The time of creation of the tragedy Manfred its literary context. The meaning of the word manfred in a literary encyclopedia. Characteristics of a Romantic Hero

S. B. Klimova

THE MYTH OF PARADISE IN BYRON'S "METAPHYSICAL" DRAMA "MANFRED"

The work is presented by the department foreign literature and intercultural communication of the Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University.

Scientific adviser - Doctor of Philology, Professor 3. I. Kirnoze

The article considers the myth of paradise in Byron's drama "Manfred" as a tragic version of the romantic myth. The author traces the ways of its creation; touches upon the issues of its structure and semantic differences with the myth of other romantics. Special attention is given to the problem of the movement of time and the role of a different "point of view" in it.

Keywords: myth, archetype, vertical "man - God", linear time, cyclic time, point of view.

The article considers the myth of paradise in Byron's drama "Manfred" as a tragic variant of the Romantic myth. The author touches upon the myth's structure, the ways of its realization in the text and the character of time motion. Special attention is paid to the role of another perspective in it.

Key words: myth, archetype, the vertical line "man - God", linear time, cyclic time, perspective.

Byron's work is deeply and consciously mythological. One of the most important myths functioning in Byron's works is the myth of paradise. For the first time in Byron, the myth of paradise fully unfolds at different levels of the text in the "metaphysical" drama "Manfred" (1816-1817) - "the central work of the Swiss period", "marking the pinnacle of the poet's individualistic rebellious aspirations" .

The myth of paradise has ancient roots and many incarnations in various mythologies and literary traditions. Its comprehension in European art of the early 19th century. stands in direct connection with the most important features of romantic poetics: dissatisfaction with existence, pathos of individuality, contrast. The English romantics create new myths about paradise on the basis of the ancient myth of the "golden age" and the Christian myth of the lost Eden, the paradise of the righteous and the eschatological New Jerusalem. These myths are processed in line with the romantic belief in the "objective" "theogonic" truth of mythology and in the need for artistic myth-making as a path to the ideal. In a mature creative

In honor of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, the myth of paradise appears as an archetype of human consciousness, the individual

but embodied in human life.

The semantic knot connecting the myth of paradise among the English romantics with ancient and Christian myths is the belief in the attainability of a “new” bliss. From the Christian tradition, the romantic myth also inherits a complex linear-cyclical movement of time from a fall to a new acquisition. The main line of transformation of these traditions in the romantic myth is the individual perspective. It defines the spiritual path of an individual from the old paradise of innocence through self-knowledge and merging with nature to a new, more complete bliss as the essence of the myth. With its help, the different currents of linear and cyclical time in the Christian myth are transformed into a spiral movement of the inner path of man.

Byron in the drama "Manfred" creates a special, tragic version of the romantic myth of paradise. In line with romantic quests, Byron's myth appears as a myth about inner path a person based on self-knowledge. However, the belief in the attainability of a “new” bliss, which determines

the movement in myth among other English romantics is transformed by Byron into a deep doubt about the possibility of finding happiness. In this regard, Byron firmly outlines the path of replacing the individual spiral movement from happiness through self-knowledge to new happiness with a linear downward movement.

The drama "Manfred" is a monodrama depicting the tragic state of the main character - the romantic titanic personality, the magician Manfred. The plot of the drama reveals the tragic position of the hero as a result of self-knowledge, which reveals the disharmony of human nature as an inescapable feature of the personal and general existence of mankind. The beloved of the hero Astarte appears in the drama as his ideal alter ego: their similarity, their family connection, her beauty and gentleness are emphasized**. Union with her enables the hero to expose, to know his "heart". This self-knowledge, in a romantic way, breaks his happiness and transfers his "ideal" from the realm of the real to the realm of the unattainable. “Not with my hand, but heart, which broke her heart; / It gazed on mine and withered,” Manfred answers the question of how Astarte died. After her death, which occurs before the start of the drama, Manfred does not stop looking for Astarte, but now she is an unearthly spirit. The path of self-knowledge of the hero from the bliss of merging with the ideal-Astarte to the discovery of his sinfulness, to the death of his beloved and the realization of the unattainability of the ideal is the path from “illusory” happiness to a fall, to misfortune. It is he who is the semantic core of Byron's myth of Paradise Lost.

