1 00:00:01,660 --> 00:00:17,000 So. I have titled this talk Pirates, Poets and Plagiarism. 2 00:00:18,270 --> 00:00:25,040 With plagiarism in scarecrows. Partly because who doesn't love pirates? 3 00:00:26,310 --> 00:00:32,970 Just check out the number of children's picture books that feature such popular villains. 4 00:00:34,980 --> 00:00:44,280 Poets, perhaps less so, although in Byron pirates and poets have surprisingly a lot in common. 5 00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:53,620 Figures at once. Romantic. And mercenary, making their livings on the edges of polite society. 6 00:00:54,890 --> 00:00:59,060 Plagiarism, added an important third piece to the title. 7 00:00:59,630 --> 00:01:01,430 I had considered princesses. 8 00:01:02,940 --> 00:01:14,240 But this is a talk largely about borrowings back and forth between Byron and Greek poetry, his translation of Greece and its translation by Greece. 9 00:01:16,010 --> 00:01:23,360 We think of plagiarism as intellectual dishonesty, intentional, unacknowledged stealing. 10 00:01:24,170 --> 00:01:31,510 Byron sometimes does, and sometimes does not kind of point us to the sources of his borrowings or stealing. 11 00:01:31,940 --> 00:01:36,230 I'm going to go with stealing. Since Byron here is a mature poet. 12 00:01:37,550 --> 00:01:43,400 But I also liked that. And in this case, the etymology of plagiarism points us to piracy, 13 00:01:43,760 --> 00:01:54,020 the Latin plucky artist being a kidnapper of kin or stealer of slaves, then coming to me in a kidnapper of words, 14 00:01:54,560 --> 00:02:04,790 a reticulate metaphor fetched up out of marshal, actual kidnapping, as well as the impressing of and transfiguration of words and figures. 15 00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:08,270 Plots and tropes will feature here. 16 00:02:10,100 --> 00:02:20,540 Byron visited Greece twice, once in 1809 when he was 21, with a traveller in his travelling companion Hobhouse, 17 00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:32,060 when he had direct experience of shipwreck and of pirates, nearly captured himself, and also arguably engaging in a little like privateering. 18 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:35,159 And then for 100 days. 19 00:02:35,160 --> 00:02:46,170 In 1824, he returns to Greece when he joins the Greek struggle for independence, offering his time and treasure and ultimately his life for the cause. 20 00:02:46,590 --> 00:02:53,760 His failure to liberate Greece in some very real way contributing to the liberation of Greece. 21 00:02:55,520 --> 00:03:00,890 In between these visits, he wrote most of his greatest works and all of his mature work. 22 00:03:01,730 --> 00:03:05,480 I'm particularly interested because I am a poet who lives in Greece. 23 00:03:05,900 --> 00:03:09,770 In those works that touch on Greece or are set there. 24 00:03:09,770 --> 00:03:16,729 So in particular Canto two of the travelogue and autofiction Child Herald and 25 00:03:16,730 --> 00:03:21,980 the shipwrecked on an Island episode in his unfinished masterpiece dungeon, 26 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:31,040 a modern, antic epic or verse novel. And this episode, which I like to call Romeo and Heidi, the pirates daughter. 27 00:03:32,350 --> 00:03:36,850 Covers part of Canto two. Canto three entire and much accounted for. 28 00:03:38,270 --> 00:03:44,870 So in the middle of the Greek Island episode of The Undoing, which is a whole novella inside the epic, 29 00:03:45,440 --> 00:03:49,410 um, where Don Giovanni is rescued by a beautiful Greek maiden, Heidi. 30 00:03:50,060 --> 00:03:55,880 Um, in the middle of Canto three is embedded one of Byron's most famous poems, 31 00:03:56,210 --> 00:04:02,750 The Isles of Greece, which is usually, um, anthologised completely out of context. 32 00:04:04,030 --> 00:04:12,430 Um, so we're going to look a little bit at the poem and then recontextualize the poem and contextualise the context. 33 00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:19,270 Um, so, uh, many of you will know at least the first four stanzas, which are the most famous stanzas. 34 00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:23,230 Um, the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece were burning. 35 00:04:23,230 --> 00:04:27,730 Sappho loved and sung. Where grew the arts of war and peace. 36 00:04:28,120 --> 00:04:33,070 Where Dylan's rose and Phoebus sprang eternal sunlit sun. 37 00:04:33,100 --> 00:04:39,249 Eternal summer guilds them yet. But all except their sun is set the sky on. 38 00:04:39,250 --> 00:04:44,709 And the ten use the hero's harp. The lovers lute have found the fame. 39 00:04:44,710 --> 00:04:49,990 Your shores refuse their place A birth alone is mute to sound. 40 00:04:49,990 --> 00:04:54,400 That echoes farther west than your sires. Islands of the blessed. 41 00:04:55,060 --> 00:04:59,800 The mountains look on marathon. Maybe we should all do the stanza. 42 00:05:00,670 --> 00:05:05,079 Ready the mountains. Come on! The mountains! 43 00:05:05,080 --> 00:05:09,030 Look! Come on the mountains. 44 00:05:09,030 --> 00:05:13,020 Look on marathon and marathon looks on the sea. 45 00:05:13,380 --> 00:05:21,300 And musing there. An hour alone, I dreamt that Greece might still be free for standing on the persons grave. 46 00:05:21,630 --> 00:05:24,740 I could not deem myself a slave. Um. 47 00:05:24,750 --> 00:05:29,700 I think the beautiful opening lines of that which, um, are almost incantatory. 48 00:05:29,700 --> 00:05:36,450 We've got that classic, um, kind of reversal of marathon, which is literally between the mountains and the sea. 49 00:05:36,450 --> 00:05:43,560 And then we have that personal eye that feels like Byron, that feels like this is Byron speaking. 50 00:05:44,010 --> 00:05:48,690 Um, so we have the reference to marathon and then a king seat on the Rocky Brow, 51 00:05:48,690 --> 00:05:56,909 which looks or Seabourn Salamence and ships by thousands lay low and men and nations all were his. 52 00:05:56,910 --> 00:06:02,370 He counted them at break of day. But when the sun set, where were they? 53 00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:11,110 So we have this nod to the ancient glories of Greece, um, particularly Greek arts and literature. 54 00:06:11,350 --> 00:06:16,300 We have the love poems of Sappho. The skin you skin here is here. 55 00:06:17,020 --> 00:06:20,590 Um, and this stands for Homer and Epic Poetry. 56 00:06:20,890 --> 00:06:25,890 The ten Years is an African who stands in for sympathetic poetry. 57 00:06:25,900 --> 00:06:32,010 So, you know, drinking songs. Um, we have this little nod to, oh, this is an up here. 58 00:06:32,020 --> 00:06:36,140 So that's why you all couldn't chant with me. Why isn't this. 59 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:39,970 There we go. Oh, see, I missed that moment. We might have to do it again. 60 00:06:41,070 --> 00:06:46,830 All right. Can you see it now? This is this is going on this thing, but not up here. 61 00:06:47,550 --> 00:06:53,410 No wonder I just thought y'all were sorry. There we go. 62 00:06:53,440 --> 00:06:57,550 I'm sorry. We might have to come back for that. There might not be time. Um. 63 00:06:58,380 --> 00:07:10,170 So this feels very personal, but we have these references, um, to the Persian invasions of 49 for 90 B.C. and for 80 B.C., Marathon and Salamis. 64 00:07:10,380 --> 00:07:19,310 We know that Byron visited Marathon and Solomon. In fact, at marathon, he was offered for sale the entire plane of marathon at a very cheap price. 65 00:07:19,320 --> 00:07:22,470 I don't know why not buy it. Imagine how rich he would be today. 66 00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:29,790 Um, so we have these ancient references, and this does feel like Byron. 67 00:07:30,330 --> 00:07:34,649 Um, we have Rodney and Rodney meetings. Wonderful book, Byron's War. 68 00:07:34,650 --> 00:07:42,570 He mentions that modern editors and commenters do not take seriously the evidence of Thomas Medlin, who is Shelley's cousin, 69 00:07:42,990 --> 00:07:50,430 who reported two separate conversations with Byron not long after these cantos had been published of Don Ju in 1821, 70 00:07:50,430 --> 00:07:54,329 in which he claimed that the Isles of Greece had been written years earlier, 71 00:07:54,330 --> 00:08:00,059 at the same time as the second canto of Child Harold, which was begun in Athens in 1809. 72 00:08:00,060 --> 00:08:06,900 So this might really be Byron speaking, and not the anonymous Greek poet of Duns you. 73 00:08:06,900 --> 00:08:11,950 And so he might be resetting this pool. So can we have the next dances? 