MANFRED
MANFRED (eng. Manfred) - the hero of D. G. Byron's dramatic poem "Manfred" (1817). M. is often called a romantic Faust, referring to the confession of I.-V. Goethe, who wrote about Byron shortly after the publication of Manfred: “This peculiar talented poet took my Faust and, in a state of hypochondria, extracted from him a special food. He used the motives of my tragedy, which corresponded to his purposes, transforming each of them unusually; and that is why I cannot marvel enough at his talent.” True, Byron, in response to this, stated that by the time Manfred was written, he was completely unfamiliar with Marlo's Faust, and Goethe knew Faust only by retelling, since he did not know German. Nevertheless, the first scene of "Manfred" mirrors the first scene of "Faust": M.'s castle in the Bernese Alps, Gothic gallery, midnight. M. alone, he is "wounded by the harsh truth that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life."
M. is a titanic spirit who has realized the futility of not only good, evil, knowledge, but also life. In the morning of his young days he dreamed of being an educator of peoples, then he became a stranger to people, despised them and, in order to oppose himself to them, mastered the secret of immortality. But this did not make him happy, for he destroyed the only one he loved, and is unable to resurrect her. He asks the spirits to "forget what is in the heart." But spirits are powerless. Manfred is condemned to loneliness and eternal languor. He is sentenced to life.
M. - the highest embodiment of subjectivism in romantic literature, portrait inner man and, above all, Byron himself. N.Ya. Berkovsky’s remark that “the character appears among the romantics lyric poem as if reading itself. The motif of M.'s woeful love for Astarte reflects an autobiographical conflict: Byron's relationship with Augusta Lee. The ghost of Astarte portends M. a quick death. The abbot tries to save M.'s soul, but he rejects both God's and human judgment. He is prone to self-condemnation and sees his only fault in the fact that he refused to be a slave. The spirits appear behind the soul of M., but he does not recognize their power over himself and dies with the words: “I ruined myself, and I myself want to punish!” V. G. Belinsky also pointed out the proximity of the heroes of Byron and Goethe: “Byron’s “Manfred” and Goethe’s “Faust” are lyrical dramas,<...>poetic apotheoses of the disintegrated nature of the inner man, through reflection striving for the lost fullness of life. Questions of the subjective, contemplative spirit, questions about the mysteries of being and eternity, about the fate of a personal person and his relationship to himself and to the general, constitute the essence of both of these great works.
Composers R. Schumann (1850) and P.I. Tchaikovsky (1898) created their works on the theme of "Manfred".
Lit.: Romm A.S. George Noel Gordon Byron, 1788-1827. L.; M., 1961; Dyakonova N.Ya. Byron in exile. L., 1974; The great romantic Byron and world literature. M., 1991.
E.G. Khaichenko
literary heroes. - Academician. 2009 .
See what "MANFRED" is in other dictionaries:
Manfred: Surname Manfred, Albert Zakharovich (1906 1976) Soviet historian specialist in the history of France. Name Manfred (King of Sicily) Other "Manfred" poem by Lord Byron (1816 1817) "Manfred" symphony by P.I. Tchaikovsky in 1885 based on the poem ... ... Wikipedia
Free man Dictionary of Russian synonyms ... Synonym dictionary
King of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen family, who ruled in 1258 1266. Son of Frederick II and Blanca. J.: 1) Princess Beatrice of Savoy; 2) since 1259, the Greek princess of Maple. Genus. 1233, d. Feb 26 1266 Manfred was considered the natural son of the emperor ... ... All the monarchs of the world
Albert Zakharovich Manfred (August 15 (August 28) 1906, Saint Petersburg December 16, 1976, Moscow), Russian historian, specialist in the history of France, Russian-French relations. Contents 1 Family 2 Education 3 Childhood and youth ... Wikipedia
Albert Zakharovich [born 15(28) 8/1906, St. Petersburg], Soviet historian, professor (1933), doctor historical sciences(1952), honorary doctor of Clermont University of Ferrand in France (1967). After graduating from the graduate school of the Institute of History RANION ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
King of Sicily, b. in 1231, son of Emperor Frederick II and Countess Bianchi von Laptsia. Frederick recognized him as his legitimate son only in his dying moments and left him the principality of Tarentum and government until the arrival of his half ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
Albert Zakharovich (p. 15.VIII (28.VIII.) 1906) owl. historian, prof. (since 1933), Dr. ist. Sciences (since 1952); new and recent history, Ch. arr. history of France. He taught at the higher uch. institutions of Yaroslavl (1930 32), Ivanov (1932 38), Moscow ... Soviet historical encyclopedia
Manfred A. Z.- MANFRED Albert Zakharovich (19061976), historian, prof. (1933). Since 1945 collaborator In ta history, from 1968 In ta world history Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Main tr. about Franz. rev tsii con. 18th century, Napoleonic France, Paris Commune of 1871, Russian. french… … Biographical Dictionary
Manfred Manfred Coronation of Manfred, from the New Chronicle of Giovanni Villani ... Wikipedia
Books
- Manfred von Ardenne. 1907-1997. The path of the scientist-encyclopedist. From the Weimar Republic to a united Germany, V. A. Urvalov. This book is about life and scientific activity German scientist in the field of radio engineering, electronics, nuclear physics and medicine Manfred von Ardenne, member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, awarded ...
