Romanticizing India

by Serena Johnson

Coaduwar Gaut.” Plate 14 in Twenty Four Landscapes. Views in Hindoostan. Drawn and engraved by Thomas & William Daniell.  London, 1807.

Of the four Daniell’s paintings, “Coaduwar Gaut” is the only one that captures the dramatically figurative description given to us by Dean Mahomet in his first letter. The message most implicit in the painting is one of “benevolence and good-will” (Mahomet, Letter I) between the inhabitants. Although we cannot see any facial expressions, nobody in the foreground of the painting is alone and we can even see a couple of people in the center waving at others. Mahomet confirms this when he says “we are never without our neighbors,” implying that life is community-oriented and relatively harmonious. In regards to the physical landscape, Mahomet gives an extremely romantic description. He oddly mentions John Milton and the Garden of Eden to touch on his idealization of nature. The Garden of Eden is a major setting in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the painting definitely embodies the lavish, green, and untainted appearance of the infamous garden. Mahomet mentions that there are “beautifully diversified” gardens and flowers everywhere, seen not only in the front of the painting but also in the middle and background. What the painting fails to represent that I found in Mahomet’s description is the condemnation of classism and rejection of industrialization. In order to do so, the painting would have to take the form of poetry in which we can visibly see the people either ignoring or rejecting objects that symbolize Occidental power. It could be possible that whatever location was the inspiration for this painting did not have any kind of Occidental influences, but with other paintings we have seen, there is almost always some kind of intrusion by the artist in order to put themselves into a painting that was otherwise intended to depict the Oriental. Mahomet, ironically, uses a Western author in order to describe the landscape – but not in a way that praises Milton more than what he was describing.

Realism vs Romanticism within the Hellenistic Umbrella

By Liliana Silva-Vazquez

Lady Mary’s poetic geography differs from Lord Byron’s as it is much gritter and unafraid of addressing how Greece is now in ruins that could only be reformed through the imagination. She takes on a realist perspective of the ruins as she experienced them firsthand and was not a romantic poet. Instead, she wanted to give her “true” account of the state of ancient Greece by stating, “the ruins of this great city are now inhabited by poor Greek peasants” (Montagu 184), “I conjecture them to be the remains of that city” (Montagu 186), “the remains of a temple near this place are the ruins of one dedicated to Augustus” (Montagu 186), and the “Temple of Theseus…[was] filled with powder and it was accidentally blown up” (Montagu 188). With these quotes, Lady Mary presents less flowery, metaphoric, and romantic versions of the current state of “Greece.” That being said, she points out the parts that are unromantic and almost obscene to Hellenist thinkers but we also know that she fantasizes about ancient Greece at the same time. On the other hand, Lord Byron decides to completely cover the “destruction” of ancient Greece through his sublime/romantic poetry and attacks the Turks themselves.  

The main poetic device I noticed was Lord Byron’s perfect rhyme. Basically, all of the last words of each line rhyme with one another in couplets, tercets, or following an a-b pattern. This perfection of rhythm could symbolize Byron’s discontent with the Turks as they do not “fit” the idealized version of ancient Greece that he and Lady Mary had. We see this when Byron states, “So curst the tyrants that destroy!” (67), “‘Tis Greece–but living Greece no more!” (91), “The Tyranny shall quake to hear” (120), “To villain-bonds and despot-sway” (141), and “Stain’d with each evil that pollutes/Mankind, where least above the brutes” (153-4). So, we can see that he is obviously upset with the Turks for inhabiting the ruins of ancient Greece but we don’t get much imagery on their actual “destruction” of it.

