire. Styling the capital as a mighty Babylon,

he employs the equivalent rhyme Foolscap crown / LondonTown, mapping the vain city and its landmarks even more pre-cisely through disdainul pairings such as War / Traalgar,Hell / Pall Mall, and Charing Cross / dross (11.23.178;10.82.655, 656; 1.4.25, 27; 8.26.207, 208; 11.26.201, 203).35England, too, was worth a sass: thus John Bull twice meets hisrhyme in ool (7.44.345, 347; 11.85.679, 680). Even the verynotion o the nation is met by rhymes such as intoxication,taxation, degradation, vexation, sel-approbation, desola-

tion, violation, temptation, and hallucination (2.179.1426;3.14.108; 3.55.440; 5.7.53 and 10.33.261; 8.4.25; 8.126.1005;8.129.1026; 10.55.433; 13.6.46).36 The drat rhyme one tree /country, perhaps seeming too patriotic or sentimental, shitsto the more scathing erontery / country (13.91.n727, 728;13.91.727, 728). These and other equivalent rhymes serve to castaspersions on a nation Byron saw as having butchered hal theearth, and bullied tother (10.81.648).

Yet, or all his excoriations toward aristocratic, ecclesiasti-

cal, and imperial bulwarks, Byrons vitriol was perhaps ueledas much by contrarianism as by radicalism.37 Though striking anoncommittal pose at the outset oDon Juan, claiming that mypolitics, as yet, are all to educate, he later asserted that being ono party, / I shall oend all parties, nally proclaiming that withrespect to politics, I was born or opposition (Dedication.17.133;9.26.2012; 15.22.176).38 Thus, even in revolutionary mode, hestops short o articulating (and thus associating with) revolution,employing the term (or any variant thereo) only once in all oDon

Juan. Even in this lone instance, Byron undermines his ostensibleendorsement o revolutionary politicswhich Alone can save theEarthby encoding the equivalent rhyme Revolution / Hellspollution (8.51.407, 407, 408).39

While Byron may have equivocated regarding political revolu-tion, he was more plainly opposed to the notion o literary revolu-tion. Well beore he took to composing Don Juan, he had come tothe conclusion that his contemporaries were bent upon a wrongrevolutionary poetical system.40 How odd that Byron should beclassied as a Romantic alongside the very poets he so roundly

abuses in Don Juan: Southey most prominently, William Words-worth no less vituperatively, and John Keats more occasionally.Yet, here again, the classication makes sense when one under-stands Byrons poetic trajectory as consistently oppositional over


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time, working in parallel with the Romantics as they struggledto establish themselves, and working at a perpendicular against

them once they had gained literary ame.41Ultimately, Byrons position as poet remained open to sel-

critique, with the very act o composition paired with perdition(13.11.87, 88). Late in Don Juan, Byron again rues his role asrhymer, insisting that Gainst rhyme I never should have knockdmy brows (15.24.189). At this advanced stage, vilied in Eng-land, and never quite at home in Italy, Byrons renunciatory stylenally began to wear thin. Stean, attempting to explain Byronsperennial underrating, speculated that Byron might have worn

out his ame by knocking his rhyme against the entrenched acto convention and authority.42 Driven into exile, a man without acountry, seemingly aimless, singularly cosmopolitan, renouncingto the very end, Byron occupied a cultural space apart, whoseseveral languages are everywhere apparent in the spaces oDon

Juan.

BYRON THE POLYGLOT

How to say the Juan in Don Juan? While precedent sug-gests a Romance pronunciation resembling Hwan, Byron mostrequently rhymes Juan with new one and true one, imply-ing an anglicized pronunciation resembling Joo-uhn (8.29.232,14.91.726).43 In a couple o instances Byron departs rom thispattern, as when rhyming Juan with drew on and threw on(2.146.1162, 1164; 7.60.475). In these cases the pronunciationshades toward an intermediate ormulation resembling Joo-wan.

Taken together, these variations do not quite prove any given

rule o pronunciation: rather, they indicate Byrons undamentalconcerns with morphology and with imperect rhyme.44 On bal-ance, then, the indeterminate sonic structure o Don Juans veryname rests somewhere between the traditionally ascribed Englishmispronunciation Dahn Joo-uhn and the more conventionalSpanish pronunciation, Don Hwan.

More generally, in any given example o a polyglot rhyme, By-rons meter cues the reader to pronounce a non-English word orphrase in one way or another, but such indications almost always

work against the readers inclination as to how that word shouldbepronounced. Byron cleverly inscribes this indeterminacy opronunciation into the poems very conceit, ambiguously stylinghis narrator in a long unpublished preace to Don Juanas eitheran Englishman settled in Spainor a Spaniard who had travelled


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in England.45 Presumably, such a distinction would make a sig-nicant dierence in that narrators own pronunciation. Thus,

to the extent that readers are unable to resolve this ambiguity,they remain uncertain o their own internal soundings and may

be inclined to gloss over them. Yet, there is no escaping the prob-lem, or Byron employs an aggressively polyglossic approach romthe very rst, placing French, Greek, and Latin words in rhymepositions within the rst six stanzas o canto 1. Indeed, as i inrecognition o the intractable complications o polyglossic verse,Byron coyly describes Juan himsel as one who knew severallanguages but did not rhyme (11.53.417, 420).