74 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:16,059 Um. And where are they? And where art thou? My country. 75 00:08:16,060 --> 00:08:22,090 On thy voiceless. Sure. The heroic lay is tuneless. Now the heroic bosom beats no more and must die. 76 00:08:22,090 --> 00:08:25,780 Liar! So long divine degenerates into hands like mine. 77 00:08:25,990 --> 00:08:30,210 This is clearly not Byron. Um. My country Greece. 78 00:08:30,220 --> 00:08:36,370 Greece is not Byron's country. He does not consider that ancient poetry has degenerated into his own hands. 79 00:08:36,700 --> 00:08:45,129 This is clearly the anonymous poet on the unnamed Greek island who is speaking to something in the dearth of fame, 80 00:08:45,130 --> 00:08:49,630 the linked among a fettered race to feel at least a patriots shame, 81 00:08:49,630 --> 00:09:01,120 even as I sing, suffused my face for what is left the poet here for Greeks, a blessed for Greece a tier must we but week or days more blessed must we. 82 00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:04,839 But bless our father's blessed earth. 83 00:09:04,840 --> 00:09:08,860 Render back from out thy breast a remnant of our Spartan debt. 84 00:09:09,430 --> 00:09:13,930 Of the 300 grants, but three to make a new Thermopylae. 85 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:17,770 What? Silent, still and silent. Uh, all I know. 86 00:09:17,770 --> 00:09:21,249 The voices of the dead sound like a distant torrent. Spell an answer. 87 00:09:21,250 --> 00:09:25,899 Let one living head but one arise. We come, we come to us. 88 00:09:25,900 --> 00:09:29,860 But the living who are dumb. So we have a change of mood. 89 00:09:29,860 --> 00:09:34,180 From the kind of more contemplative. I dreamt that Greece might be free. 90 00:09:34,520 --> 00:09:38,590 I might still be free to patriots. Shame. Kind of anger. 91 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:48,069 We have this strange invocation of the 300 dead from the Battle of Thermopylae, where we're talking about the Spartans, 92 00:09:48,070 --> 00:09:54,760 and under King Leonidas, defending the pass of Thermopylae from a much larger army of Persians. 93 00:09:54,760 --> 00:09:59,260 Of course, it's not just the Spartans. They are thespians and other people who are there. 94 00:09:59,260 --> 00:10:04,360 But anyway, um, there's a certain amount of Greek propaganda that carries forth to the present day. 95 00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:09,490 In fact, I feel like I should point out that Thermopylae was not a victory for the Greeks. 96 00:10:10,030 --> 00:10:14,979 I guess you will constantly see rhetoric in which it seems to be a victory. 97 00:10:14,980 --> 00:10:20,560 Um, they're right wing organisations that like to use this rhetoric and like, you know, they lost rings. 98 00:10:21,070 --> 00:10:26,350 Anyway, I would just put that out there. Um, so there's talk of this glorious deed. 99 00:10:26,350 --> 00:10:30,129 Um, there is talk of the dead rising again to help the living. 100 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:37,810 Maybe there's some thought of Zico in the valley of dry Bones bringing up, um, an army of skeletons. 101 00:10:38,290 --> 00:10:43,450 Uh, I will point out, um, that it's a pretty common trope, and we'll see it again and again. 102 00:10:44,140 --> 00:10:48,700 Felicia, Felicia, Dorothea Heymans, and I don't know how to pronounce your name. 103 00:10:48,700 --> 00:10:57,910 You can correct me afterwards. In her 1817 poem Modern Greece and the Elgin Marbles, which title is later just truncated to modern Greece. 104 00:10:58,540 --> 00:11:05,709 Also mentions of writing the story, um, of a vision of Theseus come back to fight with the Greeks at Marathon. 105 00:11:05,710 --> 00:11:08,770 So it's even there in ancient times, this idea. 106 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:17,329 These are the next stanzas. Have to check to make sure they're in vein and veins like other chords fill high. 107 00:11:17,330 --> 00:11:18,920 The cup was same in wine. 108 00:11:19,190 --> 00:11:27,500 Now this again fits the situation in which we find the poem in dungeon, where we're in something like a wedding feast and people are drinking wine. 109 00:11:27,980 --> 00:11:29,209 Um, again. 110 00:11:29,210 --> 00:11:38,000 Sam also has an association with an actress, an actress, and who is a poet, associated especially in Byron's time, with frivolous drinking songs. 111 00:11:38,150 --> 00:11:43,280 He also happens to work for a tyrant. Um, leave battles to the Turkish hordes. 112 00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:48,889 That's politically incorrect and said the blood of sky is vine heart rising to the ignoble call. 113 00:11:48,890 --> 00:11:53,959 How answers each bold bacchanal. You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet. 114 00:11:53,960 --> 00:11:57,230 Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone of two such lessons? 115 00:11:57,230 --> 00:12:00,260 Why forget the nobler and the manlier one? 116 00:12:00,680 --> 00:12:05,479 Here we have someone addressing a you, addressing a you who are Greeks. 117 00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:08,930 That sort of fits in more with the context you have. 118 00:12:08,930 --> 00:12:12,410 The letters Cadmus gave the Greek alphabet, essentially. 119 00:12:12,860 --> 00:12:17,090 Thank you. He meant them for a slave. Fill hi. The bowl with Sammy and wine. 120 00:12:17,450 --> 00:12:21,890 We will not think of things like these. It made an acronym sung divine. 121 00:12:22,100 --> 00:12:25,670 He served but served. Tis a tyrant. 122 00:12:26,060 --> 00:12:32,650 But our masters then were still at least our countrymen, the tyrant of the curse. 123 00:12:32,810 --> 00:12:39,890 Ease was freedom's best and bravest friend. That tyrant was mill Hyades, important general during marathon. 124 00:12:40,370 --> 00:12:47,570 Oh, that the present hour would lend another despot of the kind such chains as his were sure to bind. 125 00:12:48,580 --> 00:12:53,830 Um, and here we get to the end of the poem, and there's a lot of interesting things that start happening here again. 126 00:12:54,670 --> 00:12:59,379 Phil, hide the ball with Sammy and wine on Sully's rock and Park is sure exists. 127 00:12:59,380 --> 00:13:03,420 The remnants of a line such as the Doric Mothersbaugh. 128 00:13:03,430 --> 00:13:08,440 And there perhaps some seed is sown incorrectly. 129 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:13,870 I then led my own trust. Not for freedom to the Franks. 130 00:13:14,290 --> 00:13:22,040 So when I was everywhere in modern Greece and we talk about the Franks, what we mean is any Western European foreigner, 131 00:13:22,060 --> 00:13:26,379 anyone who is not Greek and belongs to the European West, those are the Franks. 132 00:13:26,380 --> 00:13:29,470 So that could include and here does include the English. 133 00:13:30,130 --> 00:13:35,440 They have a king who buys and sells in native swords and native rakes. 134 00:13:35,440 --> 00:13:41,900 The only hope of courage dwells. But Turkish force and Latin fraud would break your shields. 135 00:13:41,920 --> 00:13:49,209 However broken it. Filth by the bull would say me in wine our virgins dance beneath the shade. 136 00:13:49,210 --> 00:13:54,670 I see their glorious black eyes shine. But gazing on each glowing made my own. 137 00:13:54,700 --> 00:13:59,620 The burning teardrop leaves. To think such breasts must suckle. 138 00:13:59,620 --> 00:14:05,319 Slaves place me on Sunni arms. Marble steep where nothing save the waves. 139 00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:11,020 And I may hear our mutual murmurs. Sweep their soil like let me sing and die. 140 00:14:11,020 --> 00:14:15,250 The land of slaves shall never be mine. Dashed down. 141 00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:26,440 Yarn cut of saint me and wine. So, um, Don Schumann itself, it's sort of maybe hard to place exactly when it sets, but we find out that, don't you? 142 00:14:26,440 --> 00:14:31,960 And, you know, is, among other things, um, uh, lives at the same time as Catherine the Great. 143 00:14:32,380 --> 00:14:37,630 Um, so we think of it as maybe a bit before Byron's time, but it's not ancient, 144 00:14:37,630 --> 00:14:43,209 and it's not the present, but the two words Suri's rock and park is sure. 145 00:14:43,210 --> 00:14:53,500 Especially with trust. Not for freedom. To the Franks place this poem quite specifically to about November of 1819. 