some "Darkness" things

I’m presenting on “Darkness” tommorow so here are some kind of related odds & ends that hopefully won’t make it so we have nothing to talk about tomorrow… :

"Manfred"

Manfred is referred to a lot as a “Child of Clay” (131)—the concept of man being made from clay is Biblical and also a characteristic of many religions (Genesis 2:7—“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”). The Bible/religious allusions in “Manfred” are offset and/or questioned by the supernatural elements; ultimately Manfred really defies religion by defying Abbot and choosing to die alone rather than to be saved.

The involvement and sort of reappropration of religion reminded me of the last two men in “Darkness” who use “holy things/For an unholy usage” (59-60) when they burn the holy artifacts on an altar for light rather than for worship. Manfred’s Spirit also tells Abbot in Act 3 Scene 4 to “Waste not thy holy words on idle uses”—another holy/unholy moment.

The clay is also present in “Darkness”---the world becomes “a chaos of hard clay” (72), another interesting/sort-of perversion of religion and man, where the clay becomes hardened and perhaps thus dissociated from God.

In Act 3 Scene 3 Abbot says: “It is an awful chaos—light and darkness—/And mind and dust—and passions and pure thoughts/Mix’d, and contending without end or order/All dormant or destructive” (3.3 164-7). These ideas are interesting to think about with “Darkness,” too—there is a chaos in the mix, but then also in “Darkness” men have lost their passions and are in perhaps a different kind of chaos.

"Epitaph to a Dog"

The poem suggests that this dog, despite being “deny’d in Heaven,” had “all the virtues of man without his Vices.”  The speaker of the poem is mourning what he considers to have been his only true friend; whereas the honors on men’s tombs describe them in perhaps faulty/or overly complimentary terms, the speaker seems to feel that a dog is deserving of such praise in a way that men are not. This was written after the death of Byron’s dog Boatswain in 1808, who was (according to Wikipedia) sick with rabies and who he also apparently cared for until the dog’s death without caring there was a chance he could have been infected. Wikipedia also notes that the dog’s tomb is bigger than Byron’s.

There’s also a dog in “Darkness,” and he appears to play the same loving role—of course he is the only dog to do so—thus it isn’t just a general appreciation for dogs but rather an affection for this one dog who demonstrates the virtue of man without his vice. After learning about this poem and Byron’s affection for his dog the one true/pure dog in “Darkness” is even more interesting.

"She Walks in Beauty"

I think the line “all that’s best of dark and bright” (3) is interesting to look at in the context of “Darkness,” just as it draws that light/dark contrast ought that is obviously important in both. It’s interesting to think, too, about the “She” in this poem in contrast with the final “She” of “Darkness”—who is darkness. The footnote obviously informs us that Byron supposedly wrote “She Walks in Beauty” about Anne Wilmot, whereas the She in “Darkness” doesn’t appear to refer to any person as much as it does to a personification of the Darkness. Still, “She walks in beauty, like the night,” immediately associates the woman of “She Walks in Beauty” with another darkness. Her darkness appears to also be pure and “innocent” (18), though, a sentiment that is pretty absent from “Darkness.”  

The Sound of Silence

So I haven’t exactly done an intense analysis of this song in relation to “Darkness,” but the first line does personify it in a similar way (though of course Byron’s personification doesn’t come until the end of the poem). The vision/dream in this song is also interesting—especially as it is a vision and a dream and kind of blurs the line between the two, just as Byron does with the line “I had a dream, which was not all a dream” (1). The neon signs in “The Sound of Silence” are also a kind of aritificial light that perhaps aligns with the image of the fire in “Darkness,” though the song and poem do seem to consider religion differently.     

NBC’s Revolution

Maybe almost embarrassed to post this because it is admitting that I’ve seen some of this show. But I just thought of it so thought I’d throw it in… we all appear to remain interested in the concept of the lights “going off”—how we refer to losing light and electricity as “losing power.” The loss of light results in a chaotic dystopia in the show, too. Our obsession with imagining the end of the world/the possibility of the world ending doesn’t seem to have faded since Byron’s time---both the poem and show (and also the many other dystopic shows/movies that exist today) also feature the way that men play a key role in their own downfall.