Indeed, the basis of the author's myth in the drama is not the triune image of Eden, the paradise of the righteous and the New Jerusalem, as in other romantics, but the image of the lost Eden. Addressing him in the speech of the hero at the very beginning of the first act becomes the first step towards creating a new author's myth:

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest over the fatal truth,

The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.

The biblical image receives a romantic interpretation here. The oppositions “knowledge - life” and “knowledge - happiness” are endowed with special significance. Paradise appears inevitably containing the "grains" of misfortune. Through the images of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, the motifs of sin, fall, exile, sorrow enter the image of paradise. The syntactic structure of the sentence implies a partial coincidence of the universal and individual perspectives. First part complex sentence appears as an expression of universal truth: "Sorrow is knowledge." The second part highlights the "chosen" people, romantically marked by the depth and completeness of knowledge. Their consciousness seems to be the most complete bearer of the truth: “Those who know more than others should grieve more than others ...”, etc. Verbs in the present tense emphasize the transfer of the image of Eden from the mythical theogonic past to the present of individual consciousness.

The image of the lost Eden - the starting point of the plot of the drama - is supported in the drama by the image of a “star” that has lost its path (“The hour arrived - and it became / A wandering mass of shapeless flame.”) and the opposition of beautiful (beautiful, glorious) images of nature disharmonious (half dust, half deity, a degradation, a conflict) image of a person. This series is joined by the apocalyptic image of the "white horse", which is associated in the text with the general tragedy of human existence, the images of "sorrow and suffering" of mankind in history, the image of "sinful souls that can never return." Contrasting motifs of “chaos” and “harmony” grow out of these and other similar images in the drama, corresponding to human and natural existence. At the syntactic level, they are supported by compound sentences -

mi with the unions "but" and "yet", on the morphological - derivational affixes "de-", "-less", "-ful".

Existence in the fall is a way of being a hero in a drama. Realizing his disharmony, he consistently rejects all other possible ways to achieve happiness - knowledge, including mystical ones, power, health, enlightenment mission, communication with nature. "Patriarchal" happy life The hunter, accordingly, is in the drama nothing but the illusion of an unawakened consciousness (the epithets "innocent" and "guiltless" in Manfred's description of him are not accidental). Another form of illusions about the possibility of happiness for a person is the image of the "golden age". Debunking him (and thus the traditional, including romantic, ideas about him), in Manfred's monologues, Byron puts next to the "beautiful giants" and the "fallen" progenitors of mankind, the "great" ancient Rome and the "bloody arena of gladiators". Obviously, this series of “patriarchal” images is correlated with the image of Eden: in their perspective, Eden emerges as a romantic-psychological archetype of the innocent state of humanity. This innocence is associated with Byron not with righteousness, but with ignorance (ignorance is one of Byron's "favorite" words) and stands under the minus sign.

The disharmony of human nature determines the linear flow of individual time in Byron's myth of paradise from a blissful state to a fall, misfortune. However, the cyclical, epic isolation of the patriarchal-illusory paradise falls out of it. common man"(Hunter). This linear movement is superimposed by the cyclical movement of humanity as a whole, associated with the constant repetition of the path from happiness to misfortune.

At the same time, the possibility of finding a true new "bliss" does not completely disappear from Byron's myth of paradise, but remains "on the edge" in it. Such a possibility

ness appears as a consequence of Byron's implicit preservation of the traditional vertical "man - God". God in the drama "Manfred" is an unattainable, unknowable (unmanifested) Creator***. He is not self-manifested, but exists through his “deputies”: spirits and Ahriman. The reality of his existence to the hero, however, is certain: in Act III, Scene 2, Manfred addresses the sun with these words: "Thou Material God!/ And representative of the Unknown.". In Act II, Scene 4, he also says in response to the spirit, referring to Ahriman: "Bid him bow down to that which is above him,/ The overruling Infinite - the Maker." The fact that in this vertical (in "Cain" and "Heaven and Earth" as well as in "Manfred") there is no place for Christ, testifies, in particular, to the isolation of man from God, to His non-manifestation in the world.

