Byron's Sardanapalus (1821)
 |
| The Dream of Sardanapalus, 1871 painting by Ford Madox Brown. |
[Image source: Wikimedia . Brown's painting is in the Delaware Art Museum. I've chosen it because it really illustrates the story in Byron's play: it shows the exhausted Sardanapalus aprey to troubled dreams and anxiously watched over by Myrrha (Act IV Scene 1). Delacroix's shocking 1827 painting The Death of Sardanapalus is vastly more renowned, but he only used the Byron connection to gain publicity: Byron had toned down the king's transgressiveness, but Delacroix toned it up.]
I'm always looking for new ways to shed readers, and of all the things about Sardanapalus that I might delve into I've selected perhaps the most trivial and least interesting, namely how Byron pronounced the name "Sardanapalus".
But before we get to Byron, Wikipedia tells us that the correct way to pronounce it is "/ˌsɑːrdəˈnæpələs/ SAR-də-NAP-ə-ləs". That fits with the Ancient Greek "Σαρδανάπαλλος", which is how the name appeared in the Bibliotheca Historicae of Diodorus Siculus (fl. 50 BCE); it's also consistent with a hypothetical derivation from the Assyrian "Aššur-bāni-apli" (the historical king Ashurbanipal).
When Byron wrote his blank-verse play, he could have used that pronunciation. It has the same stress-pattern as Neoptolemus or Michelangelo or indeed Michael Peverett, i.e. /-/-/, and it would slot very nicely into an iambic pentameter.
But he didn't. Peter Cochran (link below) tells us that in Byron's play the name is pronounced “Sar-dan-a-PAY-lus”, arguing from the following line:
To share the soft hours of Sardanapalus,
(Sardanapalus, I.2.8)
on which he comments: "To make the line scan, the hero’s name must have its penultimate syllable stressed."
I was baffled, and perhaps you'll feel the same. The line just seemed rough, with clashing accents at "soft hours", and no pronunciation of Sardanapalus was going to change that.
After spending several mornings elegantly demonstrating why Cochran was wrong, I suddenly realized he was right.
But he doesn't spell out the reasoning, so I will. It depends on understanding Byron's way of writing blank verse.
*
Byron's blank verse is often bracingly choppy (like the line in question), but underlying it are two principles that he maintains with steely regularity.
1. Every line has five accents, neither less nor more.
The rhythm is predominantly iambic, but trochaic inversion is common, especially in the first foot but sometimes in others.
There is often (though not too often) a tension between natural and metrical accentuation, leading to the "choppiness" already mentioned. Byron seems to do this deliberately, creating the effect of speech riding above an underlying rhythm rather than staying in sync with it.
2. Every line has either ten syllables (if the ending is masculine) or eleven syllables (if the ending is feminine).
In Byron's verse feminine endings are common (unlike in Keats, Arnold or the Brownings). He also makes heavy use of enjambement, often ending a line with a leading word such as "from", "to" or "who".
Extra unstressed syllables (as sometimes in Robert Browning*) are not allowed.
Some lines may appear to have extra syllables, but on inspection this is because Byron makes full use of traditional elisions. Words like "even", "heaven", "fallen" and "frozen" are treated as one syllable. "Natural" is treated as two syllables. Common word groups like "He hath", "To have", "Thou hast", "I had" and "I will" are crushed into one syllable (these all occur in the first few pages of Act I). When "The" and "to" precede an unstressed vowel they are usually elided... and so on.
*Examples of extra syllables in Robert Browning. These lines have eleven syllables though the ending is masculine.
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
(The Ring and the Book (Half-Rome))
What does the body that lives through helpfulness
(The Ring and the Book (The Pope))
*
So I get what Peter Cochran is saying now. The line in question has eleven syllables ("hours" is considered monosyllabic). It must therefore have a feminine ending, which means that the final syllable is unstressed and the penultimate syllable is stressed.
Thus Byron stressed the fourth syllable of "Sardanapalus".
The name crops up a dozen times in the play's verse speeches. Positive support for this pronunciation comes from I.2.8, I.2.249, II.1.368, II.1.404, and III.1.28; and it isn't contradicted by the other occurrences (I.2.259. III.1.10, III.1.27, III.1.296, III.1.412, IV.1.413, IV.1.516).
By the way, the verse also shows where Byron placed the stress on some of the other names: Se-MIR-a-MIS, Be-LES-es, Ar-BAC-es, Eu-PHRAT-es. Mede and Medes are pronounced as monosyllables ("mead", "meads").
