Chapter 16 - Arnold’s Ambivalence and Byron’s Force and Fire

Summary

‘I have always sought to stand by myself’ Arnold announced in 1865.¹ The remark is the more intriguing for its appearance in the first series of Essays in Criticism, a collection which, with its consideration of cultural tradition and the intricate relationality of writers, both affirms and denies autonomy. A poet-critic deeply interested in the legacy of the past and the influence of previous generations of writers, Arnold was very conscious of the particular challenges of pursuing a literary voice of one’s own in an age when the place and purpose of the arts was being questioned (not least by him), and with the Romantics still in living memory. The irony of Arnold’s wish ‘to stand by myself’ is that its registering of distinctness carries Byronic airs. With one eye on his present fame and one on posterity Byron had declared ‘I stood and stand alone’, sounding more sure of it than Arnold.² Whether it was his powerful individualism and desire to go his own way, his defence of personal liberties and resistance to authority, or his estranged and egoistic heroes, Byron was the embodiment of self-determination for contemporaries and subsequent generations. Arnold admired Byron’s independent streak, and, ironically, found in it means of self-recognition as well as self-evaluation with which to carve out his own career. He sets up Byron as an example of what he wanted to be, as well as – more negatively – what he was prone to being, what he could not quite manage to live up to, or wanted to avoid becoming. Regard for Byron also enabled him to evaluate the legacy of different strands of English Romanticism and put his finger on what he felt was lacking in Victorian life and culture.