Unlike his accidental protagonist, Byron knew several lan-guages and didrhyme, and his polyglossic approach has had bothchampions and detractors. McGann has praised Don Juanor itsability to speak many languages, both in the everyday and inthe philosophical sense.46 Eliot, by contrast, paid Byron a rather

backhanded compliment in declaring himsel unable to think oany other poet o his distinction who might so easily have been anaccomplished oreigner writing English.47 With this praise Eliotgrew more damning still, asserting that Byron added nothing to

the language . . . discovered nothing in the sounds, and developednothing in the meaning, o individual words.48 That such an ac-complished poet could proer such a thorough dismissal suggestsnothing so much as Eliots own perverse and willul blindness tothe morphological genius o Byrons ottava rima.

Nevertheless, in more than one respect, Byron wasan accom-plished oreigner writing in English. As Tom Scott has observedo comic rhymes such as pas / Eclt / squaw, Byron might

be more accurately judged on the basis o his Scots lug thanon the basis o his English lilt (13.79.626, 628, 630).49 Moreover,Don Juanitsel was the work o an exile in Italy, which assuredlyimpacted its authors sense o English as a spoken and writtenlanguage. Tis pleasing to be schoold in a strange tongue, Byronexclaims early in Don Juan, concludingrom Scottish pride, per-hapsthat Much English I cannot pretend to speak, / Learningthat language chiefy rom its preachers (2.164.1305; 2.165.1315,1316). Juan, on the other hand, did not understand a word / OEnglish, save their shibboleth, God Damn! (11.12.8990).

With a mixture o indierence and irreverence toward the

English language, Byron speaks and acts to renounce an unques-tioning promotion o its ascendancy. In this respect (or rather,disrespect), Byrons linguistic ambivalence, which aims to demotethe relative importance o the English language, mirrors his


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ideological ambivalence, which aims to discredit English politi-cal ideals.50 As Charles LaChance observed, Byrons purposeully

bad English proves symptomatic o his oppositional worldview,culminating in a nihilism that wills the subversion o all receivedideologies.51 Thus, where Byron points to the competing styleso the English and the Frenchas, or instance, in recognizingthe Wellington / Vilainton divide in pronunciation across theEnglish Channelhe reinorces his political critique through theuse o a rhyme that is polyglossic in both linguistic and ideologi-cal terms (9.1.1).

As or the service o the got, Byron explains that one is

best to

pronounce it as inclinesYour stomach! Ere you dine, the French will do;Butater, there are sometimes certain signs

Which prove plain English truer o the two.(15.72.570, 5714)

The anglicized pronunciation gout, while mentioned in a pass-

ing jest, holds no place within the actual rhyme scheme, wherethe rancophone gout completes the triple rhyme gout / do /two. Thus, Byron has his cake andeats his got, or he simul-taneously insists on the validity o the dual pronunciation andthe superiority o the French pronunciation, even while managingto issue a qualied argument or the English pronunciation by

way o spleen.52The polyglossic rhymes o Don Juan are so maniold that

an index and interpretation o their nuances would ll a slim

volume.53

In most o these instances, Byrons intentions remainunclear: does he wish to imply an Anglicized pronunciation o thenon-English word, a de-Anglicized pronunciation o the English

word, or, indeed, something in between, in the best interests othe rhyme pair? The most prominent examples o such ambigu-ous dynamics include: in canto 1, river / Guadalquivir, sone as / Donna Inez, Seville / devil, and hopes / Cheops(1.8.63, 64; 1.11.87, 88; 1.203.1623, 1624; 1.219.1751, 1752).In canto 2, the instances include Cadiz / trade is / ladies,

a Volley / Fazzioli, portmanteau / canto, die once / Gulo Lyons, and scanty / Dante (2.5.33, 35, 37; 2.7.55, 56;2.16.127, 128; 2.39.311, 312; 2.83.663, 664). In later cantos, onecan take but ten o the nest instances: pukes in / Euxine,orte / short, swore on / Koran, attack / Cossacque /


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can lack, more glad in her / St. Vladimir, Niger / obligeher / bos piger,thick sought / Quixote, Modest way /

sine qu, and quibble, he / quiaimpossibile (5.5.39, 40;5.48.383, 384; 6.102.815, 816; 7.14.105, 107, 109; 8.140.1119,1120; 12.70.554, 556, 558; 13.10.79, 80; 15.86.687, 688; 16.5.39,40).