*
But I could have saved myself a lot of time if, instead of scrutinizing the minutiae of Byron's blank verse practice in Sardanapalus, I had gone straight to Don Juan:
Thou mak’st philosophers; there’s Epicurus
And Aristippus, a material crew!
Who to immoral courses would allure us
By theories quite practicable too;
If only from the devil they would insure us,
How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new),
‘Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?’
So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.
(Don Juan, Canto II Stanza 207)
This Canto was written Dec 1818-Jan 1819. In that outrageous final line, maybe, lies the germ of the play Byron wrote two years later.
Anyway, for our purposes the line confirms the accent on the fourth syllable, and it also confirms the vowel sound. As Cochran says, it is PAY-lus (not PAR-lus or PAL-lus).
And it tells us about the name's other accent too. (Is it on the first syllable or the second? Peter Cochran, you may have noticed, didn't commit himself.) Wherever the name occurs in the play, you could make a case for either sar-DAN-a-PAY-lus or SAR-dan-a-PAY-lus, since Byron's blank verse allows trochaic inversion.
But the line in Don Juan tells us, beyond reasonable doubt, that the accents fall on the second and fourth syllables, not the first and fourth.
So now we know. Byron pronounced it sar-DAN-a-PAY-lus. The same stress-pattern as Patricia Highsmith, Aretha Franklin or Sir Edward Elgar.
*
Returning briefly to the "choppy" line I.2.8, there's two ways we can try to scan it, depending on how we negotiate the third foot.
To sháre the sóft hours óf Sardánapálus,
To sháre the sóft hóurs of Sardánapálus,
The first way produces a regular rhythm, but ruthlessly ignores the natural accents of speech: the second tries an inversion of the third foot to restore the more natural accent on "hours" -- but the subsequent run of unstressed syllables is very awkward.
There's no correct solution. As often when talking about Byron's verse, a sea metaphor is hard to resist. His lines have a general rhythmic drift, but the surface is enlivened by conflicting flashes; it sparkles. This line is one of the choppy ones, because the speech rhythm and the verse rhythm pull in different directions, like cross-currents; and that, I think, is just what Byron intended (inasmuch as he thought about it at all).
*
Sardanapalus
And yet these forgotten works of the imagination are full of hidden treasures! There is not one of Byron's "impressionist studies" of striking episodes of history or historical legend, flung, as it were, with a "Take it or leave it" in the face of friend or foe, which does not transform names and shadows into persons and substance, which does not contain lines and passages of unquestionable beauty and distinction.
(Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 1901 (link below))
I've now read Sardanapalus three or four times in a row. (The first time I was on a flight that must nearly have passed over Nineveh, but I was oblivious of that.)
I find it quite a compulsive reading experience, and a remarkably rich one. (No doubt it helps if you relish history plays as much as I do.) Despite the richness, I kept feeling I was missing something.
But I don't agree with Bonamy Dobrée that Byron's plays are philosophical statements; not in respect of Sardanapalus, anyway. I think it's better to see it the way Byron described it, writing to John Murray on 14 July 1821:
My object has been to dramatize like the Greeks (a modest phrase!) striking passages of history, as they did of history & mythology.
It's true that the figure of Sardanapalus often recalls Byron's own scandalous reputation; and also the recently-crowned George IV, who Byron (like most people) despised. When the topic is despotism, we might think of Bonaparte; and when it's the downfall of a long-continued dynasty, the Bourbons. Sometimes Byron seems to be remembering Shah Soltan Hosayn, whose downfall in 1722 marked the end of the Safavid dynasty in Persia. The play is open to all those thoughts. Yet it's basically retelling an old story in the free way of, say, Euripides' Andromache.
Not all the richness relates directly to Sardanapalus; for example there are those hymns that book-end the play, Beleses to the sunset (Act II) and Myrrha to the sunrise (Act V). Byron's play has no Euripides-style Chorus, but these stupendous invocations have something like a choric function.
All the same, a great deal of the play's richness is down to the maddening, brilliant many-sidedness of its protagonist. So that's what my chosen excerpts are about.
Myrrha. Look to the annals of thine Empire's founders.
Sardanapalus. They are so blotted o'er with blood, I cannot.
But what wouldst have? the Empire has been founded.
I cannot go on multiplying empires.
Myrrha. Preserve thine own.
Sardanapalus. At least, I will enjoy it.
Come, Myrrha, let us go on to the Euphrates:
The hour invites, the galley is prepared,
And the pavilion, decked for our return,
In fit adornment for the evening banquet,
Shall blaze with beauty and with light, until
It seems unto the stars which are above us
Itself an opposite star; and we will sit
Crowned with fresh flowers like—
Myrrha. Victims.
