Page 16 - GALIET EMPATHY and Byron´s Hero IV

Manfred’s despair and grief become universal analogies of sympathy for humanity’s tragic fall. For what does Manfred mourn beyond Astarte? He mourns the ‘fatal truth’ that “The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”20 The Sumero- Akkadian mythic being can possess wisdom equal to that of the gods,21 but he is denied life; the biblical being may have obtained life, but he is denied divine knowledge. As Manfred mourns, humanity too mourns (and vice-versa): for Eve and Adam’s sin and loss is felt in his own heaving breast. Every reader instinctively knows how ambitious self-assertion, the delusion of injured prerogative, the morbid curiosity for something undiscovered and forbidden, the reckless decision against unresisting obedience, the overpowering shame that comes over the sinners as their courage leaves them, are things universally experienced. Manfred discovers, too, in time, after losing Astarte, that none of these avails him, neither knowledge, nor powers, nor passions, yet his lucent honesty gleams. Unlike Adam and Eve’s twists and turns to Yahweh, he confesses openly to the witch of the Alps. He does not hide amidst trees, does not tell her half-truths to disguise his guilt, and does not blame others for his sin. Perplexingly, he does not obstruct, but facilitates all things. He is the antipode, the
20 Manfred. I.I.12. Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973.
21 This appears in the Atrahasis Myth. Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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