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Dominique Gracia

Ocean imagery in Don Juan: the symbolism of Byron’s ethics of poetry

The ocean is at once a symbol of dynamism and doubt; the ceaseless action and energy of the

waves, and the uncertainty and indecision of deep waters. This combination of dynamism and

ambivalence makes the ocean and related nautical images ideal simultaneously to illustrate and

comment on human experience, and in Don Juan, Byron goes beyond trite ocean metaphors – of

which there are, admittedly, examples (such as the “stormy seas” of female emotions (VI.liii.7)) –

to reveal his ethics of poetry.1 This essay explores Byron’s ethics of poetry and draws out its

manifestation in the ocean images and metaphors of Don Juan.2

In general, the phrase ‘ethics of poetry’ relates to the author’s experience of and intention

in her writing, and the values by which she might appraise its ‘success’ or ‘failure’. Byron’s

ethics of poetry broadly resembles Percy Bysshe Shelley’s in Defence of Poetry, written around

the same time as Don Juan. Shelley argues that poetry “awakens and enlarges the mind” “by

rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought”, and that “to

be greatly good”, one “must imagine intensely and comprehensively” humanity’s “pains and

1
Lord George G. Byron, ‘Don Juan’, in The Major Works, ed. by Jerome McGann (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1986; repr. 2008), pp. 373–879. Further references to this edition are
given after quotations in the text.
2
As this essay considers authorial engagement with the symbol of the ocean and Byron’s
attitudes towards contemporary politics and poetry, it does not consider the distance between the
narratorial and authorial voices. Consequently, I refer in this essay to Byron when, more
precisely, one might refer to the narrator. Numerous critics have dealt with the question of the
narrator, and it here suffices to say that while the distance between narrator and author
contributes to the ironic tone of some of the lines quoted in this essay, it does not serve to alter
the interpretation of Byron’s ocean imagery or ethics of poetry. For critical considerations of the
function of Don Juan’s narrator, see for example: Eleanor Wikborg, ‘The Narrator and the
Control of Tone in Cantos I-IV of Byron’s Don Juan’, English Studies, 60 (1979), 267–79;
Bernard Beatty, ‘The Narrator’s Cantos’, in Byron’s Don Juan (Beckenham: Croom Helm,
1985), pp. 29–86; and Jonathan David Gross, ‘“One Half What I Should Say”: Byron’s Gay
Narrator in Don Juan’, European Romantic Review, 9 (1998), 323–50.
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pleasures”.3 ‘Goodness’ does not demand morality according to general social approbation—it

would be difficult to associate Byron with this sort of ‘goodness’—but instead asks

comprehensive experience and an empathetic sensibility. Combining personal experience with

broader insights, the ethical poet presents to the reader’s mind fresh ideas, in turn encouraging

her to perform empathetic imaginative work and experience both “pains and pleasures” through

the act of reading. Poetry that accomplishes this is vicariously ‘good’, or ethical.

Don Juan’s Dedication shows such an ethics of poetry at work. Byron contrasts himself

and his contemporaries, particularly the “Lake poets”, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and

Southey, whose poetry “makes [him] wish [they]’d change [their] lakes for oceans” (v.8). This

image strikes upon what Jonathan Fenno describes as an “ancient antithesis” between salt- and

fresh-water imagery, which in The Iliad distinguishes Greeks and Trojans (respectively), and

which Fenno suggests can be traced back into ancient Mesopotamian myth. This opposition,

Fenno argues, “endows heroic action with greater cosmic and theological significance”. I do not

contend that Byron consciously employs such “hydropolemic imagery” for this specific purpose,

but his choice of image carries this resonance.4 We might be tempted to conclude, from the epic’s

generally wry tone, that Byron is being flippantly hyperbolic in his metaphor, endowing poetic

differences and personal squabbles with a grander significance than they necessarily deserve.

However, the message of opposition between lake and ocean is a serious one.