146 00:14:53,980 --> 00:15:01,900 Um, we have met people from Sully and people from Parga and Child Harold, because Byron himself had met them. 147 00:15:02,260 --> 00:15:11,649 Um, Byron and Hobhouse have a near shipwreck or pretty much shipwreck, and they end up on the shore, and they are helped by bandits. 148 00:15:11,650 --> 00:15:19,030 They are helped by the Soviets, who are Christian Albanian bandits who also speak Greek. 149 00:15:19,030 --> 00:15:24,610 But, you know, we're going to end up sort of talking about them as Greeks. But I just want to phrase that a little bit more carefully. 150 00:15:25,030 --> 00:15:32,709 Um, and we even have his description, um, where child Harold is afraid to go on land because of the bandits there. 151 00:15:32,710 --> 00:15:40,180 But this was a vain fear. The sea outstretched, the welcome hands led them or rocks and passed the dangerous swamp. 152 00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:47,740 Kinder than Polish slaves, though not so bland, and piled the hearth and wrung their garments damp, 153 00:15:47,740 --> 00:15:55,720 and filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful layer, and spread their fair, the homely, all they had. 154 00:15:56,320 --> 00:16:06,160 Um. So we have this idea of brave bandits, honour among thieves, and a kind of native generosity to these shipwrecked people. 155 00:16:06,910 --> 00:16:11,710 Parga is. There's also the issue of the silly at war. 156 00:16:11,980 --> 00:16:21,820 So in around 1803, the ciliates who are start fighting against Ali Pasha Ali Pasha is the local Ottoman ruler. 157 00:16:21,820 --> 00:16:29,710 Byron meets with him. He's also known as the Lion of Yuan, and, uh, he is the Balkan Napoleon, the Balkan Bonaparte, 158 00:16:30,100 --> 00:16:37,060 um, a very educated and civilised person, he was also capable of amazing savagery. 159 00:16:37,510 --> 00:16:41,590 The ciliates, uh, started to resist and fight against him. 160 00:16:41,920 --> 00:16:47,229 And there's an incident, uh, when Byron was a teenager in 1803, about the same time, 161 00:16:47,230 --> 00:16:51,790 Elgin is removing a bunch of sculptures from the Parthenon and shipping them to England. 162 00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:59,080 Um, there's an incident in the Civil War that's widely recorded in poetry, folksong and academician art. 163 00:16:59,530 --> 00:17:08,830 Um, it's the dance of so long ago. 50 women with their children in their arms are supposed to have thrown the children off a cliff to their deaths, 164 00:17:09,220 --> 00:17:17,560 rather than have them be enslaved, and then themselves danced off the cliff to the rhythm of the sea or to the sea or toe, 165 00:17:17,770 --> 00:17:22,030 which means dragging or tugging is a slow dance, performed hand in hand, 166 00:17:22,300 --> 00:17:28,300 where the dancers kind of move forward a bit and dance in place a little, and then move forward a bit more. 167 00:17:28,660 --> 00:17:36,820 Um, you can see how it might possibly work with women kind of dragging themselves over the cliff one by one to their deaths. 168 00:17:37,240 --> 00:17:42,610 Um, uh, it goes it's very romanticised in the West and in Greece. 169 00:17:42,610 --> 00:17:49,180 It's this idea of liberty or death, which becomes one of the important mottos of the Greek Revolution. 170 00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:58,360 But I'd like us to keep the image of dancing girls and mothers in our mind who prefer death to slavery for themselves and their children, 171 00:17:58,630 --> 00:18:01,120 because it returns only a couple of stanzas later, 172 00:18:01,420 --> 00:18:07,540 and the otherwise pretty stanza about the dancing girls whose breasts will suckle slaves who do not, 173 00:18:07,540 --> 00:18:11,780 in other words, throw their children off a cliff or dance themselves to death. 174 00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:16,780 So, um, there's a bit of judgement here, perhaps. Um, it's also an incident. 175 00:18:16,780 --> 00:18:20,080 Um, that. So this. Heavens. And here's one of the paintings. 176 00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:27,670 Um, this is the Silhouette Women, uh, by uh, Scheffer, depicting the folklore suicide of silhouette women known as the dancers. 177 00:18:27,670 --> 00:18:34,960 Long, uh, um, this is, uh, uh, Greek Theosophists, um, painting of the same incident. 178 00:18:35,380 --> 00:18:41,200 Uh, Felicia Hammons, of course, includes it in modern Greece and in a kind of overblown way. 179 00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:48,580 And she also has a poem called The Slit Mother. Um, she's probably more famous today for Casablanca. 180 00:18:48,910 --> 00:18:54,310 Casablanca? That poem that starts. The boy stood on the burning deck from the battle of the Nile. 181 00:18:54,550 --> 00:19:00,130 She really likes to write poems about suicidal, patriotic, suicidal mothers and children. 182 00:19:00,850 --> 00:19:09,510 It's. It's actually her thing. Um Parker, though more places the poem to a time and place. 183 00:19:09,870 --> 00:19:13,230 So Parga is on the mainland. Um. 184 00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:17,040 Byron has also met with people from Parga who are again. 185 00:19:17,310 --> 00:19:20,490 The idea is kind of bandits. 186 00:19:20,490 --> 00:19:23,610 Pirates who are also, um, very brave. 187 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:31,920 Um, from Child Herald. We have then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves and teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves. 188 00:19:32,130 --> 00:19:37,350 So shall live on the beach, the long galley and or and track to his culvert. 189 00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:43,290 The captive on sewer. So there are kind of also romanticised people associated with the ciliates. 190 00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:49,770 Um, they're on the mainland, but they are traditionally collective with the seven Ionian islands. 191 00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:57,330 Uh, it's a part of the Greek speaking world, and the only part of the Greek speaking world that never fell under the Ottoman yoke. 192 00:19:57,900 --> 00:20:11,400 That is, until 1819. So from 1815 until 1864, the Ionian Island group, the United States of Ionian Islands, was a British protectorate. 193 00:20:12,810 --> 00:20:19,050 But in 1819 the British sold off Parga to the notorious Ali Pasha. 194 00:20:19,740 --> 00:20:26,280 Um Ali had his eyes on Parga for a long time, and the targets had kind of resisted this. 195 00:20:26,550 --> 00:20:29,880 And then suddenly the British simply sell it to him. 196 00:20:30,120 --> 00:20:36,420 This is considered in the the larger European world and in Greece, and maybe in parts of England, 197 00:20:36,690 --> 00:20:42,390 to be a huge betrayal of a Christian population to Muslim slavery. 198 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:46,620 Um, so another plagiarism. So that's how it is viewed at the time. 199 00:20:46,980 --> 00:20:54,930 And Byron knew a lot about it because Ugo first, Carlo, the Italian poet was born on the Greek island of Zakynthos, 200 00:20:55,260 --> 00:21:03,750 writes an enraged essay letter about it into the Edinburgh Review, which is published in October of 1819. 201 00:21:04,140 --> 00:21:11,250 He describes something kind of like, uh, the ago, the population, when they find out they have been sold to Ali Pasha, 202 00:21:11,250 --> 00:21:14,940 threatens to kill themselves, every last one of them man, woman and child. 203 00:21:15,270 --> 00:21:19,680 The English are appalled, um. And give them safe passage to Corfu. 204 00:21:20,100 --> 00:21:23,130 Um, but again, they do something kind of surprising. 205 00:21:23,520 --> 00:21:32,130 They all march out of the city together, and, um, they first exhume the bones of their glorious ancestors. 206 00:21:32,700 --> 00:21:37,190 Um, and the priest does a blessing of them, and they are burnt in a giant funeral pyre. 207 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:42,570 So we have a literal exhuming of the bones of the ancient ancestors. 208 00:21:42,990 --> 00:21:50,370 Um, so, again, this very much places the poem, um, in a kind of political sphere and at a moment in time, 209 00:21:50,580 --> 00:21:56,070 which is completely outside in some weird ways of its setting and undoing. 210 00:21:56,490 --> 00:22:00,460 The last stanza of the Isles of Greece is not my favourite. 211 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:02,160 I think it's kind of week ending. 