February and The Byronic Project

February is starting with the world covered in snow. It has been constantly snowing all week long and doesn't show signs of stopping yet, which is great because I currently spend my days curled up in bed. My obligatory post-exam period illness has caught up with me, so instead of going out to celebrate I am staying in and watching the snowflakes dance outside my window.
One twelfth of the year is already over. That doesn't sound like much, but considering how quickly this time has passed it is enormous. But I am very much looking forward to February, for several reasons.


First, I am participating in Alice's readalong of Charles Dickens's Bleak House which is going to be a lot of fun judging by her readalong of Wilkie Collins's Woman in White in ye olden days.

However I am a tiny little bit worried because the goal is to read the whole 800+ pages book in February, with posts on every Tuesday between the 4th and the 18th. This will require a lot of dedication (and time, considering my tortoise's reading pace), but I have been wanting to delve into Dickens's world again for quite some time now. And I have high hopes since a friend recently especially  recommended me Bleak House upon hearing that my two favourite Dickens novels are Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.

Second, I am going abroad again! Next Friday I am leaving Austria to go to Spain for a week-long language holiday with my class. Valencia lies on the west coast, directly at the beach where it currently has 20 degrees, and is famous for its modern museums and its food, especially the delicious rice and seafood dish paella. To say I am looking forward to this week would be the understatement of the year!
And finally: I have figured out a list of books for my Byronic Project. Originally I wanted to include a lot more works which feature good Byronic heroes, but then I decided to limit the project to books which played an important role in the creation of the archetype, amongst other things due to time constraints. I would like to finish the project before the presentation of my paper in June. So the final choice of titles is this:

Paradise Lost by John Milton
Since the times of the French and American revolutions Satan has been considered the true hero of Milton's epic poem and the earliest traceable source for Byron's heroes. For the Romatics Satan is a rebel against God’s omnipotence which he regards as tyrannic, and in his hopeless rebellion against almightiness becomes a tragic character. He also displays other personality traits which will later become characteristics of the Byronic Hero: he is persuasive, passionate and charismatic, rallying the other Angels into war and, tempting Eve into tasting the Forbidden Fruit, he is also seductive.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
The first real Byronic Hero is sketched out in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narrative poem published in 1812, when Lord Byron was only 24 years old. Childe is the medieval term for a young man waiting to become a knight, although Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a contemporary nineteenth century account of a young man’s travels and worldviews, based on Lord Byron’s own travels through Europe. The protagonist is the son of a wealthy family, disillusioned and bored by his pleasant life who seeks distraction and escape from society in foreign countries.The picture Byron draws of Harold is almost that of a completed Byronic Hero, charming, wealthy, beautiful, but also dark, immoral and flawed. Harold’s great flaw is his pride and arrogance; he feels superior to all other human beings but with this superiority comes a persistent loneliness and melancholy. Because he feels so superior to society he deliberately breaks its conventions and lives by his own principles, looking for excitement in scandalous behaviour.

Manfred by Lord Byron
The hero of this epic poem is supposed to be an especially good example of the Byronic hero. He is also the first who is haunted by guilt over a crime committed in his past, a pattern that would become very popular later (Mr Rochester, anyone?).

The Vampyre by John Polidori
This short story written by Lord Byron's private physician not only has its titular hero based off Byron himself, but also came into being together with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein during an especially cold and wet summer at Byron's villa in Switzerland. It was an enormous success and sparked the vampire craze that spread throughout Europe, leading to the creation of Dracula and thereby strongly influencing our notion of the vampire as an elegant and seductive but terrifying gentleman.
 
I am very excited to better acquaint myself with these fascinating characters!

January

I'll need a new hobby to fill all the time I currently spend
dreaming about this place

Obviously I am immensely susceptible to psychologic manipulation. From two days ago to now virtually nothing has changed in my life and yet my cosy laziness of then has been replaced with busy excitement, all because of the new year. I have finally realised that it really is January, and although the first day of 2014 is in fact just a day that is hardly different from the one before, everything feels different. I am thrilled for everything this year will bring: graduation, my entry into the world of adults on my 18th birthday and university. This morning I filled in my new calender and now the dates of my final exams are hanging on the wall in red ink. What a weird feeling!

It is a little intimidating, especially since I have no idea where in the world I will be next September. Cambridge is supposed to send me their answer during the next few days and of course I am excited, even though I try not to be. Rationally I know that it can only be a rejection because while my interviews were okay (but not great), my performance at their critical thinking test was underwhelming, to put it nicely. Overall I did my best, I just can't imagine that it was enough for Cambridge, there were almost 900 brilliant applicants for just 200 places. So in order to not be disappointed I am trying to crush my hopes, but you all know how obstinate hope can be.

On a brighter note, I have started reading again! When I was standing in front of my shelves yesterday a small book I have had there untouched for over a year basically jumped at me. The Frozen Deep was written as a play by Wilkie Collins for the annual Christmas performance at Charles Dickens's house in 1856 and later reworked into a short novel. It tells the story of Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition of 1845 and, although written by Collins, Dickens apparently altered it so much that critics claimed the play should be ascribed to him rather than to his friend. Having read both authors I am curious if I can notice their separate influences. However, the reason why I am really interested in it is that The Frozen Deep inspired Dickens to write A Tale of Two Cities by creating the character of Richard Wardour who later became Sydney Carton, the most tragic byronic hero of all time. So I am excited to see where this fascinating character originated and also because no, I can't get enough of Sydney Carton.

Hopefully I will finish this short book before the readathon on Saturday, which starts at 2 pm for me thanks to the time difference. I have had a few ideas as to what to read for it, but I'll probably decide spontaneously at my whim. Right now I am mostly concerned with hiding the last Christmas cookies so that I'll have something to snack on during the night!