Whilst the lake symbolises personal, parochial concerns and a narrow field of vision, the

sea or ocean represents what Bernard Beatty describes as Byron’s “strong sense of Life”—

politics, history, and the full range of human experience—as “commanding our prior attention”,

3
Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Defence of Poetry’, in The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley, ed. by
Bruce Woodcock (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2002), pp. 635–60 (p. 642).
4
Jonathan Fenno, ‘“A Great Wave against the Stream”: Water Imagery in Iliadic Battle Scenes’,
The American Journal of Philology, 126 (2005), 375–504 (p. 476).
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our attention above all other poetic themes.5 Jerome McGann distinguishes Byron’s ‘poetry of

experience’ from other Romantic poetry because Byron refuses to focus on “the ‘universal’

import of personal experience” at the expense of “political and historical currencies”.6 This

critical language of the ‘universal’ and the ‘currency’ distinguishes between deep, resonant

human issues and modish, dynamic ones, emphasising the distinction that is combatively encoded

in the ocean imagery throughout Don Juan: for example, referring to Wordsworth’s opening call

for “a boat” in Peter Bell, Byron mockingly suggests that Wordsworth’s boat will either “sail the

deeps” of “air”—nothing at all—or of “seas” that Wordsworth himself has “drivel[led]”

(III.iic.5–8).7 Byron opposes this limited approach. Whilst his contemporaries may speak with

poetic voices “inflected by the local and personal history” of the Lake District,8 his ethics of

poetry demands that he speak with a voice inflected by the ocean.

Throughout Don Juan, Byron figures his experience of writing as an ocean voyage, and

remarks on how ethically he conducts his journey often cast sideways glances at critics and

fellow poets alike. For example, Byron comments that “[his] words, at least, are more sincere and

hearty / Than if [he] sought to sail before the wind” (IX.xxvi.3–4). His ethics of poetry drives

him, not “the wind” of critical approval; he conducts his ‘voyage’ according to his own insights.

Later, Byron expresses this same sentiment aspirationally: he aims to “sail in the wind’s eye”,

that is, directly into the wind “by Poesy”. From the future, subjunctive tense, he shifts to the

concrete: “In the Wind’s Eye I have sailed, and sail”. However, unlike others, he does not “sail”

5
Bernard Beatty, ‘Byron and the eighteenth century’, in The Cambridge Companion to Byron,
ed. by Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 236–248 (p. 239).
6
Jerome McGann, ‘Byron’s lyric poetry’, in The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. by
Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 209–23 (p. 211).
7
William Wordsworth, ‘Peter Bell’, in The Major Works, ed. by Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984; repr. 2008), pp.91–128.
8
James C. McKusick, Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2000), p. 28.
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“by the dint of glass and vapour”, that is to say navigating by the stars, for “[his] telescope is

dim”. Byron is incapable of following the usual course of his contemporaries, instead seeking to

provide otherwise “unapprehended combinations of thought” by tracking what Jane Stabler calls

“the flotsam and jetsam of [human] experience”, both personal and historical, as we see in his

depiction of the siege of Ismail, which blends political and historical commentary, abstract

meditations on war in the abstract, and the emotive rescue of Leila (VI-VII).9

Byron concludes his reference to “sail[ing] in the wind’s eye” with an ambiguous

evaluation of his own success: “at the least I have shunned the common shore”—he has

successfully avoided the commonplace, for the most part—and would instead “skim the Ocean of

Eternity” (X.iii–iv). However, Byron is less ambiguous later, when he suggests that the world

would be seen very differently if only “some Columbus of the moral seas / Would show man

their souls’ Antipodes” (XIV.ci.7–8). Although this line has the ring of deliberate provocation,

Byron is sincere in the way he values poems as a means of furnishing his readers with an ethical.

