Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a narrative poem by famed Romantic poet Lord Byron. The first section, or canto, of the poem was published in 1812, the final one in 1818. Spanning four cantos, the poem follows the travels of Childe Harold, a dissipated and world-wearied young man who travels the world seeking for something that even he isn't quite able to articulate. Harold has a licentious and troubling, although vague, past, and according to Byron's narration, is ultimately running from an unnamed trauma. The term “childe” refers to a medieval title for a noble young man preparing for knighthood. Byron infuses the entire poem, although largely the first two cantos, with a corresponding medieval feel by using archaic language. By the end of the final canto, however, these affectations have been notably restrained, and Byron's poetry takes on a more natural cadence and vocabulary.

In the first canto of Childe Harold, we meet Harold as he seeks to escape his hedonistic past by leaving England. He goes suddenly, without saying goodbye to any of his beloved family or friends – his only goodbye is to his page. He departs first for Portugal, and from there embarks on a pilgrimage to numerous battlegrounds across Europe. The narrator frequently flies off on political tangents: England had, in Byron's day, recently helped Spain prevent the encroachment of Napoleon I, and Byron had a lot to say about the matter. Surveying the ruin left in Napoleon's wake, Byron eulogizes those who died resisting Napoleon's tyranny. He is particularly taken with the women of Spain's Aragon region, who fought alongside their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons against