The image of Childe Harold as the embodiment of the Byronic hero (based on the poem by J. G.

Byron's most famous poem is Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The poem was created piecemeal. Her first two songs were written during Byron's travels to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece (1809-1811). The third canto is on the shores of Lake Geneva after the final departure from England (1816), the fourth canto was completed already in Italy in 1817.

All four songs are united by one hero. The image of Childe Harold entered world literature as the image of a completely new hero, whom literature had not known until now. It embodies the most characteristic features of the enlightened part of the younger generation of the era of romanticism. Byron himself stated that he wanted to show his hero "as he is" at a given time and in a given reality, although "it would be nicer and probably easier to portray a more attractive face."

Who is the "pilgrim" Childe Harold? Already at the beginning of the poem, the author introduces his hero:

There lived a young man in Albion. He devoted his life only to idle entertainment In a crazy thirst for joy and negligence...

This is the offspring of an ancient and once glorious family (Child is the old name for a young man of a noble class). It would seem that he should be satisfied with life and happy. But unexpectedly for himself, "in the prime of life in May" he falls ill with a "strange" disease:

Satiation spoke in him, A fatal disease of mind and heart, And everything around seemed vile: Prison - homeland, grave - father's house ...

Harold rushes to foreign, unknown lands, he longs for change, danger, storms, adventure - anything, just to get away from what he is disgusted with:

Inheritance, house, family estates, Pretty ladies, whose laughter he loved so much... He traded for winds and fogs, For the rumble of southern waves and barbarian countries.

The new world, new countries gradually open his eyes to a different life, full of suffering and disasters and so far from his former secular life. In Spain, Harold is no longer the social dandy he is described at the beginning of the poem. The great drama of the Spanish people, forced to choose between "submission or the grave," fills them with anxiety and hardens their hearts. At the end of the first song, this is a gloomy, disillusioned person in the world. He is burdened by the whole way of life of an aristocratic society, he does not find meaning either in earthly or in the afterlife, he rushes about and suffers. Neither English nor European literature in general has ever known such a hero.

However, already in the second chapter, finding himself in the mountains of Albania, Harold, although still "alien, careless," but already amenable to the beneficial influence of the majestic nature of this country and its people - the proud, courageous and freedom-loving Albanian highlanders. In the hero, responsiveness, spiritual nobility are increasingly manifested, there is less and less dissatisfaction and longing in him. The soul of the misanthrope Harold begins to recover, as it were.

After Albania and Greece, Harold returns to his homeland and again plunges into the "whirlwind of secular fashion", into "the flea market where the fuss boils", He again begins to be haunted by the desire to escape from this world of empty fuss and aristocratic swagger. But now "its goal ... is more worthy than then." Now he knows for sure that "his friends are among the desert mountains." And he "takes up the pilgrim's staff again"... material from the site

Since the appearance in print of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, readers have identified the hero of the poem with the author himself, although Byron strongly objected to this, insisting that the hero was fictional. Indeed, the author and his hero have a lot in common, at least even in the biography. However, the spiritual image of Byron is immeasurably richer and more complex than the image of the character he created. And yet, the "line" desired by the poet between him and his hero was never succeeded, and in the fourth song of the poem, Childe Harold is no longer mentioned at all. “In the last song, the pilgrim appears less frequently than in the previous ones, and therefore he is less separable from the author, who speaks here in his own person,” admitted Byron.

Childe Harold is a sincere, deep, albeit very contradictory person who has become disillusioned with the "light", in his aristocratic environment, runs away from it, passionately looking for new ideals. This image soon became the embodiment of the Byronic hero in the literature of many European countries in the era of romanticism.

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The most famous and large-scale work of the English romantic poet George Byron, the poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" was created over a long time - the process of writing it stretched for almost a decade - from 1809 to 1818. The idea of ​​writing an innovative work in terms of content arose from the poet during a trip abroad: Byron decided to convey in the poem his personal perception of what he saw during his wanderings around Europe.

Lyric epic poem, including four songs, created in the form of a lyrical diary, in which the poet expressed his attitude to his contemporary era and gave his own assessment of social conflicts in European countries.

The central theme of the poem- the national liberation struggle of the peoples of Europe - and the appeal to large-scale events of our time led to the high civic pathos of the poem. The theme of patriotism is closely intertwined with the main theme. The main idea of ​​the work is the thought of the regularity of revolutionary events and popular uprisings against tyranny. It is no coincidence that a through image of time passes through the entire poem as a symbol of just retribution.

