Desire and Hubris in Manfred

Human Desire and Hubris in Lord Byron’s Manfred
Lord Byron presents a timeless, epistemological study in the mindset of the Byronic Hero in the creation of his first poetical drama Manfred, alluding to an outside look of the condition of mankind, and the way in which humans might either suffer or flourish in dealing with the conflict of the mind and heart: in accepting authority as the Truth or, the Hero’s inverse belief of, seeing Truth as the authority. Byron’s “Byronic Heroes” all share the same characteristics, the same struggles, usually the same pursuits and desires, and consequentially each shares a similar fate. As well as other figures in Romantic literature that are variations of this character, Manfred meets his end when he realizes that he can not find happiness in the natural world. He rejects humanity and the systems with which humanity is associated, and so he is punished for his human desire of wanting to know of the physical world, as well as his god-like hubris in wanting to know the mysteries of the universe. At the same time, Manfred’s courage is his most admirable quality, and that alone is what makes him a hero. He is a “doomed hero, ‘fatal and fated in [his] sufferings,’ but he is also shown as a kind of superman, choosing his own course in defiance of all supernatural powers…” (Rutherford 81).
Manfred is the quintessential model for the Byronic hero, as he is an outsider; he is passionate but depressed; he is courageous as well as self-righteous, thinking that he is superior to all men, even to the good and evil spirits of the Earth, which he conjures at his command. Throughout the drama, Manfred asserts that he fears nothing and consistently refuses to kneel to supernatural forces, calling them “slaves” and suggesting that he is the more powerful:
“Ye mock me—but the power which
brought ye here Hath made you mine.
Slaves, scoff not at my will!
The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark,
The lightning of my being, is as bright,
Pervading and far darting as your own,
And shall not yield to yours, though coop’d in clay!” (Manfred I 152-56)
It is unexplained how Manfred is able to manipulate supernatural forces, but he proclaims his superiority in his ability to do so although he is only a mere human of “clay.” The spirits in turn consider him an equal as the First Destiny tells Nemesis, “This man is of no common order…his sufferings have been of an immortal nature, like our own; his knowledge, and his powers and will…No other spirit hath a soul like his—or power upon his soul” (Manfred IV 51-55, 71-72).
The strangest and perhaps most important characteristic of the Byronic Hero is his contradictory nature, especially that of Manfred. I have already mentioned his courage, and alongside that, his cowardice of suicide to escape the things that repel him. Although his consideration of suicide is this, at the same time, it is also courageous of him if it is something he must do in order to obtain what he desires, to obtain the unobtainable in the physical world and to know the mysteries of the universe. When Manfred asks the spirits for “self-oblivion,” with which their reply is that they cannot help but “thou may’st die,” he asks bravely: “Will death bestow it upon me?” (Manfred I 147-48). Unfortunately, the spirits leave him unanswered and frustrated. Manfred is apparently freed from any and all desire and fear, as he declares in the beginning, but yet he desires forgetfulness, forgiveness, and death; and later on, he trembles in fear of death, saying “I dread the thing I dare…” (Manfred II 199). Hopeless Manfred has hit a dead end when he comes to a revelation in epistemology that deters him away from everything:
“That knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance” (Manfred IV 61-3)
Manfred despairs and is grief-stricken because “’All that we know is, nothing can be known,’ ‘Knowledge is sorrow;’” (Chew 80) however, he also says “But grief should be the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most…” (Manfred I 8-10). Presumably he is without desire, but when the spirits inquire, he tells them that he desires “Forgetfulness,” which is a feat only spirits can grant him (Manfred I 136).
Lord Byron’s creation of the Byronic Hero and the characteristics associated with it are most evidently autobiographical of Byron himself. It is safe to say that Byron’s characters of this kind are reflective of his own mind and of his own agony during the time of this composition, especially in the relationship between Manfred and his lost love Astarte which coincides with Byron’s relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Andrew Rutherford states in Byron: A Critical Study that “Byron’s feelings are the ultimate source for the poem [Manfred]” (Rutherford 77). Whether or not his incestuous relationship with Augusta was factual, it is not so much relevant, but his emotions during the time of his writing Manfred stemmed from “his relations, real or imagined, with Augusta, and their psychological aftermath…Incestuous guilt, or at least the idea of such guilt, seems to have been the mainspring of his inspiration…” (Rutherford 78). Byron quite possibly must have been very depressed about the accusations imposed on him, and, like Manfred with Astarte, felt loss in his closeness with Augusta, even guilt.
