Don Juan: Canto The Fifteenth by Lord Byron

2022年09月05日

バイロン卿ジョージ・ゴードン・バイロンはイギリス人でスコットランドの詩人でした。バイロンの最高の詩作品には、長編の物語詩ドン・ファンとチャイルド・ハロルドの巡礼です。バイロンは英国で最も偉大な詩人の 1 人と見なされており、今でも広く読まれ、影響力を持っています。バイロンの最高傑作であるドンファンは、17 のカントにまたがる詩です。ジョンミルトンの失楽園以来、英国で出版された最も重要な長編詩の 1 つにランクされています。当時の叙事詩と呼ばれることが多いこの傑作は、文学の伝統に深く根ざしている。初期のビクトリア朝時代にはやや衝撃的であると見なされていました。社会的、政治的、文学的、イデオロギー的なあらゆるレベルで、独自の現代世界に等しく関与しています。これは、この偉大な作家の最高の詩であるドン・ファンの一節です。(English) George Gordon Byron was an Englishman and Scottish poet. Byron is one of Britain's greatest poets and remains widely read and influential. Byron's masterpiece, Don Juan, is a poem that spans 17 cantos. It ranks among Britain's most important long poems since John Milton's Paradise Lost. Often referred to as the epic poem of its time, this masterpiece is deeply rooted in the literary tradition. It was considered somewhat shocking in the early Victorian period. It engaged with its contemporary world on social, political, academic, and ideological levels. It is a passage from Byron's best poetic work, the long narrative poem Don Juan.

Don Juan: Canto The Fifteenth by Lord Byron

In seeing matters which are out of sight.

But all are better than the sigh supprest,

Corroding in the cavern of the heart,

Making the countenance a masque of rest,

And turning human nature to an art.

Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best;

Dissimulation always sets apart

A corner for herself; and therefore fiction

Is that which passes with least contradiction.

Ah! who can tell? Or rather, who can not

Remember, without telling, passion's errors?

The drainer of oblivion, even the sot,

Hath got blue devils for his morning mirrors:

What though on Lethe's stream he seem to float,

He cannot sink his tremors or his terrors;

The ruby glass that shakes within his hand

Leaves a sad sediment of Time's worst sand.

And as for love--O love!--We will proceed.

The Lady Adeline Amundeville,

A pretty name as one would wish to read,

Must perch harmonious on my tuneful quill.

There's music in the sighing of a reed;

There's music in the gushing of a rill;

There's music in all things, if men had ears:

Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.

The Lady Adeline, right honourable;

And honour'd, ran a risk of growing less so;

In their resolves--alas! that I should say so!

They differ as wine differs from its label,

When once decanted;--I presume to guess so,

But will not swear: yet both upon occasion,

Till old, may undergo adulteration.

But Adeline was of the purest vintage,

The unmingled essence of the grape; and yet

Bright as a new Napoleon from its mintage,

Or glorious as a diamond richly set;

A page where Time should hesitate to print age,

And for which Nature might forego her debt--

Sole creditor whose process doth involve in 't

The luck of finding every body solvent.

O Death! thou dunnest of all duns! thou daily

Knockest at doors, at first with modest tap,

Like a meek tradesman when, approaching palely,

Some splendid debtor he would take by sap:

But oft denied, as patience 'gins to fail, he

Advances with exasperated rap,

Whate'er thou takest, spare a while poor Beauty!

She is so rare, and thou hast so much prey.

What though she now and then may slip from duty,

The more's the reason why you ought to stay.

Gaunt Gourmand! with whole nations for your booty,

You should be civil in a modest way:

Some parts of Juan's history, which Rumour,

That live gazette, had scatter'd to disfigure,

She had heard; but women hear with more good humour

Such aberrations than we men of rigour:

Besides, his conduct, since in England, grew more

Strict, and his mind assumed a manlier vigour;

Because he had, like Alcibiades,

The art of living in all climes with ease.

10)

His manner was perhaps the more seductive,

Because he ne'er seem'd anxious to seduce;

Nothing affected, studied, or constructive

Of coxcombry or conquest: no abuse

Of his attractions marr'd the fair perspective,

To indicate a Cupidon broke loose,

And seem to say, 'Resist us if you can'--

11)

Which makes a dandy while it spoils a man.

They are wrong--that's not the way to set about it;

As, if they told the truth, could well be shown.

But, right or wrong, Don Juan was without it;

10)

In fact, his manner was his own alone;

Sincere he was--at least you could not doubt it,

In listening merely to his voice's tone.

The devil hath not in all his quiver's choice

An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.

11)

By nature soft, his whole address held off

Suspicion: though not timid, his regard

Was such as rather seem'd to keep aloof,

To shield himself than put you on your guard:

Perhaps 'twas hardly quite assured enough,

12)

But modesty's at times its own reward,

Like virtue; and the absence of pretension

Will go much farther than there's need to mention.

Serene, accomplish'd, cheerful but not loud;

Insinuating without insinuation;

Observant of the foibles of the crowd,

Yet ne'er betraying this in conversation;

Proud with the proud, yet courteously proud,

So as to make them feel he knew his station

13)

They pleased to make or take him for; and their

Imagination's quite enough for that:

Adeline, no deep judge of character,

Was apt to add a colouring from her own:

'Tis thus the good will amiably err,

And eke the wise, as has been often shown.

Experience is the chief philosopher,

But saddest when his science is well known:

And persecuted sages teach the schools

Their folly in forgetting there are fools.

14)

Was it not so, great Locke? and greater Bacon?

Great Socrates? And thou, Diviner still,

Whose lot it is by man to be mistaken,

And thy pure creed made sanction of all ill?

Redeeming worlds to be by bigots shaken,

How was thy toil rewarded? We might fill

Volumes with similar sad illustrations,

But leave them to the conscience of the nations.

15)

I perch upon an humbler promontory,

Amidst life's infinite variety:

With no great care for what is nicknamed glory,

But speculating as I cast mine eye

On what may suit or may not suit my story,

And never straining hard to versify,

I rattle on exactly as I'd talk

With any body in a ride or walk.

I don't know that there may be much ability

Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme.

Ref)

So what is the plot?

In the first volume, 16-year-old Juan falls in love with Julia, a married woman, and she is sent to a convent.

Juan is sent on a boat trip.

During the voyage, the ship is hit by a storm and is adrift, food runs out, and some crew members resort to cannibalism.

Hungry humans eat Juan's spaniel dog.

His teacher, Pedrillo, is also to be eaten in drawing lots.

Byron says throughout the poem that he tells the truth.

It is an aspect of Nature that the weather is rough and humans are food.

It is different from the Nature depicted by Wordsworth, and Nature's meaning is not easy.

Juan has washed up alone on an island in the Aegean Sea.

There she is rescued by Heidi, the island's daughter.

Their love is eventually fulfilled on a beach at sunset, and that's the end of Book 2.

Juan then went to Haarlem.

He took part in the war between Turkey and Russia.

He was called to Russia and became the mistress of Yekaterina II.

But the love was too intense, and he became ill and had to relocate.

He was sent to England as a diplomat.

He became a popular figure in British high society.

Something is about to happen because of love.

Having written that much, Byron went to Greece and lost his life.

'Don Juan' was unfinished.