Byronically Brilliant

While reading the poem, I thought it was so intriguing that he would use two people who were so recognized in the literary community, Southey and Coledridge. It almost seemed as if he was making a satire out of Coleridge’s, and by extension, Bob Southey’s beliefs. For you see, these two had plans for a political uptopia where everyone would work for the common good of the community. Byron apparently did not agree with this thus resulting in his lovely wordy elaborate poem Don Juan. Glorious and very well played Lord Byron because not only did he use two important literary figures who already had a connection with each other, the poet laureate and the founder of Romantic Movement, but he also used the connection that they had against them, showing first off Southey as a hero for his venture to try to establish “with all the lakers” (the Lake Poets) his perfect society and his position as a poet laureate in the very first stanza. As poet laureate, he is seen as some kind of a hero, a hero with his words if you must. However, Byron draws on the fact that the society which Southey wanted to establish was crumbling because Coleridge (a Lake Poet) did not agree with him on the location for it for even the perfect hero of literature (if pushed into that position of Poet Laureate as was the case for Southey) can crumble himself.

The direct tie into the second stanza is with the mention of Coleridge, using the metaphor of “too has lately taken wing, but like a hawk encumbered with his food” for though they both didn’t agree on a place, Coleridge still spread his idealogy to the people, telling them of the tales of this perfect society of how this would happen. You see, Byron establishes the very skeleton of a Byronic hero simply in these two stanzas. Broken, beaten, trying for the better good – these characteristics of the Byronic hero are established in the knowledge of these poets, and Byron uses it to show that even the best of the literary heroes will fall, but their ideas will never die, not while the word still lives. Perhaps that is the true political sense of it, that ideas that have the potential to change society will never die. The trick is that someone must understand it which Byron shows that many people can’t by the words “I wish he would explain his explanation.” They may be literary Byronic heroes pushing for their own political views, but Byron uses that to his advantage, using their acts and position as such to show his own political view. He makes a satire out of them in order to show his audience what he thinks which if you ask me is Byronically brilliant.