Beyond those polyglossic rhymes in which English and non-English words ambiguously abut, thereby destabilizing the lin-guistic hierarchy, Byron also employs instances o polyglossia thattranscend English, such as fotilla / Bis Millah! (7.13.103,104). In other instances, ostensibly monoglossic moments sug-

gest ambiguities o their own, as with the presumptively Englishshoulder / solder / colder, the similarly Spanish Salamanca/ Sancho Panca, and, nally, the aux Russian Yesouskoi /Polouzki (8.94.745, 747, 749; 2.37.295, 296; 8.76.607, 608).54In the presence o such audacious, dexterous, and inventiverhyming, one might be led to wonder i Byron ever came acrossa rhyme that he didnt like.

BYRON THE REVISER

The variorum edition oDon Juanprepared by Stean andWillis W. Pratt suggests that, while Byron was quite likely torevise any given line within any given canto, he was much lessinclined to revise in the rhyming positions o those lines. Sincehis narrative arc had no given rules, the content oDon Juanproved eminently revisable: a ortunate circumstance, since hisormal apparatus was rather constricting and sometimes calledor revision. Yet, within these ormal strictures, Byron arranged

or additional breathing room by relaxing his attitude toward thenotion o a legitimate rhyme. Announcing himsel rather loatheto alter a rhyme, i not a line, once written, many o his revisedlines retained little o their original orm apart rom the rhyming

word itsel.55

Nevertheless, on occasion, Byron did elect to renounce arhyme rather than rattling on. As might be expected, problems osense led Byron to spurn some rhymes, and problems o soundled him to spurn others. In a ew cases, problems o both soundand sense led Byron to revision. For example, in his critique oBritish policy toward Ireland, whereby Gaunt Famine never shallapproach the throne / Though Ireland starve, great George

weighs twenty stone, Byrons renunciation o the drat ortystone or twenty stone improves the lines consonance while


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exchanging satirical hyperbole or satirical credibility (8.126.1007,1008, n1008). For all his sel-ashioned brashness, Byron was

no stranger to redaction or to the sel-tempering o his polemi-cal edge.56 Yet, on at least one occasion, Byron thought better othinking better. When he revised Virgin Mary out o the rhymeposition in canto 1, Byron inserted the more agreeable coupletgrace / case in its stead (1.75.n599, 599, 600). But, in the

very next canto, perhaps regretting a missed opportunity, he re-stored the Blessed Mother to the rhyme position via the pairingmartyrs hairy / Virgin Mary (2.149.1191, 1192). Impressiveas this hirsute coupling may have been, Byron seems to have

repented somewhat in its atermath, subsequently redacting pos-sibly oensive drat rhymes including wine / Swine / divineand Solomon / hollow man (3.unincorporated stanza.2, 4, 6;7.unincorporated stanza.7, 8).

In this vein, toward the beginning o the Don Juandedica-tion (initially renounced, but later reclaimed), Byron canceledthe highly unorthodox couplet ending in Laureat / Iscariot(Dedication.11.n878). He justied the decision with an explana-tory note:

I doubt ilaureateand Iscariotbe good rhymes; butmust say as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who chal-lenged him to rhyme with

I, John Sylvester,Lay with your Sister.

Jonson answered, I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wie.

Sylvester answered, that is notrhymeNo, said BenJonson; but it is true.57

Unlike kiss and bliss, which seem alike partially because theysound alike, Ben Jonson and your wie need not rhyme in

verse to rhyme in act. The Laureat / Iscariot rhyme, jarringin both verse and act, thus ound its replacement in the tongue-in-cheek lockstep o obey / Castlereagh (Dedication.11.87,88). Thus, Southey was spared, or once . . . or was it Judas who

was spared? It is unclear which traitor Byron wished to spare insparing the couplet.

In a couple o places in Don Juan,Byron also bowdlerizes, orrather, eigns bowdlerization, exposing the censors ineectual-


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ity and discrediting his own impulse to suppression by retainingthe intended slur via the vehicle o rhyme. For instance, in canto

11, Byron revised the drat rhyme riches / btchs to readriches / bs (11.41.327, 328). Though the better part o theslur is excised, the proanity is yet retained by virtue o the sug-gested echo. The most pronounced instance o this techniqueoccurs in the couplet describing Catherines reign, whom glorystill adores / As greatest o all sovereigns and ws (6.92.7356).Mary Shelley wanted to purge still adores and ws entirely,leaving the reader no clue as to the implied rhyme or to Byronsattendant aspersion. To her likely chagrin, in a concession con-

ceding nothing, Byron retained the extremities o the oendingterm, even while gesturing toward (and thus mocking) discretion,preserving enough o the rhyme to get the hint across.58

Scatological rhymes orm another minor set worth consider-ation. For example, the expurgation o the drat couplet rhymecuring / urinewith its proximity to stool, also perched inrhyme positionprobably had as much to do with sense as withsound (2.10.n7980; 2.10.78). The replacement couplet rhyme,education / generation, was not nearly as apt to raise a stink,

and it shited the sense o stool rom the sample to the seat(2.10.79, 80). A vestigial sense o decorum probably also led tothe revision o the drat couplet rhyme water closet / rare de-posit, which Byron altered to the less specicand much lessecunda closet / rare deposit (3.89.n807, 807, 808). Hencethe majestic argument that words are things, initially under-mined by the explicitly scatological implications o the watercloset, nds itsel ennobled through the sanitation o the revi-sion (3.88.793). The authors name and his dull MS., no longeremplaced in a would-be cesspool, are elevated to the status oan unsullied archaeological nd (3.89.805). This is not to sug-gest, however, that all o Byrons renunciations o rhyme wereorged in the dialectic o censorship and transgression. At times,it was merely an unconvincing rhyme that prompted revision.

