Byron by Matthew Bevis

Author:Matthew Bevis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2015-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

Oh pardon my digression – or at least

Peruse! ’Tis always with a moral end

That I dissert

(Don Juan, 1819–24)

The moral end of digression is a lesson about our love-affair with endings and with progress narratives, with how we use our life stories to limit what our lives actually are – or might be. Going astray, digressing or being distracted needn’t be seen as failings; they can be ways to foster creativity. As Roland Barthes put it: ‘To be with the one I love and to think of something else – this is how I have my best ideas.’

By staging and then sabotaging the need for a polished story, Byron encourages readers to take pleasure at not being equal to our ‘life plan’ (whatever that is). Being at a loss is seen as a kind of gain. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ interviewers often ask. Byron isn’t sure where he sees himself in the next five lines:

I ne’er decide what I shall say, and this I call

Much too poetical. Men should know why

They write, and for what end; but, note or text,

I never know the word which will come next.

(Don Juan, 1819–24)

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