Byron's Prometheus

Text/Ma Jiajun

Marx said: "Prometheus is the noblest saint and martyr on the philosophical calendar. "There are many famous writers and poets in the history of European literature who have written on the subject of the deeds of Prometheus. The ideas of these works, though different, are based on Greek mythology. 

Byron's Prometheus is a heroic scene of a god who suffered for the benefit of mankind who persisted in his rebellion and was heroic. The poem was written in 1816. At that time, after the Industrial Revolution in England, the contradiction between the reactionary forces of the aristocratic bourgeoisie and the impoverished proletariat and the toiling masses intensified. The workers opposed capitalist exploitation and spontaneously destroyed the machine. The leading worker was named Nate Luther. Lutherans staged riots, often killing factory owners. The British government enacted a bill to punish those who saboteur the machine to death. Byron was a member of the House of Lords, gave speeches to defend workers, and wrote poems satirizing the authors of the bill. As a result, he was criticized and slandered by the ruling class. During the persecution, Byron had to leave England and go into exile until his death. In 1816, he first came to Switzerland and wrote the famous "Song of the Lutherans" (a translation of "The Song of The Luthers"), calling on the workers to rise up and fight for freedom. In the same year, the poet wrote the poem Prometheus.

The poem is mainly written about Prometheus's heroic spirit of not fearing suffering, violence and persevering in struggle, and thus expressing the fighting spirit of by the advanced people of Byron's contemporaries against the dark reality. This poem of three verses of varying lengths is hierarchical. 

The first verse writes about the suffering of Prometheus. The poet appealed directly to Prometheus, shouting "Giant!" Show the greatness of Prometheus. This verse is divided into two layers. The first layer is the first four lines, which write about Prometheus's sympathy for humanity before stealing fire. Man is "miserable" and "pathetic." The gods, on the other hand, are enemies of man and "despise and disregard" human suffering. Prometheus had a different attitude from the gods, the god who never died, with his "immortal" eyes, saw the "truth" and sympathized with and loved mankind. The fifth line is a transition, led up with a twisting word, ending with a question mark: "But what rewards your compassion?" Started the second layer of writing affliction. The second floor first writes about prometheus being locked to the caucasus rock after the fire. The "reward" he received was "rocks, hungry eagles and shackles", as well as invisible "pain". This pain is very heavy, "condensing the heart", "accumulating in the heart"; this pain is very intense, like "hanging"; this pain is very deep; it is "silent", unknown, inner, bitter in the heart, lonely. Furthermore, the greatest pain is "no pain", even when lonely, you cannot confide, you cannot sigh, and beware of anyone hearing. The poet emphasizes all this very prominently and very strongly. 

The second verse is six lines higher than the first, and goes one level to write about the sharp contradiction between Prometheus and Zeus. This verse is divided into four layers, interwoven with the two sides. The first layer is the first three lines, still shouting "O giants!" Begin, and continue to write about the "immortal" pain of Prometheus. It goes a step further here, saying that Prometheus is torn between "pain" and "will." Suffering was given by Zeus. The indomitable will makes suffering inextricably free. We cannot abandon our "will" to seek "relief" from suffering, but rather suffer than lose our will. Pain, and infinity, the god who cannot die, has no choice but to "go through" the tribulations. The fourth to ninth lines are the second layer, with the word "and" turned around, writing about zeus's brutality and ruthlessness. The psalmist rebukes Zeus as the authority of heaven for being "ruthless" and that his throne, which rules the fate of man and God, is "deaf." All Zeus had was "hate." The psalmist expands this elevation not to be limited to Zeus's "hatred" of a small god, Prometheus, but to the hatred that sums it up as "the highest," i.e., the universal hatred of all. God destroys everything He has created. There was a deep hatred for Prometheus, and he did not even give "happiness at the bottom of death". That is, he is only allowed to live on the mountain rock to suffer, otherwise, once he dies, he will be spared from suffering, but will become happy. The "hate" of not allowing death shows the cruelty of the Heavenly Emperor. The third layer is the tenth to sixteenth lines, which again write about the will of Prometheus. Prometheus is "eternal" immortal, "good" in the face of suffering. It is a tenacious endurance, an unyielding endurance. Zeus "forced" and suppressed with his great authority, and Prometheus replied only with "curses" and resolutely "refused to tell the secret of reconciliation". The tall heroic figure of Prometheus stood tall. The fourth layer is the last four lines of this section, which weave together the two sides of the struggle and write about the imprisoned Prometheus's judgment on the Emperor and its effects. This verdict is an "eternal" verdict, and its content is "silence", and the unyielding "silence" that strictly guards the secret of future destiny becomes the most severe blow to Zeus. Under this verdict, Zeus acted outwardly strong, he was "remorseful", but in vain, he could only hide in the depths of the "soul"; he "frightened" This fear is "evil", but Zeus wants to "cover up" and cannot cover it; he "trembles", he has been trembling, and he is still waving lightning in his hands, and he is fierce, but the thunder is already sleepy, and the lightning is trembling. This exposed Zeus's embarrassing embarrassment at being sentenced.