Byron's debut as a playwright, the philosophical tragedy "Manfred", perhaps the most profound and significant (along with the mystery "Cain", 1821) of the poet's works in the dialogic genre, is not without reason considered the apotheosis of Byron's pessimism. The writer's painful discord with British society, which ultimately prompted him to voluntary exile, the inevitably deepening crisis in personal relationships, in which he himself was sometimes inclined to see something fatally predetermined - all this left an indelible imprint of "world sorrow" on the dramatic poem ( skeptical of the achievements of the contemporary English theater, Byron repeatedly emphasized that he wrote it for reading), in which the most vigilant of his contemporaries - not excluding the great German himself - saw a romantic analogue of Goethe's Faust.
Never before has the unpredictable author of "Childe Harold," "Gyaur" and "Jewish Melodies" been so darkly majestic, so "cosmic" in his contempt for the philistine lot of the majority, and at the same time so merciless to the few chosen ones, whose indomitable spirit and eternal quest doomed them to lifelong loneliness; never before have his images so much resembled in their alienated scale the sky-high heights and inaccessible ridges of the Bernese Alps, against which Manfred was created and against which his action unfolds. More precisely, the ending of an unusually broadly sketched conflict, because in a dramatic poem, covering, in essence, the last days of the protagonist's existence (chronologically, it "hangs" somewhere between the 15th and 18th centuries), more important than anywhere else in Byron, the role background and subtext. For the author - and, consequently, for his audience - the monumental figure of Manfred, his languor of spirit and inflexible theomachism, his desperate pride and equally incurable heartache were the logical outcome of a whole gallery of the fates of romantic rebels, brought to life by the passionate imagination of the poet.
The poem opens, like Goethe's Faust, by summing up the preliminary - and disappointing - results of a long and stormy life, only not in the face of an impending death, but in the face of a hopelessly dull, not sanctified by a lofty goal and endlessly lonely existence. "Science, philosophy, all the secrets / of the Miraculous and all earthly wisdom - / I have known everything, and my mind has comprehended everything: / What is the use of that?" - thinks the anchorite-sorcerer, who has lost faith in the values of the intellect, frightening servants and commoners with his unsociable way of life. The only thing that the proud feudal lord, tired of searching and being disappointed, and the hermit endowed with mysterious knowledge of the beyond, still longs for is the end, oblivion. Desperate to find it, he summons the spirits of various elements: ether, mountains, seas, earth's depths, winds and storms, darkness and night - and asks to give him oblivion. "Oblivion is unknown to the immortals," one of the spirits replies; they are powerless. Then Manfred asks one of them, incorporeal, to take that visible image, "which is more appropriate for him." And the seventh spirit - the spirit of Fate - appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman. Having recognized the dear features of his forever lost lover, Manfred falls unconscious.
Wandering alone on the mountain cliffs in the vicinity highest mountain The Jungfrau, with which many ominous beliefs are associated, is met by a chamois hunter - he meets at the moment when Manfred, sentenced to eternal life, tries in vain to commit suicide by throwing himself off a cliff. They enter into conversation; the hunter brings him to his hut. But the guest is gloomy and taciturn, and his interlocutor soon realizes that Manfred's illness, his thirst for death, is by no means physical property. He does not deny: "Do you think that our life depends / On time? Rather, on ourselves, / Life for me is an immense desert, / A barren and wild coast, / Where only the waves groan ..."
When he leaves, he takes with him the source of the unquenchable torment that torments him. Only the fairy of the Alps - one of the host of "rulers of the invisible", whose dazzling image he manages to invoke with a spell, standing over a waterfall in an alpine valley, can he believe his sad confession ...
From his youth, alienated from people, he sought solace in nature, "in the struggle against the waves of noisy mountain rivers / Or against the furious surf of the ocean"; Drawn by the spirit of discovery, he penetrated the cherished secrets, "which was known only in antiquity." Armed with esoteric knowledge, he managed to penetrate the secrets of the invisible worlds and gained power over the spirits. But all these spiritual treasures are nothing without the only comrade-in-arms who shared his labors and sleepless vigils - Astarte, a friend, beloved by him and ruined by him. Dreaming at least for a moment to see his beloved again, he asks the fairy of the Alps for help.