Thus Rough / cus was abandoned or oath / both, andwears / despairs was abandoned or wears / cares (4.93.n743, n744; 4.93.743, 744; 6.20.159, n160, 160). In other cases,unwieldy rhymes were streamlined, as in the revision o lazy /amaze ye to lazy / crazy or in the revision o foodshed /

bloodshed to food / blood (6.41.327, n328, 328; 7.80.n639,n640; 7.80.639, 640). Elsewhere, Byron revised overly simpli-ed rhymes into more complex ormations, as in the rejection oescape / shape / scrape or escape / shape / step and


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in the rejection o pillory / artillery or pillar! He / artillery(7.72.570, 572, n574, 574; 9.44.n351, 352, 351).

BYRON THE REVELATOR

As the above examples demonstrate, Byrons rhyming practic-es were anything but arbitrary, and his motivations or deployingrhymes proved just as conficted as his motivations or renouncingthem. Above all, Byrons increasingly daring rhyming style was oa piece with the increasingly audacious political stance that even-tually proved to be his undoing. Byron had intended to complete

Don Juans tour o Europe by having him nish anAnacharsisClootsin the French revolution.59 However, he embarked on hisown tour o Europeleading to his own nish at Missolonghi

beore bringing his own plan or the poem (such as it was) to itscompletion. Nevertheless, the anarchic qualities o Byrons rhymeshave survived him, perhaps best exemplied in a pair o late pas-sages that characterized indignation via anaphora.

The rst o these breathless, prophetic renunciations comes ina hal-comic, hal-desperate diatribe against the lords o hardened

and imperial sin (10.85.676). Therein, Byron implores the genteelreormer Mrs. Fry to teach them and tell them and tell themand tell them (10.86.681, 683, 685; 10.87.689). Having rebukedthem this ar, he thinks to continue, then truncates the thought,orsakingpoiesisoraposiopesis, pleading and tell thembut you

wont, and I have prated / Just now enough (10.87.6945).60 Setto speak truth to power, Byron instead shuts up and breaks o,despairing o a air hearing, and disgusted with the hypocrisy othe so-called opposition. Beyond the pale o the establishment,

he also ound himsel beyond the ken o its reorming fank. Justas his complaints about the lords ell on dea ears, so too werethose same complaints, when directed toward the liberals, met

with obligatory silence.The second instance o anaphoric castigation comes in By-

rons amed attempt to determine Who hold the balance o theworld?, ollowed by a series o who questions: Who reign,Who rouse, Who keep, and Who make (12.5.33, 35, 37, 38).

The ghostly who, like its conspiratorially minded answerJewRothschild, and his ellow Christian Baringnds its latter-dayanalogue in Amiri Barakas post-9/11 jeremiad Somebody BlewUp America (12.5.40). With its own litany o who questions,Barakas poem also contains its own set o conspiracy theoriesand its own ghoulish concluding lines, which, at once accusatory


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and elliptical, cry out Who and Who and WHO (+) who who /Whoooo and WhooooooOOOOOOooooOoooo!61

Byron, like Baraka ater him, may well have elt spooked bythe bankers, by the king makers, and by his own quixotic questagainst them, and yet the concluding right oDon Juancan only

be communicated in the spectral howl o rhyme itsel. In his nalinvocation o the rhyming unction, Byron links the very practiceo rhyming to the ghostly riar who haunts Don Juan at Norman

Abbey. Preparing or bed, and expecting the ghost to arrive, DonJuan hears a sound rst labeled as the wind (16.113.945).However, the noise is subsequently identied as

the sable Friar as beore,With awul ootsteps regular as rhyme,Or (as rhymes may be in these days) much more.

(16.113.9468)

Whether regular or extraordinary, rhyme or Byron had evolvedin the late cantos oDon Juaninto a most unnerving prospect.Spooked by the airs o those who would link rhyme to rhyme in

step, Byron nds little solace in the thought o those who wouldrhyme askance, or in most hands such an unorthodox approachtends to yield even more awul results.

