Adieu, thou damned Quarantine!

“To know another man well, especially if he be a noted and illustrious character, is a great thing not to be despised.” 

                                                     -Sainte Beuve

As the recklessly imposed countrywide Lockdown continues to greatly cripple the economy and hardly contain Covid, and unlike Lord Byron’s exile, most of us are at home toiling, reading, eating, yawning and sleeping ceaselessly. Well, I must let other ​​implied activities to your wild imagination. Like Byron, some of us do curse, of course, not piercingly quarantine but the extended lockdown and a new kind of imposed isolation.     

The whole world has novelly been besieged by COVID-19. Many, negatively termed the ‘positive’ cases, are forced to go through a period of self-​quarantine, in the beginning, some thought of it as a somewhat fashionable way. ​The very COVID-19 has, like reel Thanos wiped out the world, sieged the human race. Little did anyone know of Thanos back then and now of dangerous Corona, the pandemics.  

​​Under the vivid title ‘Life Under Lockdown,’ the scholars from the University of Cambridge reviewed the past ravaged by the pandemics. They look at how Cambridge alumni, in history, dealt, without the modern medicines, with their own experiences of lockdown, quarantine and isolation. 

​The Cambridge student, Lord Byron [1788-1824], a romantic poet, Nietzsche’s superman and Bronte sisters’ [Byronic] hero,​was, in 1811, forced to quarantine at a facility in Malta after returning from a Cholera-hit Greece. In his poem ‘Farewell to Malta,’ he satirically verbalised his brief-grief. 

‘Adieu, thou damned’st quarantine,​​ 

That gave me fever, and the spleen!’  

He was infuriated at the possibility of spending 40 days in lockdown, a measure that he considered to be draconian and unnecessary. So infuriated that he angrily bade farewell to Malta. The poem, if read in the Indian context with some modifications, would make you laugh and ease your ‘i-so-lation.’  

Lord Byron, I beg your pardon, but let me substitute the sound ‘stage’ with the malicious ‘godi-media’ and break the perfect metre. Of the next line, you, at liberty, seek your pleasure. 

‘Adieu, that media which makes us yawn, Sirs,
Adieu, his Excellency’s dancers!’  

The dramatic life of Lord Byron had invariably inspired the generations. And continue to do so. The influential literary expression ‘Byronic hero’ was born out of his controversial life and fearless works. Of Byronic hero, Countness G writes, ‘…a school called Romantic was in progress of formation. That school wanted a type by which to mould its heroes, as a planet requires the sun to give light.’ Such was the sun who ignited the Romantic Movement. 

A magnetic, rebellious and cynical yet affectionate at heart were the qualities he had, and the Brontes, notably in the characters of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, and Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, who exhibit the qualities of a Byronic hero. 

It is particularly exciting to note that Byron was very fond of animals. His ‘Epitaph to a Dog’ recollects Boatswain as ‘…all the virtues of Man without his Vices…’ is popular and too humane. The dog, Boatswain, who died of rabies, was personally nursed by him.  Swiftly, he criticised human, ‘while man, vain insect!’, for being a vain insect.   

Out of anger for rules forbidding pet dogs at Trinity, he, a rebellious student, kept a tamed bear. It so happened that there was no mention of bears in the college statutes. Trinity authorities were in a complete shock and had no legal basis for complaining.

In an explicit letter to Elizabeth Pigot, he referred to this unusual incident happened in 1807. He boastfully wrote, ‘I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship.” To the poor millennials, esp. university walas, it might, seemingly, sound a bit hyperbolic, but it literally happened.  

Byron, in his comparatively short lifetime, had undertaken several voyages, but had spent most of his life in Italy. The lady, Countess G. as he fondly referred to her, who was inspired by his way and was unconditionally in the love of his company, wrote a lengthy book, in two parts, entitled ‘My Recollection of Lord Byron and those of Eyewitnesses of his Life.’  

He disliked Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Editor of Edinburgh Review and Sir Walter Scott, but he was very fond of Shelley and Keats. In Italy, he spent time with Shelley.  

