Mazeppa (Byron)

This article is about the poem by Lord Byron. For other uses, see Mazeppa.
Mazeppa
Author Lord Byron
Original title Mazeppa
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Narrative poem, Romanticism
Publisher John Murray
Publication date
 1819
"Mazeppa" by Théodore Géricault ca. 1823; based on Byron's poem.

Mazeppa is a narrative poem written by the English romantic poet Lord Byron in 1819. It is based on a popular legend about the early life of Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), a Ukrainian gentleman who later became Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks.[nb 1] According to the poem, the young Mazeppa has a love affair with a Countess Theresa while serving as a page at the Court of King John II Casimir Vasa. Countess Theresa was married to a much older Count. On discovering the affair, the Count punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting the horse loose. The bulk of the poem describes the traumatic journey of the hero strapped to the horse. The poem has been praised for its "vigor of style and its sharp realization of the feelings of suffering and endurance".[1] This poem also inspired Alexander Pushkin to write his poem Poltava as an answer to Byron's poem.

Published within the same covers with "Mazeppa" was the short story "A Fragment", also known as "Fragment of a Novel" and "The Burial: A Fragment", one of the earliest vampire stories in English.

Overview

The poem opens with a framing device: Mazeppa and the Swedish King Charles XII, together with their armies, are retreating from the Battle of Poltava, where they were defeated by the Russians. Exhausted and war-weary, the two men set up camp for the night. (Stanzas 1–2) The King admires Mazeppa's horsemanship, and Mazeppa offers to tell him how he learnt this skill (Stanza 4).The poem then switches to the first person. Mazeppa describes his youth and his service as a page to King John II Casimir in Poland. (Stanza 4). He becomes acquainted with Theresa, a beautiful Orientalized woman who "had the Asiatic eye" (l. 208). She is married to a Count who is thirty years her senior (l. 155). Mazeppa falls passionately in love with her (l. 266-7), is unable to control his passions (l. 290–295), and they meet at night and consummate their love. (l. 298–300)

However, the Count's men catch them together (l. 325-6) and bring him to the Count. The Count orders an unusually cruel punishment: Mazeppa is to be tied naked to a steed, which is then to be taunted and set loose. (Stanza 9) Stanzas 10 to 18 recount the steed's flight across Eastern Europe, emphasising the pain, suffering and confusion that Mazeppa feels. However, the horse has seemingly limitless energy. Mazeppa nearly dies twice. In Stanza 13, he describes himself "full in death's face" (l. 557), but is restored when the horse swims through a river. Stanza 18 concludes with a description of "an icy sickness" and his vision of a raven flying overheard, ready to feast on his corpse. However, in Stanza 19, Mazeppa awakes to find himself in bed, with his wounds being tended by a "Cossack Maid" (l. 817). In the final stanza, Mazeppa's narrative ends. The poet-narrator describes Mazeppa preparing his bed for the evening. The King is already asleep (l. 867 – 880)

Sources and Inspiration

There are historical sources which verify that Ivan Mazepa served in the Polish Court to John II Casimir. However, it is unclear why he left Poland in 1663 and returned to his homeland Ukraine. There is no historical evidence to support that Mazepa was exiled from Poland because of a love affair, or that he was punished by being strapped to a wild horse.[2]

However, this colourful legend was in circulation before Byron published his poem. Voltaire repeats it in History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (1731). This appears to have been Byron's main source for his poem: his 'Advertisement' to the poem includes three long quotations from this work. Several critics have also speculated that Byron was familiar with the Mémoires d'Azéma (1764) by the French writer André Guillaume Contant Dorville, as there are significant similarities between the plot of that novel and of Byron's poem.[3]

Byron's references to Mazepa's participation, in the Great Northern War alongside Charles XII, and their eventual defeat, are historically accurate.

Analysis

Horace Vernet (1789–1863)

Many critics see Mazeppa as a transitional work in Byron's oeuvre. Its dates of composition (1818–1819) place it between the earlier Eastern tales such as The Prisoner of Chillon (1817), which describe agonised, maudlin Byronic heroes and the later satirical, ironic Don Juan (1818–19). Leslie Marchand argues that Mazeppa is a partly unsuccessful work, as it is torn between high emotion and lighter irony.[1] Mark Phillipson also sees Mazeppa as a transitional work of a "mongrel genre, the historical verse-romance". He argues that the poem is characterised by "moral ambivalence", and it remains unclear whether Mazeppa is a sympathetic hero or not.[4]