Obviously, this vertical in Byron's myth of paradise plays the most important role in revealing a different "point of view". Its semi-manifested existence does not allow to reconsider the completely dominant

human "point of view", however

it allows you to question it. A person may turn out to be wrong - including in his judgment about the inescapable disharmony of his nature, and this gives hope for the "spiral" movement of man and mankind. This is how the end of the drama is read: the dying Manfred "feels" that the demons have no power over him, that he can and must go alone. The obscurity of the direction of this last path, emphasized by the words of the “outside observer”, the Abbot, standing in a “shocking” position at the very end of the drama, is of paramount importance for comprehending the entire work.

Byron's myth of paradise, created in the "metaphysical" drama "Manfred", is thus a special, tragic version of the romantic myth. Like the paradise myth of other English romantics, Byron's myth is a myth about the path of self-knowledge of the individual. Byro-

however, the movement in the myth does not spiral upwards, as in other romantic poets, but linearly rushes down, from happiness to fall. This linear movement is complicated by its cyclic repetition in the history of mankind as a whole. The archetype of this movement and the "core" of Byron's myth is the romantic

ki meaningful image of the biblical Eden. At the same time, the implicit presence of the vertical “man - God”, hinting at the possibility of a different “point of view”, leaves hope for gaining a “new” bliss, “twisting” the spiral and opening the “bad” cyclical nature of human history.

NOTES

* For example, in Prospectus to the uncreated The Recluse, W. Wordsworth interprets the myth of paradise as a symbolic image of an endless “everyday” movement human soul from harmony to its loss and again to finding it on a new turn of the spiral. The images of the biblical paradise (paradise) and ancient Elysium (Elysian groves) stand side by side here as different manifestations of “absolute mythology”.

** Important for understanding the image of Astarte are the mythological roots of her name: in many ancient mythologies, Astarte is the name of the main goddess, the queen of heaven. In ancient times, Astarte was considered the goddess of the moon; however, she was identified not only with Selene, but also with Artemis and Aphrodite.

*** From this point of view, the fact of the poet's direct appeal to Old Testament in the lyrical cycle "Jewish melodies". Consideration must be given to the impact of Enlightenment, deistic, and skeptical ideas, as well as Calvinism, on Byron. The following example is indicative: in 1811, in a correspondence with Francis Hodgson, Byron speaks of the Creator in the words of Voltaire: "The Great First Cause, understood least of all."

**** In this regard, it is important that in the English text the name of the hero - Manfred - with its first three letters (man) coincides with the word "man" and it is these three letters that are indicated in the main text.

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"Manfred"

In 1817, the great English poet left his homeland forever, carrying in his soul the sadness and bitter resentment of the exile. From this turning point in Byron's life, the second period of his work begins, during which works of amazing depth and artistic power were created. Let us consider one of them, the most important for the development of the image of Cain. This is Byron's dramatic poem Manfred.

Before proceeding to the review of "Manfred" it is worth saying a few words about Byron's dramaturgy in general. Byron was fond of the theater from a young age, later, as we see from his biography, he was close to the Drury Lane theater, where he became closely acquainted with theatrical life. This could not but make him want to write something for the stage. However, in fact, all the dramatic works that he created were not intended, in his own opinion, to be staged in the theater. Apparently, this was due both to the peculiarities of his creations, which were largely innovative, and to the situation on the English stage of that time. The secular public, probably, was not yet ready to perceive the deep socio-philosophical meaning of Byron's works, and he feared that the reaction of this kind of public would only cause him "suffering, further intensified by doubts about the competence of the audience and the consciousness of their imprudence in choosing them as their judges" (Preface to "Marino Faliero"). Creating his works, Byron experienced a strong influence of classicism, which is especially pronounced in such dramas as “Marino Faliero”, “Sardanapal” and “Two Foscari”. The poet himself speaks of his adherence to the principle of three unities and other classic principles in the preface to the drama "Marino Faliero". In a curious way, this group of works, written approximately in the same period, coexisted with another, fundamentally different from it - "Manfred", "Cain", the mystery "Heaven and Earth", created in a free romantic form.

So, "Manfred" becomes, in fact, Byron's first serious dramatic experience. This dramatic poem was begun by him in the year of exile, 1817. An important role in its creation was played by the poet's impressions from his travels in Switzerland. Majestic landscapes, snow-capped mountain peaks, beautiful and wildlife The Alps struck Byron's imagination, prompted him to depict these magnificent paintings in poetic form. The whole poem is imbued with the cold beauty of the mountains, brought to us by the genius of the poet.

