THE TWO VOICES: THE QUESTION OF CONFLICT IN BYRON'S DON JUAN

Abstract

Any discussion of the voices in Byron's Don Juan must take into account the richness and complexity of the poem as a dramatic work of art. Here, if ever, the academic insistence on focus acquires a special significance. The poem is full of ramifications on love, on politics, on the cultural climate of Byron's age, and on the poet's personal but contradictory thoughts and feelings as he attempts to fathom the meaning of existence. Boiled down to its essentials, Don Juan conveys two messages which Byron knew only two well from his experiences in life. "All is rotten in the state of Denmark" aptly sums up the first. The second is that the world should become - must become - a better place to live in. But between these two extremities lies a yawning gap through which run the swirlin,g eddies of hope and despair, of moral preaching and licenft10usness, of certainty in the powers of Goodness and doubt in that they can ever be effective, of orthodoxy and hatred of the Establishment on which orthodoxy rests. In short, between one message and the other is the