Lord Byron's The Year Without A Summer
The poem Darkness is the oddball of these poems, where in fact, there is no positive diction in this poem at all. Except, for maybe the one word ‘Happy’ which I will talk about later on.
Byron wrote Darkness in 1816, known as The Year Without a Summer. It was a 3 year weather disaster which occurred when dust from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 has spread throughout the globe, and blocked the sunlight. And thus with no sunlight, the years 1815-1817 had no summer. This led to devastating worldwide harvest failures, leading to famine, and civil unrest which is what the surface of this poem is based on. As being written in the romantic era, Byron vividly describes the hardships of the common man by using apocalyptic scenes and the loss …show more content…
of life. However when we read Darkness in a different light, Byron is expressing his deep bitterness and depression from his loss of love.
The poem starts off with the paradox, “I had a dream, which was not at all a dream”. This introduction explains Byron’s view of this un-earthlike disaster, which felt like a nightmare. And frankly it is. Byron describes this nightmare where men had became primitive, with no love nor the desire to be heroic.
The motif of death gives the poem a hopeless tone. With the absence of the sun’s natural light, men attempt to imitate this light source with man-made fire. Ironically, “The habitations of all things which dwell,/ Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed, [by fire]”. Light is symbolic of love, and with the loss of love, the men end up destroying their own world in an attempt to replicate it. The men have a hunger for love, and this can be shown through the image of famine, “Of famine fed upon all entrails - men/Died” and “The meagre by the meagre were devour’d”. Even the smallest piece of dead flesh was eaten. With the indication of cannibalism, Byron states the dire need for food. Or in another sense, the need for love.
Byron saw love to be as dead as life, and emphasizes this with the motif of water/ or the absence of water. Byron blatantly says “The waves were dead”. In this case, water symbolizes life. And as I explained earlier, the loss of life symbolizes the dead love.
Byron makes a biblical allusion to the book of Matthew with the lines;
“The brows of men by the despairing light,”
[that] “fed/ Their funeral piles with fuel”
“gnash’d their teeth and howl’d”
Around these lines, Byron tells us about the men who accepted their fate of losing light/ love, and of those who fought against it. Those who fought against it became their primitive selves. In Matthew 8 verses 10-11, Jesus is saying “But children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and knashing of teeth”. Byron may have made this allusion to blame a higher being; who is God for his loss of love, where essentially, he feels like the victim of this breakup.
There is profound image of hate between two enemies in Darkness. The two sole survivors of this apocalypse find each other, and they build a fire together. That seems a bit hopeful right? Well sadly, once they see each others faces from their light, they shriek and die of mutual hideousness. Byron uses this image to emphasize the tragic loss of human love.
b. Byron presents us a metaphor between a dog and its master.
“Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
“And he was faithful to a corse (which means corpse)”
[he] kept famish’d men at bay”
-later on, dog dies form hunger and he dies beside his master
-dogs are metaphor for men, while masters are metaphor for their partners -their wives.
And the death of the master can symbolize the death of the woman’s love for the man.
-Unfortunately, the only faithful man left has a wife who doesn’t love him anymore.
-I can say that this scene may be the most heroic out of all of the scenes in Darkness, but this still is a failed heroic attempt. The master, or the love was long gone, so the man basically had nothing to fight for.
c. “Happy were those who dealt within the eye
Of the volcanoes,”
“A fearful hope was all the world contained;”
- juxtapositioning, so without love, there was no hope, only a fearful hope.
-hoping won’t die, knowing that they’ll die. Fearful to hope, to live another day.
-those who killed themselves in the volcano felt one second of natural light. Felt one second of love, which seems more worth it than suffering for another day without love.
a. personification
-”And the clouds perish’d: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them - She was the Universe.”
-Woman as the universe, which turned to darkness, leading me to the interpretation of the whole
poem.
-She was Byrons’ universe, but once she stopped loving him, it felt like the end of the world.
