著者

門田 守

出版者

奈良教育大学

雑誌

奈良教育大学紀要 人文・社会科学 (ISSN:05472393)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.45, no.1, pp.35-54, 1996-11

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Byron adopts a double viewpoint in delineating his hero's checkered career in Don Juan. The viewpoint manifests itself as the narrator's tendency to overlap heavenly elements on worldly matters which he has chosen as his poetic materials. His wish for heaven exists throughout the entire poem, and forms Byron's poetic stance on the whole. The apocalyptic sublime appears in shipwreck cantos and the cantos which depicts the battle between Turkish troops and Russian army supported by hired soldiers. Although the sublime scenes and heavenly elements fascinate the reader together with the narrator's occasional witty satires on worldly matters, Byron repeatedly breaks the logic of apocalypse and betrays the reader's expectations. Don Juan is an epic poem which comprises triple-layered structures. The first layer is the memory of mankind's degeneration from paradisal state. The second is Byron's personal memories of his abominable past years. The third is the elusive plot of the poem itself. The narrative on Juan's journey conveys the present degenerated political state of Europe and also insinuates man's innate and unchangeable proclivity to commit sins. The total effect distresses the reader with the impression that human life is a fruitless game which accumulates follies on follies. Unlike his previous works, Don Juan presents the attitude to make fun of romantic scenes and the logic of apocalypse as well. For example, Gulbeyaz the empress of Constantinople knows Juan's sincere attitude toward love and tries to love him. However, after knowing his sleeping with Dudu one of the female slaves in Sultans palace, Gulbeyaz loses her presence of mind on account of sudden anger and jealousy. The anecdote's underlying connotation must be applied to The Corsair. Gulnare loves Conrad on account of his sincere heart displayed when he was saving lives of female slaves in Pasha's harem. She exiles with him in Lara. Gulbeyaz's love, however, ends up with her shameful faint. The shipwreck cantos indicate the lack of God's providence, because Juan owes his survival to his good luck. The battle in Ismail serves as the scene to show man's brutality and there is no cause for freedom such as displayed in Marino Faliero. The later depiction of British high society reflects the image of the ruthless war. The love of angelic women, Haidee and Aurora Raby, may bring about the salvation from this miserable world. The probability of it is denied by the poem's plot. Byron's Greek expedition may have been the psychological supplementation for this futile effort to search the rums of paradise.