212 00:22:02,850 --> 00:22:12,090 Uh, I think Byron felt, you know, I need to go back to marathon and to Salome's and maybe even remembers sitting there, 213 00:22:12,390 --> 00:22:20,310 um, uh, um, next to the marble temple at the temple to Poseidon and carving his name in it quite famously. 214 00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:25,710 Um, so we have this ending with its ambiguous, ambiguous dash down the cup. 215 00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:30,150 Does that mean to sit down, or does it mean to hurl it aside? 216 00:22:31,490 --> 00:22:34,550 So let's go back a little bit to the poem itself. 217 00:22:35,330 --> 00:22:43,969 Um, here we have this painting where Byron is depicted as Don Ju in a portrait of Byron is kind of stuck on to Don Julian. 218 00:22:43,970 --> 00:22:54,650 And we have Heidi in this beautiful cave. Um, they live together and become lovers and, um, end up in a kind of wedding celebration. 219 00:22:54,650 --> 00:23:01,220 Although it's not technically a wedding where we have this poet. But let's look a little bit at the poet, and then we'll go outward. 220 00:23:02,210 --> 00:23:08,870 Um, the poet at their festivities is described as a sad, trimmer, but very pleasant fellow. 221 00:23:09,260 --> 00:23:15,290 He is clearly categorised with the talent at this festival and not with the gifts. 222 00:23:16,510 --> 00:23:22,840 And now they were diverted by their sweet dwarves, dancing girls, black eunuchs and a poet. 223 00:23:23,660 --> 00:23:29,120 Which made their new establishment complete. The last was of great fame and liked to show it. 224 00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:35,270 His verses rarely wanted their defeat, and for his theme he seldom sung below it. 225 00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:43,010 He being paid to satirise or flatter, as the psalm says, indicting a good matter. 226 00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:52,159 He deemed being in a lone isle among friends that without any danger of a riot, 227 00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:58,940 he might for long lying make himself amends and singing as he sang in his warm youth. 228 00:23:59,450 --> 00:24:03,230 Agree to a short armistice with truth. 229 00:24:04,340 --> 00:24:12,020 He had travelled amongst the Arabs, Turks and Franks to get Franks are all Europeans and knew the self of the different nations, 230 00:24:12,020 --> 00:24:17,390 and having lived with people of all ranks, had something ready upon most occasions. 231 00:24:18,020 --> 00:24:22,820 That's usually when he was asked to sing. He gave the different nations something national. 232 00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:30,409 Twas all the same to him. God save the king or suck it up according to the fashion of his muse. 233 00:24:30,410 --> 00:24:35,630 May increment of anything from the high lyric down to the low rational. 234 00:24:35,930 --> 00:24:41,210 If Pindar sing horse races, what should hinder himself from being pliable as Pindar? 235 00:24:41,610 --> 00:24:48,979 So, like one of my favourite couplets in Byron. Um, I think partly I love the Hinder and Pindar rhyme. 236 00:24:48,980 --> 00:24:54,080 I, as an American born classicist, would probably say Pindar. 237 00:24:54,560 --> 00:25:00,520 Um, but clearly, if you're an aristocrat who went to hero, the correct pronunciation is Pindar. 238 00:25:00,590 --> 00:25:02,810 I love it when rhymes tell us how to pronounce things. 239 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:09,950 I also like to sing horse races, because Pindar does have this appellation odes to victorious athletes. 240 00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:15,500 And he kind of starts off with a victorious horse whose name is victory bearer. 241 00:25:16,130 --> 00:25:21,770 Um, but also, I like that kind of political sense. We might be getting in here of singing horse races. 242 00:25:21,810 --> 00:25:31,700 Um, there's something I think political going on there. Um, and then, you know, in Greece, he said he'd sing some sort of him like this to you. 243 00:25:32,660 --> 00:25:40,830 It's interesting that he mentions that a hint. So on the one hand, we are prepared for the poet to give us some sort of truth, 244 00:25:41,820 --> 00:25:45,660 but we are also told we are going to get something national with the mention of, 245 00:25:45,660 --> 00:25:50,610 on the one hand, God save the Queen, King and of a French revolutionary song. 246 00:25:50,970 --> 00:25:58,170 And in fact, Byron's The Isles of Greece ends up having an intimate entanglement with solemn forces him to liberty, 247 00:25:58,260 --> 00:26:01,800 which will become the Greek national anthem. More on that later. 248 00:26:02,130 --> 00:26:09,510 So even the hymn here ends up being present, and this will be directly responded to in Greece's national hymn. 249 00:26:10,690 --> 00:26:16,450 After the performance of the Isles of Greece, we start to lose sight of our anonymous poet. 250 00:26:16,810 --> 00:26:24,940 And Byron begins to back-pedal about the truthfulness even of this reportage and Paul's what I like to call a facilities. 251 00:26:25,860 --> 00:26:30,149 The song, or would or could or should have. 252 00:26:30,150 --> 00:26:34,200 So the modern Greek intolerable verse. 253 00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:45,040 In dungeon. We do have reference to the language Modern Greek, but I think this is the only incident where a person is referred to as a modern Greek. 254 00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:51,690 And I think that we might consider that this is a term tossed about in debates in the Edinburgh Review about, you know, 255 00:26:51,700 --> 00:26:59,710 whether this occupied people, um, has the sense to handle, you know, their freedom, whether they are worth being freed. 256 00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:08,229 Um, it's the sort of term we see in Shelley's introduction to Hellas, which is a verse play, models on the Persians, 257 00:27:08,230 --> 00:27:15,160 and it's dedicated to Prince Maverick Cortez, who also happens to be Mary Shelley's Greek tutor. 258 00:27:15,370 --> 00:27:27,760 It's all very embroiled. Um, and Shelley says such stuff in this overblown introduction as we are all Greeks, our laws, our literature, our religion. 259 00:27:28,630 --> 00:27:37,990 What? Our arts have their roots in Greece, but for Greece we might still have been savages and idolaters. 260 00:27:38,910 --> 00:27:43,800 The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious being. 261 00:27:45,820 --> 00:27:55,060 Byron mentions Modern Greek in a catty aside to his and Felicia Timmins publisher John Murray about her poem Modern Greece, 262 00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:56,470 which has been sent to him. 263 00:27:56,740 --> 00:28:04,630 Modern Greece and the Elgin Marbles is very much a response to, um, Child Herald and its, um, upset ness about the Elgin Marbles. 264 00:28:05,230 --> 00:28:12,100 Um, and he says modern Greece good for nothing, written by someone who has never been there. 265 00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:21,630 Besides, why modern? You may say modern Greeks, but surely Greece is rather more ancient than ever. 266 00:28:21,650 --> 00:28:30,700 It was. So for some in Europe, the modern Greek is degenerative or not even related to figures like Leonidas or Pericles, 267 00:28:30,700 --> 00:28:34,479 and to others, the modern Greek is the descendant of glorious beings. 268 00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:41,140 But this is exactly the sort of nonsense that Byron, who has actually been to Greece and met Greeks, would never say. 269 00:28:41,260 --> 00:28:43,630 Instead, in the notes of child Harald, we have. 270 00:28:44,140 --> 00:28:51,520 But instead of considering what they have then and speculating on what they may be, let us look at them as they are. 271 00:28:55,120 --> 00:29:02,140 Well, now get a little bit into the plot in which this, um, poem and poet, uh, comes on stage. 272 00:29:03,410 --> 00:29:13,490 The young hero Don juin is the sole survivor of a shipwreck that is part raft of the Medusa, part ryme of the Ancient Mariner, 273 00:29:13,730 --> 00:29:19,370 and part out of Byron's grandfather's own narrative of his own shipwreck off the coast of Chile. 274 00:29:20,030 --> 00:29:26,930 Um. Byron's grandfather was the vice Admiral John Byron, also known as Foul Weather Jack. 275 00:29:28,110 --> 00:29:33,240 That's a great name for a pirate. It's much better than Jack Sparrow, I think. 