Page 32 - GALIET EMPATHY and Byron´s Hero IV
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his double infinite drop a new mythic logos.61 Our Hero and artist, being and not being, never fully abandons or exchanges sympathy’s girasol or his far-off rose for apathy’s shroud or his sublime Astarte and universal for the gross and particular:
“The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. 3⁄4 Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the Night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learned the language of another world.”
(Manfred, II.4.1-8)
61 Byron through his work rejects Platonism and transcendentalism. Yet here, he portrays a Hero who has known the forms.
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