Facetious or not, the image of a new Columbus plumbing the depths of human morality informs

our understanding of Byron’s ethics of poetry, and his actions in opposing to his critics and

contemporaries. Although he has been subjected to “the roar / Of breakers”—personal and

professional criticism and obstacles—his “slight, trim, / But still sea-worthy skiff”—his poetry

and motivation for writing—has not been “daunted”. Rather, “she may float / Where ships have

foundered” (X.iv.6–8). Using the nautical image of smaller crafts surviving when larger ones are

destroyed, Byron casts a sharp sideways glance at his more vaunted contemporaries, their

“laurels”, and their influence over the Regent, instead finding solace in his poetical voyage on the

9
Jane Stabler, ‘Byron, postmodernism and intertextuality’, in The Cambridge Companion to
Byron, ed. by Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 265–84 (p.
274).
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“moral seas” (Dedication.ix.1, ii.1–4).

It is worth noting here how the above-quoted passages are evocative of the ambition

expressed in Tennyson’s Ulysses.10 Byron’s desire to “skim the Ocean of Eternity” strikes the

same notes as Ulysses’ assertion that “all experience is an arch wherethro’ / Gleams that

untravell’d world whose margin fades / For ever and forever when I move” (19–21). Tennyson’s

Ulysses shares with Byron a passion for experience and ambitious voyages, metaphorical or

otherwise: Ulysses’ compulsive travel— “I cannot rest” (6)—mirrors Byron’s inability to find

peace on shore (Epistle to Augusta, ii.8).11 A colon then introduces Ulysses’ next phrase,

equating the two; compulsive travel means “drink[ing] / Life to the lees” (Ulysses, 6–7). The

same punctuation introduces a third equal component: “All times I have enjoy’d / Greatly, have

suffer’d greatly” (7–8). The whole range of human experience is embraced, whether it gives

enjoyment or suffering. Similarly, in Byron’s ethics of poetry, the reader should be exposed to

both “pains and pleasures”, and the ocean is the vehicle for providing such experiences.

To what end does Byron encourage his audience to embrace his ‘Ulyssean’ philosophy of

Life? Paul Cantor argues that Byron aims for a “philosophy that orientates itself toward action”,

and Byron shares his ‘Ulyssean’ philosophy through his poetry to propel his readers to action:

intellectual, political, or physical.12 With wry reflexivity, throughout Don Juan, Byron critiques

his own digressions and philosophising, but I would argue that this avowed disdain is a complex

litotes employed to encourage readers’ engagement (e.g. III.ivl and VI.lxiii). Ostensibly, Byron

warns of the risk of drowning by philosophising. While it is a “pleasant voyage” to “float” “on a

10
Lord Alfred Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’, in Tennyson’s Poetry, ed. by Robert W. Hill, Jr. (London:
W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), pp. 82–4.
11
Lord George G. Byron, ‘Epistle to Augusta’, in The Major Works, ed. by Jerome J. McGann
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; repr. 2008), pp. 268–71.
12
Paul A. Cantor, ‘The Politics of the Epic: Wordsworth, Byron, and the Romantic Redefinition
of Heroism’, The Review of Politics, 69 (2007), 375–401 (p. 394).
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sea of speculation”, “what if carrying sail capsize the boat?” (IX.xviii.1–3). “Swimming long in

the abyss of thought” leaves us “apt to tire”, and Byron appears to advocate seeking “a calm and

shallow station”, avoiding too deep water. However, he does so ironically, sneering at the

“moderate bathers” he feigns to laud (IX.xviii.5- 8). Byron in fact discourages his readers from

such moderation. The stanza implies that philosophising, and the action it might compel us

towards, is all the more alluring because one risks “drowning”.

Epistle describes Byron’s personal rejection of such a “station”, how he has “had no rest

… on shore” (ii.8), and how his travels have pulled him back from his “thought[s] of shaking off

[his] bonds of clay” (iv.6). He speculates that this activity may have sparked “the workings of

defiance” or “cold despair”, giving him a new “spirit of slight patience” or “a strange quiet” not

to be achieved by someone with “a calmer lot”, a peaceful but stultifying life at home with family

(v-vi). Byron seems to anticipate the return of “wild breakers”, without which, counter-

intuitively, his “strange quiet” may be destroyed (v.5). He goes on to explore the pastoral Alpine

landscape seen on his travels, which evokes memories of the view that he and Augusta shared,

significantly of a lake (viii). The same dichotomy established in Don Juan’s Dedication exists

here with a personal dimension. The emotions aroused by the loss of the pastoral lake are

oceanic: an “ebb of philosophy” and a “tide” of tears (ix.7–8). Byron cannot remain in the “calm

and shallow station” of the lake, of domestic life; his emotions exist on too grand a scale.