The protagonist of the poem satiated with life at the age of less than nineteen, Childe Harold is the son of his era. In this generalized image, Byron embodied the traits, attitudes and disappointments of an entire generation that saw only the sunset of the era of great revolutionary upheavals and the Napoleonic wars. Characteristics of the new romantic hero- the ability for reflection and introspection, a break with a hypocritical society, a deep internal conflict of the individual with the world.

Childe Harold plays the role of a conductor of the views and beliefs of the poet himself in the poem. At the same time, the hero cannot be identified with Byron: despite the closeness of Childe's image to the author (coincidence of biography facts, feeling of loneliness and flight from high society), the poet is not satisfied with the passivity of the hero's position. Childe Harold analyzes personal experiences caused by conflict with society, but does not fight against existing foundations, only observes the vague state of the world.

Plot development connected with the wanderings of the protagonist, however, the event plot is weak, and the hero is gradually pushed into the background by dramatic historical events witnessed by the author himself. The poet confesses that he has lost a hero ( "He's lost something and isn't coming"), and the image of the main character is replaced in the third or fourth songs by lyrical digressions-thoughts of the author.

The first and second songs were written during Byron's journey through the Pyrenees and the Balkans. In them, the author raises the topic of popular uprisings, describing the struggle of the Spanish people against the Napoleonic invasion and telling about the enslaved position of the Albanians under the Turkish yoke and the Greeks. Passionately stigmatizing the colonial policy of England, Byron calls on the Hellenes to fight: "Oh, Greece! Get up and fight!".The image of the people fighting against the enslavement occupies an important place in the poem, and the very content of this struggle is expressed through the emotional assessments of the author.

The third (1816) and fourth (1818) songs of the poem were written during the period when Byron left England and lived in Italy and Switzerland. In the third song, Byron expresses his attitude to the central event of the entire era - the Great French Revolution. Speaking of the titans of thought, Voltaire and Rousseau, who prepared the ground for the revolution with their views, the poet expresses his deep conviction that the proclaimed ideals of the revolution must triumph everywhere.

The fourth song is dedicated to depicting the suffering of the Italian people, groaning from feudal fragmentation and the Austrian yoke. The poet expresses the idea of ​​the struggle for freedom in the image of the sea - a recalcitrant free element.

Political content poem organically combines the travel diary of Byron himself, sharp political satire and deep lyricism in describing the emotional experiences of the hero and the poet.

The poem is written in multicolored verse - Spencer stanza, which includes eight lines of iambic pentameter and one line written in iambic six-meter. The first two songs reflect the folklore motifs of the Greek and Spanish peoples.

"An enthusiastic detractor of the universe," Byron proclaims in his poem a declaration of a romantic mood, passionately expressing a hatred of tyranny and a thirst for political freedom.

Childe Harold - a young man who is prompted to boundless skepticism by "anguish, a caustic force", which has become a distinctive feature of a whole generation, which has only caught the sunset of the heroic era of revolutionary upheavals and wars of liberation. Pushkin's definition - "premature old age of the soul" - highlights the most essential quality of the worldview embodied in G.. Coloring a whole period of European spiritual life, such a mindset, the focus and spokesman of which is G., gave the story of his "pilgrimage" the significance of a vivid document of the era and one of the largest events in the history of romanticism. Feeling himself born under the “inglorious star” and having abandoned the hope of finding a goal worthy of the forces dormant in him, G., in his incomplete nineteen years, only dreams of oblivion, which could bring flight “from himself”, but corrosive disbelief haunts him, “ and there is no peace in the heart. G.'s position becomes total irony, which reveals petty self-interest behind the masks of nobility, and behind lofty words - the emptiness of meaning, which has become a chronic disease of the era when the sense of meaningfulness and purposefulness of existence has been lost. In Spain, passing through the fields of “sorrowful glory”, which remained as a memory of the resistance to the Napoleonic invasion, even in Greece, where “the free in the past are honored by the sons of Liberty”, and in the colorful harsh Albania, G., traveling with the only desire not to inhale the poisoned air of his native land , experiences only a feeling that is painful for himself too - indifference, "Pilgrimage" appears not as a spiritual journey, not as a feat of a knight driven by dreams of glory, but as the implementation of a long-standing plan "at least to escape to hell, but leave Albion." G.'s background is told in the very first stanzas, speaking of the only love, but rejected by him, since the hero preferred to "seduce the love of many" - with the hope of dulling the feeling of boredom among the "noise of crowded halls" with this external diversity. His vulnerable pride, combined with melancholy and hopeless disappointment, is recognized by G. himself as “a fatal disease of the mind and heart,” but “life-denying sadness” turns out to be stronger than all other motives. Suppressing "feelings involuntarily and ardor", in indifference he seeks protection from injuries caused by contact with the real order of things in the world, as G. knows him. The grief that owns G. is organic, genuine and cannot be explained either by his “unfortunate character”, as the first critics believed, or by the seeming indistinguishability of the character from the author, while in reality the poem does not at all bear the character of a lyrical confession. To a much greater extent, Byron's goal was a portrait of his generation, presented in the form of a young skeptic who is alien to all seduction, languishes with the aimlessness and emptiness of his everyday life and knows only too well the price of the beautiful deceptions of love, dreaminess, selflessness, self-sacrifice. The concept of "Byronic hero" arose and took root along with the publication of the first songs of the poem. As a representative of the era, G. gained much wider and more stable fame than as a literary hero with his own individuality.