Sardanapalus. No, like sovereigns,
The Shepherd Kings of patriarchal times,
Who knew no brighter gems than summer wreaths,
And none but tearless triumphs. Let us on.
Enter Pania.
Pania. May the King live for ever!
Sardanapalus. Not an hour
Longer than he can love. How my soul hates
This language, which makes life itself a lie,
Flattering dust with eternity. Well, Pania!
Be brief.
Pania. I am charged by Salemenes to
Reiterate his prayer unto the King,
That for this day, at least, he will not quit
The palace: when the General returns,
He will adduce such reasons as will warrant
His daring, and perhaps obtain the pardon
Of his presumption.
Sardanapalus. What! am I then cooped?
Already captive? can I not even breathe
The breath of heaven? Tell prince Salemenes,
Were all Assyria raging round the walls
In mutinous myriads, I would still go forth.
Pania. I must obey, and yet——
Myrrha. Oh, Monarch, listen.—
How many a day and moon thou hast reclined
Within these palace walls in silken dalliance,
And never shown thee to thy people's longing;
Leaving thy subjects' eyes ungratified,
The satraps uncontrolled, the Gods unworshipped,
And all things in the anarchy of sloth,
Till all, save evil, slumbered through the realm!
And wilt thou not now tarry for a day,—
A day which may redeem thee? Wilt thou not
Yield to the few still faithful a few hours,
For them, for thee, for thy past fathers' race,
And for thy sons' inheritance?
(Sardanapalus, I.2.547-589)
*
so blotted o'er with blood: Sardanapalus is a great critic of the brutal military expansionism that has sustained the Assyrian empire. He himself hates the thought of bloodshed, but he isn't a revolutionary. He's born into despotism and is accustomed to doing whatever he likes without question. He's irked by subservience, but predictably upset when he badgers Myrrha into following her own will and it doesn't coincide with his own; what he wants is people happening to choose just what he would like.
But what wouldst have? the Empire has been founded. I cannot go on multiplying empires. There is, as Byron realized, an element of comedy in Sardanapalus. He plays to the gallery, and probably raises a laugh here. But his argument is flimsy: not even the hawks want a new empire, just an expansion of this one; they want him to strike fear into the countries around, sack a few cities... And while he grandstands, as Myrrha unsmilingly responds, he's letting it all go down the pan.
Not an hour longer than he can love. Love is a very central theme in the play, but it's highly problematized; you can see the initially reluctant Byron taking up Teresa Guiccioli's suggestion and enthusiastically running with it, but rather turning it upside down in the process. Few modern readers, I think, will experience the ending as a simple triumph of love. Anyway, this speech swings sharply from a superbly idealistic romanticism and rejection of coventional flattery to Pania, be brief: the impatience of a despot whose playtime is being interrupted.
am I then cooped? Sardanapalus is swift to react to an incursion on his absolute freedom. Every producer needs to decide how to blend his parts: the majestic authority, wisdom and vision... but also the vanity and dandyism, the petulance of a spoiled child.
in silken dalliance. What actually goes on at Sardanapalus' revels? Byron drapes them in discreet vagueness; not so his source Diodorus Siculus:
Sardanapalus, the thirtieth from Ninus, and the last king of the Assyrians, exceeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for, wallowing in pleasure and wanton dalliances, he clothed himself in women's attire, and spun fine wool and purple amongst the throngs of his whores and concubines. He painted likewise his face, and decked his whole body with other allurements like a strumpet, and was more lascivious than the most wanton courtesan. He imitated, likewise, a woman's voice, and not only daily inured himself to such meat and drink as might incite and stir up his lascivious lusts, but gratified them by filthy Catamites, as well as whores and strumpets, and without any sense of modesty, abusing both sexes, slighted shame, the concomitant of filthy and impure actions, and proceeded to such a degree of voluptuousness and sordid uncleanness, etc etc
(Diodorus Siculus in G. Booth's translation)
Byron's text doesn’t entirely suppress even the "filthy Catamites". They are the "beings less than women" mentioned by Salamenes in I.1 and they make a mute entrance as "young slaves" in I.2. Yet readers who wished to avert their eyes could easily believe that Sardanapalus and his revellers did little more than drink wine, wear flower-crowns and compose hymns to Myrrha's eyes. Our producer has some intriguing choices to make here; how strongly to bring out the hero’s bisexuality, in what way his love for Myrrha supersedes or coexists with his wider sexual browsing, and how to play this relationship between an "effeminate" king and a slave-girl with "masculine" characteristics; a remarkable relationship, but not always tranquil, and extremely unequal.