In its dialectic o attraction and repulsion to rhyme, Don Juanserved as a harbinger o things to come or the rhyming unc-tion in the remainder o the nineteenth century, throughout thetwentieth century, and beyond. From the cusp o the modernera, Byrons ambivalence toward rhyme and his insistence on itsreer, looser possibilities remain symptomatic o a persistent yet

peripheral tradition within modern and contemporary poetics.Thus, the ghoulish ending oDon Juanpregures the comic yethaunting presence that rhyme has come to play or Byrons manypoetic ollowers, rom immediate inheritors such as George Can-ning, Marie-Victorin Frre, Thomas Hood, Winthrop MackworthPraed, Richard Harris Barham, and Edward Lear to more recentexemplars, including Kenneth Koch and James Merrill.62 Eventoday, the unconventional traces o this rhyming countertradi-tion continue to shadow those who have yet to renounce rhyme

ully, cutting against the grain, in spite o themselves and others,in an age when most have ound themselves content to make dowithout rhymes, Byronic or otherwise.


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NOTES

I wish to thank J. Paul Hunter and Jerome J. McGann or their encourage-ment and their help in the preparation and revision o this essay.

1 George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 5o Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols.(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 198093), p. 407, canto 8, stanza 138, line1104. Subsequent reerences to Don Juan, hereaterCPW, are rom this edi-tion and will appear parenthetically in the text and notes by canto number(or section number where necessary), stanza number, and line number (linenumbers indicate the lines place within the canto).

2 Lindsay Waters placed Byrons desultory rhyme (15.20.2) within thisItalian tradition, declaring Don Juan to be among the great imitations o

improvised poetry (The Desultory Rhyme oDon Juan: Byron, Pulci, and theImprovisatory Style, ELH45, 3 [Autumn 1978]: 42942, 438). Nevertheless,as Kurt Heinzelman notes, Byron assumed an increasingly vocational aspectas he progressed with Don Juan(Byrons Poetry o Politics: The EconomicBasis o the Poetical Character, TSLL23, 3 [Fall 1981]: 36188, 3745).

3 The British Critic, n.s. 12 (August 1819): 195205, 202, rprt. in TheRomantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews o British Romantic Writers,ed. Donald H. Reiman, 3 parts (New York: Garland, 1972), part B, vol. 2, p.299.

4 Robert Southey, The Lie and Correspondence o Robert Southey, ed.

Charles Cuthbert Southey (New York: Harper, 1851), p. 384.5 Matthew Arnold, Byron, in Arnold, Complete Prose Works, ed. R.H. Super, 11 vols. (Ann Arbor: Univ. o Michigan Press, 1960), 9:21737,2223, 225.

6John Churton Collins, The Collected Works o Lord Byron, in Studiesin Poetry and Criticism(London: G. Bell and Sons, 1905), pp. 78123, 120;

T. S. Eliot, Byron, in On Poetry and Poets(New York: Noonday, 1964), pp.22339, 233.

7Alan Bold, introduction to Byron: Wrath and Rhyme, ed. Bold (TotowaNJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983), pp. 714, 9.

8Truman Guy Stean, The Making o a Masterpiece, vol. 1 oByrons Don

Juan: A Variorum Edition, hereaterDJV, ed. Stean and Willis W. Pratt, 2dedn., 4 vols. (Austin: Univ. o Texas Press, 1971), p. 104.

9W. H. Auden observes in Notes on the Comic that rhymes in incongru-ous or irrelevant combinations tended to register greater comedic eects(Notes on the Comic, in The Dyers Hand[New York: Random House, 1962],pp. 37185, 380). He also notes in his essay on Don Juanthat the structuralcharacteristics o English were such that the majority o double or triplerhymes are comic, simply by virtue o their linguistic unlikelihoodan e-ect that surely intensied with accretion (Don Juan, in The Dyers Hand,pp. 386406, 398).

10

Byron to John Murray, Bologna, 12 August 1819, in Byrons Letters andJournals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols. (London: John Murray, 197382),6:208, abbreviated hereater as L&J. For the hard data concerning Byronsrevisions in pursuit o giggles, see Steans Appendix B: Tables on the Extento Revision (pp. 31125).


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11 Bernard Beatty, Continuities and Discontinuities o Language andVoice in Dryden, Pope, and Byron, in Byron: Augustan and Romantic, ed.

Andrew Rutherord (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990), pp. 11735, 132.Stean, via Mary Shelley, attests to Byrons hasty composition o the lasteleven cantos (pp. 512). Additionally, Stean nds it ironic that he hadexercised most care with the manuscripts o the rst period when he pre-tended to take Juanlightly, whereas when opposition later drove him toprotest his seriousness he then proceeded to dash o canto ater canto withextraordinary acility (p. 114).

12William Keach,Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics, Lit-erature and History (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004), p. 18.

13 Peter Graham, Don Juan and Regency England(Charlottesville: Univ.Press o Virginia, 1990), p. 10.

14 Byron, preace to Hours o Idleness, in CPW1:324, 33. For additionalcommentary on Byrons early attitudes toward rhyme and his later practicein Don Juan, see Jane Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History(Cambridge: Cam-

bridge Univ. Press, 2003), pp. 778.15 Byron, Journal: November 14, 1813April 19, 1814, L&J3:20458,

220. On the tension between development and normalization in Byron, seeTom Mole, Byrons Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutico Intimacy(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2007), p. 134.

