‘Heaven’s Brandy’

Apparently resolutely of this world, Byron is often viewed as an ‘outsider’ puncturing any residual pretensions of Romanticism, an intelligent man but ‘no philosopher’. But this position pretends to a detachment to eternity that the work never has. Byron might dispose of philosophical theories of eternity but not of eternity itself. Byron’s protean and shifting approach to eternity sees him experiment with finding a means to articulate what eternity can signify to a mortal poet. Byron does not argue in favour of a specific version of eternity, even sometimes denying its existence entirely in early letters, but toys with, and even embraces, a number of philosophical possibilities. Flashing between positions, Byron explores eternity’s clash with and attraction for humanity, moving from position to position, without resting in false certainty.