George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), the outstanding English poet of the 19th century, an important representative of European Romantic literature.
He was naturally handsome, but he was lame and emotionally sensitive.
Born in London in 1788 to a shabby aristocratic family, he inherited the baronship at the age of 10 and, in his youth, was influenced by French Enlightenment ideas at Cambridge University.
After graduating from university, he was granted a hereditary seat in the House of Lords.
At that time, the democratic and national revolutionary movements in Various European countries were booming, and Byron opposed autocratic oppression, supported the people's revolution, wrote poetry to raise the flag for the British workers' movement, and was therefore madly slandered and persecuted by the reactionary forces, and left England in 1816 and wandered to Switzerland, Italy, Greece and other places.
In Greece, he personally participated in the armed struggle of the Greeks for independence, and in 1824, died in the Greek army.
According to Spanish legend, Don Juan was the son of a Seville nobleman in the 14th century, who seduced a woman and killed her father, and the territory of this Don Juan was Tenorio, hence the name Don Juan Tenorio.
But many other cities also have their own Don Juan. Each has its own legend in the beginning, and as time goes by, all of these legends gradually merge into a character's story.
This character is generally referred to in Italian as Don Giovanni.
The first drama to write the character of Don Juan was Molina's The Hornbilly and the Eater of Seville, Molière also wrote the five-act comedy Don Juan in 1665, followed by Mozart composing music for the two-act opera Don Juan in 1787, with lyrics written by Lourenço da Ponte.
Both the comedy and the opera Don Juan are masterpieces. But these works mainly tell the story of Don Juan's pursuit of women, and there is not much positive significance.
Byron's choice of don Juan, the legendary figure, as the protagonist of his poetry, using his "popularity" and adventures to illustrate his ideals is undoubtedly a new artistic creation.
Don Juan was born in the famous city of Sevier in southern Spain, his father was a great nobleman named Don José.
Don Juan looked lively and cute when he was a child, and when he grew up, he was a talent and was loved by aristocratic girls.
He has a natural temperament and likes to mess with these girls, and even had sex with the noblewoman Donna Julia at the age of 16.
This caused an uproar in high society. In desperation, he had to leave his homeland to travel to Europe.
Don Juan's ship was hit by a great storm on its way to Italy, but under his command and efforts the ship did not sink.
Soon after, however, there was a famine on board, and the sailors on board were forced to cannibalize each other.
Don Juan did not want to be as cruel as these people, so he bravely jumped out of the boat to escape, and was eventually rescued by a young and beautiful girl.
The girl's name was Haidet, and she was the daughter of the great Greek pirate Lambloh.
She fell in love with the handsome man so much that she hid him in a cave by the sea to live with him.
Soon, they heard that Lamblo had died in an accident at sea, so they began to plan the wedding.
But just as they were about to enter the cave together, Lamblo suddenly appeared.
He ordered his attendants to knock Don Juan down, tie him up on a ship, and escort him to Constantinople, the Turkish capital, for sale.
The black eunuchs of the Turkish royal palace took a fancy to the young and handsome Don Juan and bought him and sent him to the harem for a queen to enjoy.
However, Don Juan was obsessed with the innocent and pure Haidet, so he managed to escape from the palace and finally went to the Turkish troops.
Believing that fighting was a heroic cause, he fought very hard, and because of his outstanding military achievements, he finally defected to the Russian commander Suvorov.
After the Russian occupation of Constantinople, Suvorov intended to send Don Juan to Petersburg to report the victory to the Tsarina.
The empress, who lived in debauchery, took a fancy to him and left him in the palace for her own enjoyment. Over time, Don Juan was tortured to the point of exhaustion, and the Empress no longer needed him.
At this time, Tsarist Russia and Britain were preparing an alliance against Napoleon.
The Empress decided to send him as a diplomatic envoy to England for negotiations. So he left Russia.
Arriving in England, Don Juan was initially deluded by his false appearance of prosperity, believing it to be a promised land of freedom, but soon he was robbed in broad daylight on the boulevards of London, and immediately returned to his former dislike of England.
After meeting with the British royal family and nobles, he became more aware of the evils of British society, but his behavior was contrary to his understanding.
He still could not resist hooking up with the noble women here, and the fight was fierce, and even the duchess of Fozzie Fürk, the most powerful and beautiful mistress of England and the well-known mistress of the king, became very interested in him.
Don Juan is a long poetic novel and a satirical poem that reflects the real life of Europe at that time. It depicts the adventures of a young Spanish aristocrat who traveled through various European countries at the end of the 18th century.
The poet boldly and originally uses the language of the English people, describing the hypocritical and conservative feudal monarchy of Spain where Don Juan grew up, describing a series of wonderful scenes and fragments of the sea distress, the horror of starvation, pastoral love, slave markets, the forbidden palace of the Turkish emperor, the cruel war, the court of the Russian empress, the high society of London, and so on.
It is through the different experiences of its protagonists in these places that poetry reproduces to us the social and historical life of Europe at that time from many aspects.
At the same time, the poet also pointed his satire directly at the "Holy League" and some other European reactionary forces, bitterly satirized the deeds of those tyrants, and ruthlessly unveiled a layer of mystery that hung over the royal families of various countries, and showed their sins, shamelessness and absurdity naked to the reader, so it had great shocking power.
On the one hand, this also shows the poet's own radical attitude and clear position.
The character of Don Juan also left a deep impression on the reader.
This image continues the consistent style of the author's "Byronian hero", with both an innate and shocking rebellious spirit and an infinite yearning for freedom, so that this long poem becomes a work with strong individualistic overtones.
Don Juan's experience is also somewhat similar to that of the author himself, so it is not difficult for us to experience the poet's personal emotional characteristics and personality characteristics from this character image.
Byron, like his poet friend Shelley, was a brilliant revolutionary Romantic poet, and although Byron rarely spoke of imagination, that did not mean that he lacked imagination.
His works are mainly won by feelings, and the feelings are very abundant and powerful.