Page 31 - GALIET EMPATHY and Byron´s Hero IV

identity, change and continuity; in perennial tension between the real and ideal, he traverses the voluminous, the capacious, the boundless, the obscure abysses of spirit and mind, the dark Elysian mysteries. Byronic Hero 3⁄4 whose katabasis of being elevates him to the higher heavens, those sun-lit forms of beauty: το καλον. At times, gross and self-loathing, he is attracted to the sun like any Icarus or Phaeton; at others, ephemeral, he is elevated to the cosmic continent of aether.
O wistful and wounded spirit 3⁄4 whose riddling motion strongly dwells between the universal and particular, the subjective and objective, the sympathetic and apathetic; neither starred, nor fated to be identical nor mixed with others 3⁄4 alienates and estranges himself. He, the Hero of Byron, of the sorrowful breast, aged by moments and ‘pierced by the depths of life,’ whose sympathy for the fallen human condition transforms him to his other self, to difference and indifference, where things cease to be hideous or beautiful, dreadful or hopeful,60 and moves him, once more, to become his most extreme reversal to spare us from the monotony and ennui of the Same. He, thundering Hero and meta-poet, in his magic, suggestive and wistful romanticism aspires for the ineffable, never once forgetting beauty and idealism, and still learning, in
60 Manfred I.I.184 and I.I.12-16. Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973.
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