276 00:29:34,860 --> 00:29:39,569 Um, so he takes a lot of points directly from foul weather. 277 00:29:39,570 --> 00:29:44,070 Jack. Um, but once a shipwrecked sailor has washed ashore. 278 00:29:44,070 --> 00:29:51,990 The sole survivor, of course. Um. And as it turns out, onto this minor and unnamed island in the 60s in the Aegean. 279 00:29:52,350 --> 00:29:57,690 Naturally, we are in more romantic and less obviously tragic territory. 280 00:29:57,900 --> 00:30:03,090 So we're in The Tempest, say, or a scene out of The Argonaut or the Odyssey. 281 00:30:03,570 --> 00:30:10,400 This section of the poem. Um. Uh, I I've already made my Romeo and Heidi the Pirates daughter joke. 282 00:30:10,410 --> 00:30:18,570 Turn it. As a rule, shipwrecked sailors are saved or assisted by virgin princesses. 283 00:30:19,020 --> 00:30:23,730 It is naturally a highly erotic situation, as by literary tradition. 284 00:30:24,030 --> 00:30:28,950 Shipwrecked sailors are also, besides coincidentally, being young and handsome. 285 00:30:29,100 --> 00:30:33,300 In the entries in this interesting state of being more or less naked. 286 00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:38,770 So that kind of helps things along. This is a Ford Madox Ford painting. 287 00:30:39,070 --> 00:30:43,660 It does not look like grease at all to me. It's very brown. It's not look like the 60s. 288 00:30:44,290 --> 00:30:47,260 And she looks like she's performing actual CPR. It was. 289 00:30:49,370 --> 00:30:59,030 So it is with Don, you and a girl, Heidi of 17, with jet black eyes and auburn or dark gold hair, who is not technically a princess. 290 00:30:59,570 --> 00:31:08,000 Byron goes out to say, but she is the sole heiress of the iron, so she is a princess along with her slightly older companion, the handmaid Zoe. 291 00:31:08,610 --> 00:31:16,700 Zoe means life. It's a very common Greek name, and we might remember that Byron uses it in the refrain of The Maid of Athens. 292 00:31:17,090 --> 00:31:25,480 Zoe moves us out of her. Um, Heidi, which is not a common Greek name, but is a fairly common. 293 00:31:25,490 --> 00:31:33,740 I guess maybe Swiss name would seem to come from hi, devil, I caress, and so her name literally means pet. 294 00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:42,130 Um, Byron steals the name from a Greek folk song that he himself translated in 1809, but more on that a little bit later. 295 00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:50,680 So the young women rescue the the man and clothe him, but so as not to arouse suspicion of Haydn's father, hide him in a cave. 296 00:31:51,490 --> 00:32:00,280 Conveniently, Heidi has no mother or siblings, only a father, Lamberto, whose work happens to be piracy. 297 00:32:01,150 --> 00:32:06,580 Other. Byron enjoys calling him things like a sea solicitor or sea attorney she cares 298 00:32:06,580 --> 00:32:10,270 for doing in a cave where she brings in broth and a delicious breakfast. 299 00:32:10,930 --> 00:32:15,489 And I like that Byron goes into the details of the breakfast. Um, this sounds like a very nice. 300 00:32:15,490 --> 00:32:19,390 A good breakfast for breakfast of eggs, coffee, bread and fish. 301 00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:24,940 And then later it's eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey and wine. 302 00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:32,200 And of course, it's the responsibility of a princess who finds a shipwreck sailor to provide him with a nice shirt. 303 00:32:32,230 --> 00:32:41,860 We've had that out of the Odyssey. And so they do that. They furnished him entire except some stitches with a clean shirt and very spacious britches. 304 00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:46,690 I, I think the original painter didn't pay attention to that. 305 00:32:47,020 --> 00:32:54,040 Um, he can't understand Greek, but she speaks to him in good modern Greek, with an Ionian accent, low and sweet. 306 00:32:54,490 --> 00:33:02,500 Um. Later, though, he says her, and as he interrupted, not Heidi went, eking her speech out to her protege and friend, 307 00:33:02,740 --> 00:33:08,290 to pausing at the last breath, at her, at the last, her breath to take. 308 00:33:08,620 --> 00:33:12,000 She saw he did not understand. Roommate. 309 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,780 Uh, so Romeo is another way to refer to modern Greek? 310 00:33:16,810 --> 00:33:20,470 Um, because the Greeks thought of themselves as Romans. 311 00:33:22,770 --> 00:33:32,280 See. Okay. So when bro, whom Byron also calls a sea attorney and a sea solicitor, goes ah, pirating again. 312 00:33:32,850 --> 00:33:37,290 Um, Heidi and Julian, who have already become lovers. 313 00:33:37,470 --> 00:33:43,620 Heidi is a virgin and apparently knows nothing about the facts of life whatsoever, and sees nothing wrong with this. 314 00:33:44,100 --> 00:33:47,400 Um. Uh. So they progressed to becoming lovers. 315 00:33:47,670 --> 00:33:53,670 And when Lambros goes pirating again, um, now he can come up to the house. 316 00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:59,850 They can live openly as lovers or even as common law husband and wife, though they are not technically married. 317 00:34:00,180 --> 00:34:06,120 And it's during this time that Lambros in his piracy is rumoured to have died. 318 00:34:06,510 --> 00:34:13,290 So I guess they mourn him a little bit, but then they sort of have a big wedding feast and have celebrate that he's not there. 319 00:34:14,100 --> 00:34:20,970 Of course, as you know, this is exactly the moment when Lambros, who is not dead, is going to return. 320 00:34:22,150 --> 00:34:27,210 Um. And he's not happy. He is not happy instead of mourning him. 321 00:34:27,270 --> 00:34:30,929 Um. Uh, there's there's feasting. There is dancing. 322 00:34:30,930 --> 00:34:34,770 He is very, very upset about the extravagant expense. 323 00:34:35,490 --> 00:34:44,129 Um, anyway, the pirate Lambo is not the first Pirate Lamberto to have appeared in a Byron tale in The Bride of Abydos, 324 00:34:44,130 --> 00:34:49,680 one of his Turkish tales, the hero Saleem has been part of a crew of pirates under a Greek pirate. 325 00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:55,320 Lembra and Byron, in a note, points us to a real pirate and a revolutionary. 326 00:34:55,650 --> 00:35:01,320 Um, he says Lambros can gun Sonny, but it's clearly Lambros got sonis. 327 00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,610 I love that there's a DVD you can rent about his life. I haven't found it yet. 328 00:35:06,150 --> 00:35:12,750 Um, he's a very important Greek revolutionary. Um, so important that four ships of the Hellenic Navy are named after him. 329 00:35:12,750 --> 00:35:15,900 So he's not an obscure pirate revolutionary. 330 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:20,310 And he's, in fact, only one level of distance from Byron. 331 00:35:20,700 --> 00:35:30,810 Um, his godson is Andreas and Drusus, who happens to be the half brother of the Greek girl that Trelawney gets married to. 332 00:35:31,530 --> 00:35:38,710 Anyway, one point, um, in a lot of ways, uh, the one thing that Lambros had, 333 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:43,710 the one person in the poem Lambros has anything in common with is with the anonymous poet. 334 00:35:44,100 --> 00:35:50,010 They both kind of read which way the wind Blows. They're complicated and full of mixed feelings about Greece. 335 00:35:50,430 --> 00:35:52,560 They've made a career out of convenience. 336 00:35:52,860 --> 00:36:00,720 Um, they're also possibly stored with a fire that, under some conditions, might lead him not to be a pirate, uh, but to be a revolutionary. 337 00:36:00,990 --> 00:36:09,780 Um, so Lambros arrives at this wedding feast. His reception at his people's banquet was such as fire accords to a wet blanket. 338 00:36:10,260 --> 00:36:18,960 Again, one of my favourite couplets. Um. And we talk about his country's wrongs and his despair to savour had stung him from a slave to an enslaver. 339 00:36:19,260 --> 00:36:26,010 The love of power and rapid gain of gold, the hardness of long habits produce the dangerous life in which he had grown old. 340 00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:31,139 The mercy he had granted oft abused the sights he was accustomed to behold. 341 00:36:31,140 --> 00:36:39,840 The wild seas and wild men with whom he cruised had cost his enemies a long repentance, and made him a good friend but bad acquaintance. 