Gospel & Universe ❤️ Three Little Words

Byron: Carrying Sail

Byron’s take on the rejection of dichotomies is expansive, yet in a different way than we find in Whitman. Byron would like to see “both sides for once agreeing,” yet instead of embracing dichotomies he acts more like Zhuangzi and Pyrrho: he distances himself from them, assuming a suspended position from where he responds to both sides. A great admirer of Alexander Pope, Byron condenses the impossibility of an all-enclusive vision into a tightly expressed logic: because we see, we think we see everything. Byron has a realism that distances him from Whitman’s idealism, and this realism simply can’t accept that a limited perception can claim any sort of universality, let alone a vision of the heavens and beyond. Indeed, Byron challenges anyone to say what life itself means. He argues that because “There’s no such thing as certainty,” doubt is the closest we’ll ever come to a universal position:

'To be, or not to be?' — Ere I decide,
  I should be glad to know that which is being?
'T is true we speculate both far and wide,
  And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing:
For my part, I'll enlist on neither side,
  Until I see both sides for once agreeing.
For me, I sometimes think that life is death,
Rather than life a mere affair of breath.

'Que scais-je?' was the motto of Montaigne,
  As also of the first academicians: 
That all is dubious which man may attain,
  Was one of their most favourite positions.
There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain
  As any of Mortality's conditions;
So little do we know what we're about in
This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting. — Don Juan 9.16-17

In Byron Doubting I looked in detail at the end of these two stanzas. Here I want to note that immediately following them Byron pushes his doubt into the type of nautical warning about Pyrrho’s suspension of belief that writers such as Dante and Pascal have also made, albeit without Byron’s agnostic slant. In the second canto of Paradiso, Dante warns his reader, non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse, / perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti — “don’t put yourself onto the high seas, because perhaps / if you lose [sight of] me, you will be lost.” Dante can make the journey because it’s not just Apollo, but God himself who’s driving his sail. Byron, on the other hand, keeps within Pyrhho’s skeptical context:

It is a pleasant voyage perhaps to float,
  Like Pyrrho, on a sea of speculation;
But what if carrying sail capsize the boat?
  Your wise men don't know much of navigation;
And swimming long in the abyss of thought
  Is apt to tire: a calm and shallow station
Well nigh [near] the shore, where one stoops down and gathers
Some pretty shell, is best for moderate bathers. — Don Juan 9.18

Byron’s notion that we are deluded if we think we understand everything, as well as his refusal to “enlist on either side” echoes the Classical Greek skepticism about our knowledge, as well as Montaigne’s desire to inscribe the slogan Que sais-je? and the emblem of the balance into his thinking.

Byron’s refusal in Canto 9 to “enlist on either side” also has a political angle, especially when he sees that the ability to choose is being threatened by autocratic forces. He laments Voltaire’s connection with Catherine the Great, stating, “I deem an absolute autocrat / Not a barbarian, but much worse than that.” In the following three stanzas the connection between critical thinking and the freedom to think critically is paramount:

And I will war, at least in words (and — should
My chance so happen — deeds), with all who war
With Thought; — and of Thought's foes by far most rude,
Tyrants and sycophants have been and are.
I know not who may conquer: if I could
Have such a prescience, it should be no bar
To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation
Of every despotism in every nation.

It is not that I adulate* the people:      * fawn over
Without me, there are demagogues enough,
And infidels, to pull down every steeple,
And set up in their stead some proper stuff.
Whether they may sow scepticism to reap Hell,
As is the Christian dogma rather rough,
I do not know; — I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings — from you as me.

The consequence is, being of no party,
I shall offend all parties: — never mind!
My words, at least, are more sincere and hearty
Than if I sought to sail before the wind.
He who has nought to gain can have small art: he
Who neither wishes to be bound nor bind,
May still expatiate freely, as will I,
Nor give my voice to slavery's jackal cry. — Don Juan 9.24-26

Byron says that he is “of no party” in two senses. He doesn’t side with tradional political authority nor with mob rule, especially since the 1790s Reign of Terror was still fresh in everyone’s memory. Nor does he choose between “the Christian dogma rather rough” and “tearing down every steeple.” He links the thought process which requires critical distance, or suspension of belief, not so much to ataraxia’s escape from dichotomies as to political commitment. This shift from philosophical suspension of belief to political action may separate Byron somewhat from many past philosophers — not from Montaigne, but certainly from Zhuangzi, who avoided political involvement like the plague. Yet Byron’s direction anticipates the political and cultural engagement of later existentialists, notably Sartre and Camus.

This engagment makes sense: if one cherishes the process whereby doubt opens the door to suspension of belief and to an ability to pivot from position to position, then one would fight for a political system which allows this process of critical thinking to continue ad infinitum. Leaving aside Sartre’s unfortunate enthusiasm for Soviet communism (which ended with Russian repression of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s and 60s), it seems clear to us now that liberal democracy is the most obvious choice. In the summer of 1822 — that is, when Byron was writing the 9th Canto of Don Juan — Byron was clearly in the middle of its historical development: the 1832 Reform Act was passed 8 years after he died. The abolitionist movement was also in full swing: Britain had already banned slavery at home 1807, and would soon ban it in the colonies in 1831. It’s perhaps for this reason that he ends his political statement with a refusal to give his voice to “slavery’s jackal cry.”

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