In the crystal ocean of mountain ice,

We slide without a trace along their fractures,

On blocks piled on top of each other,

Frozen in the middle of a whirlpool ....

(Act II, Scene 3)

At the same time, he was tormented by feelings of bitter disappointment, loneliness, rejection, which he also put into his amazing work. However, there is no doubt that the idea of ​​"Manfred" is due not just to Byron's capricious fantasy, not just to his personal grief, but expresses the essential side of the philosophical thought of the era. The suffering of Manfred, who has imprisoned himself in the impregnable loneliness of his mountain castle and is dying under the burden of repentance and the consciousness of his insurmountable gap with humanity, reflects Byron's own painful reflections, ultimately generated by ... the general crisis of enlightenment thought in Europe.

Manfred is not a very big poem, not so many events take place in it, and, by and large, everything that happens is just an illustration of the philosophical idea underlying the work. Many of Byron's contemporaries believed that Manfred was inspired by Goethe's Faust. Indeed, at first glance, it seems that there are many similarities - the gothic atmosphere, the learning of the main characters and their appeal to otherworldly forces, mystical events, the death of a beloved ...

However, Byron denied the connection of his poem with Faust. If Faust affirms the impossibility of true knowledge, then the hero of Manfred is convinced that knowledge only increases human suffering. This position of his is stated at the very beginning of the poem.

Sorrow is knowledge, and the one who is richer in it,

He had to comprehend in suffering,

That the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life...

(Act I, Scene 1)

These lines are directly related to the issue of "Cain"; reflections on the question of the essence of knowledge and the place of man in the system of the universe in "Cain" will receive special meaning and development.

Another motive, inherited from Byron's previous works and later transferred to "Cain", will be the already known motive of tyranny, the refusal to worship the higher powers. In "Manfred" this protest is most clearly expressed at the end of the poem, when the hero refuses to obey Ahriman, the ruler of evil forces, and to follow the mighty spirit called to lead him to death.

I despise you - with every breath I take

I lose my life, but I despise you!

I will not accept as long as the heart beats ...

(Act II, Scene 4)

Manfred, who has comprehended various sciences, longs for oblivion and freedom from his experience, he dreams of non-existence.

Oblivion - only oblivion.

You promise me a lot - really

Can't give just one?

(Act I, Scene I)

He is burdened by a sense of guilt, since he caused the death of his beloved Astarte, like other heroes of Byron's dramaturgy, he "painfully experiences the very fact of his being."

So, having considered "Manfred", which followed the Oriental Poems, we can follow the changes in the image of the Byronic hero and the changes in the views of the poet himself. The mood of Byron's works since 1817 has become more pessimistic, his hero's faith in humanity is weakening, alienation from society is increasing, and with it his pride is growing, the protest against evil and injustice becomes more violent and desperate. In the image of Manfred, the tragedy of Byron's romantic worldview reaches its highest point. However, along with the type of hero that gradually developed from Child Harold to Manfred and later to Cain, great poet created another unique image, significantly different from all the others and in a curious way contrasting with the image of “Cain”. We are talking about "Don Giovanni", one of the greatest works literature XIX century.

The dramatic poem "Manfred", first published as a separate edition in 1817, is a work that most fully conveys Byron's tragic worldview. Initially, the author intended it only for reading, believing that it was not suitable for staging on stage. You can understand it. Most of actors"Manfreda" - spirits. The work is not rich in events. Byron himself called the poem "unbridled, metaphysical and inexplicable."

History of creation

Byron began writing the poem in 1816 while in Switzerland. Shortly before that, he experienced a divorce from his wife and said goodbye to his native England. Last but not least, Manfred was influenced by Byron's travels in Switzerland - mainly a visit to the Bernese Alps. It is in these mountains that the action of the poem unfolds. Completely completed work on the work of Byron in 1817, while in Italy.

Plot

The poem has a fairly clear plot, in the center of which is the magician Manfred, who lives as a hermit in his own castle in the Bernese Alps. At first, burdened with knowledge, having achieved immortality and yearning for the forever lost beloved Astarte, he seeks oblivion, but does not receive it. Then he tries to commit suicide, also unsuccessfully. His next goal is to meet his dead lover. He asks the fairy of the Alps to resurrect her. She says that she has no power over the dead, after which she invites Manfred to swear obedience to her - then, perhaps, it will be possible to help. The Wizard refuses. Further, Manfred asks for help from the god of evil Ahriman and receives it. The goddess of retribution, Nemesis, returns Astarte from the world of the dead for a short time. The ghost of Manfred's beloved predicts to him quick death. The wizard dies in his own castle, before refusing to repent of the sins of the abbot, who tried to save his soul.