In Manfred, the fact that Byron consciously or unconsciously refers to his relationship with his half-sister (Incest was obviously highly frowned upon, especially in the eyes of his aristocratic society to which he belonged), and in his avoidance in confronting his guilt, might show where Manfred refuses to speak his mind to the spirits, when he says to them “Ye know it, and I cannot utter it.” (Manfred I 138). It is unclear whether Astarte is literally, physically dead, or only lost from his life, or perhaps she is damned either in society (physical world) or to a place such as Hell (supernatural world.) Whatever the case, Manfred blames himself for their dual pain which had resulted from their love, their Byronic passion. Manfred’s desire for “forgetfulness” is, not only about his wanting to learn how to unlearn but, also attributed to his guilt from their sinful love for one another; he suffers from guilt and so automatically, he desires her forgiveness. The spirits are able to construct a phantom of Astarte but are unable to make her speak. Manfred pleads to the ghost of Astarte:
“Forgive me or condemn me.
…………………………….
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made
To torture thus each other, though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath’st me not—that I do bear
This punishment for both—that thou wilt be
One of the blessed—and that I shall die;” (Manfred IV 105, 121-27)
The previous passage from Manfred works on a “metaphysical” pane, as does the majority of the story, as stated by Lord Byron himself (Chapman 205). The metaphysics in the drama revolves around an ambiguous notion, while offering multifaceted comprehensions, of the love and desires of Manfred and Astarte. Samuel Chew says in his The Dramas of Lord Byron that “…Astarte is more than the heroine of a tragic love tale; she is the formal embodiment, the concrete presentation, of the abstract mood” (Chew 67). Is their forbidden love the socially-illicit and religiously immoral love they have for each other, or is it their self-condemning joint love and sinful lust for knowledge, and quest for unknown truths and practice of mysticism? The latter is especially defiant against God and along with the paranormal forces in the poem, among other human systems. As a “seeker after absolute truth, “Manfred of course rejects all of these: “the doctrinaire attitude” and “the acceptance of truth as revealed by authority” (Chew 81). Manfred is never satisfied with the Truth as it is presented to him and feels that Truth is only attainable through opposition and investigation. “Astarte presumably resembled him in all respects, including “the quest for hidden knowledge,” and Manfred “destroyed her, not physically, but by allowing her to contemplate his heart” (Chapman 208). Perhaps Astarte adopted Manfred’s outlook on life—his pessimistic mind and passionate heart—which damned them both into despair and sorrow; that may be why he feels like Astarte’s demise is his fault:
“She was like me in lineaments...
………………………………………
But soften’d all, and temper’d into beauty:
She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To comprehend the universe: nor these
Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine,
Pity, and smiles, and tears—which I had not;
And tenderness—but that I had for her;
Humility—and that I never had.
Her faults were mine—her virtues were her own.
I loved her, and I destroy’d her!” (Manfred II 105, 108-17)
The passage is brimming with his misery describing her faults as his own, in describing her decency, and in his confession. Manfred says to have destroyed her: “Not with my hand, but heart, which broke her heart…” (Manfred II 118). He says that he “saw,” her fate “and could not staunch it,” affirming to the understanding that (because Manfred probably could not foresee physical death), he probably witnessed her emotional and spiritual “death,” alongside his own. (Manfred II 121)
Lord Byron’s Astarte is also, even moreso than his half-sister Augusta Leigh, representative of his love for Mary Chaworth. Mary Chaworth was Byron’s neighbor and said to be the “love of his life” by many. Samuel Chew implies that Mary Chaworth is solely the woman responsible. She is the primary source of Byron’s creation of the character Astarte, as their histories are “identical,” and “that Astarte and the Lady [in Byron’s poem The Dream] and Mary Chaworth are one and the same” (Chew 72). Obviously Byron’s relationship with Chaworth could not have been incestuous, but this does not eliminate the fact that she too is the Astarte in Manfred, as well as Augusta. “We are told that Mary Chaworth looked upon him as a brother—‘but no more,’ and the fact that he betrayed that confiding friendship made Byron in Manfred record this sin as the ‘deadliest’” (Chew 73).
