I want a hero

Don Juan is fiercely entertaining and comical. It is clearly a satirical representation of a classical epic poem, as Byron declares, “I want a hero” and proceeds to deviate from the classical structure by beginning his tale of the hero “from the beginning” (as opposed to Horace’s notion that the epic should begin in medias res). The poem is, as we said in class, an inverted epic. Byron, as the poet, can whimsically craft a hero through his own doing, yet he makes this informal declaration as a witty and satirical parallel to the composition of classical, epic poetry – the statement “I want a hero” undoubtedly implies that Byron does not have a hero. While epic poets such as Virgil and Homer undoubtedly whispered to themselves at one time or another: “I want a hero,” this preliminary statement never appeared in their poems in this direct form. Moreover, Byron himself declared in regard to Don Juan, “I have no plan – I had no plan – but I had or have materials.”

Moreover, the materials that Byron implies that he possesses appear to primarily be himself and his own “seductively attractive life” (Wu). Wu argues, “no one in their right mind would read the poem just for its story, as so much is taken up with digressions and disquisitions by the narrator on all kinds of well-chosen irrelevancies…but that was precisely the point: it is sufficiently relaxed to contain all the waywardness, unpredictability and accumulated detritus of life as lived.” Don Juan, in this sense, is the accumulation of life as Byron lived it. Its comedy, moreover, derives from the audience’s knowledge of Byron’s lifestyle and the parallel critique of it that Byron offers through his narrative voice.

It is this comic commentary, interestingly, that undoubtedly cultivates Don Juan’s audience with Byron himself. As the poem casts a provocative shadow of Byron’s life (the audience is able to see Byron in both of the characters Don Jose and Don Juan), Byron is able to simultaneously distance himself from the poem by arguing that Don Juan is merely his interpretation and subsequent revision of the traditional ‘Don Juan’ figure.

The audience, however, sees Byron as Don Juan with his academic antics, his numerous and capricious love affairs, and ultimately, with his witty humor. Byron clearly solidifies his narrative presence through his comic and sarcastic interjections and continual remarks and criticisms within the parenthesis. Within the parenthesis, Byron criticizes his former wife's clothing, makes witty remarks regarding Sir Samuel Romilly's suicide, comments on extra-marital affairs and cuckholding, satarizes Lady Byron's journal of him, and reduces Don Juan's pedigree to husbandry.

These witty, narrative remarks portray Byron as a poet who forthrightly speaks with a youthful audacity, and simultaneously, increases his seductive appeal. Through this parenthetical device, Byron illustrates the distanced and almost blase lifestyle that he led. Through the poem Don Jusn, Byron appears to be critiquing his own lie through his own means, as he is using youthful and almost careless audacity to critique the dramatic nature behind Don Juan's life, and perhaps, his own.