"Fairy. I am powerless over the dead, but if / You swear obedience to me ..." But Manfred, who has never bowed his head to anyone, is not capable of this. The fairy disappears. And he, drawn by a daring plan, continues his wanderings through the mountain heights and transcendental chambers, where the rulers of the invisible dwell.
For a short time we lose sight of Manfred, but then we become witnesses of the meeting on the top of the Jungfrau mountain of three parks, preparing to appear before the king of all spirits, Ahriman. The three ancient deities who govern the lives of mortals, in Byron's pen, are strikingly reminiscent of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; and in the fact that they tell each other about their own craft, one hears not too typical for philosophical works Byron notes of caustic satire. So, one of them "...married fools, / Restored the fallen thrones / And strengthened those close to the fall<...> / <...>turned / Into wise madmen, stupid ones into wise men, / Into oracles, so that people would bow / Before their power and so that none of the mortals / Do not dare to decide the fate of their masters / And talk arrogantly about freedom ... "Together with the appeared Nemesis, the goddess retribution, they go to the chamber of Ahriman, where the supreme ruler of the spirits sits on a throne - a fireball.
Praises to the lord of the invisible are interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Manfred. Spirits urge him to prostrate in the dust before the supreme ruler, but in vain: Manfred is rebellious.
Dissonance in general indignation is introduced by the first of the parks, declaring that this impudent mortal is not like any of his despicable tribe: "His suffering / Immortal, like ours; knowledge, will / And his power, since it is compatible / All this with the mortal dust, such, / That the dust marvels at him; he aspired / With his soul away from the world and comprehended / That which only we, the immortals, comprehended: / That there is no happiness in knowledge, that science - / The exchange of some ignorance for others. Manfred asks Nemesis to summon from oblivion "unburied in the earth - Astarte".
The ghost appears, but even the all-powerful Ahriman cannot make the vision speak. And only in response to the passionate, half-mad monologue-call of Manfred responds, pronouncing his name. And then he adds: "Tomorrow you will leave the earth." And dissolves in ether.
At the hour before sunset, the abbot of St. Maurice appears in the ancient castle, where the unsociable warlock count lives. Dismayed by the rumors creeping around about the strange and wicked occupations that the owner of the castle indulges in, he considers it his duty to call on him "to be cleansed from filth by repentance / And reconcile with the church and heaven." "It's too late," he hears the laconic reply. He, Manfred, has no place in a church parish, as well as among any crowd: "I could not curb myself; whoever wants / to command, he must be a slave; / whoever wants the nonentity to recognize / him as their ruler, he must / be able to before humble yourself with insignificance, / Penetrate everywhere and keep pace / And be a walking lie. I didn’t want to interfere with the herd / I didn’t want to interfere, at least I could / Be the leader. The lion is lonely - I am too. Breaking off the conversation, he hurries to retire in order to once again enjoy the majestic spectacle of the sunset - the last in his life.
Meanwhile, the servants, timid in front of a strange gentleman, recall other days: when Astarte was next to the fearless seeker of truths - "the only creature in the world, / Which he loved, which, of course, / was not explained by kinship ..." Their conversation is interrupted by the abbot , demanding that he be urgently escorted to Manfred.
Meanwhile, Manfred, alone, calmly awaits the fateful moment. The abbot who burst into the room feels the presence of a powerful evil spirit. He tries to conjure the spirits, but in vain. "Spirit.<...>The time has come, mortal, / Humble yourself. Manfred. I knew and I know what happened. / But not to you, slave, I will give my soul. / Get away from me! I will die as I lived - alone. " The proud spirit of Manfred, who does not bow before the power of any authority, remains unbroken. And if the ending of Byron's play really resembles the ending of Goethe's Faust, then one cannot help but notice the essential difference between the two great works: for Faust's soul is fought by angels and Mephistopheles, while Manfred himself defends the soul of Byron's theomachist from a host of invisible ones ("The immortal spirit creates judgment for itself / For good and evil thoughts").
"Old man! Believe me, death is not at all terrible!" he says goodbye to the abbot.
"Manfred", perhaps the most profound and significant (along with the mystery "Cain", 1821) of the poet's works in the dialogic genre, is not without reason considered the apotheosis of Byron's pessimism. The writer's painful discord with British society, which ultimately prompted him to voluntary exile, the inevitably deepening crisis in personal relationships, in which he himself was sometimes inclined to see something fatally predetermined - all this left an indelible imprint of "world sorrow" on the dramatic poem ( skeptical about the achievements of the contemporary English theater, he repeatedly emphasized that he wrote it for reading), in which the most vigilant of his contemporaries - not excluding the great German himself - saw a romantic analogue of Goethe's Faust.