The question of whether the audience is expected to sympathise with Mazeppa has long been a subject for critical discussion. W.H. Marshall (1961) argues that Mazeppa is entirely unsympathetic: a "garrulous and egoistic old man" who never atones for his crime and whose hackneyed description of his passion for Teresa "becomes tedious at once".[5] Jerome McGann (1968) takes the opposite view, arguing that Mazeppa's "wild ride" acts as an initiation process which makes him into a mature hero who is able to restrain his passions, unlike King Charles. He compares Mazeppa to Meursault, the existentialist hero of Albert Camus' novel The Stranger (1942).[6]

Hubert Babinski (1974) also offers a sympathetic reading of the character Mazeppa, pointing out his kindness to Charles and the horses in the opening and closing chapter. Babinski suggests that the hero Mazeppa is "one of Byron's most realistic creations, heroic within the bounds of human potential" and that he is a "fine specimen of a man".[7] He further argues that Mazeppa's death-in-life experiences during his "wild ride" are central to the poem's meaning and symbolic of the possibilities of human transformation and rebirth. He argues that the French painters who took up the Mazeppa theme further developed this idea.[8]

More recent interpretations have attempted to apply the insights of critical theory to the poem. Zbigniew Bialas (1999) offers a Saidian postcolonial reading, suggesting that Byron orientalises Eastern Europe and attempts to stamp an identity on Mazeppa, who nonetheless evades fixed national and political identities.[9] Meanwhile, Jane Stabler (2004) reads the poem through the prism of postmodern theory, suggesting that uses Byron's Mazeppa as an example of a poem which "draws attention to the fictive contours of history".[10] More recently, Thomas McLean (2012) considers Mazeppa "Byron's Polish poem" in light of the British fascination with Tadeusz Kosciuszko and sees Mazeppa as an empowering figure for Europe's other smaller nations.[11]>

Literary significance and reception

Babinski points out that although Mazeppa received a flurry of reviews upon publication, later critics of Byron have rarely addressed the poem.[12] Certainly there is less scholarship on Mazeppa than many of Byron's other narrative poems, and Mazeppa does not appear in Byron anthologies such as the 1978 Norton Critical Anthology.[13]

However, Byron's poem was both popular and influential in the romantic period. The French poet Victor Hugo acknowledged Byron when he produced his own poem 'Mazeppa' for his 1829 collection Les Orientales, which in turn became the literary inspiration for a Transcendental Étude and a symphonic poem by Franz Liszt. Several French artists produced paintings depicting Mazeppa's "wild ride" including Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, and Claude-Joseph Vernet. Nathaniel Currier and Ives has painted 4 paintings about Mazeppa around 1846 : "Mazeppa", "Mazeppa 2", "Mazeppa 3" and "Mazeppa 4". Paintings are exhibited in The Bridgeman Art Library.[14][15] Currier and Ives published an illustrated edition of Byron's poem in 1846. The American lithographer Nathaniel Currier, has painted 4 paintings about Mazeppa around 1846 : "Mazeppa", "Mazeppa 2", "Mazeppa 3" and "Mazeppa 4". John Frederick Herring, an English painter, has also painted several paintings about Mazeppa : around 1833, he painted "Mazeppa Surrounded by Horses" and "Mazeppa Pursued by Wolves" and in 1842 "MAZEPPA".

Currier and Ives illustration to their 1846 printing of the poem

In Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin's narrative poem Poltava (1828–29) deals with a later stage of Ivan Mazepa's life, his switching of allegiance from the Russians to the Swedes and his defeat in the Battle of Poltava. Pushkin's poem, which opens with an epigraph from Byron's Mazeppa, later became the subject of an opera by Tchaikovsky. Mazeppa is an Opera written by Tchaikovsky in three acts and six scenes. At the beginning of this Opera the opening scene is "Mazeppa's ride". Victor Burenin has written the libretto and is based on Pushkin's poem Poltava. Mazeppa is a story about love, abduction, political persecution and vengeful murder. This story takes place in Ukraine in the 18th century. This Opera was written in the 19th century. In this Opera there are two baritone, one Mezzo-Soprano, one soprano, one bass and three Tenor.