342 00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:44,189 But something of the spirit of old Greece flashed over his soul. 343 00:36:44,190 --> 00:36:50,890 A few heroic rays, such as let onward to the Golden Fleece, his predecessors in the cold and days. 344 00:36:50,910 --> 00:36:55,540 Jason is, of course, also a pirate. Tis true he had no ardent love for peace. 345 00:36:55,560 --> 00:37:03,270 Alas, his country showed no path to praise hate to the world and war with every nation he waged in vengeance of her degradation. 346 00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:08,670 So what happens is, of course, he is not happy to see dungeon. 347 00:37:08,940 --> 00:37:12,269 He threatens to sell him into slavery or just kill him on the spot. 348 00:37:12,270 --> 00:37:17,940 Hide as is the way a princess's pleads for the life of her beloved um. 349 00:37:17,940 --> 00:37:24,210 But instead, what happens is she's so shocked that she falls into a dead faint out of like a stroke, 350 00:37:24,450 --> 00:37:29,520 falls into a coma, and some days later actually dies with. 351 00:37:29,940 --> 00:37:33,450 And this is a very sad point, the unborn child within her. 352 00:37:33,450 --> 00:37:36,960 So she's actually two people. And there's a very charming stanza about that. 353 00:37:37,260 --> 00:37:41,610 Don Julian is sold into slavery and so his adventures go forward. 354 00:37:41,730 --> 00:37:49,410 Or you might say he's plagiarised into slavery. Um, so there's a strange though postlude to this. 355 00:37:49,410 --> 00:37:56,130 After this Greek episode with Heidi perished and Don ju and sold into slavery, um, Byron says. 356 00:37:57,140 --> 00:38:07,580 B I o is now all desolate and bare, its dwellings down, its tenants cast away none but her own. 357 00:38:07,580 --> 00:38:12,110 And father's grave is there. And nothing outward. Tells of human clay. 358 00:38:12,530 --> 00:38:16,639 No stone is there to show. No tongue to say what was no dirge. 359 00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:21,140 Except the hollow sees mourn or the beauty of the 60s. 360 00:38:21,710 --> 00:38:29,240 So this is very strange. It's almost as if this is in a distant mythological past, um, even further away than we thought we were. 361 00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:38,990 But many a Greek made in a loving song sighs or her name, and many an islander with her side story makes the night less long. 362 00:38:39,380 --> 00:38:42,920 Valour was his, and beauty dwelt with her. 363 00:38:43,550 --> 00:38:46,760 Um. So we have the sudden disorientation of being in the distant past. 364 00:38:47,090 --> 00:38:55,399 Um, this could almost be a mythological past. And in fact, only four stanzas later we're describing, uh, um, a barrow on the fields of Troy. 365 00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:58,910 So there's a kind of merging of this ancient Greeks idea. 366 00:38:59,390 --> 00:39:08,120 But also, it's been long enough that Heidi has entered folk song and, um, become a song herself. 367 00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:12,560 So we kind of feel like this might be a long time, although this could happen more quickly. 368 00:39:12,860 --> 00:39:18,769 And then there's a second song about her sire, or perhaps the telling of stories, which could be any number of Cliff songs. 369 00:39:18,770 --> 00:39:26,540 I'm sure there's long songs about cut Sonis, or indeed could be the Odyssey itself, and there's a lot of similarities to that. 370 00:39:27,020 --> 00:39:35,780 Um, so in Don two and he alludes to this loving song, but he is pointing us directly to translation. 371 00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:47,010 Of the remix song in the notes to Child Herald, where we have been on Mr. Petty Valley or Delta t hiding and we get this translation I end to. 372 00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,520 It's very bouncy. It sounds a little bit like Annabel Lee. 373 00:39:51,090 --> 00:39:54,300 I enter the Garden of Roses, beloved and fair eyed. 374 00:39:54,990 --> 00:39:58,830 It's morning where Flora reposes for Shirley. I see her in the eye. 375 00:39:58,830 --> 00:40:03,540 Lovely. That's how I implore thee. Receive this country for my tongue which utters that song to adore thee. 376 00:40:03,720 --> 00:40:07,440 Yet trembles for what is sung. As the branch of the bidding of nature. 377 00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:15,090 Adds fragrance and fruit to the tree through her eyes, through her every feature shines the soul of the young lady. 378 00:40:15,450 --> 00:40:22,800 Um. We didn't really know how awful this was for a long time because, uh, the the Greek poem was missing and only. 379 00:40:23,220 --> 00:40:28,470 And this is also the only source. Byron is the only source for this particular Greek folk song. 380 00:40:28,650 --> 00:40:32,790 But it did emerge in the 40s. And then we got we were like, whoa! 381 00:40:33,820 --> 00:40:38,890 Okay, first of all, um, Byron expands 16 lines to 36. 382 00:40:39,570 --> 00:40:44,380 So there's a lot of filler. Um, Byron is the only source of. 383 00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:49,170 But this poem, the copy of the folk song was made by Doo Doo Rock. 384 00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,820 Um, who is the cousin of the maid of Athens? She's half Greek and half French. 385 00:40:54,360 --> 00:41:02,980 Um, uh, whoever transcribed this poem, I think, was illiterate in Greek and is translating it pretty phonetically. 386 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:08,430 We have misspellings. We have problems with word spacing and so forth. 387 00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:13,560 Um, uh, and we can now see the changes that Byron has made. 388 00:41:13,950 --> 00:41:18,870 Um, I have a slightly different translation on my page, but follow what you have up there. 389 00:41:19,230 --> 00:41:24,480 I come into the garden, most lovely Heidi, where you gather roses and flowers at dawn. 390 00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:30,180 I beseech you, girl, um, with all your wisdom, that my tongue may utter two words to you. 391 00:41:30,180 --> 00:41:35,520 And she, a good and modest girl, breaks off and gives me a branch of the lemon tree. 392 00:41:35,700 --> 00:41:39,540 This is part of this language of flowers that Byron is sort of fascinated with, 393 00:41:39,750 --> 00:41:45,810 where girls in the audience, who are not taught to read and write and communicate by flowers, 394 00:41:46,260 --> 00:41:56,100 and truly an eye from bitterness, will see no flowers but bitter Daphne or oleander to chew it, um, or oleander is poisonous and truly orient. 395 00:41:56,130 --> 00:42:01,050 Oleander is very bitter. Their lovely and decadent beauty. Open the gates of [INAUDIBLE]. 396 00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:05,220 Turn the keys to unlock them. That, my dear miserable soul may enter. 397 00:42:05,430 --> 00:42:09,000 And the two arrows you shot with your eyes. Struck me, lady, and wounded me. 398 00:42:09,210 --> 00:42:13,410 Body and soul. But tell me my light. How long lost I thought back. 399 00:42:13,410 --> 00:42:16,559 How long will I torture my heart for you? Um. 400 00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:21,540 This is a better poem, I think. Obviously, even in this not very good translation. 401 00:42:21,780 --> 00:42:25,830 Um, it's a more modern poem. It's a more oblique poem. It's a darker book. 402 00:42:26,430 --> 00:42:35,220 Um, there is no suggestion in the Greek that Heidi is false, which Byron adds in his translation, only that she will not yield. 403 00:42:35,580 --> 00:42:40,110 The Heidi and Duncan is very yielding and utterly true. 404 00:42:40,590 --> 00:42:48,630 And in fact, the word for wisdom here is related to the same word as we have, like with the wise and foolish virgins. 405 00:42:49,050 --> 00:42:53,610 Um, in the New Testament. And Heidi is definitely a very foolish virgin. 406 00:42:53,610 --> 00:42:56,580 That's how she loses her virginity in the first place. 407 00:42:57,300 --> 00:43:03,900 Um, so Byron changes to the poem are conscious, if not admirable, and he seems to go back to the original, 408 00:43:03,900 --> 00:43:10,920 though, when he's describing Hades eyes in dungeon because he describes them not as lances but as arrows. 409 00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:17,850 Um, Byron has mentioned a second. Oh, this is the actual transcription and Byron's actual attempt to translate it. 410 00:43:18,210 --> 00:43:19,410 And this is it, put to music. 