Wat Evi Aarens over Byron weet
In Disoriëntaties (2021) van Evi Aarens (2000), een sonnettenkrans in het kwadraat, wordt Byron genoemd in het achtste sonnet uit de Zesde cirkel, waarin Kaïn aan het woord is:
8.
Het vuur is lammenadig aan het roken
En ik voel me schrikbarend gebrouilleerd
Mijn denken wordt bevolkt door wilde spoken
Mijn daden door de slang gesanctioneerd
De brontekst doet geen moeite te verklaren
Waarom de Kunstenaar mijn gift passeert
Maar Byron heeft weten te openbaren
Welke vergissing dit verhaal dicteert
Er vloeit bij mij geen bloed, mijn offerande
Bestaat uit een plantaardig arsenaal
Mijn granen, zaden, vruchten zijn een schande
De wensen van de Schrijver zijn carnaal
Ik ben geen man van slachting en terreur
Vertoon van vroomheid stelt steevast
Het gaat hier vrijwel zeker om een verwijzing naar het (toneel)stuk Cain: A Mystery dat in 1821 verscheen. In dat stuk verwerkte Lord Byron ideeën van Georges Cuvier over het ontstaan van de wereld. Ideeën die afwijken van het Bijbelse scheppingsverhaal, vandaar dat Lucifer het in Cain: A Mystery kan hebben over wat zich al voor Adam en Eva heeft afgespeeld.
In het voorwoord noemt Lord Byron Georges Cuvier als bron:
‘Note.—The reader will perceive that the author has partly adopted in this poem the notion of Cuvier that the world had been destroyed several times before the creation of man. This speculation, derived from the strata and the bones of enormous and un- known animals found in them, is not contrary to the Mosaic account, but rather confirms it: as no human bones have yet been discovered in those strata, al- though those of many known animals are found near the remains of the unknown. The assertion of Lucifer, that the pre-adamite world was also peopled by rational beings much more intelligent than man, and proportion ably powerful to the mammoth, &c. &c. is, of course, a poetical fiction to help him to make out his case.’
Ook in brieven aan zijn vriend Thomas Moore en zijn uitgever John Murray valt de naam Cuvier als hij het over de totstandkoming van en intenties met Cain: A Mystery heeft.
Op 2 januari 1821- Cain: A Mystery – is dan nog niet verschenen, schrijft Byron aan Thomas Moore:
‘(…) As to matters here, they are high and mighty —but not for paper. It is much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders, (every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,) there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour through Europe. There is nothing like habit in these things.’
Op 19 september gaat hij in een brief aan Thomas Moore uitvoeriger in op de achtergronden van Cain: A Mystery:
‘It is in the Manfred metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic declamation; — Lucifer being one of the dram, pers., who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and afterwards to “ Hades,” where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its inhabitants.
I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths, and what not ; but not by man till the Mosaic period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found ; — those of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the rational Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical.
The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel’s sacrifice was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the Rhapsody has arrived — it is in three acts, and entitled “ A Mystery ,” according to the former Christian custom, and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader.’
In een brief aan zijn uitgever John Murray legt hij het op 3 november 1821 nog een keer uit:
‘The notion is from Cuvier (that of the old Worlds ), as I have explained in an additional note to the preface. The other passage is also in character: if nonsense — so much the better, because then it can do no harm, and the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As to “ alarms,” etc., do you really think such things ever led any body astray ? Are these people more impious than Milton’s Satan ? or the Prometheus of Aeschylus ? or even than the Sadducees of your envious parson, the Fall of Jerusalem fabricator ? Are not Adam, Eve, Adah, and Abel, as pious as the Catechism ?
Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things can have any serious effect : who was ever altered by a poem ? I beg leave to observe, that there is no creed nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this : but I was obliged to make Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and surely this has always been permitted to poesy. Cain is a proud man : if Lucifer promised him kingdoms, etc., it would elate him : the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the Catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against Life, and the Author of Life, than the mere living.
His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated , his repentance would have been tardier.
The three last MS. lines of Eve’s curse are replaced from memory on the proofs, but incorrectly (for I keep no copies). Either keep these three , or replace them with the other three , whichever are thought least bad by Mr. Gifford. There is no occasion for a revise ; it is only losing time.
Deze laatste brief is ook opgenomen in Brieven en dagboeken van Lord Byron, vertaald en bezorgd door Joop van Helmond.
