Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (in particular, Cantos 3 & 4) by Lord Byron - a review and analysis

 

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Childe Harold is the Byronic hero; a lone traveller, self-exiled and world weary, pondering life and nature. Indeed, this long narrative poem, described as a romaunt (archaic; meaning a romantic tale or poem), takes in all of these themes. The protagonist, Childe (an archaic term, meaning a young man who aspired to knightly honours) Harold, is disillusioned with shallow pleasures and seeks distraction and something more profiund in foreign travels. And so, we follow his wanderings as he contemplates life, war, society, nature, and more.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is a society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

There are parts of the poem, and the character of Harold, that are thought to be autobiographical. In early drafts, the character's name was written as Childe Burun, an early form of Byron's family name; it could be said that Childe Harold is Byron himself, only exaggerated. He could definitely have drawn on his own travels to inform the narrative of the poem. 

Whatever the origins, this is the poem that made Byron famous, after the first two cantos were published. It also, as already mentioned, gave the world the Byronic hero; an often dark and brooding character, most likely misunderstood by others, who questions, or maybe even has downright distaste for, social norms. Examples might include Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, right through to Batman and James Bond. Byron himself - a man born with a deformity in his right foot, who starved himself and had a troubled relationship with his weight, not to mention the relationship he had with his parents - felt not a little like an outsider himself. "Mad, bad and dangerous to know", maybe? Maybe not. There are signs of sensitivity there; he cared much for animals, and nursed his beloved dog, Boatswain, when the Newfoundland contracted rabies and, when the poor animal eventually died, he commissioned an impressive monument to his canine friend.

I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me.

- George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

You can purchase a copy of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Byron here.

If you'd prefer, you can purchase a copy of Byron's selected poems here.

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