ng the poem, Prometheus is much more idealised and lacks that carnal aspect that completes the figure of the Byronic hero , who combines the grandness and ambition of his spirit with a sinful and vicious corporeal life.
Nonetheless, since Byron s first successful work, Childe Harold s Pilgrimage, we can observe his melancholic feelings towards the Ancient Greek, from where he is reclaiming the hero he s trying to find. In Childe Harold s Pilgrimage -and throughout his entire career-Byron is looking for a hero.
Prometheus revolutionary spirit matches also with that of Napoleon Bonaparte, and in Byron s Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte (1814), a very symbolic and revealing comparison is made:
Or, like the thief of fire from heaven/Wilt thou withstand the shock?/And share with him- the unforgiven/His vulture and his rock? Raquo;.
Prometheus 'suffering can be likened to Napoleon Bonaparte who has to experience suffering and death first before the society realized his fight for freedom of all people (18, 146).
Also we can find the same pessimistic and apocalyptic view of man s funereal destiny in Byron s poem Darkness (1816).
All earth was but one thought - and that was death/Immediate and inglorious; and the pang/Of famine fed upon all entrails-men/Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh (22,45) .importance of Prometheus myth during the Romantic age can be hardly compared with any other time s. Prometheus gave the romantics an example of courage and rebelliousness against Zeus, who they saw as personification of tyranny. He was the spirit of the French Revolution and of the divinely inspired artist, and Prometheus is one of the best examples of this.
Darkness - Byron wrote this poem in July-August 1816. It is composed in a style of an apocalyptic vision dealing with degeneration of the human race and total destruction of the world. was greatly influenced by 2 events that occurred at that time - a mysterious prognosis made by an Italian astronomer who proclaimed that sun would burn itself that year and darkness would fall on earth, marking the end of the world; and sudden eclipse that really occurred but as a result of a sudden eruption of a volcano in Indonesia. The poet was at that time in state of depression (he left his family and England for the last time) and his cynic attitude towards human civilization and it s future reached the highest peak. All this stuff along with the tendency to implement allusions from Bible made the poem sound especially terrifying (14, 115).
First it is essential to discuss the rhythm of the poem under analysis. Byron employs several poetic techniques to unify Darkness and to create a sense, of time passing away. The poem s blank verse creates the feeling of time beating wildly, and then slowing to a stop when world s destruction is completed. Time, after this smooth, regular beat, soon changes to a faster, different pace. As men run wildly to preserve light and their lives, time runs like a clock gone wild. Byron doesn t use complex stylistic devices to describe the scene. Everything happens unbelievably fast, and as rapidly as Byron envisioned it. But closer to the end pace of the poem slows down giving us a feeling of the calm after the storm.should also pay attention to the fact that there are only 6 sentences throughout the entire poem. Byron allows no time to pause to rest once the narration begins. It creates feeling of despair and hopelessness intensified by the use words relating to destruction, chaos and death.the poem the author uses alliteration to compensate the absence of rhymed lines. This can be seen in the following lines:
fearful hope was all the world contain d; were set on fire - but hour by hour fell and faded - and the crackling trunks d with a crash - and all was black. (14,144)
also gives emphasis to words - beasts are described as tame and tremulous, Death as immediate and inglorious" .
Then it should be also mentioned that there are some sets of images. First, movement downwards, all the time descending, like into the abyss - men burn the palaces and huts down, then birds flutter on the ground, masts are falling, and then the silent depths - everything moves down in the direction of hell.
Then we observe the direction from light to darkness, comparison of men with animals, and the whole desperation and anguish that fill the narration and impress in that way that one can imagine the annihilation of the humanity on his/her own. This calls to mind the words of Jesus in the Gospels, where those who are cast away from God are cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8: 1...