Never before has the unpredictable "Childe", "Gyaura" and "Jewish Melodies" been so gloomy majestic, so "cosmic" in its contempt for the philistine lot of the majority, and at the same time so merciless to the few chosen ones, whose indomitable spirit and eternal searching doomed them to lifelong loneliness; Never before have his images been so reminiscent in their alienated scale of the sky-high heights and inaccessible ridges of the Bernese Alps, against which Manfred was created and against which his action unfolds. More precisely, the finale of an unusually broadly outlined conflict, because in a dramatic poem, covering, in essence, the last days of the existence of the main thing (chronologically, it “hangs” somewhere between the 15th and 18th centuries), more important than anywhere else in Byron is the role of prehistory and subtext. For the author - and, consequently, for his audience - the monumental figure of Manfred, his languishing spirit and inflexible theomachism, his desperate pride and equally incurable mental pain were the logical outcome of a whole gallery of the fates of romantic rebels, brought to life by the poet's ardent fantasy.
The poem opens, like Goethe's Faust, by summing up the preliminary - and disappointing - results of a long and stormy life, only not in the face of an impending death, but in the face of a hopelessly dull, not sanctified by a lofty goal and endlessly lonely existence. “Sciences, philosophy, all the secrets / of the Miraculous and all earthly wisdom - / I have known everything, and my mind has comprehended everything: / What is the use of that?” - thinks the anchorite-sorcerer, who has lost faith in the values of the intellect, frightening servants and commoners with his unsociable way of life. The only thing that the proud feudal lord, tired of searching and being disappointed, and the hermit endowed with mysterious knowledge of the beyond, still longs for is the end, oblivion. Desperate to find it, he summons the spirits of various elements: ether, mountains, seas, earth's depths, winds and storms, darkness and night - and asks to give him oblivion. “Oblivion is unknown to the immortals,” one of the spirits answers; they are powerless. Then Manfred asks one of them, incorporeal, to accept that visible one, "which one is more appropriate for him." And the seventh spirit - the spirit of Fate - appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman. Having recognized the dear features of his forever lost lover, Manfred falls unconscious.
Lonely wandering through the mountain cliffs in the vicinity of the highest Jungfrau mountain, with which many sinister beliefs are associated, he is met by a chamois hunter - he meets at the moment when Manfred, sentenced to eternal vegetation, tries in vain to commit suicide by throwing himself off a cliff. They enter into conversation; the hunter brings him to his hut. But the guest is gloomy and taciturn, and his interlocutor soon realizes that Manfred's illness, his thirst for death, is by no means a physical property. He does not deny: “Do you think that ours depends / On time? Rather, from ourselves, / Life for me is an immense desert, / A barren and wild coastline, / Where only the waves groan ... "
LEAVING, he takes with him the source of unquenchable torment that torments him. Only the fairy of the Alps - one of the host of "rulers of the invisible", whose dazzling image he manages to invoke with a spell, standing over a waterfall in an alpine valley, can he believe his sad confession ...
From his youth, alienated from people, he sought solace in nature, “in the struggle against the waves of noisy mountain rivers / with the furious surf of the ocean”; Drawn by the spirit of discovery, he penetrated the cherished mysteries "that were known only in antiquity." Armed with esoteric knowledge, he managed to penetrate the secrets of the invisible worlds and gained power over the spirits. But all these spiritual treasures are nothing without the only comrade-in-arms who shared his labors and sleepless vigils - Astarte, a friend, beloved by him and ruined by him. Dreaming at least for a moment to see his beloved again, he asks the fairy of the Alps for help.
"Fairy. I am powerless over the dead, but if / You swear obedience to me ... ”But Manfred, who has never bowed his head to anyone, is not capable of this. The fairy disappears. And he, drawn by a daring plan, continues his wanderings through the mountain heights and transcendental chambers, where the rulers of the invisible dwell.
For a short time we lose sight of Manfred, but then we become witnesses of the meeting on the top of the Jungfrau mountain of three parks, preparing to appear before the king of all spirits, Ahriman. The three ancient deities who govern the lives of mortals, in Byron's pen, are strikingly reminiscent of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; and in the fact that they tell each other about their own craft, notes of sarcastic satire, not too typical for Byron's philosophical works, are heard. So, one of them “...married fools, / Restored the fallen thrones / And strengthened those close to the fall<…> / <…>turned / Into wise madmen, stupid ones into wise men, / Into oracles, so that people bow down / Before their power and so that none of the mortals / Do not dare to decide the fate of their masters / And talk arrogantly about freedom ... ”Together with the appeared Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, they go to the hall of Ahriman, where the supreme ruler of the spirits sits on a throne - a fireball.
Praises to the lord of the invisible are interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Manfred. Spirits urge him to prostrate in the dust before the supreme ruler, but in vain: Manfred is rebellious.
