|
''The Vision of Judgment'' (1822) is a satirical poem in ottava rima by Lord Byron, which depicts a dispute in Heaven over the fate of George III's soul. It was written in response to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey's ''A Vision of Judgement'' (1821), which had imagined the soul of king George triumphantly entering Heaven to receive his due. Byron was provoked by the High Tory point of view from which the poem was written, and he took personally Southey's preface which had attacked those "Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations" who had set up a "Satanic school" of poetry, "characterized by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety". He responded in the preface to his own ''Vision of Judgment'' with an attack on "The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem", and mischievously referred to Southey as "the author of ''Wat Tyler''", an anti-royalist work from Southey's firebrand revolutionary youth. His parody of ''A Vision of Judgement'' was so lastingly successful that, as the critic Geoffrey Carnall wrote, "Southey's reputation has never recovered from Byron's ridicule."〔Geoffrey Carnall, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. H. Harrison (eds.) ''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 51, pp. 698–9; ''The Poetical Works of Robert Southey'' (Paris: Galignani, 1829) p. 587〕 == Synopsis == Byron's poem is set in Heaven, where we find that the carnage of the Napoleonic Wars has placed a massive workload on the Recording Angel, though since most of the dead have been damned St. Peter has little to do. After "a few short years of hollow peace"〔Line 49〕 comes the death of George III, whom the poet describes as, …although no tyrant, one A cherub brings the news of the king's death to St. Peter, and George III then arrives accompanied by Lucifer, the archangel Michael and an angelic host. Lucifer claims him for Hell, portraying him as a friend of tyrants and an enemy of liberty: "He ever warr'd with freedom and the free".〔Line 353〕 In support of this view Lucifer calls the John Wilkes's shade as witness, who however declines to give evidence against the king, claiming that his ministers were more to blame. The soul of the pseudonymous pamphleteer Junius is then summoned, and on being asked for his opinion of king George, replies "I loved my country, and I hated him."〔Line 664〕 Lastly the demon Asmodeus produces Robert Southey himself, whom he has abducted from his earthly home. Southey gives an account of his own history, which Byron thus summarises: He had written praises of a regicide; Southey then begins reading from his ''Vision of Judgement'', but before he has got further than the first few lines the angels and devils flee in disgust, and St. Peter knocks the poet down so that he falls back to Derwent Water: He first sank to the bottom – like his works, George III meanwhile takes advantage of the confusion to slip into Heaven unnoticed, and begins practising the hundredth psalm. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Vision of Judgment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|