BYRONIC BOOK REVIEWS Vincenzo Patan’: L’estate di un ghiro: I mito di Lord Byron attraverso la vita, i viaggi, gli amori, le opere (The summer of a dormouse: the myth of Lord Byron seen in his life, his travels, his loves, his works: Cicero, Venezia) 2013. 569 pp. ISBN 978-88-89632-39-0 Mario Praz, in The Romantic Agony — a book so famous that it now has an edition of its own, with a preface by Frank Kermode (no less) - shows as much knowledge of Byron as the equally famous and equally bad Orientalism by Edward Said, who, just as confident as Praz about Byron, feels no need to show anything as vulgar as evidence of having read him. I'm reliably informed that it’s because Praz dismissed Byron that two-and- critics have ignored him. Alll this has recently changed. Diego Saglia’s selection of translated essays Byron e il Segno Plurale (2011), Gioia Angeletti’s Lord Byron and Discourses of Otherness (2012), and Carla Pomaré's Byron and the Discourses of History (2012), are clear signs that Praz. has been relegated to the dustbin of history, and that Italians are once again (at last?) aware of how important Italy was to one of the greatest and most European of poets (if not how important he was to Italy). Vincenzo Patané’s huge book is at the forefront of this welcome development. It aims at a full account of Byron’s life, influences, poetry (romantic, dramatic and satirical), prose, women, boyfriends, politics and legacy. These themes are written-up in discrete sections: the book is not entirely chronological, thus breaking away from the standard Marchand / Eisler / Grosskurth / MacCarthy format. The book is so big that a complete review would take up most of this issue. I shall concentrate on a few sections. It’s new in that / ragazzi. John, Nicold ¢ Lukas get as much space as Le donne. Augusta, Caro e Teresa. Patané is much happier with Byron’s bisexuality than any of our settentrionale commentators, who even in 2015 are still strangely embarrassed about his predilection for adolescent youths slightly younger than himself: a pre- dilection which, obviously, became harder to realise the further away from adolescence he grew himself, There’s even an appendix on Don Leon: the Cochran thesis — that the poem was written by Hobhouse — is described as “decisamente interessante” (p.481). A subsection entitled I! Grand Tour: una missione diplomatica? (pp-413-6) does not understate the role which Byron’s own beauty played in persuading Spiridion Forresti to steer the poet in the direction of “la corte stravagante e favolosa di Ali Pascia” (p.415). I still sense noses wrinkling about this even as I write it: our Byron would never allow himself to be used in this way by a mere Maltese diplomat, But Patang is not shy about describing Tepelene as being redolent of “la presenza costante dell’ omosessualita” (p.206) and Ali’s reaction to Byron’s ears, hair, and small hands (see Don Juan V 104, authorial note) as proof of “il suo evidente tentativo di seduzione” (p.207). All this without reference to the hardy perennial Cecil Y. Lang's Nar- cissus Jilted, which is cited nowhere in the book. The treatment of Byron’s indebtedness, in his three ottava rima poems, to Italian precedents, is on the other hand thin, Despite all the efforts of Maria Schoina, I have yet to find anyone who shows signs of having read all of Casti’s Novelle Galanti (see brief references by Patan’ on pp.87 and 356-7). Every time I return to this collec- tion I find ideas which Byron borrowed and adapted. On the other hand, everybody's favourite dirty disgusting lf generations of Italian 222. The Wicked Lord, B.'s great uncle, had died in 1798, 223. g.'s mother had died in August 1811.poem, Buratti’s !"Elefanteide,” is said to “ispird sicuramente Byron con la sua irresis though Byron never mentions it Patané writes of Byron’s marriage with fair thoroughness, speaking of his wooing “con un masochistico gusto autodistruttivo per la sofferenza” (p.152), which, I'd argue, applies to Annabella as much as to him. But the horrid comedy of the wedding is understated: Hobhouse’s diary comments before the ceremony ("Never was lover in less haste” ... “The bridegroom more and more Jess impatient”) might have been quoted, and Byron’s reported query to his wife immediately