Dissonance in the general indignation is introduced by the first of the parks, declaring that this impudent mortal is not like any of his despicable tribe: “His suffering / Immortal, like ours; knowledge, will / And his power, insofar as it is compatible / All this with mortal dust, such / That the dust marvels at him; he aspired / With his soul away from the world and comprehended / What only we, the immortals, comprehended: / What is not in knowledge, what is science - / Exchange of some ignorance for others. Manfred asks Nemesis to summon from oblivion "unburied in the earth - Astarte."
The ghost appears, but even the all-powerful Ahriman cannot make the vision speak. And only in response to the passionate, half-mad monologue-call of Manfred responds, pronouncing his name. And then he adds: "Tomorrow you will leave the earth." And dissolves in ether.
At the hour before sunset, the abbot of St. Maurice appears in the ancient castle, where the unsociable warlock count lives. Dismayed by the rumors creeping around about the strange and wicked pursuits that the owner of the castle indulges in, he considers it his duty to call on him to "cleanse himself from filth by repentance / And reconcile with church and heaven." "It's too late," he hears the laconic reply. He, Manfred, has no place in a church parish, as well as among any crowd: “I could not curb myself; whoever wants / to command must be a slave; / Whoever wants nothingness to recognize / Him as their ruler, he must / Be able to humble himself before nothingness, / Penetrate everywhere and keep pace / And be a walking lie. I didn’t want to interfere with the herd, at least I could / Be the leader. The lion is lonely - so am I." Breaking off the conversation, he hurries to retire in order to once again enjoy the majestic spectacle of the sunset - the last in his life.
Meanwhile, the servants, shy before the strange gentleman, recall other days: when Astarte was next to the fearless seeker of truths - “the only creature in the world, / Which he loved, which, of course, / was not explained by Kinship ...” Their conversation is interrupted by the abbot, demanding to be escorted to Manfred immediately.
Meanwhile, Manfred, alone, calmly awaits the fateful moment. The abbot who burst into the room feels the presence of a powerful evil spirit. He tries to conjure the spirits, but in vain. "D at x.<…>The time has come, mortal, / Humble yourself. Manfred. I knew and I know what happened. / But not to you, slave, I will give my soul. / Get away from me! I will die as I lived - alone. The proud spirit of Manfred, who does not bow before the power of any authority, remains unbroken. And if the ending of Byron's play really resembles the ending of Goethe's Faust, then one cannot help but notice a significant difference between the two great works: angels are fighting for Faust's soul and Manfred himself defends the soul of Byron's god-fighter from a host of invisible ones ("The immortal spirit is the very court creates for himself / For good and evil thoughts”).
"Old man! Believe me, death is not terrible at all! he says goodbye to the abbot.
The philosophical tragedy Manfred, which became Byron's debut as a playwright, is perhaps the most profound and significant (along with the mystery Cain, 1821) of the poet's works in the dialogic genre, and not without reason is considered the apotheosis of Byron's pessimism. The writer's painful discord with British society, which ultimately prompted him to voluntary exile, the inevitably deepening crisis in personal relationships, in which he himself was sometimes inclined to see something fatally predetermined - all this left an indelible imprint of "world sorrow" on the dramatic poem ( skeptical of the achievements of the contemporary English theater, Byron repeatedly emphasized that he wrote it for reading), in which the most vigilant of his contemporaries - not excluding the great German himself - saw a romantic analogue of Goethe's Faust.
Never before has the unpredictable author of Childe Harold, Gyaur, and Jewish Melodies been so darkly majestic, so "cosmic" in his contempt for the philistine lot of the majority, and at the same time so merciless to the few chosen ones, whose indomitable spirit and eternal quest doomed them to lifelong loneliness; Never before have his images been so reminiscent in their alienated scale of the sky-high heights and inaccessible ridges of the Bernese Alps, against which Manfred was created and against which his action unfolds. More precisely, the ending of an unusually broadly sketched conflict, because in a dramatic poem, covering, in essence, the last days of the protagonist's existence (chronologically, it "hangs" somewhere between the 15th and 18th centuries), more important than anywhere else in Byron, the role background and subtext. For the author - and, consequently, for his audience - the monumental figure of Manfred, his languishing spirit and inflexible theomachism, his desperate pride and equally incurable mental pain were the logical outcome of a whole gallery of the fates of romantic rebels, brought to life by the poet's ardent fantasy.