Composition

The poem "Manfred" consists of three acts, each of which is divided into several parts. The most important compositional technique used by Byron is montage. In this case, it is necessary first of all in order to fully reveal the inner world of the protagonist. In Manfred, individual parts become whole, and a new semantic unity arises.

Poetic size

"Manfred" is written mainly in pentameter blank verse. This poetic size characteristic of English classical drama, beginning with Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Byron will subsequently choose him constantly when writing tragedies and "mysteries". Periodically, blank verse is replaced by rhymed fragments with different sizes and types of rhymes. For example, we are talking about a spell that is pronounced at the end of the first act.

Literary direction and genre

Like most of Byron's other writings, "Manfred" belongs to romanticism. The work is imbued with the chanting of freedom and individualism ( main character- a loner who does not want to kneel before anyone), the pathos of the struggle against society (Manfred was disappointed in people and left them). The genre of "Manfred" is a dramatic poem. From the drama here - a clear and complete composition; the repetition of the same images, helping to better reveal the character of the protagonist; reproduction of the conflict revealed through the actions of the characters, and so on. By the way, Byron took the conflict typical of romanticism - between man and the world. The lyrical beginning is manifested in the fragmentation of the plot, the poet's thoughts, which occupy the most important place,

Main topics

The most important theme of the poem is the theme of knowledge as a burden. Manfred managed to penetrate the secrets of the world, to achieve immortality. He is able to summon spirits and control them. Despite this, the acquired knowledge burdens him, even with their help he cannot change the existing world order. In the second act, Manfred meets a hunter - a kind man who knows how to enjoy simple things. In this case, the hunter personifies a certain stage of knowledge. And here a contradiction arises, which Byron cannot resolve within the framework of the work. As soon as the hunter begins to delve into the mysteries of nature, gains more knowledge, he will also begin to be weary of them. Nevertheless, the property of a person is to develop his own mind, without this in any way.

The theme of freedom plays an important role in the work. Throughout the poem, Manfred refuses to obey anyone - the fairy of the Alps, the spirits, the god of evil, and so on. The very thought of becoming someone's slave disgusts him.

The image of a lyrical hero

Manfred, the protagonist of the poem, is a rebel and a loner, a man who, with the help of knowledge, managed to achieve immortality. It just didn't bring him happiness. He ruined the only woman he loved, and is unable to bring her back. Knowledge burdens him. Manfred calls on the "spirits of darkness and light" and asks them to forget. But they cannot help him. Manfred is a typical romantic hero. An exceptional person portrayed in exceptional circumstances. His inner world is woven from contradictions. In the end, he rejects both the judgment of man and the judgment of God, refusing to become a slave and agreeing to submit only to death. Manfred dies, believing that he has ruined himself, therefore he must also punish himself.

Creates a dramatic poem "Manfred".

Byron. Cain. Manfred. radio shows

Her hero, Manfred, is a thinker, like Faust, disillusioned with the sciences. But if Goethe's Faust, discarding dead, scholastic learning, seeks the path to true knowledge and finds the meaning of life in a labor feat for the benefit of people, then the magician and magician Manfred comes to a hopelessly gloomy conclusion:

Knowledge is sorrow, and who knows more than anyone,
The more bitterly I must cry, making sure
That the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.
(Translated by D. Tsertelev)

And he summons the spirits to demand one thing from them - "oblivion!".

Manfred says that "the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life." Knowledge of magic, giving him superhuman power over the elements of nature, at the same time plunged him into cruel despair. Possessed by heavy remorse, he wanders through the heights of the Alps, finding neither oblivion nor peace. Spirits subject to Manfred are powerless to help him in his attempts to escape from himself.

The titanic individualism of the proud "superman" appears in the drama as a sign of the times. The son of his age, Manfred is, like Napoleon, the bearer of the consciousness and feelings of the era. This is indicated by the symbolic song of "fates" - the peculiar spirits of history flying over Manfred's head. The image of the “crowned villain cast into dust” (in other words, Napoleon), which appears in their ominous chant, clearly correlates with Manfred. His story is a romantic version of the European Napoleonic.