In Don Juan. Byron counsels that it is better not to hide from “waves and weather”, from

the storms experienced at sea, because such experience in turn teaches “discernment”, and “not to

pour [one’s] ocean in a sieve”, not to waste one’s efforts and abilities on trifling acts (XIV.il.4,

7–8). Experiencing the dynamism and uncertainty of life, symbolised by the ocean, educates the

reader ethically. Thus, Juan’s early experiences resemble the emotional suffering that Byron
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expresses in Epistle. However, Byron’s poetry is unusual in framing such suffering as positive.

Discussing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797–8), Amer Al-Rashid suggests that

Coleridge’s use of the ocean as a “heterotopical space” “negates the essential desire of the

Mariner” to express emotion, adducing Gaston Bachelard’s suggestion that the mind requires

small “spatial images to reflect/localize” one’s thoughts and feelings.13 In Rime, the ocean is

oppressive, inducing suffering. However, in Don Juan, as for Byron himself, the ocean’s

negation can be beneficial. Juan’s first encounter with the ocean teaches him this. He enters into

“our nautical existence”—a new life shared with Byron and a group of other travellers in which

the reader is included (II.xii.8)—in a state of distress after the traumatic dissolution of his

relationship with Julia, but his tears become literally a drop in the ocean—“salt tears dropp’d into

the salt sea (II.xvii.2)—and the tides purge him of his trauma, at least temporarily (II.xix-xxii).

The cure is not permanent; Juan’s distress at the loss of a lover is again present in his

confrontation with Gulbeyaz (V.lxvii). However, this repetition only reinforces the lesson for the

reader: “not to pour [one’s] ocean in a sieve”.

Canto II thus demonstrates the “discernment” the ocean can teach, and it also reinforces

the lake-ocean opposition of the Dedication and Epistle. After Haidee rescues Juan, they quickly

settle into a domestic routine: “Juan, after bathing in the sea, / Came always back to coffee and

Haidee” (II.clxxi.7–8). The internal rhyme, somewhat childish, undermines any sense of mature,

adult fulfilment that might be present here. Repeated return from the ocean to a fixed domestic

point, rejected in Epistle, is undermined as juvenile, and dealt a further blow in the very next line:

“both were so young” (II.clxxii.1). In this false idyll, “dead, long summer days” make the ocean

13
Amer H.M. Al-Rashid, ‘Between Flux and Fixity: Negotiations of Space in Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Cross-Cultural Communication, 7 (2011), 59–71
(p. 62).
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“glitter like a lake”, emphasising the scene’s oppressive unreality, and a “silent ocean”

accompanies “voiceless sands”, forming a false, muted landscape that drives the pair together

(II.clxxvii.7–8, (II.clxxxix). There is little for the reader to learn except what to avoid: lakes and

static domesticity.

Cantos II and III resonate ominously with The Odyssey. Byron’s description of Juan as

“[Haidee’s] own, her ocean treasure, cast / Like a rich wreck” and the preceding shipwreck evoke

the episode on Circe’s island. Juan’s false idyll is unreal, childish, and a perilous trap

(II.clxxiii.7–8). This is confirmed by the dramatic inversion of the identification between Juan

and Ulysses in Canto III, when Lambro’s return takes us forward to Ulysses’ Ithacan

homecoming and confirms Juan’s precarious situation as an imposter. Lambro has “fluttering

doubts if all be well”, and Byron remarks that “wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler”,

evoking Ulysses’ caution upon his return and Penelope’s ruse to deter her suitors, culminating in

a direct reference to Ulysses’ “good fortune” (III.xxi.5, xxii.7, xxiii.2). These initial Homeric

gestures are reinforced by the busy household’s initial failure to recognise the ‘true’ master of the

house (II.xxiix-xxxv, xxxxii). This is accompanied by a return to the Circean episode, turning

from Canto II’s reference to Circe’s joy with Ulysses’ arrival to the fate of Ulysses’ companions:

an entertainer tells the story of “magic ladies who … / Transform’d their lords to beasts”