The poem opens, like Goethe's Faust, by summing up the preliminary - and disappointing - results of a long and stormy life, only not in the face of an impending death, but in the face of a hopelessly dull, not sanctified by a lofty goal and endlessly lonely existence. “Sciences, philosophy, all the mysteries / of the Miraculous and all earthly wisdom - / I have known everything, and my mind has comprehended everything: / What is the use of that?” - thinks the anchorite warlock, who has lost faith in the values of the intellect, frightening servants and commoners with his unsociable way of life. The only thing that the proud feudal lord, tired of searching and disappointed, and endowed with mysterious knowledge of the beyond, still longs for is the end, oblivion. Desperate to find it, he summons the spirits of various elements: ether, mountains, seas, earth's depths, winds and storms, darkness and night - and asks to give him oblivion. “Oblivion is unknown to the immortals,” one of the spirits answers; they are powerless. Then Manfred asks one of them, incorporeal, to take that visible image, "which is more appropriate for him." And the seventh spirit - the spirit of Fate - appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman. Having recognized the dear features of his forever lost lover, Manfred falls unconscious.
Lonely wandering through the mountain cliffs in the vicinity of the highest Jungfrau mountain, with which many sinister beliefs are associated, he is met by a chamois hunter - he meets at the moment when Manfred, sentenced to eternal vegetation, tries in vain to commit suicide by throwing himself off a cliff. They enter into conversation; the hunter brings him to his hut. But the guest is gloomy and taciturn, and his interlocutor soon realizes that Manfred's illness, his thirst for death, is by no means a physical property. He does not deny: “Do you think that our life depends / On time? Rather, from ourselves, / Life for me is an immense desert, / A barren and wild coastline, / Where only the waves groan ... "
LEAVING, he takes with him the source of unquenchable torment that torments him. Only the fairy of the Alps - one of the host of "rulers of the invisible", whose dazzling image he manages to invoke with a spell, standing over a waterfall in an alpine valley, can he believe his sad confession ...
From his youth, alienated from people, he sought solace in nature, "in the struggle against the waves of noisy mountain rivers / Ile with the furious surf of the ocean"; Drawn by the spirit of discovery, he penetrated the cherished mysteries "that were known only in antiquity." Armed with esoteric knowledge, he managed to penetrate the secrets of the invisible worlds and gained power over the spirits. But all these spiritual treasures are nothing without the only comrade-in-arms who shared his labors and sleepless vigils - Astarte, a friend loved by him and destroyed by him. Dreaming at least for a moment to see his beloved again, he asks the fairy of the Alps for help.
"Fairy. I am powerless over the dead, but if / You swear obedience to me ... ”But Manfred, who has never bowed his head to anyone, is not capable of this. The fairy disappears. And he, drawn by a daring plan, continues his wanderings through the mountain heights and transcendental chambers, where the rulers of the invisible dwell.
For a short time we lose sight of Manfred, but then we become witnesses of the meeting on the top of the Jungfrau mountain of three parks, preparing to appear before the king of all spirits, Ahriman. The three ancient deities who govern the lives of mortals, in Byron's pen, are strikingly reminiscent of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; and in the fact that they tell each other about their own craft, notes of sarcastic satire, not too typical for Byron's philosophical works, are heard. So, one of them “...married fools, / Restored the fallen thrones / And strengthened those close to the fall<...> / <...>turned / Into wise madmen, stupid ones into wise men, / Into oracles, so that people would bow / Before their power and so that none of the mortals / Do not dare to decide the fate of their masters / And talk arrogantly about freedom ... ”Together with the appearance of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, they head to the hall of Ahriman, where the supreme ruler of the spirits sits on a throne - a fireball.
Praises to the lord of the invisible are interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Manfred. Spirits urge him to prostrate in the dust before the supreme ruler, but in vain: Manfred is rebellious.
Dissonance in the general indignation is introduced by the first of the parks, declaring that this impudent mortal is not like any of his despicable tribe: “His suffering / Immortal, like ours; knowledge, will / And his power, insofar as it is compatible / All this with mortal dust, such / That the dust marvels at him; he aspired / With his soul away from the world and comprehended / That which only we, the immortals, comprehended: / That there is no happiness in knowledge, that science is / The exchange of some ignorance for others. Manfred asks Nemesis to call from non-existence "unburied in the earth - Astarte."
The ghost appears, but even the all-powerful Ahriman cannot make the vision speak. And only in response to the passionate, half-mad monologue-call of Manfred responds, pronouncing his name. And then he adds: "Tomorrow you will leave the earth." And dissolves in ether.
At the hour before sunset, the abbot of St. Maurice appears in the ancient castle, where the unsociable warlock count lives. Dismayed by the rumors creeping around about the strange and wicked pursuits that the owner of the castle indulges in, he considers it his duty to call on him to "cleanse himself from filth by repentance / And reconcile with church and heaven." "Too late," he hears the laconic reply. He, Manfred, has no place in a church parish, as well as among any crowd: “I could not curb myself; whoever wants / to command must be a slave; / Whoever wants nothingness to recognize / Him as their ruler, he must / Be able to humble himself before nothingness, / Penetrate everywhere and keep pace / And be a walking lie. I didn’t want to interfere with the herd, at least I could / Be the leader. The lion is lonely - so am I." Breaking off the conversation, he hurries to retire to once again enjoy the majestic spectacle of the sunset - the last in his life.