after marrying her — “Are you ready, Miss Milbanke?” — isn’t mentioned. The event ‘was even more sick than is here conveyed. References to Annabella as “legnosa ¢ frigida” (p.156), or to the “glacialith di Annabella” (p.158), seem prejudiced: Lady Byron could at first be “caressed into tractability”, and it was only when she truly realised what a monster she’d married that she showed signs of woodenness and “glacialita” — as anybody might. But Patane is quite correct when he writes that “Byron mostrd di non apprezzare l'idea della procreazione” (p.158): he was indeed “a link reluctant in a fleshly chain”. Annabella’s departure (p.159) is got out of the way too rapidly ~ she wouldn't have walked out if Byron hadn’t written her a note assuming, on no evidence, that she wished to do so. The idea that “L’intera aristocrazia londinese ... si schierd contra di lui” (p.161) needs examination. Patan® is happy to quote Hobhouse’s marginalium in Moore’s Life, “Byron aveva tentato di —a” (p.160: meaning “tried to bugger her”) but should therefore have quoted Hobhouse’s later jotting in the same book, “there was not the slightest necessity even in appearance for his going abroad”. It pleased Byron to think that the world was against him ~ the idea is all over Childe Harold III and IV, which is why we need to treat it more sceptically. But these are queries about shadings and emphases. Italian readers — to whom most of the story will be new ~are given much to chew over in this section. That Patané has Byron's poetry clearly in perspective is at once evident when he opens his section on Don Juan with an analysis of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, part of the impulse behind the later and greater work being an even stronger revulsion against contemporary poetry than motivated the earlier one. “... sono convinto che si troviamo in una Sistema poetica rivoluzionario errato” (p.355) is his own translation of “I am convinced ... that we are upon a wrong revolutionary { poetical} system”. Via a consideration of Whistlecraft and brief (100 brief) mentions of Pulci, Berni and Casti (p.356), he concludes that Byron's new style “va senza dubbio ascritta alla vita e alla cultura italiana, a cui Byron in quegli anni si stava avvicinando sempre di pit” (p.357). Anexcellent account of Beppo follows, pointing to its skilful digressions and its indebtedness to Byron’s experience of the Venetian carnival. Missing is the poem’s relationship with the Turkish Tales, which it travesties, and whose female readership it insults (“I leave them to their daily “Tea is ready’, / Smug Coterie, and Literary Lady. ~~"). Beppo is an even bigger break with Byron’ s “romantic” work than is conveyed here. Patan® approaches Don Juan (“senza dubbio il suo capolavoro” — p.363) with a fascinating quotation (p.368) from Giuseppe di Lampedusa, not a writer normally associated with Byron, but whose admiration for the work evidently knew no bounds. He’s momentarily distracted by the strange idea of the poem's supposed “gay narrator” (p.373), and, while conceding that “Giovanni non possiede infatti nessune della carrateristiche del suoi predecessori” (ibid.), can’t bring himself to admit that neither Julia, Haidee, nor the other heroines, are anything like their (mostly) victimised predecessors either. But his analysis of the poem’s anti-climactic style is first-rate (he does his own translations, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose) This chapter's final section (pp.379-84) centres on The Vision of Judgement, Byron's greatest completed poem; a fact which, however, is ill-served by placing it together with two prose pieces, with The Blues, and The Age of Bronze. In concentrating on a few sections of Vincenzo Patané’s book I hope I’ve conveyed some idea of its scope, depth, and detail. My disagreements are of differing emphases merely. But it really is a massive and highly original book, the fruit of a huge amount of first-hand reading, and, together with the other titles mentioned in my third paragraph above (particularly the one edited by Diego Saglia) heralds a new start in Italian Byron studies. | € a SD 224; See << http://petercochran files. wordpress.com/2011/08/pietro-buratti-the-elephantiad.pdf>> le verve” (p.357), even