[To be soberly scholarly, the attribution of a manly mind to a woman was a traditional compliment. Compare Dryden's "On the Monument of a Fair Maiden":
A daughter duteous, and a sister kind;
In sickness patient, and in death resigned.
]
[NB Byron was relaxed about re-using the expressions of eighteenth-century poets. Compare the description of Nero as "The silken son of dalliance" in Thomas Gray's Agrippina.]
*
Another extract. The treachery of Beleses and Arbaces has been discovered by Salemenes, but Sardanapalus refuses to hear the evidence against them. Beleses protests their innocence.
Salemenes. Peace, factious priest, and faithless soldier! thou
Unit'st in thy own person the worst vices
Of the most dangerous orders of mankind.
Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies
For those who know thee not. Thy fellow's sin
Is, at the least, a bold one, and not tempered
By the tricks taught thee in Chaldea.
Beleses. Hear him,
My liege—the son of Belus! he blasphemes
The worship of the land, which bows the knee
Before your fathers.
Sardanapalus. Oh! for that I pray you
Let him have absolution. I dispense with
The worship of dead men; feeling that I
Am mortal, and believing that the race
From whence I sprung are—what I see them—ashes.Beleses. King! Do not deem so: they are with the stars,And——Sardanapalus. You shall join them there ere they will rise,If you preach farther—Why, this is rank treason.Salemenes. My lord!Sardanapalus.To school me in the worship ofAssyria's idols! Let him be released—Give him his sword.Salemenes. My Lord, and King, and Brother,I pray ye pause.Sardanapalus. Yes, and be sermonised,And dinned, and deafened with dead men and Baal,And all Chaldea's starry mysteries.Beleses. Monarch! respect them.Sardanapalus. Oh! for that—I love them;I love to watch them in the deep blue vault,And to compare them with my Myrrha's eyes;I love to see their rays redoubled inThe tremulous silver of Euphrates' wave,As the light breeze of midnight crisps the broadAnd rolling water, sighing through the sedgesWhich fringe his banks: but whether they may beGods, as some say, or the abodes of Gods,As others hold, or simply lamps of night,Worlds—or the lights of Worlds—I know nor care not.There's something sweet in my uncertaintyI would not change for your Chaldean lore;Besides, I know of these all clay can knowOf aught above it, or below it—nothing.I see their brilliancy and feel their beauty—When they shine on my grave I shall know neither.Beleses. For neither, sire, say better.Sardanapalus. I will wait,If it so please you, Pontiff, for that knowledge.In the mean time receive your sword, and knowThat I prefer your service militantUnto your ministry—not loving either.Salemenes. (aside). His lusts have made him mad. Then must I save himSpite of himself.Sardanapalus. Please you to hear me, Satraps!And chiefly thou, my priest, because I doubt theeMore than the soldier; and would doubt thee allWert thou not half a warrior: let us partIn peace—I'll not say pardon—which must beEarned by the guilty; this I'll not pronounce ye,Although upon this breath of mine dependsYour own; and, deadlier for ye, on my fears.But fear not—for that I am soft, not fearful—And so live on. Were I the thing some think me,Your heads would now be dripping the last dropsOf their attainted gore from the high gatesOf this our palace, into the dry dust,
Their only portion of the coveted kingdom
They would be crowned to reign o'er—let that pass.
As I have said, I will not deem ye guilty,
Nor doom ye guiltless. Albeit better men
Than ye or I stand ready to arraign you;
And should I leave your fate to sterner judges,
And proofs of all kinds, I might sacrifice
Two men, who, whatsoe'er they now are, were
Once honest. Ye are free, sirs.
Arbaces. Sire, this clemency——
Beleses. (interrupting him). Is worthy of yourself; and, although innocent,
We thank——
Sardanapalus. Priest! keep your thanksgivings for Belus;
His offspring needs none.
(Sardanapalus, II.1.229-299)
juggling homilies : Salemenes makes the familiar accusation of "priestcraft". Sardanapalus, who is avoiding taking sides, takes a more childish line: he merely objects to being dinned and sermonized.
King! Do not deem so.. Beleses, trying to act the innocent, is respectfully bold.
Salemenes. My lord! Salemenes registers his dismay at Sardanapalus saying "Why, this is rank treason", thus shifting the discussion from real treason to a trivial offence against decorum.
I know nor care not. Asserting our inevitable ignorance is an argument that has always appealed to hedonists. (Yet no assertion is more necessary today, when the media thrives on falsely promising to supply knowledge, and professional bodies on falsely claiming to possess it.) As regards the gods, Sardanapalus is honest enough to say that he takes pleasure from a state of ignorance; he doesn't draw the conclusion, though readers may be tempted to, that his open-ended enchantment is more truly religious and reverent than any priestly dogma.