16 Byron, Journal, 3:217; Byron to Thomas Moore, Albany, 9 April1814, L&J4:913, 92.

17

McGann, The Beauty o Infections: Literary Investigations in HistoricalMethod and Theory(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 1988), p. 270.18 Byron to Murray, Ravenna, 23 April 1820, L&J7:825, 84.19 By Paul Wests reckoning, the incidence o eminine rhymes in the

concluding couplets o Byrons stanzas grows rom twenty-ve percent inMorgante Maggioreto over ty percent in Beppoand to greater than seventy-ve percent in Don Juan (Byron and the Spoilers Art[London: Chatto and

Windus, 1960], p. 68). For more on Byrons later writing habits, see West, pp.1304. From The Corsair(1814) orward, Byrons experiments with emininerhyme dovetail with his increasingly fuid conceptions o gender and sexual-ity, as per the argument o Susan J. Wolson (Formal Charges: The Shaping

o Poetry in British Romanticism[Stanord CA: Stanord Univ. Press, 1997],pp. 14963).

20 Byron, DJV, 3:348n56, 3:392n4a.21Timothy Webb, in noting that Byron sometimes oered Murray multiple

drat variations, leaving the nal choice up to editorial rather than authorialintuition, suggests that while this slightly surprising renunciation o autho-rial privilege may have been designed to provide Murray with the illusiono editorial license . . . Byron watched sharply over his own rights and wasprepared to be outraged when they were ignored (Free Quills and PoeticLicenses: Byron and the Politics o Publication, in Liberty and Poetic License:New Essays on Byron

, ed. Beatty, Tony Howe, and Charles E. Robinson[Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 2008], pp. 219232, p. 228).22 Indeed, Don Juanis replete with varieties o slang, with registers rang-

ing rom the dandied to the homosocial. For example, whereas beat maysignal an aristocratic register, it may also unction as a queer register o the


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type Gary Dyer identies as fash dialect (Thieves, Boxers, Sodomites, Poets:Being Flash to Byrons Don Juan, PMLA116, 3 [May 2001]: 56278, 564).

23

A. B. England useully identied this particular mode in Byron withwhat he termed the burlesque style, a poetry that maniests a high degreeo tolerance or disorder, impurity, and discontinuity o rhetoric and diction(England, Byrons Don Juan and Eighteenth-Century Literature: A Study oSome Rhetorical Continuities and Discontinuities [Lewisburg PA: BucknellUniv. Press, 1975], pp. 156).

24Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (London: W. Lewis, 1711),part 2, line 365. W. K. Wimsatt Jr. argues that rhyme generally tendsto present, contrary to the rhetorical argument o the poem, a counter-pattern o alogical implication that inverts sense, describing Byronsmahogany/philogyny/dog any rhyme, in Beppo(70.561, 563, 565), as a

comedic parry pushed to the point o disintegration and mad abandon (TheVerbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning o Poetry [Lexington: Univ. o KentuckyPress, 1954], pp. 153, 1645).

25 Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, Venice, 11 November 1818, L&J6:768,76.

26 George M. Ridenour, The Style o Don Juan(New Haven: Yale Univ.Press, 1960), p. 145; McGann, Don Juan in Context (Chicago: Univ. oChicago Press, 1976), p. 3.

27 Philip Hobsbaum, Byron and the English Tradition, in Byron: Wrathand Rhyme, pp. 3756, 51, 44, 49.

28

Jenni Calder, The Hero As Lover: Byron and Women, in Byron: Wrathand Rhyme, pp. 10324, 118.29 Such erratic renunciation, as opposed to systematic repudiation,

may in act have redeemed the poem in the eyes o its publisher, Moore,who likely concluded, as James Chandler speculates, that the poem posesno case against the reigning normative ramework it supercially seems tofout (England in 1819: The Politics o Literary Culture and the Case o Ro-mantic Historicism[Chicago: Univ. o Chicago Press, 1998], p. 351). Likewise,Malcolm Kelsall explains that, in political terms, there is a retention in DonJuan, however vestigially, o the ideals o the Whig Constitution and the greatcountry house, signaling that there is no other society, no other political

discourse available to the poet (Byrons Politics [Brighton UK: HarvesterPress, 1987], p. 192).

30 For an opposing view, see Englands claim that Byrons similarities osound dramatize dissimilarities o ordinarily assumed meaning (England,p. 108). West, meanwhile, posits that Byrons use o dissonant rhyme led tosets o ill-matched concepts that nevertheless ormed a statementbothcoherent and apposite (West, p. 62, emphasis mine). Whereas JacquesDerrida has held that rhyme generally unctions as the olding-together oan identity and a dierence, Rachel Mayer Brownstein nds that Byronsparticularly famboyant rhymes, at their most daring and polyglossic, gesture

toward neither like nor unlike meanings, but rather suggest great abysses omeaninglessness (Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson [Chicago:Univ. o Chicago Press, 1981], p. 277; Brownstein, Byrons Don Juan: SomeReasons For the Rhymes, MLQ28, 2 [June 1967]: 17791, 1901).