411 00:43:21,830 --> 00:43:29,540 Byron has mentioned a second poem or oral tradition at the end of the Socratic episode and the event, the adventures of her sire. 412 00:43:29,540 --> 00:43:38,180 Any number of Greek clef songs might supply this, as we said, but there is a second Greek source for the plot of the Greek episode In dungeon. 413 00:43:38,210 --> 00:43:43,160 Though there is some debate about the influence, but I am utterly convinced that they are completely entangled. 414 00:43:43,580 --> 00:43:51,560 It's an anonymous, creeping Renaissance poem, so roughly from Shakespeare's time, and printed as all such poems were in Venice. 415 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:57,920 Byron might have got hold of it there. Um, he, in a couple of letters, mentions this poem. 416 00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:06,200 He mentions it as damn nonsense, and he deplores the quality of it's Greek, but it's in it's in Crete, in medieval Greek. 417 00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:10,010 So it's like Greek, Old Greek with a Venetian accent. 418 00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:15,830 Um, and I don't think he I mean, even in this version, it's with the parallel modern Greek translation. 419 00:44:15,830 --> 00:44:17,720 So it's not particularly easy. 420 00:44:18,260 --> 00:44:27,830 Um, uh, there's the connection of the plot and the poem share some folksong imagery with the love song eyes as Eros, a fragrant garden. 421 00:44:28,100 --> 00:44:35,929 Death being referred to as Hades. That's really standard for Greek folk songs, but I think must have struck, um, 422 00:44:35,930 --> 00:44:42,140 Byron as as quite wonderful that in modern Greek songs the underworld is Hades. 423 00:44:42,380 --> 00:44:50,750 Maybe there's even a connection in his mind with Heidi. Um, briefly, the plot of Evil Scapula, the shepherdess. 424 00:44:51,170 --> 00:44:58,100 Um, it is, like most pastoral poetry, quite sophisticated in its folk scene as. 425 00:44:58,100 --> 00:45:05,300 So it pretends to be folksy, but whoever has composed it is really highly literate and aware of a lot of literary tropes and so forth. 426 00:45:05,720 --> 00:45:09,830 Um, so it's a pastoral tragedy set on a Greek island, Crete. 427 00:45:10,220 --> 00:45:13,970 A handsome young shepherd meets a beautiful shepherdess who is tending her flock. 428 00:45:14,270 --> 00:45:17,299 The shepherd is so stricken with love at the sight of her. 429 00:45:17,300 --> 00:45:23,810 In fact, her eyes, cupids in her eyes, shoot out arrows at him, and he falls down into a dead faint. 430 00:45:24,260 --> 00:45:30,110 This might be the dam. Nonsense. He falls into a dead faint, and the the shepherdess thinks he is actually dead. 431 00:45:30,380 --> 00:45:35,570 She revives him and takes him to a very comfortable and well-appointed cave. 432 00:45:36,230 --> 00:45:42,260 Um. She also feeds him cheese, cheese curds, cold roasted lamb, spring water and wine. 433 00:45:42,380 --> 00:45:47,990 I like that we get these lists of food. Um. The shepherdess, like Heidi, has no mother or siblings. 434 00:45:47,990 --> 00:45:51,080 Only an old father. But he is away building a wall. 435 00:45:51,530 --> 00:45:57,230 They spend the night and promised to see each other again in a month, when the father will again be away. 436 00:45:57,620 --> 00:46:03,169 The shepherd makes this promise, but when the time comes, he is ill, so he does not make the appointments. 437 00:46:03,170 --> 00:46:09,979 And he is late by a month. You can imagine what happens when he arrives, um, at the meeting place. 438 00:46:09,980 --> 00:46:13,010 He does not meet the beautiful shepherdess, but her old father, 439 00:46:13,220 --> 00:46:18,980 who is in black and is in deep mourning for his daughter, who has died of lovesickness. 440 00:46:19,310 --> 00:46:23,870 She has fallen into a kind of deathly swoon like Heidi. 441 00:46:24,260 --> 00:46:27,140 Um, and so there are a lot of similarities there too. 442 00:46:27,350 --> 00:46:35,260 Also, as the shepherd is feverish, he has a set of prophetic dreams, three prophetic dreams, which we also have in Giovanni. 443 00:46:35,630 --> 00:46:44,000 Um, so it seems to me that there's just not any kind of doubt that, um, similarities, uh, are not coincidences. 444 00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,850 And there's a triangulation among the shepherdess, 445 00:46:47,420 --> 00:46:53,330 which is also being read around the same time by Greek poets looking for a fresh idiom for a new literature. 446 00:46:53,570 --> 00:46:58,969 And the folk song that Byron has translated, um, in the folk song, the lover threatens to die. 447 00:46:58,970 --> 00:47:02,510 But in both The Shepherdess and Don't You? And it's the beloved girl who dies. 448 00:47:02,750 --> 00:47:07,850 And then in Dawn and when he goes to describe Heidi's eyes, her hair, I said, what was auburn? 449 00:47:07,850 --> 00:47:12,259 But her eyes were black as death. That seems to go back to. 450 00:47:12,260 --> 00:47:22,970 You know, I didn't translate that poem very well. And he makes those eye glances, arrows and not lances, even though lances glances and enhances. 451 00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:28,270 Doesn't take it this time. Rains in it. Um. 452 00:47:29,720 --> 00:47:35,720 He translates two Greek, uh, poem. Three Greek poems in the the end of Child Herald. 453 00:47:36,230 --> 00:47:40,910 Um, and there's another one which is the war song of Regas. 454 00:47:41,240 --> 00:47:44,900 Regas also was mentioned in that note together with the pirate. 455 00:47:45,470 --> 00:47:51,170 Um, so it's one of the remix songs, the song which is known as the Greek Marsyas. 456 00:47:51,650 --> 00:47:57,010 Um. And sung to the same tune. Um uh was thought to be by Regas. 457 00:47:57,020 --> 00:48:00,260 It may not be. We have Hobhouse as account of how they came to hear it. 458 00:48:01,470 --> 00:48:07,670 Senior Lando of Rosti is the son of the person who may be said to govern the Morea. 459 00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:14,820 That's the Peloponnese. On hearing the name of Riga, Riga Piraeus, who is a poet and revolutionary, though he does not look like one. 460 00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:19,770 Um, when he was playing with me, a party of chess jumped suddenly from the sofa. 461 00:48:19,770 --> 00:48:21,690 I threw over the board and, clasping his hands, 462 00:48:21,900 --> 00:48:27,300 repeated the name of the patriot with a thousand passionate exclamations, the tears streaming down his cheeks. 463 00:48:27,630 --> 00:48:31,830 The same person recited with ecstasy the war song of the unfortunate Greek. 464 00:48:32,610 --> 00:48:39,270 George Findlay, in his History of Greece, written 30 years later, has a further embroidery of the tale via Byron. 465 00:48:39,900 --> 00:48:44,610 Lord Byron used to describe an evening passed in the Company of London in 1809, 466 00:48:44,940 --> 00:48:51,030 with a spirit that rendered the scene worthy of a place in dungeon, and in fact it kind of exists within it. 467 00:48:51,630 --> 00:48:55,590 Um. After supper Lindos commenced singing through his nose. 468 00:48:56,430 --> 00:49:06,870 Regas, Hymn to Liberty, and a new Cadi, passing near to the house, inquired of the cause of the discordant hubbub, and native Musselman replied, 469 00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:16,799 it is only the young primate London, who is drunk, and who was singing hymns to the new year of the Greeks, whom they call and left there. 470 00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:22,590 Yeah, panacea is the Virgin Mary, but could be here a goddess. 471 00:49:22,980 --> 00:49:27,300 Um, so it's Our Lady of Freedom. It's a hymn to freedom. 472 00:49:27,630 --> 00:49:34,980 Um. Hobhouse and Byron both translated this poem, and they're both chatty about each other's translation. 473 00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:44,850 Um, Hobhouse makes a point that Byron has completely misconstrued the metre, and Byron says that Hobhouse is translation is meant. 474 00:49:45,970 --> 00:49:49,420 And they're both correct. So this is completely the wrong metre. 475 00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,920 Um, again, this should be able to be sung to the French tune. 476 00:49:54,250 --> 00:50:00,070 We will notice, though here that we have again the idea of the 300 of Sparta. 