Since 1817, the Italian period of Byron's work begins. The poet creates his works in the context of the growing movement of the Carbonari for the freedom of Italy. Byron himself was a member of this national liberation movement. In Italy, the poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 1809-1817) was completed. In terms of genre features, this is a lyric-epic poem written in the form of a poetic travel diary.

A new hero of romantic literature appears in the poem. Childe Harold is a dreamer who breaks with a hypocritical society, a reflective hero who analyzes his experiences. Here are the origins of the theme of the spiritual quest of a young man, which has become one of the leading ones in the literature of the 19th century. Obsessed with the desire to escape from the usual way of life, disappointed and implacable, Childe Harold rushes to distant lands. Active introspection makes him passive in the practical realm. All his attention is absorbed by the experiences caused by the break with society, and he only contemplates the new that appears before his eyes during his wanderings. His longing has no specific reason; it is the attitude of a person living in a vague state of the world. Childe Harold does not fight, he only looks at the modern world, trying to comprehend its tragic state.

The plot movement of the poem is connected with the wanderings of the hero, with the development of feelings and views of both Childe Harold and the author himself. In some ways, the image of Childe Harold is close to the author: some biographical facts, a feeling of loneliness, an escape from high society, a protest against the hypocrisy of modern England. However, the difference between the personality of the poet and the hero of the poem is also obvious. Byron himself denied the identity between himself and Childe Harold: he ironically refers to the pose of a disappointed wanderer, calmly observing what he sees during his wanderings, to the “perversion of the mind and moral feelings” of a passive person.

The poem is imbued with civic pathos, which is caused by an appeal to large-scale events of our time. In the first and second songs, the theme of the popular uprising plays a significant role. The poet welcomes the liberation movement of the peoples of Spain and Greece. Episodic but impressive images of ordinary people appear here. A heroic image of a Spanish woman participating in the defense of Zaragoza has been created.

Heroic verses are replaced by sarcastic verses in which the poet denounces British policy in the Iberian Peninsula and in Greece, where instead of helping the Greek people in their liberation struggle, Britain is robbing the country, taking national values ​​out of it.

The heroic theme of the poem is connected, first of all, with the image of the rebellious people, with the depiction of the struggle of the Spanish and Greek patriots. Byron feels that it is in the people that freedom-loving aspirations are alive and that it is the people that are capable of a heroic struggle. However, the people are not the main character of the poem; Childe Harold, who is far from the people, does not become a heroic figure either. The epic content of the people's struggle is revealed mainly through the author's emotional attitude. The movement from the lyrical theme of a lonely hero to the epic theme of the people's struggle is given as a change in the emotional spheres of the hero and the author. There is no synthesis between the lyrical and epic beginnings.

The appeal to the significant social facts of his time gives Byron reason to call the poem political. The main idea of ​​the poem is the apotheosis of popular indignation against tyranny, the regularity of the revolutionary action of the masses. Through the entire poem passes the image of Time, associated with the idea of ​​just retribution.

In the third and fourth songs, the image of the hero is gradually replaced by the image of the author. The poet expresses thoughts about the central event of his era - about the French bourgeois revolution, in which "humanity realized its strength and made others realize it", about the great enlighteners Rousseau and Voltaire, who participated in the preparation of the revolution with their ideas. In the fourth song, Byron writes about the fate of Italy, about its history and culture, about the suffering of the Italian people. The poem expresses the idea of ​​the need to fight for the freedom of Italy. A metaphorical image of the "tree of freedom" is also created here. Despite the fact that the reaction cut down this tree, it continues to live and gain new strength. The poet expresses faith in the inevitable triumph of freedom in the future:

But Byron does not bow to fate. He believes that a person can heroically resist fate. He is a supporter of an active attitude of man to life; he calls for a heroic struggle for the freedom of the individual and the people. The poem "Childe Harold" exalts the rebelliousness of a person who comes into conflict with the hostile forces of evil. The poet is aware of the inevitable tragedy of this struggle, since fate is stronger than man, but the essence of a true human personality is in heroic confrontation.