When his ‘Hours of Idleness’ earned scathing criticism in the prestigious Edinburgh Review, Byron, was annoyed and with a little thought, attacked Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott and the editor of Edinburgh Review in his satirical poem ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’ 

‘Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,

To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?’

The way he speaks of Coleridge and criticizes his work, one ought to take a minute. Though the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, an energetic piece, earned him instant fame, he next, in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, regretted his attitude towards the English bards. He then voluntarily suppressed the satirical poem.  

Byron’s The Vision of Judgement is a parody of Southey’s A Vision of Judgement. Byron individually attacked Robert Southey, the poet laureate. The multiple-choice questions pertaining to these books often create confusion among the students of literature, especially those who prepare for NET/SET. Ironically, the question often questions whether ‘A or The’ Vision of Judgement, and whose. 

​Of ​his epistles,​ indeed, ​still attract a considerable number of people. His letters to mother were sometimes addressed as ‘Dear Mother’ and ​sometimes as​ ‘My Dear Madam.’ The relationship, some biographers, has shown of ties-conflicts. Showing Mrs Byron in a bad light, some say, never justified. In a letter, he wrote to his mother in 1811, probably before the quarantine, he said, ‘I am convinced, however, that men do more harm to themselves than ever the devil could do to them.’    

There are many poems of his that I admire but The Dream, a resume of Byron’s emotional life, has always delighted me. The younger boy of the Dream has stamped an indelible impression in the corner of my memory. The Dream, composed in 1816, based on his unhappy youthful love-affair with Mary Chaworth, who was much elder to him. He uniquely detailed the difference of age as: 

“And both were young- yet not alike in youth As the sweet moon on the horizon’s verge,

The maid was on the eve of Womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart

Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth”

Byron beautifully illuminated the idea of a dream, ‘a wide realm of wild reality.’ He additionally poured life in the dream. Symbolizing the dream with human sense and needs, he briefly wrote, 

‘And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;’

The dream is, leaves ‘a weight upon our waking thoughts,’ ultimately ‘a portion of ourselves as of our time.’ The dream is ‘creations of the mind’ and can ‘outlive all flesh.’ It also curdles a long life into an hour. 

The poetic speaker narrates his past affair but in an impersonal tone. The poetic speaker sees, in a dream, two beings in hues of youth standing upon a hill. The poem vividly creates floating images full of emotions of a boy and a woman, unhappily ends in madness- both in misery. The sleep, may not be needed for a pipe dreamer, has its own world.  

I admit that some of you may like his other short poems, such as ‘she walks in beauty’ composed on 12 June 1814.  I, however, faintly remember a friend of mine told me at a university canteen that this poem was also trans-created in Marathi as ‘Sundara Manamdhye Bharali.’ My quick search found it out untrue. My friend, an uncirculated poet himself, who offered me a cup of coffee, could not produce any reference when asked while sipping black coffee. He, now and then, recites the elegant poem. Ram Joshi (1758-1812), who composed this elegant Sundara Manamdhye Bharali, must have written the poem before 1812. Nay, often we misunderstand things!     

Some might argue in favour of lengthy Childe Harold or Don Juan. It is true that Childe Harold and Don Juan brought him all fame. I do not find myself to be able to make a comment on them. Byron once wrote, ‘he awoke one morning and found himself famous.’​ These poems craved the Byronic style and personality in literature and politics. 

He referred to the Greek War of Independence in his last poem ‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Six Year’ which gives us an idea about the man, the Byronic hero of Romantic Movement, who at the end of his life gave it all for the Greek War of Independence. In the war-devastated Greek, he adopted a little orphan Turkish Muslim girl who was in serious danger, and whose parents were already killed. 

​Let me unlock your locked mind.​ ​In the most critical times of Corona, the media,​ the dancers of his Excellency,​ must not communalise the virus [as green or red] but speak truth to the power whereas the government must understand that the lockdown, quarantine and isolation not in vain but pain too. 

Satish Gore.

(State Secretary at Maharashtra Pradesh Youth Congress, teaches literature.)