In knowledge of our fathers when the earth Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,īut by superior science– penance– daring,Īnd length of watching– strength of mind– and skill My life is in its last hour,– that I know,Īnd thy surrounding angels my past power His eventual death is a stirring rebuke of spiritual authority: Unable to forget, and unable to commit suicide, Manfred struggles to find peace. They cannot do so, having no power over the past. He uses his supernatural powers to summon seven spirits and commands them to make him forget his unnamed sin. The character of Manfred is a nobleman living in the Alps, tormented by some unknown guilt involving his dead beloved, Astarte. Some critics believe Byron was heavily influenced by Goethe’s Faust, but that is debatable. It has been quite popular with composers, including Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Manfred is a dramatic play, but intended to be read aloud rather than performed. The work is heavy with supernatural elements, perhaps inspired by the nights spent brainstorming ghost stories with Percy and Mary Shelley. Byron himself called it “a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind” of drama. Manfred’s themes of guilt and forbidden passion only encouraged readers and critics to view it as autobiographical. He had exiled himself from England, leaving under the cloud of a scandal that never dissipated – rumors of an affair between himself and his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Manfred is a wonderful work, composed by Byron in 1816-17 as he lived at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland.
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