(II.xxxiv.7–8). The danger encoded in Juan’s false idyll culminates in the returning Ulysses

propelling Juan out onto the ocean again. Byron’s message is clear: Juan is insufficiently

“seasoned” to interpret or navigate the false idyll represented by the lake, but Byron and his epic

will allow him—indeed, force upon him—the opportunity to become thus (X.cxiv.6, emphasis

mine). Byron’s ethics of poetry means that, vicariously and metaphorically, Don Juan does the

same for the reader.

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To “season” Juan and the reader, the epic itself must be permeated with the fluidity of the

ocean’s tides. Referring to Don Juan’s digressive style, Drummond Bone remarks that readers

“will almost certainly experience Don Juan as some kind of eddying stream (to adopt a

Coleridgean phrase) with local episodes constantly emerging out of and flowing into an ever-

changing contingent narrative ramble”.14 However, the word “stream” domesticates Byron’s far

grander endeavour. Within these eddying digressions, Byron enfolds social and political

commentary on near-historical events, crucial to his ethics of poetry. Nevertheless, Coleridge’s

phrase has become a common critical ‘slip’. For example, Jane Stabler recognises that Byron

couples an “insistence on ‘fact’” (time, date, and the “particularity” of events) with a broader

“awareness of helpless human involvement in … history”, but she errs in suggesting that Byron

considers history a “stream” when he figures life in larger terms (p.277). For example, Haidee’s

life is “the current of her sinless years” (III.i.7), and he borrows Shakespeare’s phrasing to

propose that “there is a tide in the affairs of men” (VI.i.1), and women’s too (VI.ii.1). It would be

more appropriate to replace Coleridge’s “stream” with Byron’s “tide” (III.1). However, the kernel

of Stabler’s remark affords us insight into the reader’s experience of Don Juan’s ‘ebb and flow’.

Uniting recognisable specifics with a pervasive sense of human “helpless[ness]” is a strategy by

which Byron can afford his general commentary on Life immediacy and relevance, heightening

his poetry’s success in presenting otherwise “unapprehended” ideas and emotions.

Before exploring the pessimistic of some of Byron’s ocean imagery, it is worth a

digression of our own to consider how Alain Badiou’s philosophy provides insight into the

correspondence of Byron’s ‘Ulyssean’ philosophy with his political experiences, which underpin

14
Drummond Bone, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV, Don Juan and Beppo’, in The Cambridge
Companion to Byron, ed. by Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
pp. 151–70 (p. 159).
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Don Juan’s near-historical commentary. In The Communist Hypothesis, Badiou proposes two

ways a revolutionary political movement might fail: the ‘simple’ (defeat), and the ‘complex’ (a

victory in vain that gives rise to repetition). He concludes that there is a “sacrificial temptation of

the void”, a drive to political extremes, making the “most fearsome enemy of the politics of

emancipation” not “repression by the established order” but “the interiority of nihilism”.15 The

interiority of political nihilism has an important effect on Byron’s ethics of poetry.

Christopher Strathman summarises Byron’s political yearnings by noting that he was

“eager to turn his life to some account—whether as a statesman or as a soldier”.16 A brief

summary of Byron’s political experiences might run as follows.17 Drawn to the Whigs whilst at

Cambridge, he joined the party in 1812, making his maiden speech in the House of Lords that

year. He spoke on several issues of social reform, but Malcolm Kesall suggests that by 1813,

having been unsuccessful on every issue he raised in the House, Byron had become disenchanted

with parliamentary government, leading to his “paralysis” during the Napoleonic Hundred Days.

