Don Juan

Don Juan is very particular, in my opinion. He is both womanized and a womanizer. The term "Don Juan", in more recent times, is a term used to describe a man that flirts with a lot of women, and potentially has relations with them, in private. How odd it is that in John Clare's poem, it discusses love and marriage, rather than sex and masturbation, as it was in Lord Byron's poem of Don Juan. Don Juan is portrayed in a romantic sense, but one of those senses is far more sexual, and somewhat describes a sexual frustration for a first love, in the first couple of stanzas.

John Clare's Don Juan: In Your Face

I found John Clare's Don Juan very abrasive.  What really came through was Clare's cynicism.  It's overwhelming.  I've never felt a negative emotion come through so strongly in a poem.  Women are portrayed as overly sexual and untrustworthy.  One excerpt I wanted to focus on:

"Children are fond of sucking sugar candy

& maids of sausages—larger the better

Shopmen are fond of good sigars & brandy

& I of blunt— & if you change the letter—

To C or K it would quite as handy

& throw the next away—but I'm your debtor

For modesty— yet wishing nought between us

I'd hawl close to a she as vulcan did to venus"

This is a great example of Clare's abrasiveness.  Clare simplifies the desire for a woman to simply the desire for "cunt."  I had to reread this several times to make sure I was interpreting it correctly.  I was not sure if that word was even in use at the time, but a little research confirmed my suspicions.

If that wasn't offensive enough, there is an obvious sexualization of the maids shopmen... with the most disturbing sexualization being that of the children "sucking sugar candy."  John Clare seems like he's trying to point out that sex is everywhere.  Something about the format...the way he presents it, maybe, reminds me of John Wilmot, 2nd Early of Rochester as he was portrayed by Johnny Depp in The Libertine: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfTPS-TFQ_c

It's the wit and the animalistic sexuality mixed with cynicism.  It's upsetting, but in an almost entertaining way.

Negative View of Women in Clare's Don Juan

What I found particularly interesting in John Clare's Don Juan A Poem is the negative view of women throughout the work. In lines 15-16, Clare writes "Wherever mischief is til womans brewing Created from manself--to be mans ruin." Without knowing his past or relationship history, I would guess that he had been heartbroken by a woman or have ill will toward women.
During this time period I know it was common to view women as closer to nature and "hysterical." I also know that women were blamed for the fall of man because Eve ate the apple in the biblical story of how mankind succumbed to sin. I wonder if Clare felt that women were to blame for his misery and thus is "mischief" is about, it is most defintely "womans brewing."(line 16)
This also makes me wonder if Clare viewed woman as wholly more sinful than men, and if so, who does he blame his own sin on? Does he believe that his sin is a result of something that a woman did to him?

Byron the Sass Master

Lord Byron's snarky opinions make Don Juan an amusing read, in part because of his criticism on the literary market of the time. In stanza 178, for example, he says that tact keeps "a lady distant from the fact" when "pushed by questions rather tough (1421-1422). While this of course is a direct reference to his own scandalous lifestyle and the rumors spread because of it, and the fame that both he and Don Juan received as a result, it also raises an interesting commentary on the truthfulness of literature. It is almost as if he is asking if politeness and "tact" are of higher value than candid, honest writing. He is critical of flowery, pastoral writing, calling Wordsworth's writings "unintelligible" (720). He seems to mock writers who "find materials for their books" "within the leafy nooks" of nature (717, 715). By using a snarky tone to criticize other writers and styles, Byron seems to be defending the candid nature of his works, and suggesting that truthfulness is more important than style.

I want a hero: an uncommon want

The first stanza “I want a hero” is about how he wants someone to stand up and be that figure, someone that inspires and encourages others to be better and how that is uncommon to want. It also talks about how there have been so many people that have showed up over the years, that have claimed they were a hero or tried to fill this role of hero but they have all ended up being false heroes. The second stanza lists many political figures each different in their own way. Some good, some not, some military, others royalty but each a person who tried to stand as a hero of some kind. These two stanza tells us that Byron’s chosen genre is the epic, which has three elements. One it must be a trilogy or longer, two is that the time span must encompass years or more and three it must contain a large back story or universe setting in which the story takes place. More well-known works that are considered epics are J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Thousand and One Nights, where the stories Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad the Sailor come from. These two stanzas and Byron’s choice in genre tell us the he is trying to influence the people. He is trying to teach a way of thought that could convince the people to take a stand and control their own futures. He wants them to see that the heroes of the past that have all failed were part of the aristocracy and that they should try and shape their own lives.

Reaching for More or Humanity is "Never" Satisfied

In the spirit of Kubla Khan is a poem about reaching for something beyond yourself and basicly not getting it. The problem with the narrator in I Am by John Clare is that they want to be closer to "god" or a godlike being because they feel they have nothing left so being something other than what they are is appealing. The need that people have to want something beyond all sanity is frightening in and of itself because we recognize that theirs a limit to when we just have to stop, but obsession can of course drive people to do insane things, such as bringing a dead person back to life when you "know" a person is suppoused to stay dead in Frankenstein. Humanities struggle to keep going even when your not sure where your going too is something that in the narration of the poem is explored where the narrator simply wishes to return to something or be reborn into a life where they aren't in pain or suffering from depression since the tone of the poem seems to lean that way.

Clare's Madness

After reading John Clare’s first I Am it seemed to me that he thought of himself as an eternal spirit that was not shackled by time or by body. This would explain how he thought he was Byron. Yet Clare’s Don Juan A Poem, seems to not be similar to the portion we read of Byron’s Don Juan. Both poems contain spite yet Clare’s poem seems to be more pointed and hateful. The poem seems to shift focus frequently. Whatever Clare's focus falls upon could either be praised or lambasted seemingly on a whim. Clare's second I Am seems as if it were written with a clearer head.  A man plagued by illness is locked away and abandoned by his friends and family. He longs for peace with God like the peace he knew in childhood. The selection of Clare's work is a very interesting representation of his disease. The work displays the anger, hubris, and vulnerability of a troubled mind in a way that is totally unique to me.

Vulgarity at its Finest

While reading Don Juan by Clare, my jaw was completely dropped. However, the vulgarity of the subject matter was a very clever strategy to use. His very vibrant choice words and visuals invoke a tavern or pub feel. The questionably stated subject matter engages the reader in a personal conversation with many personal opinions expressed freely. This method of audience engagement really draws in the reader while using vulgar expressions to create a level of humor over serious political views (Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister for example). Overall I found his method of getting his point across in an almost drunken manner to be effective. It was entertaining. And if anyone takes what he says offensively it can be disregarded by means of the sloppy drunk friend we all know who behaves inappropriately after hours.

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.

Morality versus Nature

Don Juan seems to have a problem throughout Canto I with being unable to rein in his passions and act on logic something that gets him and Julia into a lot of trouble when they begin an affair and get caught. This problem with not being able to control there passions and act completely on instinct seems to be a way for Byron to explore whether man is ruled by his base instincts first and learns morality later or has personal morals that are instilled at birth. This question was something that was being studied at the time and looking at this question through the eyes of a character so obviously portraying his own morality rather than what is expected is a good idea.

The fact that Don Juan is 16 at the time was a odd choice though in that by him being so young it casts a reckless light to this character making his actions more primal in that as teenagers were more in tune with our baser emotions and allow them to rule us, not that Don Juan being a teenager excuses his actions but it does cast them in a more realistic light. The fact that this question of whether people are ruled by logic or instinct is a fundamental question for the nature of this story but there's no true way to tell whether people are born with morality or learn it.