Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

I found Stephen’s admiration for Lord Byron quite intriguing. I wanted to know more about this important British character, and to better understand Joyce’s use of Byron to indicate certain facets of Stephen’s personality. Joyce’s choice of role model for Stephen was certainly not coincidental, but without knowing about Lord Byron, it would be impossible to understand his influence on the young Stephen.

George Gordon Byron, born on the 22^nd of January, 1788, was a hugely important British poet, and a leading figure in Romanticism. He was somewhat wild, and a large contrast to the common conception of the shy and sensitive artist. He fought in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman empire, making him a lasting hero among the Greeks. Finally, he died from a fever contracted while in Greece. He was famously described as being “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know,” by Lady Carloline Lamb. This description is enlightening as to why exactly a young boy might choose a poet as a role model. Lord Byron was much more than a quiet thinker, and this wild artist would serve to be the perfect hero to Stephen, specifically because of his badness.

This alone would allow Lord Byron to be a perfect candidate to serve as Stephen Dedalus’s personal hero. Early on in Chapter two, Stephen discussed his love of the book The Count of Monte Cristo. He spent many long hours acting out the story with his friend Aubrey, and truly incorporated the story into his own life. The adventure and passion of the tale appealed to the young Stephen, and he once again found this sense of adventure in the life of Lord Byron. Byron was a rogue, a renegade and yet he managed to bridge a deep love of words, which Stephen shared, into his exciting life. He managed to be both sensitively brooding, without sacrificing a strikingly masculine personality. This was greatly admirable in the eyes of the budding artist Stephen, as he began to discover his own sensitive side, and still wished to nurture an adventurous excitement.

Additionally however, Lord Byron is famous for his love life. His mother is famous for remarking, “He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion.” He pursued many different women during many different periods, but he attempted to woo each individual with a passionate fervor, again something quite inspirational for the young Stephen. Again, this aligns with his hero Edmond Dantes and his passion for his fiancé Mercedes. Stephen reenacted the fervent declarations of love found in The Count of Monte Cristo, and even went so far as to search for his very own Mercedes. Each girl he came into contact with he viewed as a potential Mercedes, and was then disappointed when his real-life romance fell short of his romantic expectations. Still, Stephen did not abandon his hopes of a ‘desperate’ love like Lord Byron’s, and this is confirmed when Stephen composes his poem “E_C_”.

Although it was apparent from the very opening of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that Stephen identified with literature form his identification with baby tuckoo, Joyce takes this further by incorporating both The Count of Monte Cristo and Lord Byron into Stephen’s development. Lord Byron represents a hero to the growing Stephen, and through imitating him, Stephen was able to find an outlet for his budding sexuality and search for love. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, he received validation for the deep sensitivity he had always been aware of, without succumbing to a weakness that sensitivity usually implies. He was able to, instead, feel mature and enlightened, and through the pursuit of this line of thought, we see the beginning reconciliation between the “artist,” and “the young man.”