Byron's Numerology Revisited: Don Juan

Abstract

In The Byron Journal of 1994, Alan Rawes,1 picking up on James Fisher's article in 1993,2 suggests that the positioning of stanzas 49 and 50 in Cantos I and II of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage reveals a numerological pattern in Byron's poem. It seems to me that this is indeed the case but for reasons more interesting than Rawes recognised. The two stanzas come at structural midpoints in the cantos (stanza 49 of 93 and the exactly central stanza 49 of 98). Their references to 'yon long, level plain, at distance crown'd / With crags' and 'the grove that crowns yon tufted hill' relate to the tradition of central-line symbolism, which placed images of kingship and elevation, amongst other symbols that I will discuss shortly, at the centre of a literary work. Byron's intentions are made clear when, at the centre of the whole of Childe Harold (stanza 247 of 495), we read that 'by Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, / There is a small and simple pyramid, / Crowning the summit of the verdant mound'. The desire to place this image at the centre of Childe Harold might help to explain why Canto IV is so long. Indeed, this seems to give an answer to what may be a criticism of my argument. It will be argued that Byron wrote accretively and that this precludes the planning that is demanded by the type of centralised structure I am going to advocate. However, in this case, it appears to me that accretion deliberately creates the central emphasis or, conversely, that the desire for the central emphasis deliberately creates accretion. At the centre of Canto IV itself (stanzas 92 and 93 of 186), Byron has the 'arch of triumph' (92), God's rainbow (92) and 'things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale' (93) - images frequently found at the centre of literary structures. Another counter-argument to my own would stress Byron's digressions as working against numerical patterning. Even Fisher argues of Beppo that 'Byron's own mid-point is just another circling back to his story after yet another digression, a central position seemingly without much importance'.3 However, Beppo has a self-consciously marked centre in stanza 51 (of 99). Here, Byron wishes he 'had the art of easy writing' so that he could 'scale / Parnassus where the Muses sit'. Furthermore, if the poem 'starts' at stanza 21 (when Byron says 'But to my story'), the midpoint between this and the end of the poem is stanza 61, which has an Emperor, a God and a falling: Crush'd was Napoleon by the Northern Thor Who knock'd his army down with icy hammer. Byron also seems to use structural quarter points in Beppo. In stanza 25, we are introduced to Beppo. There is also an image of ascension: His wife would mount, at times, her highest attic For thence she could discern the ship with ease: He was a merchant trading to Aleppo, His name Giuseppe, call'd more briefly, Beppo. The three-quarter point (stanza 75) introduces two types of crown (one of which we will meet again at a key point in Don Juan): the foolscap and the coxcomb. This, of course, is also the midpoint between 'But to my tale of Laura' (stanza 50) and the end of the poem. Beppo provides clues to the structure of Don Juan, where the digressive nature of the poem allows Byron to play with central images and numerical structures in novel ways. He can be accretive, digressive and numerological. He can develop multiple, highly complex centralised structures. The plural is important because, as I hope to show, the poem is a network of overlapping structures, or, as Fisher calls those in Beppo, 'circling' structures.4 One particular aspect of this is Byron's use of a series of new, or even false, starts. This enables him to create a number of central points, even in a single canto - a technique that achieves its supreme realisation in Canto IX. He also uses central points in individual episodes and within many of the discrete periods of time depicted in Don Juan. …