In the meantime, the servants, shy before the strange gentleman, recall other days: when Astarte was next to the fearless seeker of truths - “the only creature in the world, / Which he loved, which, of course / was not explained by Kinship ...” Their conversation is interrupted by the abbot, demanding to be escorted to Manfred immediately.
Meanwhile, Manfred, alone, calmly awaits the fateful moment. The abbot who burst into the room feels the presence of a powerful evil spirit. He tries to conjure the spirits, but in vain. "D at x.<...>The time has come, mortal, / Humble yourself. Manfred. I knew and I know what happened. / But not to you, slave, I will give my soul. / Get away from me! I will die as I lived, alone. The proud spirit of Manfred, who does not bow before the power of any authority, remains unbroken. And if the ending of Byron’s play really resembles the ending of Goethe’s Faust, then one cannot help but notice a significant difference between the two great works: angels and Mephistopheles are fighting for Faust’s soul, while Manfred himself defends the soul of Byron’s god-fighter from a host of invisible ones (“The Immortal Spirit Himself He creates judgment for himself / For good and evil thoughts”).
"Old man! Believe me, death is not terrible at all! he says goodbye to the abbot.
The philosophical tragedy Manfred, which became Byron's debut as a playwright, is perhaps the most profound and significant (along with the mystery Cain, 1821) of the poet's works in the dialogic genre, and not without reason is considered the apotheosis of Byron's pessimism. The writer's painful discord with British society, which ultimately prompted him to voluntary exile, the inevitably deepening crisis in personal relationships, in which he himself was sometimes inclined to see something fatally predetermined - all this left an indelible imprint of "world sorrow" on the dramatic poem ( skeptical of the achievements of the contemporary English theater, Byron emphasized more than once that he wrote it for reading), in which the most vigilant of his contemporaries - not excluding the greatest German - saw a romantic analogue of Goethe's Faust.
Never before has the unpredictable author of Childe Harold, Gyaur, and Jewish Melodies been so darkly majestic, so "cosmic" in his contempt for the philistine lot of the majority, and at the same time so merciless to the few chosen ones, whose indomitable spirit and eternal searching doomed them to lifelong loneliness; never before have his images been so reminiscent in their alienated scale of the sky-high heights and inaccessible ridges of the Bernese Alps, against which Manfred was created and against which his action unfolds. More precisely, the finale of an unusually broadly outlined conflict, because in a dramatic poem, covering, in essence, the last days of the protagonist's existence (chronologically, it "hangs" somewhere between the 15th and 18th centuries), more important than anywhere else in Byron's role background and subtext. For the author - and, consequently, for his audience - the monumental figure of Manfred, his languishing spirit and inflexible theomachism, his desperate pride and equally incurable mental pain were the logical outcome of a whole gallery of the fates of romantic rebels, brought to life by the poet's ardent fantasy.
The poem opens, like Goethe's Faust, by summing up the preliminary - and disappointing - results of a long and stormy life, only not in the face of an impending death, but in the face of a hopelessly dull, not sanctified by a lofty goal and endlessly lonely existence.
Science, philosophy, all mysteries
Miraculous and all earthly wisdom -
I have known everything, and my mind has comprehended everything:
What's the use in that?
This is how an anchorite-sorcerer, who has lost faith in the values of the intellect, thinks, frightening servants and commoners with his unsociable way of life. The only thing that the proud feudal lord, tired of searching and being disappointed, and endowed with mysterious knowledge of the transcendent hermit, still longs for is the end, oblivion. Desperate to find it, he summons the spirits of various elements: ether, mountains, seas, earth's depths, winds and storms, darkness and night - and asks to give him oblivion. “Oblivion is unknown to the immortals,” one of the spirits replies; they are powerless. Then Manfred asks one of them, incorporeal, to take that visible image, "which is more appropriate for him." And the seventh spirit - the spirit of Fate - appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman. Having recognized the dear features of his forever lost lover, Manfred falls unconscious.
Lonely wandering along the mountain cliffs in the vicinity of the highest Jungfrau mountain, with which many sinister beliefs are associated, he is met by a chamois hunter - he meets at the moment when Manfred, sentenced to eternal vegetation, tries in vain to commit suicide by throwing himself off a cliff. They enter into conversation; the hunter brings him to his hut. But the guest is gloomy and taciturn, and his interlocutor soon realizes that Manfred's illness, his thirst for death, is by no means a physical property. He does not deny: “Do you think that our life depends / On time? Rather - from ourselves, / Life for me is an immense desert, / A barren and wild coast, / Where only the waves groan ... "
When he leaves, he takes with him the source of the unquenchable torment that torments him. Only the fairy of the Alps - one of the host of "rulers of the invisible", whose dazzling image he manages to invoke with a spell, standing over a waterfall in an alpine valley, can he entrust his sad confession ...