477 00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,270 Sparta. Sparta. Why in slumbers? Lethargic. Does that lie? 478 00:50:05,350 --> 00:50:14,319 Awake and join their numbers, with Athens old ally Leonidas recalling the chief of ancient Song who saved he once from falling the terrible, 479 00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:22,000 the strong, who made that bold diversion in old Thermopylae and warring with the Persian to keep the country free. 480 00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:26,710 Hobhouse is much more literal. 481 00:50:27,220 --> 00:50:29,290 He keeps the metre. Exactly. 482 00:50:29,980 --> 00:50:38,110 And one of the things that Byron has changed is, in the Greek Um Leonidas um is victorious, completely victorious at Thermopylae. 483 00:50:38,290 --> 00:50:46,450 I think Byron realises that, uh, his English audience is probably more up to date with their Greek history than the average Greek patriot. 484 00:50:46,720 --> 00:50:50,200 And so he, he he's a little pedantic and he simply changes it. 485 00:50:50,410 --> 00:50:56,830 But we see that Hobhouse keeps that bit at Thermopylae victorious or the flying Persian fans. 486 00:50:57,340 --> 00:51:02,410 Um, I'll just mention that, um, there's a nod to the Persians in both of these. 487 00:51:04,180 --> 00:51:10,600 Um. We're rounding the corner. So there is a Greek poem that responds. 488 00:51:11,390 --> 00:51:20,260 Um, I mentioned that Greek poets in the run up to the Greek Revolution were also reading the Shepherd s, but they were reading Byron as well. 489 00:51:20,410 --> 00:51:25,660 And the poet in particular I am thinking of is Dionysius Solomon's ten years younger than Byron. 490 00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,970 Born on him to us, and educated in Italy. They may have met each other. 491 00:51:29,980 --> 00:51:32,740 They certainly, um, kind of could have crossed paths. 492 00:51:33,100 --> 00:51:42,040 So, um, he is a Venetian patrician blood, or at least partly, um, who had themselves been refugees from Crete. 493 00:51:42,610 --> 00:51:50,050 Um, he is bilingual. He has been educated as most of the Ionian Islands, educated entirely in Italian and in Italy. 494 00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,610 His earliest poems are written in Italian and published in Italian. 495 00:51:54,880 --> 00:52:00,220 He returns to Zakynthos in 1818. Canto three with the Isles of Greece. 496 00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:04,720 Um has been written in 1819 and will be published in 1821. 497 00:52:05,050 --> 00:52:14,560 So imagine a Greek poet reading the isles of Greece, and the description of the kind of shifty Greek poet singing the song. 498 00:52:14,890 --> 00:52:17,950 Um, and what your reaction might be. Um. 499 00:52:17,950 --> 00:52:28,030 In 1822. Suleiman's had an encounter with spirito chickpeas, the poet and statesman who would deliver Byron's funeral oration, 500 00:52:28,270 --> 00:52:36,760 and he who would become the new nation's first prime minister on and hearing almost as excellent Italian poetry, 501 00:52:36,850 --> 00:52:42,850 is supposed to have said, your aptitude reserves for you a place on the Italian Parnassus. 502 00:52:43,420 --> 00:52:50,040 But the first places there are already taken. The Greek Parnassus does not yet have its daunting. 503 00:52:50,700 --> 00:52:53,849 I mean, that's quite an inspiration for a young poet. 504 00:52:53,850 --> 00:52:58,710 Like like we don't have this in our literature. Why don't you come be our first great poet? 505 00:52:59,310 --> 00:53:03,870 Um, in the modern time? Uh. Solomon's demurred. He said his Greek was not fluent enough. 506 00:53:04,050 --> 00:53:08,490 But your group has started him on a course of study with a focus on the demotic language. 507 00:53:08,490 --> 00:53:11,160 That is, the language of the people and of the folksongs. 508 00:53:11,370 --> 00:53:18,389 So Solomon is studying the same sorts of poems, um, romantic folk songs, revolutionary hymns, 509 00:53:18,390 --> 00:53:23,280 and Cretan Renaissance works, and in some cases the exact same poems that Byron is reading. 510 00:53:23,730 --> 00:53:30,120 Um, so his first poem in Greek, and indeed his only completed poem, The Hymn to Liberty, 511 00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:38,970 was written in May of 1823 and published in Messalonskee in 1824, probably on the very printing press Byron brings with him. 512 00:53:39,510 --> 00:53:44,760 Um. The opening, as with Byron's Isles of Greece, shares elements of Regas poem. 513 00:53:44,940 --> 00:53:55,170 This idea of, um, people rising from the dead, the holy bones of the ancient Greeks, and his later, even more specific, um, with the 300. 514 00:53:56,060 --> 00:54:04,700 The poem directly addresses addresses the goddess of freedom in 158 stanzas in rhyme to 15 syllable couplets, 515 00:54:04,700 --> 00:54:09,950 turned into quatrains that treat of the War of Independence thus far. 516 00:54:10,250 --> 00:54:22,220 But around stanzas 83, um, we suddenly have a pastoral interval of dancing girls, and we are back at the wedding of Don Dewan and Heidi. 517 00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:27,920 It's not a translation of the Isles of Greece, but it is a direct response or rebuttal of it. 518 00:54:28,130 --> 00:54:33,140 And the girls who will suckle slaves are redeemed from the plagiarism. 519 00:54:33,590 --> 00:54:38,989 Um, as one critic has said, among the most moving responses of a Greek poet to a foreign poem, we'll see. 520 00:54:38,990 --> 00:54:42,470 He's speaking back to Byron. Byron was writing before the revolution. 521 00:54:42,770 --> 00:54:46,520 Um, and we are now the writing after the revolution has begun. 522 00:54:47,090 --> 00:54:51,620 In the shade, hand in hand in the shade. I also see. 523 00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:57,840 So the Greek poet of dungeon has seen it. But now this Greek poet is there in the same room. 524 00:54:57,860 --> 00:55:03,020 I also see the lily fingered virgins where they do their dance in the dance. 525 00:55:03,350 --> 00:55:09,770 They sweetly turn their lovely erotic eyes and the dark breezes toss their all gold hair. 526 00:55:10,070 --> 00:55:13,879 My soul rejoices. Had the breast of each girl. 527 00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:20,100 Sweet bosoms. Bosom readies the milk of courage among the grass and the flowers. 528 00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:25,310 I do not raise my cup. Freedom loving songs like Pindar, I sing out. 529 00:55:25,730 --> 00:55:30,440 Risen from the holy bones of the Greeks. And with the courage of old days. 530 00:55:30,500 --> 00:55:41,260 Hail, Liberty! Hail! Interestingly, um, Solomon says he doesn't expect these virgins to dance over a cliff or to suckle slaves. 531 00:55:41,260 --> 00:55:44,410 He expects them to be the mothers of free men. 532 00:55:44,710 --> 00:55:49,960 And he's also fully aware not just of the isles of Greece, but of the context of the Isles of Greece. 533 00:55:50,170 --> 00:55:58,719 We know this because he mentions Pindar. So Pindar is no longer singing horse races, but he is singing freedom loving songs. 534 00:55:58,720 --> 00:56:01,990 And then he quotes the refrain of his own poem. So that's kind of a neat trick. 535 00:56:02,410 --> 00:56:07,600 Um, so we have this, uh, Byronic knot in the middle of the Greek national anthem. 536 00:56:07,870 --> 00:56:16,750 Um, this is how it was first printed. He does get a little bit of Dante in there, and this is the actual part of the printing press that has survived. 537 00:56:17,140 --> 00:56:25,570 This is the poem set to music. This is the part of the poem that has become the Greek national anthem. 538 00:56:25,930 --> 00:56:32,410 Um, set to music in 1826 but only adopted as the national anthem in 1864. 539 00:56:32,590 --> 00:56:40,569 And, um, the musical now forgive me. Signori zarrab DynCorp C2. 540 00:56:40,570 --> 00:56:53,350 Spath U you didn't Romy Signori the lab you know c pool your maitre d optical girl of no. 541 00:56:53,350 --> 00:57:02,469 Many tonali no. Diana okay, so I brought, uh, um, the nominee here. 542 00:57:02,470 --> 00:57:09,600 Okay. And I left the case, um, brought, um, there are many heroes. 543 00:57:09,610 --> 00:57:13,120 Yeah, I left the, uh, case. 544 00:57:13,130 --> 00:57:16,770 I brought, uh, um, real money here. 545 00:57:16,780 --> 00:57:22,450 The hero left very. I love this hymn. 546 00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:32,480 I love this hymn and its deep entanglements with Byron. 547 00:57:32,750 --> 00:57:40,760 I love Byron and Solomons and their mutual piracy, which are also in the hands of poets. 548 00:57:41,180 --> 00:57:44,990 The taking and the granting of liberties.