Instead, we get an Eden version of Greece and a feminized representation of it that acts like an Eve. Linguistically and socially/culturally, women are tied to nature, nature is tied to the sublime, and the sublime is tied to romanticism as well as Hellenism. She (ancient Greece) is the speaker’s “queen, the garden queen, his Rose” (Byron 26), “that where Nature lov’d to trace/As if for Gods, a dwelling-place–…Within the paradise she fixed” (Byron 46-49), and “To bloom along the fairy land” (Byron 55). This comparison of ancient Greece to Eden/Eve also echoes Lady Mary’s position on the Muslim’s occupation of it: they are just heathens who will be defeated and once they are, all of its “glory” will be returned, and “paradise” will come again. So, even though Lady Mary uses more grounded rhetoric to talk of the ancient Greece ruins, she and Lord Byron have similar opinions on the Ottoman empire’s inhabitance; they seek to contribute to Hellenist thoughts that idealize a Greek past in order to demonize the Turks.

Greece’s Appeal

Rhiannon Badgett

In Lady Mary’s letter forty-five she creates a setting in which she attempts to convince the audience that Greece accentuates a type of romanticism that she would not have otherwise experienced in Europe as an aristocrat. She finds beauty in many things around her, including architecture, clothing, and ways of life. She is careful to precisely articulate her feelings and thoughts on all matters she seems to surround herself by. In Montagu’s letter forty- five, she mentions how the buildings are built and the small details that go into them compared to what a “Christian King’s” home might look like. Montagu writes, “The buildings are all of white stone, leaded on the top, with turrets and spires, which look magnificent, and indeed, I believe there is no Christian King’s palace half as large” (Montagu 183). Lady Mary believes that Ancient Greece should be what it used to be; that the ruins of Ancient Greece still have beauty within them. The classic orientalism in these letters creates a space in which she is still classist and racist despite where she finds herself and what she is appreciating. She flips between being admirable of where she is residing and then seeming to look down upon it or perhaps purposely passive aggressive. While ethnocentric and counter-hegemonic, she ultimately believes that Greece shall be restored.

Similarly, Lord Byron’s The Giaour is an oriental tale in which he also cannot get over Greece’s former and current appeal. Within a war zone, Byron’s poem is scattered or perhaps rather achronological. However, his audience quickly learns that he would have died for Greece and fought with them until the end if it weren’t for his untimely death. Byron writes, “A man looks upon a day-old female corpse Greece! Her past inspires, but her present is without soul” ( Byron 68-102). He believes as Lady Montagu does, that Ancient Greece has a spark that the present doesn’t. He calls it a corpse, telling us that what he once admired is now dead and cannot be replaced. Lady Montagu and Lord Byron both have an idealization of the Hellenic past that they are attached to and seem to obsess over redundantly.

Poetic Interpretations of Greece

Arlyne Gonzalez

Lady Mary and Lord Byron both encompassed distinct perspectives on Greece. Lady Mary romanticized Greece’s past through Hellenism when she says, “I admired the exact geography of Homer, whom I had in my hand” (185). Lady Mary admired Greece’s geography because it represented a sense of nostalgia and an escape from her restricted aristocratic status back in Europe. At times, she was very consumed by these geographies and their meanings, which she mentioned, “but I forget myself in these historical touches, which are very impertinent when I write to you” (188). The fact that Lady Mary gets lost in her consumption of these Greek fantasies was because she was immersed in its mountainous and the Aegean Sea areas that are “fruitful in cotton, corn, and silk, planted with groves of orange and lemon trees” (189).  It can be argued that Lady Mary viewed Greece’s poetic geography of Greece as the Garden of Eden, a paradise that allowed her to practice escapism from her dull reality and being able to enjoy its riches such as the corn and fruit trees. Lady Mary invited Greek Hellenism into her life along with its customs to bring amusement into her life. 