But every argument can be misused, and we feel the awkward timing of this one, just when Sardanapalus is desperately seeking peace of mind not in inevitable ignorance but in wilful ignorance: he doesn't want to know anything about the conspiracy against him, because then he'd have to deal with it in ways he can't bear to think about.
His lusts have made him mad. The general idea of the king's debased lifestyle is kept afloat throughout the play, while details are avoided.
I'll not say pardon... Later Zarina uses a similar expression in regard to Sardanapalus' own shortcomings.
Two men, who, whatsoe'er they now are, were Once honest... Byron borrowed this idea from a later episode in Diodorus in which Arbaces, now king, pardons an erring Beleses.
and, although innocent, we thank.... Beleses sees that Arbaces is moved, and quickly cuts across him before he confesses to anything.
*
In Aristotle, Cicero, Dio Cassius and western literature generally, Sardanapalus was a monster: the proverbial exemplar of "oriental" excess, idleness and debauchery, the man who threw away a thousand-year-old empire while sunk in a bestial slough of sensuality.
Byron's Sardanapalus, A Tragedy was seeking the human being behind the monstrous reputation. Whether there was any precedent for doing that (e.g. in Boxberg's 1698 opera?) I'm not sure. [Incidentally Liszt began an opera Sardanapalo based on Byron's play, but he abandoned it.]
The story of Sardanapalus survived in Diodorus' compendium, presumably taken almost verbatim from the lost Persica of Ctesias of Cnidus (fl. 5th century BCE), but Ctesias' material was more myth than history. In the story it's the river Euphrates that has a fateful role in the king's downfall, but Nineveh is actually on the Tigris (opposite Mosul). The Assyrian empire did fall, but not with Ashurbanipal (if that's where the name "Sardanapalus" comes from). Ashurbanipal was notoriously brutal in warfare; Byron (though not Diodorus) makes Sardanapalus the exact opposite.
Byron had read Diodorus (at age 12, he says); this must have been in the 1700 translation by G. Booth, who names the king's brother-in-law "Salemenus" (it should really be "Galaemenes"). But in Diodorus he's little more than a name: Salemenes in the play is essentially Byron's own invention, as is Myrrha and all the minor characters. Byron brings the whole lengthy revolt within the compass of a single night, and most of the detailed action is his own, though in Byron's case invention often means channelling something else. For instance Salemenes, especially in the scene where he confronts Sardanapalus (I.2) owes a lot to Dryden's Ventidius in All For Love.
*
Notes
I.2.236:
Sar. Or for my trophies I have founded cities:
"Or" doesn't make any sense here. Surely it should say: "Oh! for my trophies I have founded cities". I.e., If you want to talk about trophies, I've got 'em too (as my fierce predecessors did).
II.1.104:
Bel. Yes—if the time served.
The comma after "What" must be a mistake. Beleses' response shows that Arbaces is saying How about we ask him.
II.1.244:
*
Sardanapalus: the complete text on Project Gutenberg, in Vol V of Byron's works edited by E.H. Coleridge (1901).
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23475/23475-h/23475-h.htm#SARDANAPALUS_TITLE .
Peter Cochran's edition of Byron's Sardanapalus: A Tragedy [PDF]:
http://www.newsteadabbeybyronsociety.org/works/downloads/sardanapalus.pdf .
[Peter Cochran (1944 - 2015). His invaluable editions were web-published and have no publication dates. I guess his work on Sardanapalus mostly dates from c. 2000.]
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (Loeb, 1933), ed. and trans. C.H. Oldfather. The section about Sardanapalus is II.23-28. This link should open in the right place.
The translation that the twelve-year-old Byron had read was The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian in Fifteen Books by G. Booth, Esq. (first published in 1700). In Booth's arrangement the story of Sardanapallus (as he spells it) is in Book II, Chapter II. This link should open in the right place.
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_agd-eLVNRMMC/page/119/mode/2up .
Wide-ranging article by Jorge Álvarez in La Brújula Verde about the legend of Sardanapalus and its scanty historical basis. More informative than Wikipedia e.g. about references to Sardanapalus in classical authors.
Byron's Sardanapalus has interested plenty of academics in recent years. The essays I found most helpful were by Daniel P. Watkins (1981, 1985), Susan J. Wolfson (1991), Daniela Garofalo (2002) and Dana Van Kooy (2019); you'll find them all on JStor.
*
.
Labels: George Gordon Lord Byron
Permalink posted by Michael Peverett @ 12:10 pm
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home