The essence of the free form of the romantic poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" is in the change of stylistic colors and tonalities - lyricism, journalism, meditation, in the flexibility and multicoloredness of the verse. The poetic form of the poem was the Spencer stanza, consisting of nine lines of different sizes. In the first two songs of "Childe Harold" folklore motifs are obvious, echoes of the folk art of Spain, Albania, Greece. The most important ideas of the poem are often expressed in aphorisms that conclude the Spencer stanza.

The style of the poem is distinguished by energy and dynamism, contrasting comparisons and passionate appeals. All these qualities of the style of "Childe Harold" correspond to the civic pathos of the poem, its modern political content.

And life-denying sadness His features breathed gloomy cold.

D. Byron

The poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" is written in the form of a traveler's lyrical diary.

The journey of the hero and the author has not only educational value - each country is depicted by the poet in his personal perception. He admires nature, people, art, but at the same time, as if unintentionally, he finds himself in the hottest spots in Europe, in those countries where the revolutionary and people's liberation war was fought - in Spain, Albania, Greece. The storms of the political struggle of the beginning of the century break into the pages of the poem, and the poem acquires a sharp political and satirical sound. Thus, Byron's romanticism is unusually closely connected with modernity, saturated with its problems.

Childe Harold is a young man of noble birth. But Byron calls the hero only by his name, thereby emphasizing both his vitality and the typicality of a new social character.

Child Harold undertakes a journey for personal reasons: he "did not harbor enmity" towards society. The journey, according to the hero, should save him from communicating with the familiar, boring and annoying world, where there is no peace, joy, self-satisfaction.

The motives of Harold's wanderings are fatigue, satiety, weariness from the world, dissatisfaction with himself. Under the influence of new impressions from historically significant events, the hero’s conscience awakens: “he curses the vices of violent years, he is ashamed of his wasted youth.” But familiarization with the true concerns of the world, even if only morally, does not make Harold's life happier, because very bitter truths related to the life of many peoples are revealed to him: "And the look that sees the truth is getting darker and darker."

Sadness, loneliness, spiritual confusion are born as if from within. Harold's heart dissatisfaction is not caused by any real reason: it arises before the impressions of the vast world give the hero true reasons for grief.

The tragic doom of efforts directed towards good is the root cause of Byron's grief. Unlike his hero Childe Harold, Byron is by no means a passive contemplator of world tragedy. We see the world through the eyes of a hero and a poet.

The general theme of the poem is the tragedy of post-revolutionary Europe, whose liberation impulse ended with the reign of tyranny. Byron's poem captured the process of the enslavement of peoples. However, the spirit of freedom, which so recently inspired humanity, has not completely died out. He still lives in the heroic struggle of the Spanish people with the foreign conquerors of their homeland, or in the civic virtues of the stern, rebellious Albanians. And yet persecuted freedom is more and more pushed into the realm of legends, memories, legends. In Greece, where democracy once flourished, only historical tradition is the refuge of freedom, and the modern Greek, a frightened and submissive slave, no longer resembles a free citizen of Ancient Hellas (“And under Turkish whips, humbled, Greece stretched, trampled in the mud”). In a chained world, only nature is free, and its magnificent joyful flowering is a contrast to the cruelty and malice that reigns in human society ("Let the genius die, liberty died, eternal nature is beautiful and bright"). Nevertheless, the poet, contemplating this sad spectacle of the defeat of freedom, does not lose faith in the possibility of its revival. All mighty energy is directed to the awakening of the fading revolutionary spirit. Throughout the poem, there is a call to rebellion, to the fight against tyranny (“Oh Greece, rise up to fight!”).

Lengthy discussions turn into the author's monologue, in which the fate and movements of the soul of Childe Harold are presented only by episodes, significant, but secondary.

Byron's hero is outside society, he cannot reconcile himself with society and does not want to seek the use of his strengths and abilities in its reorganization and improvement: at least at this stage the author leaves Childe Harold.

The poet accepted the romantic loneliness of the hero as a protest against the norms and rules of life of his circle, with which Byron himself was forced to break, but at the same time, Childe Harold's egocentrism and life isolation turned out to be the object of criticism of the poet.