to men and was condemned by Zeus to be eternally chained to a rock with his liver eaten every day by an eagle. Here we are dealing not exactly with a narrative poem, but with a demonstration of praise to the figure of a heroic character.
The given poem is structured in three stanzas that are irregular to each other, not following the same rhyme pattern and having an extension which varies from one to another. In the first stanza we are introduced to Prometheus as an immortal being who, however, is paradoxically subjected and condemned to suffer, something that is characteristic of human race (The sufferings of mortality). Here, we observe for the first time in the poem with two aspects that are essential for it: the semi-god nature of Prometheus, which fits with the duality of man (Like thee, Man is in part divine,), and the inexorable existence of suffering, consubstantial to man (14, 178).
Next, Byron throws a question, notably tainted with irony (What was thy pity's recompense?), which gets an immediate answer that shows and emphasizes the injustice of his punishment and that occupies the next and last 9 lines of the strophe: His recompense is a strong and extreme imposed suffering (note that the chain, mentioned in line 7 symbolizes very well this imposition), a suffering that is noiselessly and heroically bore by Prometheus (A silent suffering), who is represented as a lonely and remarkably individualized being who, however, must be contented as far as his cry is listened (nor will sigh until its voice is echoless), fact that provides him with a perceptible revolutionary nuance.
In the second stanza, the term power is the essential concept that is treated. While we are reading this part of the poem we are led through a process of inversion of what is power and to whom it really belongs.
At the beginning, Prometheus is represented as the one who is oppressed and defenceless, in the same way Zeus (and, extensively, all form of deity or superior being, ruling class, etc.) incarnates the powerful oppressor (inexorable Heaven, tyranny of Fate, etc.). But at the end, the fact is that the power and inner strength of Prometheus as an individual surpasses and goes beyond any supernatural and apparently superior power of Zeus. And in thy Silence was his Sentence/And in his Soul a vain repentance/and evil dread so ill dissembled/that in his hand the lightings trembled. This passage symbolizes the victory of the individual and his strong spirit over any kind of oppressor trying to reduce and silence him. It shows how the direct comparison between gods and man illustrates the ability of man to overcome power and display bravery despite his shortcomings and the gods 'advantage for being powerful and possessing extraordinary skills (14,157).
Finally, in the third stanza, the paradoxical relation between Prometheus punishment and its cause is ironically remarked again: Thy Godlike crime was to be kind and at the same time his labour and greatness (thine impenetrable Spirit) is thanked and recompensed as it was to the benefit of man, whose inherent pain and fatal destiny is highly stressed in this particular strophe from a very pessimistic point of view: His own funereal destiny/his wretchedness, and his resistance/And his sad unallied existence.
Prometheus serves as a model for man to bear pain and suffering with a firm will, and a deep sense, to overcome the misfortune of mortality with a strong Spirit characteristic of immortality (20, 124). draws an admirable and idealized character, punished due to a generous and benevolent crime, victim of the tyranny of a God and condemned to suffer an eternal torture in complete loneliness. However, as it has been said at the beginning, he was not the only one who made this representation of Prometheus. Defeated but unsubmissive, the Titans (and Prometheus in particular) were popular in the nineteenth century as symbols of revolution or resistance to tyranny.
Now we are going to place the poem in relation with all the poetical production of Byron as a whole, which is the final aim of that paper. The presence of a heroic character in Byron s work seems to be a constant and characterising feature. The sum of the almost autobiographical character in Childe Harold s Pilgrimage, the protagonists of his famous Oriental Tales (The Giaour, The Corsair, etc.) and others like Manfred, Mazeppa, etc., have contributed to configure what we know as the Byronic hero, that has been described as embodying the ultimate in individualism, self-sufficiency, ambition, and aspiration, yet isolated, gloomy, unsatisfied, and dangerous to himself and others.
Still, Prometheus does not seem to perfectly fit this description, because, as we may have perceived when analysi...