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31As a counterpoint to Byrons use o equivalent rhyme, consider hisnonequivalent rhyme virtue/thirty, which works to suggestdissonance

in act as well as verse (1.62.495, 496).32 McGann observed that Byron distrusted Systematic Enlightenmentthought because he saw all systematic philosophy not as a tool or exploringdicult problems but as a device or settling matters (Context, p. 148). Inthis respect, the insistent uncertainty o Byrons rhymes unctioned analogi-cally with respect to his insistently uncertain worldview. As W. W. Robsonexplained, Don Juan is the work o a mature mind, but not one with anintegral vision (Critical Essays[London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966],p. 186).

33 Paradoxically, Byrons contempt or the aristocracy was in itsel thor-oughly aristocratic. In this respect, his brand o dissent was related to, but

ultimately removed rom, the more marginal orm o dissent practiced byJohn Keatswhich may do something to explain Byrons amous dismissalo Keats as one who had been snued out by an Article (11.60.480). Formore on Byron and Keats as dissenters o diering temperaments, see thearguments made by Nicholas Roe in hisJohn Keats and the Culture o Dissent(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 178.

34 Byrons hostility toward nobility was quite apparent to his contempo-raries. As Byrons renunciation o his class position unsettled most reviewers,they tended to preerad hominemattacks and literary carping to anythingapproaching a socioeconomic analysis o his politics. An exception to this

rule came with the Examiner, which saw t to praise Byron, writing that he,a nobleman, has burst the enthralment o rank and station; nay, more, thestronger ligatures o an aristocratic bias, and declared or the Many againstthe Few (Examiner[5 July 1823], pp. 612, qtd. in Pratt, Notes on the Vari-orum Edition, vol. 4 oDJV, p. 307).

35The Hell/Pall Mall rhyme proves especially rich, since it rhymesmore to the ear than to the eye. Byron thus suggests that there is more toinernal London than immediately meets the eye. For more on this particularturn o language see Graham, pp. 1723. For a more general discussion, seeMichael Gassenmeiers Augustan Satires and Panegyrics on London andByrons Image o the City, in Byron: Augustan and Romantic, pp. 13664.

Gassenmeier takes up Byrons depiction o London vis--vis those earlierchampions and critics o what he deems the metropolis under rising capi-talism (p. 147).

36 It must be noted that Byron also rhymes nation with more positiveterms such as exultation, approbation, salvation, and veneration(8.126.1003; 10.33.257; 10.55.433; 10.66.524). Yet, the main drit o hisequivalent rhymes approximates his stated plain, sworn, downright detesta-tion / O every despotism in every nation (9.24.1912).

37 Perhaps, i he had been born in a more secular backwater such asSt. Louis, he might have turned Anglo-Catholic and Royalist, as did the

occasionally contrarian Eliot. Bertrand Russell has suggested that Byronscontrarianism was undamentally conservative, styling him as the exem-plar o a type called the aristocratic rebel (A History o Western Philosophy[New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972], p. 747). For Russells ull treatmento Byron see pp. 74652.


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38 For more on Byrons political ambivalence, see Richard Cronins ThePolitics o Romantic Poetry: In Search o the Pure Commonwealth(New York:

St. Martins Press, 2000), pp. 15680. Regarding Byrons oppositional ideol-ogy, see Peter A. Schocks article, which notes Byrons resolution to war, atleast in words against Tyrants and Sycophants (9.24.185, 188; Schock,I will war, at least in words: Byron and the Rhetoric o Opposition, inContemporary Studies on Lord Byron, ed. William D. Brewer, Studies in Brit-ish Literature 54 [Lewiston NY: Mellen, 2001], pp. 95120). John Lauber,meanwhile, describes Byron as a political truth tellerthat is, per Byronsown description, as one who mean[s] to show things really as they are(12.40.314; Lauber, Truth-Telling As Politics: Byron and Pound, in Byron:Poetry and Politics, ed. Erwin A. Strzl and James Hogg, Salzburger Studienzur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 13 [Salzburg: Institut r Anglistik und

Amerikanistik, Universitt Salzburg, 1981], pp. 32344). For the arc o By-rons growing alienation and his increasingly radical worldview, see StephenCheekes Byron and Place: History, Translation, Nostalgia(New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2003), pp. 14256.

39 Byrons ambivalence toward revolution emerges in his descriptiono the the tug o war that twill come again, to which he would ain saye ont, (8.51.405, 406). That e ont unctions as condemnation botho the general potential or revolution and o Byrons specic potential asrevolutionary.

40 Byron to Murray, 15 September 1817, L&J5:2646, 265. The rest o

this letter provides Byrons ull critique o his contemporaries. Byrons generalaversion or William Wordsworth and his circle led many subsequent criticsto question Byrons place within what is today established as the Romantictradition. See, or example, Hobsbaum, pp. 378.