Byron witnessed not only an “impasse” within the Whig party, but also an “aporia between

‘tyranny’ or ‘anarchy’” in Europe, and he was “sufficiently astute” to understand that nothing

could be said to make any difference.18

15
Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, trans. by David Macey and Steve Corcoran
(London: Verso, 2010), p.32. I am indebted to Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Badiou and use Žižek’s
translation here above that of Macey and Corcoran, which is slightly less elegant in the quoted
passages: Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2011), p. 181, citing Alain
Badiou, L’Hypothèse communiste (Paris: Lignes, 2009), p.28.
16
Christoper A. Strathman, ‘Byron’s Orphic Poetics and the Foundations of Literary
Modernism’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 51 (2009), 361–82 (p. 374).
17
Many critics have conducted extensive reviews of Byron’s political beliefs, and the politics of
the Romantic poets more generally. See, for example: Carl Woodring, Politics in English
Romantic Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Malcolm Kelsall, Byron’s
Politics (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987); and Cantor’s ‘Politics of the Epic’.
18
Malcolm Kesall, ‘Byron’s politics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. by Drummond
Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 44–55 (p. 49).
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Prima facie, Byron’s political failure was ‘simple’; the movements that Byron supported

did not succeed. However, I would argue that Byron experienced his failure as what might be

termed a ‘hybrid’ failure. He was disillusioned with the Whigs and sensed the futility of his

political effort, but he was not sufficiently disillusioned to reject the possibility of victory

entirely; as Strathman notes, Byron tried other avenues, namely military and revolutionary action.

Politics continued to fascinate him, and political commentary and accounts pepper his poetry.

Experiencing the “interiority of nihilism” rendering Byron politically helpless and inarticulate,

but it did not prevent him from acting in other ways. Sometimes Byron expressed “wilful

nihilism”, itself perhaps a strike against ‘true’ nihilism. By thus exerting control over his political

despair, Byron retained a sense of aspiration and a drive toward activism; he may have

“assume[d]” a “tragic role”, but he was fully aware that roles can (usually) be cast off (Kesall,

p.50).

We might now ask how this combination of aspiration and nihilism manifests itself in

Byron’s poetry. Norbert Lennartz suggests, as a general proposition, that “in Byron’s nihilistic

universe”, humanity is driven to “Icarian aspiration” yet pinned to a “relentless wheel of fortune”,

meaning that we are perpetually “met with failure, annihilation” or “destructively sardonic

laughter”.19 Although Lennartz locates “nihilism” outside the individual, as a feature of the

“wheel of fortune” that he links with the image of a malicious, laughing ‘Life’, Badiou’s

“interiority of nihilism” encourages us to consider the “wheel of fortune” as internalised, a

feature of the divided individual who, like Byron, can be simultaneously nihilistic and

aspirational. Internalising the “wheel of fortune” suggests that at the foundation of human

aspiration is a “void” into which victory can collapse, and Don Juan provides a sequence of

19
Norbert Lennartz, ‘Icarian Romanticism – The Motif of Soaring and Falling in British
Romantic Poetry’, Romanticism, 15 (2009), 213–24 (p. 219).
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extended metaphors that supports this, offering a bubble in the ocean as the symbol for an

individual human life. Rather than the Icarian image of Lennartz’s choosing, Byron chooses an

image that is literally a “void”, flooded by the ocean when it can no longer be sustained.20

Byron’s first ‘bubble metaphor’ suggests that Life is “content” “to trample / Upon the

nothings which are daily spent / Like bubbles on an ocean” because there is no reason why Life

should care for human life—“nothings”—any more than Death does. The image doubly

diminishes human life, reduced to a bubble in an ocean that is itself “much less ample than the

eternal deluge” (IX.xiii). The second such metaphor expands on this, equating life to “a syncopé

or singultus—emblems of Emotion”, “the grand Antithesis to great Ennui”. Life is short and

tragic, but this affords it interest, making the experience valuable. A “syncopé or singultus”

might be follow (or presage) the sort of rupturing ‘event’ that Badiou discusses as a window onto