The darkness was so powerful that it didn’t need the aid of clouds, which also block the sunlight. This dark universe filtered out all hope, giving men no desire to love or take heroic actions.
Byron wrote Darkness in 1816, known as The Year Without a Summer. It was a 3 year weather disaster which occurred when dust from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 has spread throughout the globe, and blocked the sunlight. And thus with no sunlight, the years 1815-1817 had no summer. This led to devastating worldwide harvest failures, leading to famine, and civil unrest which is what the surface of this poem is based on. As being written in the romantic era, Byron vividly describes the hardships of the common man by using apocalyptic scenes and the loss …show more content…
of life. However when we read Darkness in a different light, Byron is expressing his deep bitterness and depression from his loss of love.
The poem starts off with the paradox, “I had a dream, which was not at all a dream”. This introduction explains Byron’s view of this un-earthlike disaster, which felt like a nightmare. And frankly it is. Byron describes this nightmare where men had became primitive, with no love nor the desire to be heroic.
The motif of death gives the poem a hopeless tone. With the absence of the sun’s natural light, men attempt to imitate this light source with man-made fire. Ironically, “The habitations of all things which dwell,/ Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed, [by fire]”. Light is symbolic of love, and with the loss of love, the men end up destroying their own world in an attempt to replicate it. The men have a hunger for love, and this can be shown through the image of famine, “Of famine fed upon all entrails - men/Died” and “The meagre by the meagre were devour’d”. Even the smallest piece of dead flesh was eaten. With the indication of cannibalism, Byron states the dire need for food. Or in another sense, the need for love.
Byron saw love to be as dead as life, and emphasizes this with the motif of water/ or the absence of water. Byron blatantly says “The waves were dead”. In this case, water symbolizes life. And as I explained earlier, the loss of life symbolizes the dead love.
Byron makes a biblical allusion to the book of Matthew with the lines;
“The brows of men by the despairing light,”
[that] “fed/ Their funeral piles with fuel”
“gnash’d their teeth and howl’d”
Around these lines, Byron tells us about the men who accepted their fate of losing light/ love, and of those who fought against it. Those who fought against it became their primitive selves. In Matthew 8 verses 10-11, Jesus is saying “But children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and knashing of teeth”. Byron may have made this allusion to blame a higher being; who is God for his loss of love, where essentially, he feels like the victim of this breakup.
There is profound image of hate between two enemies in Darkness. The two sole survivors of this apocalypse find each other, and they build a fire together. That seems a bit hopeful right? Well sadly, once they see each others faces from their light, they shriek and die of mutual hideousness. Byron uses this image to emphasize the tragic loss of human love.
b. Byron presents us a metaphor between a dog and its master.
“Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
“And he was faithful to a corse (which means corpse)”
[he] kept famish’d men at bay”
-later on, dog dies form hunger and he dies beside his master
-dogs are metaphor for men, while masters are metaphor for their partners -their wives.
And the death of the master can symbolize the death of the woman’s love for the man.
-Unfortunately, the only faithful man left has a wife who doesn’t love him anymore.
-I can say that this scene may be the most heroic out of all of the scenes in Darkness, but this still is a failed heroic attempt. The master, or the love was long gone, so the man basically had nothing to fight for.
c. “Happy were those who dealt within the eye
Of the volcanoes,”
“A fearful hope was all the world contained;”
- juxtapositioning, so without love, there was no hope, only a fearful hope.
-hoping won’t die, knowing that they’ll die. Fearful to hope, to live another day.
-those who killed themselves in the volcano felt one second of natural light. Felt one second of love, which seems more worth it than suffering for another day without love.
a. personification
-”And the clouds perish’d: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them - She was the Universe.”
-Woman as the universe, which turned to darkness, leading me to the interpretation of the whole
poem.
-She was Byrons’ universe, but once she stopped loving him, it felt like the end of the world.
The darkness was so powerful that it didn’t need the aid of clouds, which also block the sunlight. This dark universe filtered out all hope, giving men no desire to love or take heroic actions.