41Thus McGann saw Byron as one who assumes an adversary relation-ship, and institutes a sharp critique o the sort o poetry he himselas he

well knewhad helped to advance (Context, p. 159).42 Stean, p. 287. Byron himsel recognized the role that rhyme played

in his increasing obscurity. Confating his penchant or dissent with hispenchant or rhyme, he explained in another late canto oDon Juan thatI was rather amous in my time, / Until I airly knockd it up with rhyme

(14.9.712).43 For a discussion o the peculiar pronunciation o Don Juan (Hwan

or Joo-un), along with commentary on Byrons other polyglossic fourishes,see Graham, pp. 114 and 5960.

44These subtleties and variances work against the claims o CharlesDonelan, who simply presumes that the pronunciation, Joo-en, with theemphasis on the rst syllable, is something the poem dictates, arguing thatits rhymes demand that the reader hear and recite the word this way (Ro-manticism and Male Fantasy in Byrons Don Juan: A Marketable Vice[New

York: St. Martins Press, 2000], p. 31).45

Byron, Preace, inCPW

5:815, 83. Graham deems this unincorpo-rated introduction a verbal gesture that cancels all it creates (p. 16).46 McGann, Context, p. 134.47 Eliot, p. 232.48 Eliot, pp. 2323. It may be bawdy, Byron conceded, as though antici-

pating such objections, but is it not good English? (Byron, qtd. in Auden,


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Don Juan, p. 404). The ironically understated question simultaneouslyasserts and disavows Byrons capacity to adjudicate in such matters, while

seeming to mock those who would presume to judge.49Tom Scott, Byron as a Scottish Poet, in Byron: Wrath and Rhyme,pp. 1736, 36. One o the best instances o Byrons Scots lug comes withhis replacement o the English term which with the Scottish term whilk,unctioning here to complete the triple rhyme silk/milk/whilk (5.77.610,612, 614). The switch suggests a latent preerence or Scottish as the moremusical o the two languages.

50Wolson observes that Byrons mere emphasis on rhyme works contraryto the Restoration and post-Miltonic prejudice against rhyme as a Frenchiedeeminacy (p. 277n23).

51 Charles LaChance, Byrons Bad English, English50, 197 (Summer

2001): 11125, 111.52 For more on Byrons attitude toward rhyme as a unction o his spleen,

see Beatty, pp. 11920. For a French perspective on Byrons general approachto the lyrical mode, see Robert Escarpit, Lord Byron, un temprament littraire,2 vols. (Paris: Cercle du Livre, 195557), 1:20339.

53These complexities are partly due to Byrons wide-ranging literary in-fuences. M. K. Josephs partial list included authors as diuse as Ariosto,Miguel de Cervantes, Homer, Horace, Pope, and Voltaire (Byron the Poet[London: Victor Gollancz, 1964], pp. 1845).

54This last example serves as a charming precedent to the Byronic lim-

ericks and lyrics o Edward Lear. See, or example, There was an old man oWest Dumpet and There was an old man o Messina, in Lears NonsenseBooks(Boston: Little and Brown, 1888), pp. 275, 299.

55 Stean, who presented authoritative statistics on Byrons tendencytoward the preservation o rhyme words, notes that wherever he could doso, even when recasting a whole line, he retained the original nal word or atleast the same rhyme (Stean, p. 170). In canto 1 alone, nearly eighty revisedlines retain their original rhyming words. For examples o such retention incanto 1 and elsewhere, see Stean, p. 133.

56 Consider, or example, the metrical tempering in the line Deaths areormer, all men must allow, revised rom the drat line Deaths a radical,

all men must allow (10.25.200, n200). Not only does reormer make ora milder term than radical here, but it also makes or a more balancedmetrical insertion. In another example the drat rhyme orces/corpsesis revised to read orces/corses so as to avoid the internal sight rhymeo corpses with corps, which appears at an earlier point in the same line(8.30.239, n240, 240).

57 McGann, Commentary, in CPW5:672n878. See the rest o this com-mentary or the ull history o this most complicated (and most likely apocry-phal) instance o revision, along with notes on its associated marginalia.

58 Similarly, there are those later instances in which Byron renounces a

rhyme not or ear o being overly transgressive, but rather or ear o ailing tobe suciently transgressive, as with the rejection o blue eyes/chastitiesor bluer stockings/double knockings (12.67.n5356, 535, 536).

59 Byron to Murray, Ravenna, 16 February 1822, L&J8:779, 78. Formore on Byrons plans or the completion oDon Juan, see McGanns TheBeauty o Infections, pp. 26471.


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60Jonathon Shears has posited aposiopesis as something o a modusoperandi or the narrator oDon Juan (Byrons Aposiopesis, Romanticism

14, 2 [July 2008]: 18395, 183).61Amiri Baraka, Somebody Blew Up America, in Somebody Blew UpAmerica and Other Poems(Philipsburg, St. Martin: House o Nehesi, 2003),pp. 4150, 50.

62The list o immediate inheritors is rom Auden, Don Juan, p. 398.

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