Lord Byron v. Ashton Kutcher
Not really, but I needed a title for this article. Ame and I were talking recently and Lord Byron came up. I know very little about literature, let alone English Literature. I likes my grammar the ways I likes it, but when it gets into famous people, I stumble hard. Hell, even Shakespeare and Poe are out of reach for me. I do like The Raven though.
Anyway, I mentioned my favorite Lord Byron quote:
“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.”
It’s cool, right? Ame told me that Lord Byron wrote his stuff as a sort of “Punk’d!” to the masses who take literature seriously, sort of like a, “Hah! I’m writing this crap, and you think it’s gold! Punk’d!” I tend to take what Ame says about literature as gospel; like I said before, it’s her bread ‘n butter and it was her major in college. So, those who know what Byron’s motivations were, can feel superior just as he to all the mouth-breathers of the world. I know I’m not, but I still can’t but help feel judged by a dead man. I like Bryon, dammit!
Why can’t something, even if intended as tripe, be good?
One interpretation of mine is Bryon was a narcissist and, to him, everything Byron was amazing. Byron was also smart, so he declared to at least one colleague what he was “really” doing, which was making crap for the masses to enjoy. Byron did his Byron thing, and people loved him. He sneered at their ignorance and smiled at his brilliance in manipulating the fools.
Or… Byron was insecure, but still a good wordsmith. He Byron’d it up and just said it was bad. When you set your expectations low and succeed, what a nice surprise!
Or! As a spin on the first hypothesis, he was aware of this possible interpretation and manipulated the world as one of the first, if not the first, post-modern poets. A meta-poet.
At the very least, two things: Byron is smart and dead (joke’s on him!); and it still doesn’t answer my question: If something meant to be bad is good, is it still good?
I say yes. Why attribute malevolence or benevolence to anything created? Why does it need that attribute? Would you hate a beautiful work of art if it were later discovered to be created by a pus-covered mud-man? Of course not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the creator. So what if Byron crafted his works to laugh at us? They still evoke emotions and it only makes him a gigantic asshole, no matter how brilliant or narcissistic.
Beholder, Grade 11 Beaurecrat: “Please don’t tell my supervisor I was sleeping!”
Tags: Ame, English, hypothesis, literature, Lord Byron, narcissim, quote