Darkness is a poem writt by Lord Byron in July 1816 on the theme of an apocalyptic d of the world which was published as part of the 1816 The Prisoner of Chillon collection.
The year 1816 was known as the Year Without a Summer, because Mount Tambora had erupted in the Dutch East Indies the previous year, casting ough sulphur into the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures and cause abnormal weather across much of north-east America and northern Europe. This pall of darkness inspired Byron to write his poem.
Literary critics were initially contt to classify it as a last man poem, telling the apocalyptic story of the last man on earth. More rect critics have focused on the poem's historical context, as well as the anti-biblical nature of the poem, despite its many referces to the Bible. The poem was writt only months after the d of Byron's marriage to Anne Isabella Milbanke.
Why A Volcanic Eruption Caused A 'year Without A Summer' In 1816
Byron's poem was writt during the Romantic period. During this period, several evts occurred which resembled (to some) the biblical signs of the apocalypse. Many authors at the time saw themselves as prophets with a duty to warn others about their impding doom.
However, at the same time period, many were questioning their faith in a loving God, due to rect fossil discoveries revealing records of the deaths of tire species buried in the earth.
1816, the year in which the poem was writt, was called the year without a summer, as strange weather and an inexplicable darkness caused record-cold temperatures, across Europe, especially in Geva.
The Year Without A Summer — Vee Dg
Byron claimed to have received his inspiration for the poem, saying he wrote it... at Geva, wh there was a celebrated dark day, on which the fowls wt to roost at noon, and the candles were lighted as at midnight.
The darkness was (unknown to those of the time) caused by the volcanic ash spewing from the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia (Vail 184). The search for a cause of the strange changes in the light of day only grew as scitists discovered sunspots on the sun so large that they could be se with the naked eye.
The large spots which may now be se upon the sun's disk have giv rise to ridiculous apprehsions and absurd predictions. These spots are said to be the cause of the remarkable and wet weather we have had this Summer; and the increase of these spots is represted to announce a geral removal of heat from the globe, the extinction of nature, and the d of the world.[6]
Winter Kids Poems
A Bath girl woke her aunt and shouted at her that the world was ding, and the woman promptly plunged into a coma. In Liege, a huge cloud in the shape of a mountain hovered over the town, causing alarm among the old wom who expected the d of the world on the eighteth. In Ght, a regimt of cavalry passing through the town during a thunderstorm blew their trumpets, causing three-fourths of the inhabitants to rush forth and throw themselves on their knees in the streets, thinking they had heard the sevth trumpet.[9]
This prediction, and the strange behavior of nature at this time, stood in direct contrast with many of the feelings of the age. William Wordsworth oft expresses in his writing a belief in the connection of God and nature which for much of the Romantic Era's poetry is typical. His Tintern Abbey, for example, says Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her.
His poetry also carries the idea that nature is a kind thing, living in peaceful co-existce with man. He says in the same poem, referring to nature, that all which we behold / is full of blessings.
The Year Without Summer
In other poems, such as I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, he uses language for flowers and clouds that is commonly used for heavly hosts of angels.
Ev the more frighting Gothic poems of Coleridge, another famous poet of the time, argue for a kind treatmt of nature that is only cruel if treated cruelly, as in The Rime of the Ancit Mariner, unlike Byron's sun, which goes out with no human mistreatmt mtioned at all.
In the past, critics classified Darkness as a Last Man poem, following a geral theme of the d of the world sces from the view of the last man on earth. However, rect scholarship has pointed out the poem's lack of any single Last Man character.
The Year Without Summer Review
At the conclusion of the poem, however, it is only the consciousness of the speaker that remains in a dark and desolate universe. Thus, the narrator could function as a Last Man character.
Byron also uses the hellish biblical language of the apocalypse to carry the real possibility of these evts to his readers. The whole poem can be se as a referce to Matthew 24:29: the sun shall be darked. In line 32 it describes m gnash[ing] their teeth at the sky, a clear biblical parallel of hell.
Two m left alive of an ormous city gather holy things around an altar, for an unholy usage—to burn them for light. Seeing themselves in the light of the fire, they die at the horror of seeing each other unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had writt Fid.
Blast From The Past
In doing this, Byron is merely magnifying the evts already occurring at the time. The riots, the suicides, the fear associated with the strange turn in the weather and the predicted destruction of the sun, had besieged not only people's hope for a long life, but their beliefs about God's creation and about themselves as well. By bringing out this diabolical imagery, Byron is communicating that fear; that Darkness [or nature] had no need / of aid from them—She was the universe.
Byron's pessimistic views continue, as he mixes Biblical language with the appart realities of scice at the time. As Paley points out, it is not so much significant that Byron uses Biblical passages as that he deviates from them to make a point.
For example, the thousand-year peace mtioned in the book of Revelation as coming after all the horror of the apocalypse does not exist in Byron's Darkness. Instead, War, which for a momt was no more, / Did glut himself again.
Poem In The Dark About Sadness Hi Res Stock Photography And Images
In other words, swords are only beat temporarily into plowshares, only to become swords of war once again. Also, the fact that the vipers are stingless
Parallels the Biblical image of the peace to follow destruction: And the sucking child shall play in the whole of the asp.
In the poem, though, the snake is rdered harmless, but the humans take advantage of this and the vipers are slain for food. Paley continues, saying associations of millnial imagery are consisttly invoked to be bitterly frustrated.
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