The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 5/The Deformed Transformed

The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)
by George Gordon Byron

The Deformed Transformed

3641067The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) — The Deformed TransformedGeorge Gordon Byron

THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED:

A DRAMA.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED.

The date of the original MS. of The Deformed Transformed is "Pisa, 1822." There is nothing to show in what month it was written, but it may be conjectured that it was begun and finished within the period which elapsed between the death of Allegra, April 20, and the death of Shelley, July 8, 1822. According to Medwin (Conversations 1824, p. 227), an unfavourable criticism of Shelley's ("It is a bad imitation of Faust"), together with a discovery that "two entire lines" of Southey's—

"And water shall see thee,
And fear thee, and flee thee"—

were imbedded in one of his "Songs," touched Byron so deeply that he "threw the poem into the fire," and concealed the existence of a second copy for more than two years. It is a fact that Byron's correspondence does not contain the remotest allusion to The Deformed Transformed; but, with regard to the plagiarism from Southey, in the play as written in 1822 there is neither Song nor Incantation which could have contained two lines from The Curse of Kehama.

As a dramatist, Byron's function, or metier, was twofold. In Manfred, in Cain, in Heaven and Earth, he is concerned with the analysis and evolution of metaphysical or ethical notions; in Marino Faliero, in Sardanapalus, and The Two Foscari, he set himself "to dramatize striking passages of history;" in The Deformed Transformed he sought to combine the solution of a metaphysical puzzle or problem, the relation of personality to individuality, with the scenic rendering of a striking historical episode, the Sack of Rome in 1527.

In the note or advertisement prefixed to the drama, Byron acknowledges that "the production" is founded partly on the story of a forgotten novel, The Three Brothers, and partly on "the Faust of the great Goethe."

Arnaud, or Julian, the hero of The Three Brothers (by Joshua Pickersgill, jun., 4 vols., 1803), "sells his soul to the Devil, and becomes an arch-fiend in order to avenge himself for the taunts of strangers on the deformity of his person" (see Gent. Mag., November, 1804, vol. 74, p. 1047; and post, pp. 473-479). The idea of an escape from natural bonds or disabilities by supernatural means and at the price of the soul or will, the un-Christlike surrender to the tempter, which is the grund-stoff of the Faust-legend, was brought home to Byron, in the first instance, not by Goethe, or Calderon, or Marlowe, but by Joshua Pickersgill. A fellow-feeling lent an intimate and peculiar interest to the theme. He had suffered all his life from a painful and inconvenient defect, which his proud and sensitive spirit had magnified into a deformity. He had been stung to the quick by his mother's taunts and his sweetheart's ridicule, by the jeers of the base and thoughtless, by slanderous and brutal paragraphs in newspapers. He could not forget that he was lame. If his enemies had but possessed the wit, they might have given him "the sobriquet of Le Diable Boiteux" (letter to Moore, April 2, 1823, Letters, 1901, vi. 179). It was no wonder that so poignant, so persistent a calamity should be "reproduced in his poetry" (Life, p. 13), or that his passionate impatience of such a "thorn in the flesh" should picture to itself a mysterious and unhallowed miracle of healing. It is true, as Moore says (Life, pp. 45, 306), that "the trifling deformity of his foot" was the embittering circumstance of his life," that it "haunted him like a curse;" but it by no means follows that he seriously regarded his physical peculiarity as a stamp of the Divine reprobation, that "he was possessed by an idée fixe that every blessing would be 'turned into a curse' to him" (letter of Lady Byron to H. C. Robinson, Diary, etc., 1869, iii. 435, 436). No doubt he indulged himself in morbid fancies, played with the extravagances of a restless imagination, and wedded them to verse; but his intellect, "brooding like the day, a master o'er a slave," kept guard. He would never have pleaded on his own behalf that the tyranny of an idée fixe, a delusion that he was predestined to evil, was an excuse for his shortcomings or his sins.

Byron's very considerable obligations to The Three Brothers might have escaped notice, but the resemblance between his "Stranger," or "Cæsar," and the Mephistopheles of "the great Goethe" was open and palpable.

If Medwin may be trusted (Conversations 1824, p. 210), Byron had read "Faust in a sorry French translation," and it is probable that Shelley's inspired rendering of "May-day Night," which was published in The Liberal (No. i., October 14, 1822, pp. 123-137), had been read to him, and had attracted his attention. The Deformed Transformed is "a Faustish kind of drama;" and Goethe, who maintained that Byron's play as a whole was "no imitation," but "new and original, close, genuine, and spirited," could not fail to perceive that "his devil was suggested by my Mephistopheles" (Conversations, 1874, p. 174). The tempter who cannot resist the temptation of sneering at his own wiles, who mocks for mocking's sake, is not Byron's creation, but Goethe's. Lucifer talked at the clergy, if he did not "talk like a clergyman;" but the "bitter hunchback," even when he is solus, sneers as the river wanders, "at his own sweet will." He is not a doctor, but a spirit of unbelief!