On the other hand, Lord Byron’s poetic invocation of a personified feminine Greece differs from Lady Mary’s poetic geography because he views Greece as a “loveliness in death” (96). Meaning, Lord Byron was fixated on the concept of death. In line 95, he says “we start, for the soul is wanting there”. This alerts the reader that Lord Byron is referring to a dead woman, specifically, her soulless corpse.  Upon further reading, he also mentions: “But beauty with that fearful bloom, that hue which haunts it to the tomb” (lines 97-98). The utilization of the words: “loveliness” and “beauty” hints that Lord Byron is romanticizing death, and the word “haunts” is signifying the reader that the narrator is not letting the corpse rest in peace, on the contrary, the corpse is being pursued and toyed with in some way. The begging question is: what could the narrator possibly want to do with a corpse? This is an exceedingly disturbing assumption; however, the choice of diction and imagery leads the reader to carry the notion that the narrator wants to perform necrophilia with the corpse. The narrator often associates a “loveliness” with the dead because it sees “beauty” within this soulless body. Therefore, Lady Mary’s poetic geography of Greece differs from Lord Byron’s poetic invocation of a personified feminine Greece because Lady Mary appreciated Greek Hellenism for its nostalgic historical touches, whereas Lord Byron encompassed a more sinister and disturbing interpretation of it.

Leila’s Metamorphosis

Portrait of Lord Byron

Lines 352-387 describes a Muslim boatman”Emir,” who allows the Giaour passage onto his boat. The Giaour instructs the boatman to go into the deep waters, the bundled package is what we assume to be Leila.

“The burthen ye so gently bear,
Seems one that claims your utmost care,
And, doubtless, holds some precious freight—…” (Lines 361-363)

The boatman describes the Giaour’s emotions and burden in holding the bundled parcel, and can only assume how precious it must be to him by the way he is holding it. He sympathizes with the Giaour and how hard of a task it must have been for him and though it might not have literally been his longest journey, in theory it feels like it.

“Still less and less, a speck of white
That gemmed the tide, then mocked the sight;
And all its hidden secrets sleep,
Known but to Genii of the deep,
Which, trembling in their coral caves,
They dare not whisper to the waves.” (Lines 382-387)

The particular passage kind of reminds me of the ending of the titanic, the object of his affection sinking into the depths of the ocean. These lines in particular are interesting because it seems like Leila transforms in the rhetoric of the poem from a human into pearl and coral, vanishing into the realm of the seas ‘hidden secrets’. I think an explanation for Leila’s metamorphoses would be Byron’s inability to see death as an end or that death is only a possibility to be reborn (his obsession with vampires for example)– it’s his way of keeping her alive in a sense.

Greek Hellenism

There are influences of Hellenism in both Lady Mary’s 45th letter and Lord Byron’s poem, “The Giaour.” They both fantasize over the beauty of Ancient Greece, with Lord Byron’s depictions being more feminine and nostalgic as compared to Lady Mary, who’s poem evokes a feeling more of sadness. There was no visceral connection only the thoughts that fill her mind are seeing the Ottoman occupied Greece. Both writers invoke sadness in their writings of the beautiful Ancient Greece they remember, for Lady Mary it became nothing more than “ruins… inhabited by Greek peasants.” (Montagu, 184) Lady Mary’s despise of the new inhabitants of Greece is very apparent, and she doesn’t hold back when describing them saying, “They’re not all black …all mulattos, and the most frightful creatures that can appear in a human figure.” (191)
In “The Giaour,” there is a passage that describes the destructive force of the Ottoman Occupation, it describes their lack of respect for the land.
“Against the seraphs they assail’d,
And, fix’d on heavenly thrones, should dwell The freed inheritors of hell;
So soft the scene, so form’d for joy,
So curst the tyrants that destroy! ” (Lines 65-70)

Lord Byron’s tone in “The Giaour,” differs from Lady Mary’s in its femininity and the fact that he has a firsthand and deeper connection with Greece whereas Lady Mary’s experience with Greece is only from her imagination and her knowledge of Ancient Grecian history. The idea of romantic and beautiful Ancient Greece compared to the modern Greece they described under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire is definitely an example of Orientalism. In the poem, I think that Lord Byron is represented by “the Giaour,” which is a defined as a non-Muslim, fighting against Hassan. The idea of Hassan versus the Giaour is an example of the conflicts of Orientalism and conflicting ideologies, the Giaour being the east and Hassan being the west.