Even though Lord Byron avowed to never have read any versions of the legend of Doctor Faustus before writing Manfred, not Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s Faust nor Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the drama poses so much in common with the Faust legend, they seem to run parallel in many places. “…Manfred, like Faust, exhibits…in the ceaseless quest after knowledge,” especially pertaining to the universe, that of the unknown which does not exist in the physical realm (Chew 79). They both rely heavily on the “power of thought” and “the magic of the mind” in their mystic practices, and use sorcery to conjure spirits and devils (Chew 79). One might agree with Chew when he stresses that “Manfred is more intimately associated with the Faust-legend than by mere borrowings from Goethe;” however, a close reading of Goethe will reveal a great number of minor occurrences in the story and of the writing which suggests otherwise. When one examines the chronology of both Manfred and Faust, the events, the characters, phrases and word choice in certain lines several resemblances appear: The Abbot and the Old Man both try to insist that salvation is still possible; Herman and Wagner as the naïve and boyish dependents, the supernatural phenomena in the scenes of Jungfrau Mountain versus Blocksberg Mountain on Walpurgis-Night; the opening scenes’ depressing monologues of despair and contemplations of suicide from Manfred and Faust before conjuring spirits; Nemesis versus Mephistopheles; Arimanes versus God; the phantom of Astarte versus the apparition of Helen of Troy (both forms of beauty); and their conversations with many spirits. The monologues of Manfred and Faust alone are strikingly similar stylistically, and in content. “Doctor Faust is not as a courageous character in Goethe’s Faust as Manfred, but both are conceited have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, share the same sorrow and struggles, and inevitably meet the same fate:
“What I lack, am I to find it here?
Am I to fathom of a thousand books
That mankind suffered everywhere,
that here and there a lucky on turned up?
Why do you grin at me you hollow skull,
Except to show that, once your brain, perplexed like mine,
Sought the light of day and lusted for truth,
And lost its way in heavy twilight gloom?” (Goethe 53)
Another major comparison to be identified between Faust and Manfred is that they are only interested in loving one woman: Manfred’s Astarte and Faust’s Gretchen. Both of the works focuses around these two woman figures as if the women are present in the protagonists’ minds from beginning to end. “[Manfred] has sought all form of knowledge and had regarded other humans as insignificant, ‘but there was one’” (Chapman 206). Both Astarte and Gretchen are condemned, apparently due to Manfred and Faust, but also neither of their fates is made clear. Manfred and Faust are equally aware of the grief that accompanies knowledge and make similar comments about desire thereafter:
Manfred. “…and with my knowledge grew
The thirst of knowledge…” (Manfred II 94-95)
……………………………………………….
Faust. “I stagger from desire to enjoyment,
And in its throes I starve for more desire.” (Goethe 293)
Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein is also characteristic of this kind of hubris, as he felt he was destined to “pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (Frankenstein 40). Thus, the creation of the monster, his reward for dabbling in the forbidden sciences and mimicking the gods, brought about destruction and tragedy into his life. Victor’s “thirst for knowledge,” about the “hidden laws of nature” altogether he says was the world in which he lived, “a secret which [he] desired to divine” (Frankenstein 27). Victor was not alone, but the monster he created adopted similar sentiments. The monster, although unhuman, a sensitive being who scorned humanity, tortured himself with the same questions all humans have: “Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?” (Frankenstein 134) All supernatural phenomena, especially Shelley’s monster, causes us to reexamine the concepts of creation, life and death, and the imagination. Percy Shelley’s Prometheus in his Prometheus Unbound was hardly a human; he was in fact a Titan, though he sympathized with and had much in common with humanity, sharing our compassion, our torments, and our perseverance. “No change, no pause, no hope! Yet, I endure” (Prometheus 984). So, the Gods make an example out of him: the consequences of those who defy the Gods. However, Prometheus is heroic; he shares the same kind of courage as the Byronic Heroes.