From his youth, alienated from people, he sought solace in nature, "in the struggle against the waves of noisy mountain rivers / Ile with the furious surf of the ocean"; Drawn by the spirit of discovery, he penetrated the cherished mysteries "that were known only in antiquity." Armed with esoteric knowledge, he managed to penetrate the secrets of the invisible worlds and gained power over the spirits. But all these spiritual treasures are nothing without the only comrade-in-arms who shared his labors and sleepless vigils - Astarte, a friend, beloved by him and ruined by him. Dreaming at least for a moment to see his beloved again, he asks the fairy of the Alps for help.
"Fairy. I am powerless over the dead, but if / You swear obedience to me ... ”But Manfred, who has never bowed his head to anyone, is not capable of this. The fairy disappears. And he, drawn by a daring plan, continues his wanderings through the mountain heights and transcendental chambers, where the rulers of the invisible dwell.
For a short time we lose sight of Manfred, but then we become witnesses of the meeting on the top of the Jungfrau mountain of three parks, preparing to appear before the king of all spirits, Ahriman. The three ancient deities who govern the lives of mortals, under Byron's pen, are strikingly reminiscent of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; and in the fact that they tell each other about their own craft, notes of sarcastic satire, not too typical for Byron's philosophical works, are heard. So, one of them “...married fools, / Restored the fallen thrones / And strengthened those close to the fall / turned / Into wise madmen, fools into sages, / Into oracles, so that people bow / Before their power and so that none of the mortals / I didn’t dare to decide the fate of my masters / And talk arrogantly about freedom ... ”Together with Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, who appeared, they go to the chamber of Ahriman, where the supreme ruler of the spirits sits on a throne - a fireball.
Praises to the lord of the invisible are interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Manfred. Spirits urge him to prostrate in the dust before the supreme ruler, but in vain: Manfred is rebellious.
Dissonance in the general indignation is introduced by the first of the parks, declaring that this impudent mortal is not like any of his despicable tribe: “His suffering / Immortal, like ours; knowledge, will / And his power, insofar as it is compatible / All this with mortal dust, such / That the dust marvels at him; he aspired / With his soul away from the world and comprehended / That which only we, the immortals, comprehended: / That there is no happiness in knowledge, that science - / The exchange of some ignorance for others. Manfred asks Nemesis to summon from oblivion "unburied in the earth - Astarte."
The ghost appears, but even the all-powerful Ahriman cannot make the vision speak. And only in response to the passionate, half-mad monologue-call of Manfred responds, pronouncing his name. And then he adds: "Tomorrow you will leave the earth." And dissolves in ether.
At the hour before sunset, the abbot of St. Maurice appears in the ancient castle, where the unsociable warlock count lives. Dismayed by rumors creeping around about the strange and wicked pursuits that the owner of the castle indulges in, he considers it his duty to call on him to "cleanse himself from filth by repentance / And reconcile with church and heaven." "It's too late," he hears the laconic reply. He, Manfred, has no place in a church parish, as well as among any crowd: “I could not curb myself; whoever wants / to command must be a slave; / Whoever wants nothingness to recognize / Him as their ruler, he must / Be able to humble himself before nothingness, / Penetrate everywhere and keep pace / And be a walking lie. I didn’t want to interfere with the herd, at least I could / Be the leader. The lion is lonely - so am I." Having interrupted the conversation, he hurries to retire in order to once again enjoy the majestic spectacle of the sunset - the last in his life.
Meanwhile, the servants, timid in front of a strange gentleman, recall other days: when Astarte was next to the fearless seeker of truths - “the only creature in the world, / Which he loved, which, of course, / was not explained by Kinship ...” Their conversation is interrupted by the abbot , demanding that he be urgently escorted to Manfred.
Meanwhile, Manfred, alone, calmly awaits the fateful moment. The abbot who burst into the room feels the presence of a powerful evil spirit. He tries to conjure the spirits, but in vain. "Spirit. The time has come, mortal, / Humble yourself. Manfred. I knew and I know what happened. / But not to you, slave, I will give my soul. / Get away from me! I will die as I lived - alone. The proud spirit of Manfred, who does not bow to the power of any authority, remains unbroken. And if the ending of Byron’s play really resembles the ending of Goethe’s Faust, then one cannot help but notice a significant difference between the two great works: angels and Mephistopheles are fighting for Faust’s soul, while Manfred himself defends the soul of Byron’s god-fighter from a host of invisible ones (“The Immortal Spirit Himself He creates judgment for himself / For good and evil thoughts”).
"Old man! Believe me, death is not terrible at all! he says goodbye to the abbot.
retold