In the theatre, a show called "Mazeppa, or the Tartar Horse" premiered at the Cirque Olympique in Paris in 1825. This was copied in both the USA and England[15] In 1861, in the United States version of the play, Mazeppa was played by a female, Adah Isaacs Menken, who scandalously performed the nude scene clad only in a flesh-coloured bodystocking. Mazeppa became the most widely performed drama in the American west from the 1860s until the turn of the century, and was also popular in London.[16] In 1877, Albert Aiken wrote a dime novel called The Indian Mazeppa or The Madman of the Plains, where the Mazeppa myth is transposed to the Wild West.[17]

In 1910, Francis Boggs produced a short film based on the stage play of Byron's poem titled Mazeppa or the Wild horse of Tartary.[18]

Hugo's poem Mazeppa, one of the major pieces in Les Orientales, was inspired by the painting of Louis Boulanger (Rouen museum), which competed, as did the Vernet painting, in the salon of 1827. The first part of the poem written by Hugo describes Mazeppa's run across Ukrainian plains. In the second part Hugo compares Mazeppa to a poet banned from the living world because of his eccentricities, the banned poet is attached on the wild horse of his inspiration. The comparison to the poet ends by saying that this crazy trip through suffering finally gives success and glory to the poet.

There was also a Play called Mazeppa an equestrian burlesque in two acts, an 1856 play by blackface minstrel entertainer Charles "Charlie" White (1821–1891) it was a lightly based adaptation of the poem that take place in America . It was written in a burlesque style, and by black faced actors . The main antagonist is Castiron a black man who live above his means. His daughter Olinska is in love with Satinette (aka ) Mazeppa who try to sneak into the place to see her, will follow the adventures of Mazeppa, strapped to a horse and his way back to his home.

Chassériau's oil painting, Cossack girl at Mazeppa 's body was painted in 1851. Chassériau was a French romantic painter. The painting is in the museum of Strasbourg.

Publication history

Byron began writing Mazeppa on 2 April 1817 and completed it on 26 September 1818. It was first published by John Murray on 28 June 1819, alongside Byron's "Ode to Venice" and a short prose fragment, "Fragment of a Novel", one of the earliest vampire tales in English literature.[nb 2]

Notes

  1. ↑ Mazeppa is a historical spelling; in modern documents the historical figure is referred to as Ivan Mazepa. However, reprints of Byron's poem keep the spelling Mazeppa. This article uses the 'Mazeppa' spelling when referring to the hero of the poem, and reserve 'Mazepa' for references to the actual historical personage.
  2. ↑ Full Publication history is available in Byron, George (1986). McGann, Jerome, ed. The complete poetical works. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 493.

References

  1. 1 2 Marchand, Leslie (1968). Byron's Poetry: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 70.
  2. ↑ Blumberg, Arnold (1995). Great Leaders, Great Tyrants?. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 184–88.
  3. ↑ Babinski, H.F. (1975). The Mazeppa legend in European Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 28–32.
  4. ↑ Phillipson, Mark (2003). "Alteration in Exile: Byron's Mazeppa.". Nineteenth-Century Literature (NCF). 58 (3): 308–312. doi:10.1525/ncl.2003.58.3.291.
  5. ↑ Marshall, W. H. (1961). "A Reading of Byron's Mazeppa.". Modern Language Notes. 76 (2): 120–24. doi:10.2307/3040622. JSTOR 3040622.
  6. ↑ McGann, Jerome (1968). Fiery Dust: Byron's Poetic Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 177–184.
  7. ↑ Babinski, pp. 33–36
  8. ↑ Babinski, p. 46
  9. ↑ Bialas, Zbigniew (1999). "Dressing Mazeppa: Costumes and Wounds". In Bialas, Zbigniew; Krajka, Wiesław. East-Central European Traumas and a Millennial Condition. East European Monographs. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 191–207.
  10. ↑ Stabler, Jane (2004). "Byron, Postmodernism and Intertextuality". In Bone, D. The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 265–84.
  11. ↑ McLean, Thomas (2012). The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.<
  12. ↑ Babinski, p. 21
  13. ↑ Byron, George (1978). McConnell, Frank D., ed. Byron's Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
  14. ↑ Boime, Albert (1993). Art in an age of Bonapartism, 1800–1815. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 170–1.
  15. 1 2 Mainardi, Patricia (2003). "6". Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  16. ↑ Stedman, Jane W. (2000). W.S. Gilbert's Theatrical Criticism. Sheffield: The Society for Theatre Research.
  17. ↑ "Ivan Mazeppa". University of Manitoba. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
  18. ↑ Mazeppa or the Wild horse of Tartary at the Internet Movie Database

Further reading

Prymak, Thomas M. (2014). "The Cossack Hetman: Ivan Mazepa in History and Legend from Peter to Pushkin". The Historian. LXXVI (2): 237–77. doi:10.1111/hisn.12033. 

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