Manfred and Faust encounter and converse with various spirits that act as servants toward them, offering to award them their every wish. Faust is weak-willed, cowardly, and given to material things and earthly desires from Mephistopheles, whereas Manfred craves not this petty humbles and gifts. The spirits in Manfred offer the same items as Mephistopheles does in Faust: “…the power O’er earth—the whole, or portion—or a sign Which shall control the elements, whereof We are the dominators, —each and all, These shall be thine” (Manfred I 140-44). Manfred is aggravated over the fact that cannot efficiently answer his questions, and he shouts at them:
Spirit. “Bethink ere thou dismiss us; ask again;
Kingdom, and sway, and strength, and length of days—
Man. Accursed! What have I to do with days?
They are too long already. —Hence—begone!” (Manfred I 167-70)
The witch, unsurprisingly, presents to Manfred a Faustian bargain: “…if Thou Wilt swear obedience to my will, and do My bidding, it may help thee to thy wishes” (Manfred II 155-57). Samuel Chew writes that “This rejection of the pact with the spirits of evil is Byron’s great alteration of the Faustian-idea” (Chew 80). This is precisely why Manfred is courageous; he is the Byronic Hero and cannot be tempted or detracted from his lonesome quest, so he gallantly rejects these advances. Then again, Manfred does participate in a pact proposed by Arimanes and Nemesis (this is never actually stated nor did Manfred physically sign a paper contract of any kind) when they grant his request to see a phantom of his lost love Astarte. Somehow Manfred is aware of the bargain; perhaps it was already understood between them:
“Nem. Then, for a time, farewell.
Man. We meet then! Where? On the earth?—
Even as thou wilt: and for the grace accorded
I now depart a debtor. Fare ye well!” (Manfred IV 165-68)
Lord Byron’s supernatural characters function on different levels of reality in Manfred, which can be confusing. Another contradiction of Manfred’s character which somewhat poses as a problem to the drama itself is his attitude toward religion and institutions. The reason for his guilt, whatever he may have done, whatever crimes he may have committed, cannot be clearly recognized as it simply does not fit into the scheme of Manfred’s opposition to such structures. Andrew Rutherford writes: ”Cosmic rebellion, whether Promethean or Satanic, can be judged only with reference to the God or Universal Order which is being defied, but this is what we never fully understand in Manfred” (Rutherford 91).
Manfred meets his ends after an enduring struggle with supernatural phenomena, along with conventional authorities in his search to discover the Truth. The Spirit that comes to apprehend him at the end of Manfred’s life calls itself, “The genius of this mortal,” meaning that his knowledge has caused his death. Manfred had been alone his whole life, an outsider, solitary in his thinking, and perpetually proud. His heroic comes from his spirit to never yield or submit to anything larger than himself to which he is opposed:
“Upon my strength—I do defy—deny—
Spurn back and scorn ye! (Manfred III 120-21)
“I am prepared for all things, but deny The power which summons me,” he says to his death and destroyer (Manfred III 82-83). Manfred has to die in order to satisfy his inhibitions, unyielding in his audacious pursuit; he “shuns nothing; he fears nothing; he will dare the “worst to know it...” (Chew 83). He is the Byronic Hero, “a noble and passionate lover blasted by sins, racked by remorse and grief, but defying everyone and everything” (Rutherford 90). If there is any sort of doctrine set by Byron’s Manfred, it is the “affirmation that ‘Man’s Conscience is the Oracle of God’” (Chew 84). One must understand that Manfred’s chief message is “one of encouragement and hope;” and it tells of Manfred’s “triumph of mind over matter, of soul over body...” (Chew 84)


Works Cited


Byron, Lord George Gordon. “Manfred.” English Romantic Poetry and Prose. Ed. Russell Noyes. New York: Oxford UP. 1956. 831-47.
Chapman, John S. Byron and The Honourable Augusta Leigh. New Haven: Yale UP. 1975.
Chew, Samuel C. The Dramas of Lord Byron: A Critical Study. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P. 1970.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. Faust. Trans. Peter Salm. New York: Bantam Dell. 2007.
Rutherford, Andrew. Byron: A Critical Study. Stanford: Stanford UP. 1967.
Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein Or, the Modern Prometheus. New York: Barnes & Noble. 1993.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Prometheus Unbound." English Romantic Poetry and Prose. Ed. Russell Noyes. New York: Oxford UP. 1956. 981-1015.