The second part of The Deformed Transformed represents, in three scenes, the Siege and Sack of Rome in 1527. Byron had read Robertson's Charles the Fifth (ed. 1798, ii. 313-329) in his boyhood (Life, p. 47), but it is on record that he had studied, more or less closely, the narratives of contemporary authorities. A note to The Prophecy of Dante (Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 258) refers to the Sacco di Roma, descritto da Luigi Guicciardini, and the Ragguaglio Storico . . . sacco di Roma dell' anno MDXXVII. of Jacopo Buonaparte; and it is evident that he was familiar with Cellini's story of the marvellous gests and exploits quorum maxima pars fuit, which were wrought at "the walls by the Campo Santo," or on the ramparts of the Castle of San Angelo.

The Sack of Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. "Chants populaires," writes M. Emile Gebhart (De l'Italie, "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," 1876, pp. 267, sq.), "Nouvelles de Giraldi Cintio, en forme de Décaméron . . . récits historiques . . . de César Grollier, Dialogues anonymes . . . poésies de Pasquin, toute une littérature se developpa sur ce thème douloureux. . . . Le Lamento di Roma, œuvre étrange, d'inspiration gibeline, rappelle les espérances politiques exprimées jadis par Dante . . . 'Bien que César m'ait dépouilleé de liberté, nous avons toujours été d'accord dans une même volonté. Je ne me lamenterais pas si lui régnait; mais je crois qu'il est ressuscité, ou qu'il ressuscitera véritablement, car souvent un Ange m'a annoncé qu'un César viendrait me délivrer.'. . . Enfin, voici une chanson française que répétaient en repassant les monts les soldats du Marquis de Saluces:—

"Parlons de la déffaiete
De ces pouvres Rommains,

Aussi de la complainete
De notre père saint.

"'O noble roy de France,
Regarde en pitié
L'Eglise en ballance . . .
Pour Dieu! ne tarde plus,
C'est ta mère, ta substance;
O fils, n'en faictz reffus.'"

"Le dernier monument," adds M. Gebhart, in a footnote, "de cette littérature, est le singulier drame de Byron, The Deformed Transformed, dont Jules César est le héros, et le Sac de Rome le cadre."

It is unlikely that Byron, who read everything he could lay his hands upon, and spared no trouble to master his "period," had not, either at first or second hand, acquainted himself with specimens of this popular literature. (For La Presa e Lamento di Roma, Romæ Lamentatio, etc., see Lamenti Storici dei Secoli xiv., xv. (Medin e Fratri), Scelta di Curiosità, etc., 235, 236, 237, Bologna, 1890, vol. iii. See, too, for "Chanson sur la Mort du Connétable de Bourbon," Recueil de Chants historiques français, par A. J. V. Le Roux de Lincy, 1842, ii. 99.)

The Deformed Transformed was published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824. A third edition appeared February 23, 1824.

It was reviewed, unfavourably, in the London Magazine, March, 1824, vol. 9, pp. 315-321; the Scots Magazine, March, 1824, N.S. vol. xiv. pp. 353-356; and in the Monthly Review, March, 1824, Enlarged Series, 103, pp. 321, 324. One reviewer, however (London Magazine), had the candour to admit that "Lord Byron may write below himself, but he can never write below us!"

For the unfinished third part, vide post, pp. 532-534.

ADVERTISEMENT.

This production is founded partly on the story of a novel called " The Three Brothers,"^[1] published many years ago, from which M. G. Lewis's "Wood Demon"^{[O 1]} was also taken; and partly on the "Faust" of the great Goëthe. The present publication^{[O 2]} contains the two first Parts only, and the opening chorus of the third. The rest may perhaps appear hereafter.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Footnotes designated by lower case Roman numerals

Footnotes designated by Decimal numbers

↑ The Three Brothers, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was published in 1803. There is no copy of The Three Brothers in the British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):— "Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child 'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect.' When travelling with his parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness. Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents. 'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. . . . "Were a blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, . . . "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required. . . . What was that answer the effects explain. . . . There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human artist never could depict or insculp—Demetrius, the son of Antigonus. Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance, his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of his admiration . . . Arnaud awoke a Julian!'"

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[p473-1] The Three Brothers, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was published in 1803. There is no copy of The Three Brothers in the British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):— "Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child 'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect.' When travelling with his parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness. Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents. 'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. . . . "Were a blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, . . . "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required. . . . What was that answer the effects explain. . . . There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human artist never could depict or insculp—Demetrius, the son of Antigonus. Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance, his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of his admiration . . . Arnaud awoke a Julian!'"

[1]

[O 1]

[O 2]

The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 5/The Deformed Transformed

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