‘Truth’, indiscernible until there is a rupture in the usual laws of society.21 Byron’s ‘Ulyssean’

philosophy is, in essence, actively to experience such ruptures in order to glimpse the ‘Truth’

beneath. The “syncopé” recalls the early image of Juan’s sobs into the ocean on his first voyage,

reinforcing the view that Byron advocates actively embracing the “pains and pleasures” of such

social ruptures. Byron’s ‘Ulyssean’ philosophy thus results in us “break[ing] our bubbles on the

ocean”. Taking this approach, humanity is more active than in the first ‘bubble metaphor’, and

the ocean is the “Watery Outline” or “miniature” “of Eternity”, which “ministers unto the soul’s

delight, in seeing matters which are out of sight” (XV.ii). Humanity remains doubly diminished,

20
It is worth noting, as Strathman discusses, that several critics have analysed Byron’s focus on
disjunctive discourse centred on absence and negativity (p. 363). See, for example, Peter J.
Manning, ‘Don Juan and Byron’s Imperceptiveness to the English Word”, in Reading
Romantics: Texts and Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 115–44.
21
Badiou’s theory of the ‘event’ is initially established in Being and Event: Alain Badiou, Being
and Event, trans. by Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005).
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but now the scaled-down ocean in which it exists is a comfort, allowing individuals to experience

that which is otherwise beyond comprehension.

The third and final ‘bubble metaphor’ incorporates society into its ocean imagery. First,

Byron asserts that we are cast adrift in life—“the eternal surge of time and tide rolls on, and bears

afar our bubbles”—and infinitely replaceable—“as the old burst, new emerge”—echoing the

sentiments of the earlier bubble metaphors. However, he then goes on to remark that, alongside

infinitely replaceable human bubbles lie “the graves of Empires”, which “heave but like some

passing waves” (XV.ic). Empires and the societies they represent are themselves absorbed into

the ebb and flow of the ocean, reminding us of Byron’s political disappointments. This perhaps

appears to contradict the conclusion that Byron maintains a sense of aspiration about the

possibility of social change. However, I would argue that this is merely a quiet example of

Byron’s “wilful nihilism”, a perverse temptation of the destruction that the ocean symbolises in

order to exert control over it. McGann, in an interview with James Soderholm, suggests

something similar, although from a different perspective: “figures like Byron brought a mode of

creative doubt, as it were, to the event of ‘victory’”, such that “in a dialectic of winners and

losers, the Byronic imagination foresees the perpetual return of the repressed”.22 Byron’s

‘Ulyssean’ philosophy of Life, and the ethics of poetry it entails, inspire him to embrace both ebb

and flow, suffering and enjoyment, victory and defeat, encapsulated in his ocean imagery.

From a soothing negator of despair to a destructive force of nature, the ocean can be all

things to those willing to risk its perils to experience fresh ideas. Byron suggests this himself at

the very opening of the Dedication, where we began. He explicitly warns Southey about the

danger of overweening pride for the poet: “you overstrain yourself”, Byron alleges; “you soar too

22
James Soderholm and Jerome McGann, ‘Byron and Romanticism: An Interview with Jerome
McGann’, New Literary History, 32 (2001), 47–66 (p. 51).
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high”, “and tumble downward like the flying fish gasping on deck” “for lack of moisture”, or

inspiration (ii.5–8). Here Byron conjoins ocean and Icarian imagery. Soaring above the sea,

Southey flies, but he inevitably tumbles downward, collapsing as an absurd, gasping creature on

the deck of Byron’s “trim” and “sea-worthy” “skiff”. Sometimes, it is Byron laughing

sardonically along with Life. While Byron wanders like Ulysses on the ocean’s surface with his

“pedestrian Muses”, focused on his first-hand political and emotional experiences and sharing

them with his readers, his contemporaries fly on “the winged steed” and dabble in lakes

(Dedication.viii). Yet, his ethics of poetry will ensure that he has the last laugh, at least until the

ocean chooses to burst his “bubble” and finally crush his aspiration.
 15
Dominique Gracia

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