No matter how different the forms of activity of the fallen emperor and the powerful wizard, their results are somewhat the same. For the romantic poet, both of them are tools of "fates" and their master - the evil genius Ahriman. Knowledge of the secrets of life, hidden from the eyes of ordinary people, was bought by Manfred at the cost of human sacrifice. One of them was his beloved Astarte (“I shed blood,” says the hero of the drama, “it was not her blood, and yet her blood was shed”).

In this poem by Byron, the image of Astarte (although romantically mysterious and unclear about her history) performs functions somewhat similar to Goethe's Margaret. But if for Goethe, with his optimistic understanding of the progress of history, the unity of its creative and destructive principles (Faust and Mephistopheles) was a necessary prerequisite for the creative renewal of life, for Byron history was only a chain of catastrophes. However, his Manfred, until the last minute, defends his right to think and dare. Proudly rejecting the help of religion, he closes himself in his mountain castle and dies, as he lived, alone. This inflexible stoicism is affirmed by Byron as the only form of life behavior worthy of man.

The image of the hero, as if occupying the entire poetic space of the drama, acquires truly grandiose proportions. His soul is a true microcosm. It contains all the elements of the universe - in himself Manfred wears hell and paradise and he himself creates judgment on himself. The pathos of the poem is in the affirmation of the greatness of the human spirit, rebellious and protesting thoughts. It is she, according to Byron, that constitutes the most valuable conquest of mankind, paid for at the cost of blood and suffering.

Byron's romantic disillusionment stands in stark contrast to Goethe's Enlightenment optimism. But Manfred does not reconcile, he rebels. He proudly defies the god and dies defiant.

Byron's first experience in drama, "Manfred", was created by him in Switzerland in

1816-1817. The theme of the mournful loneliness of a rebellious personality is devoted to the philosophical and symbolic drama Manfred (1817). This is a poem about inner world hero reflecting on his life. The titanic hero is depicted against the backdrop of majestic alpine nature. Spirits are subject to him, and he is capable of fighting the evil spirit Ahriman. But Manfred is tormented by some fatal secret and dreams of peace and complete oblivion. Manfred's dreams do not come true, and, dissatisfied with life and himself, he retires from society to the mountains, where he lives as a hermit. Manfred seeks to comprehend the meaning of life, to understand the fate of mankind, but he treats people with contempt and closes himself in his egoistic "I". Manfred's intellect and will are subordinated to his individualistic passions. The love of this demonic nature is destructive. Manfred is responsible for the death of his loving Astarte. The egocentrism of the hero is the reason for his loneliness. The contradiction between the power of the intellect and the unbearable suffering of a lonely person leads Manfred to despair and death. "Manfred" is known to the Russian reader in the translation of I. Bunin.

In them, Byron creates that romantic personality, which subsequently, mainly in the 19th century, became known as "Byronic" and was fully embodied in the images of Manfred and Cain. The heroes of the poems about which in question, reject a society where tyranny and despotism reigns, proclaim the freedom of the individual, not subject to the conditions that oppress him. And for all the difference in plots, the personality of the romantic hero from poem to poem is developed by Byron, enriched with new character traits, and at the same time, in Pushkin's words, "hopeless egoism" deepens in it. The romantic hero of Byron also has a great attraction due to his nobility, proud and indomitable character, the ability to love passionately and selflessly, to avenge evil, to take the side of the weak and defenseless. Base feelings are alien to this hero: venality, cowardice, deceit and deceit. written in a free romantic form. The poet tells us almost nothing about what brought Manfred to his tragic torment. Manfred's past is shrouded in darkness, and in vain we would have to explain his mental anguish only in the sphere of the hero's personal experience. True, apparently, his personal life was somewhat unsuccessful, but this is not the root of that gloomy hopelessness that seized the soul of the hero. We hear in his mouth a skeptical-tragic assessment of the mind, because the knowledge achieved through it, according to Manfred, only multiplies human sorrows. How more people knows, the more the evil that reigns in life is revealed to him. Manfred's speeches are dressed in a highly poetic form, but this is not only poetry, it is also a philosophical polemic against the enlightenment faith in reason. But here, in the same polemic, Byron's decisive difference from the reactionary romantics is also clearly evident. Let the mind be powerless, let it bring suffering instead of comfort, but the rejection of the mind is tantamount to the rejection of one's humanity. Even if knowledge does not alleviate the sorrows of a person, it is still better to know than to blindly believe. Manfred is advised to seek consolation in religion, which was offered in that era by reactionaries and obscurantists as an all-healing remedy for the "contagion" of rationalism. But Manfred proudly rejects religion, and in this gesture Byron's protest against the religious obscurantism spread by the ruling classes of the then Europe is expressed with all its force. Manfred is tired of life, he is tired of dragging out a miserable existence in a world where everything turns to evil to a person and where he himself involuntarily becomes infected with all sorts of filth. In his usual vague manner, Manfred talks about some of his misdeeds and sins, about guilt for the suffering he caused to the woman he loved. Where the bourgeois scholars of Byron see an occasion for "discoveries" concerning Byron's personal life, we are inclined to see the poetic-symbolic expression of the problem of good and evil in human nature in general. Manfred is depressing precisely by the fact that not only the world around him, but he himself as a person turned out to be far from perfect. Manfred's answer was prompted by his fatigue and despair. He longs for oblivion, and death itself seems to him a boon. But this is by no means Byron's final answer. Manfred's decision is an expression of the temporary mood of the poet himself, which he very soon got rid of.

