Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Renascence, Spring 1997 by David E Goldweber

Third-and this reason depends upon the second-it seems to me that Catholicism to the later Byron quite often appeared to be right. Before instantly brushing this contention off, let us first remember Byron's empirical mind-set. He sought truth by virtue of effect, trusting not information that satisfied a priori logic but that which subsisted manifestly in the human world. He thus praised and advocated learning that comes through "experience not Books" (BLJ 1:173), through "history" (BLJ 3:218, 8:240), and through the "due precision" of "experience" and "tradition" (DJ V.115). As we have seen above, Byron liked Catholicism because it was "sensible" and because it actually produced manifest goodness for humans, here, on earth. And while there is no record of Byron's ever attending Mass, it was reported by Fletcher (who had been Byron's valet for twenty years) that the poet would "repeatedly, on meeting or passing any religious ceremonies which the Roman Catholics have in their frequent processions . . . dismount his horse and fall on his knees, and remain in that posture till the procession had passed" (HVSV 210). Byron himself, it seems, felt firsthand the power of the ceremonies he adored. Catholicism worked not only for the Italians but for Byron as well.

FOR more evidence of Byron's genuine belief in Catholicism, let us return to the poetry, in particular to the character of Aurora, an orphan and a Catholic, who emerges in the fifteenth canto of Don Juan, during a dinner at Norman Abbey.6 Aurora is introduced not merely to be a potential wife for the poem's maturing protagonist but as a symbol of ideal tradition and ideal faith. Among many guests at the Abbey,

there was

Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,

Of the best class, and better than her class,

Aurora Raby, a young star who shone

O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass,

A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded,

A Rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded;

Rich, noble, but an orphan; left an only

Child to the care of guardians good and kind;

But still her aspect had an air so lonely!

Early in years, and yet more infantine

In figure, she had something of the sublime

In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine.

All youth-but with an aspect beyond time;

Radiant and grave-as pitying man's decline;

Mournful-but mournful of another's crime,

She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,

And grieved for those who could return no more.

(XV.43-5)

Aurora's essence is dual: both "fair" and "fairy"-a convergence of what is ideal on earth ("Of the best class, and better than her class") and in the heavens ("a young star who shone / O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass"). The "sublime" of her eyes is the Burkean sublime, an unfathomable and beautiful vastness and greatness. She rises beyond "time" that is historical. Yet while transcending human time in her closeness to eternity and to the Edenic past, she is simultaneously associated with civilization, and she thus brings spiritual ideals to real life on earth. Her reach is wide as well as far.