Byron claimed to be outside of metaphysical thinking, which Chesterton said is hypocritical; Byron could not exist without the philosophical generational zeitgeist of Kant, Swedenborg, Lamark and Rousseau and the energy they created towards looking at first causes/orgins; time induced thinking which created the sociological inspired individual responsibility of man towards society and his self-induced muckiness of Malthusian conjectures and the societal induced causes of injustice of Mill towards the individual, and the conjectural futurism of Marx and Hegel, which inspired Darwin, the big bang theory, Hegel's historical religiosity, religious anthropology (then Joseph Campbell), Hitler's paganism, Zionism, other indigenous rights movements, anthropology in general, and psychology. Man's profound and deep rooted sense of his being in the field of time. Byron's "Cain" seems somewhat inspired by the discovery of fossils and dinosaur evidence by Baron Cuvier. Byron's energetic placement of himself in the tide of history, destiny, and time was a mark of his times and his interpretation may have influenced Wagner and definitely influenced Neitzsche. He was a product of his age and energy. The same energy America was born under, at least in this geist's earliest stage. Byron was a product of the metaphysics of his day and the generation previous, consciously of Rousseau and unconsciously of the others. Byron rode this wild beast of freedom and liberty of his time and verbally puked over the common sense and good decorum of British good nature and decency. He was a poetic rebel. Poetry would never quite recover and have the good name (according to Wilfrid Sheed in his forward "Leave it to Psmith") in the English-speaking world but young poetic followers of Byron would be trampled on by teachers, fellow students, and professors ever after. Even today poets are seen as a sort of pest in the eyes of common English-speakers. Byron was extremely popular on the European continent where poetry still has a good name. No other poet has been more talked about since Byron and Byron's criticism of other poets of his day plus his questioning of the honor of Britain surely played a part in that. Byron's energy and ideas left England shocked and she never quite recovered.
Goethe said no poet of Byron's stature would come again and he was a formative poet, one where the reader is transformed, and that makes him great; but Goethe also pointed at a child, an immature, aspect of Byron as well.
Byron lived a full life, he was a rebel, and a genius. Loving life and living were what he was about and his poetry places himself his actions in some encompassing history of destiny and fate. He had a passion for liberty and humanism yet he maintained an aura of sorrow. His descriptions of himself might well reflect his own on Rousseau (p.127-), except he stood on the opposite side the history of revolution and Napoleon; perhaps he was that of a more matured Rousseau but still immature none-the-less. He often took a stoic sad appreciation of storms, rough waves, avalanches. G K Chesterton pointed to Byron having sad words but his prosody is that of and optimist, he exudes optimism faces his storms with inspiring optimism. Byron was complex and possibly the most influential poet of all time.
His success and the challenges it posed to the social mores and what was considered respectable thinking were difficult for Byron's native land to swallow. According to Wilfred Sheed, in his introduction to "Leave it To Psmith" by Wodehouse, focused academics and Head Masters and such to derisively quell any Byron-like poet upstarts and left the English-speaking world with something shallow, or at the best more subtle. But as France went on to produce Rimbauds and Flauberts the English-speaking world produced entertainment that mocks their sort, and their artsy kind; English entertainment like Gilbert and Sullivan and Wodehouse -- Byron mocked England in his own day the English choose an art that mocked him. Byron did not glorify the great battles of his nation in his day, like Waterloo, but merely equated England as a sort of cog in history; slowing things down but really not affecting anything for the better. Plus he gave more credit to Russia for Napoleon's defeat then the British might want to have admitted.
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Don Juan the wittiest poem in English