The third verse of the poem is increased to twenty-five lines, and it is written more freely. Mainly write about the meaning of the image of Prometheus and the poet's sentiments that arise from it. This section is clearly divided into two parts. The first part is about Prometheus, and the latter part is about the "man" of the poet's age. The former part is divided into two layers. The first layer summarizes the historical role of Prometheus: First, he used his own teachings and benevolence to alleviate the injustices of the world; "and to lift up the spirit of human independence." Second, he was not afraid of the deliberate enemy of heaven and the storms in heaven and on earth, and he left a "powerful lesson" to the world with his greater and noble qualities of "perseverance to resist rape", "indomitable soul", and "courage and perseverance". The second level is the meaning of this lesson, that is, Prometheus: Prometheus is the symbol and symbol of the fate and power of "man". The latter part focuses on "people". "Man" has only half of God, that is, Prometheus, as the prophet God, can foresee everything, while "man" can only foresee half, that is, foresee his "miserable destination", "misfortune" and "helplessness". At the same time, "man" is also like "God" Prometheus "unwilling to yield" and "exhilarated". The poet raises this to the level of philosophy, making a dialectical connection between suffering and struggle: 

Adversity will arouse his spirit of stubborn resistance, 

Firm will, deep understanding;

Even in pain, he could see

Suffering is its own reward, 

He was proud that he dared to resist to the end, 

Oh, he will turn death into victory.

Pain - resistance - more pain - more resistance - death - victory. This is the logic of the fate of the "man" in byron's time. This "man" is not an abstract "man", but a bourgeois democrat, a Byron-style figure, a Byron himself. Dissatisfied with the dark reality, full of rebellious spirit, determined to resist and fight to the end. But they are bitter inside, realizing that they are alone and helpless. Loneliness adds to their pain. They are individualists, who do not see the power of the masses, do not depend on the masses, and regard themselves as noble and holy "prophets" and heroes. On the other hand, they see no bright future, do not believe in a victorious and joyful future, and thus celebrate death and express pessimism. This is the mental limitation of the old warriors. 

Byron's Prometheus is an artistically appealing lyric poem. 

The poem is imbued with a sublime and tragic beauty. The image of Prometheus is tall, which is not only in his appearance a "giant", but also in the loftiness of his cause, the nobility of the spirit of struggle. Sing the praises of a holy God and make the Psalms exhilarating with their sublime beauty. Prometheus was again a tragic man. He suffered for the sake of mankind, and even more so because he did not yield. The reasonable demands of history cannot be realized in the dark reality, and the destruction of beautiful things by powerful evil forces constitutes sadness. But the fate of Prometheus is not to embody sadness and misery, but to give people a tragic and magnificent infection, so that people's moral spirit can be purified and sublimated. When the poet Byron wrote, he used the heroic and high language and sad feelings to shape the image of Prometheus, put the image on the magnificent background of the long sky and high mountains, and used a series of rhetorical questions and comparative sentences to praise the hero with exaggerated and imposing compound sentences, which made the poem more sonorous, passionate, and full of the tendency to swallow mountains and rivers. 

The poem is written about Prometheus in conflict with Zeus, so it is also contrasted in image contrasts from technique to wording. The poet highlights the cruelty and ruthlessness of Zeus in contrast to the rebellion of Prometheus. From the depths of feelings, one side is "ruthless" and "hateful"; the other side is "painful", "indomitable", "bold", and "stoic". In terms of behavior, one side "destroys" creation and "forces" people, but also "trembles" and "trembles"; the other side "curses", "resists" and "is lonely" and "endures". The strong contrast effect makes the two images complement each other perfectly. 

The poet sighed, and when he wrote Prometheus to write about "man", he used a comparative brushwork, and what characteristics God had, he took care of what characteristics he wrote about, and God and man were analogous to each other. God is the symbol and symbol of "man." 

This poem does not depict objective situations, but directly expresses the chest. It does not use some imagery to form an artistic conception and implicitly express a certain emotion, but directly praises and sighs. The poet adopts the "talking body", that is, the appeal, conversation, and narration of the main image, Prometheus. It takes a second person, writing the image of "you". Writing in this way shortens the distance between the lyricist and the lyricist, and closely unifies the lyricist's feelings with the object of praise, which produces a touching force. 

[Note]: The poems quoted in this article can be found in Liang Zhen's translation of "Selected Lyric Poems of Byron", New Literary and Art Publishing House, 1957 edition.

(Originally published in Shaanxi Youth, No. 5, 1983)

(Note: The author of this article has authorized this headline)

(Ma Jiajun, a native of Qingyuan, Hebei, born on October 5, 1929, is currently a professor at the College of Literature of Shaanxi Normal University, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Dramatists Association, a member of the Chinese Filmmakers Association, an honorary president (former president) of the Shaanxi Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Russian Literature Research Society, a former president of the Shaanxi Provincial Higher Education Drama Research Society, a former consultant of the Shaanxi Poetry Society, and a former executive director of the Shaanxi Provincial Federation of Social Science Societies. Shaanxi Province to build socialist spiritual civilization advanced individuals, Shaanxi Province to teach and educate advanced teachers, etc., enjoy special allowances from the State Council.

He is the author of 12 kinds of "Nineteenth Century Russian Literature", "The New Stage of Aesthetic History", "Poetry Exploration", "Exploration of World Literature", etc.; 4 kinds of "The Essence of World Literature" and "History of Western Drama" co-authored with his daughter Ma Xiaoyi; 9 kinds of "History of World Literature" (3 volumes) and "Research on Gorky's Creation"; edited 4 kinds of "30 Lectures on European and American Modernist Literature"; co-edited and co-authored "100 Topics of Marxism-Leninism", "Cultural Research Methods", "50 Lectures on Oriental Literature", "Western Literature in the Twentieth Century", etc. and more than 40 kinds.

It has been listed in more than 40 kinds, such as the Dictionary of Chinese Writers, the Dictionary of Chinese Poets, the Dictionary of Chinese Social Science Scholars, the Cambridge Dictionary of International Biographies (27th Edition in English), the Directory of Experts in Russian Studies Abroad (Russian Edition) of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Classics of Shaanxi Century of Literature and Art. ）