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On the Dramatic Works of Byron.
December 1861.1
Excerpt from:
Nietzsche's Writings as a Student.
Translation Copyright 2012, The Nietzsche Channel.
The main attraction of Byron's poems consists in the knowledge that in them we are
confronted by the Lord's own world of feeling and thought, not in the calm, golden-clear
composure of Goethean prose, but in the storm-stress of a fiery spirit, of a volcano that
now devastatingly rolls out glowing lava, and now, its peak darkened by wreaths of
smoke, looks down upon the blooming fields that garland its base with gloomy, eerie
silence. The unhappy poesy of world-weariness takes its origin and its most ingenious
development from Byron, and precisely in the process the poet presents himself to us in
every character he draws, without, however, lapsing into the mistake of boundless one-sidedness—for Byron knew how to identify everything lofty and noble, the most tender
and sublime feelings, within the splendid universality of his spirit—precisely therein lies
the magic that makes us feel a keen inclination for him and his poetry. Now if we
confront the poet's own being primarily in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the boundless
genius of Don Juan, especially in the latter work, which is, as Goethe says,2 absorbed
misanthropically in the most bitter cruelty, and philanthropically in the most profound
and sweet affection, we must gratefully enjoy what Byron dares to present to us with
excessive license, even audacity, yet even his other smaller epic works are really
magnificent poetic pearls, radiant with the most wonderfully gleaming colors. Today I
want to draw your attention neither to these poems nor to the Hebrew Melodies, those
infinitely tender, melancholy sounds of the purest poetry, but to his dramatic works,
characterized by the poet's extreme subjectivity, which shall be the theme of my essay. The first of his tragedies is the one started in Switzerland and [....]
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