In an effort to penetrate the secrets of the elements on which life on earth depends, Manfred summons the spirits of the mountains, winds, earth, seas, air, darkness and the spirit of his fate and asks them to give him oblivion from the thoughts that torment him. The poet puts his hero in a dual position; he can command these spirits, that is, the elements, but he also depends on them. In this contradiction, Byron guesses the dialectical unity of Man and Nature.

Manfred in the poem is opposed to simple and kind person- a chamois hunter who considers life and work a blessing. For Byron, a hunter with his ingenuous attitude to life is a certain step in understanding the world: after all, as soon as he, like Manfred, goes deep into the mysteries of nature, how the knowledge gained will bring torment from the consciousness that a person cannot change the world order. However, a person will still develop his mind, this is his essence.

Byron is unable to resolve the contradiction that has arisen by Manfred, it becomes the basis of his "world sorrow".

The central place in the poem is occupied by the scene in the chamber of Ahriman. Ahriman - the personification of Evil in ancient Eastern mythology - is depicted as an idol, before which the executors of his evil will bow. Among them stands out the goddess of retribution Nemesis. Enumerating her deeds, Nemesis speaks of the events that took place in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. This is the restoration of fallen thrones, instilling malice in people, turning "into wise fools, fools into sages // Into oracles, so that people would bow // Before their power" and not talk about freedom - "a fruit forbidden to everyone."

Nemesis intensifies Manfred's disappointment: all the noble efforts of people turn out to be in vain, evil and injustice triumph. Only love can reconcile with life. But mysterious death beloved, for which Manfred blames himself, brought devastation to his soul, brought his despair and pessimism to hopelessness. He asks Ahriman to summon the ghost of Astarte. The appearance of a ghost revives in Manfred the earthly feeling of love, creates the illusion of the joy of life. However, this only lasts for a moment.

Although Manfred is tormented by doubts, does not believe in the future and seeks oblivion, he remains proud and proud until his death. strong man: he does not agree to obey the Spirits of the elements, declaring to them that he called them to himself, which means that they are subject to him, and not he to them; he does not bow before Ahriman; rejects humility before God, calling into question the existence of a higher unearthly force that punishes a person. He claims that man himself is responsible for all his actions. Anticipating the approach of death, Manfred regrets only that he is parting with the sun, with nature. In the rebellion of Manfred, Byron showed the collapse of enlightenment illusions and disbelief in the revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie: his hero "wanted to assimilate the minds of other people and enlighten the peoples," but, "stumbling everywhere into destruction," he ended up extinguishing the spark of Prometheus in himself. Thus, in his work, Byron romantically reflected the moods and feelings of a part of the younger generation of the beginning of the century during the period of the triumph of reaction and the crisis of thought.

"Manfred" caused a wide resonance throughout the world. "Manfred" is written in pentameter blank verse, characteristic of English classical drama. But the monotony of white verse is interrupted by various inclusions: a chorus of spirits, lyrical songs, spells, which are written in other poetic meters.