Lord Byron is one of the best poets of the Romantic age, but his relationship with contemporary poets was not good at all. In particular, he had a personal conflict with poet laureate Robert Southey, and they did not even want to be in the same room. Moreover, Byron did not particularly like his senior poets of the Romantic age, William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge. Though he did not have any direct personal conflict with them in that way, there were conflicts in terms of poetic composition and style. If we read Canto 1 of Don Juan, we can understand this very well. Here, he criticized several of his contemporary literati, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, in very harsh language. This part has been highlighted here.
William Wordsworth is the pioneer of the Romantic Age, and he, along with S. T. Coleridge, published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Many people believe that the publication of this book marked the official beginning of the Romantic Age. In the preface of this book, Wordsworth mentioned that the language and style of writing poetry should be of a new kind. In terms of language, he emphasized the use of ordinary language and prioritized everyday life events of common people when selecting subjects for his poetry. Wordsworth also spoke extensively about nature. Lord Byron, with his epic poem Don Juan, tried to show the opposite of what Wordsworth said about poetry. Byron wanted to demonstrate that beautiful and great poetry could be composed by preserving the traditional forms, and Don Juan was that attempt. He called Wordsworth insane, though the exact reason for this is not known. Also, we cannot say whether he harbored any personal jealousy towards Wordsworth. However, what we see in Byron’s Don Juan is largely the opposite of the idealism found in Wordsworth’s poetry.
S. T. Coleridge is another important poet of the Romantic age, and he is famous for his use of imagination. In particular, if we look at his two poems, Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, we can see that Coleridge was one of the greatest—or perhaps the greatest—poets in English literature in terms of his use of imagination. Byron said about Coleridge that he was a drunk. One possible reason he said this is that Coleridge was addicted to drugs in his personal life. However, Byron was not in favor of Coleridge’s use of imagination, and he did not take imagination very seriously in composing poetry.
Robert Southey was the poet laureate of that time. He held this position for a long time, and though he did not gain as much fame as Wordsworth and Coleridge after his death, during his lifetime, he was fairly recognized as a poet in contemporary England. Byron had a very bitter relationship with Southey, and the two even wrote poems attacking each other. Byron’s assessment of Southey was that he was a hypocrite and talkative.
Among the poets of that time, Byron had a very good relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their friendship was very deep, and they liked each other very much. Shelley and Byron had somewhat similar thoughts. However, Shelley did not reject imagination and was a devotee of nature. The similarity between Byron and Shelley lies mainly in their ideology, and both were rebellious poets. Byron’s ideals were John Milton, John Dryden, and Alexander Pope. They were all poets of the Neo-Classical era, and Byron was a fan of their satire. All three of them portrayed society in their poems, especially civil society. Byron also portrayed this in his poem Don Juan.
However, we can see the greatest influence of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope on Byron. Byron, in his poem Don Juan, has largely followed the type of satire on people and human society that Swift used in his book Gulliver’s Travels. In Byron, we can see the power of intense satire, similar to that of Pope.
By reading the poem Don Juan, we may be reminded of Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Just as Odysseus wandered from one place to another in search of adventure or was forced by the curses of the gods, similarly, Byron’s Don Juan traveled from one place to another under the pressure of circumstances and fell in love with one woman after another.
There is no doubt that Byron did not have good relations with most of the poets of his time, and his thoughts were very modern. We can relate Byron’s thoughts and ideas to this age to a great extent. It was Byron’s misfortune that he was born at a time when the social system was not in his favor.
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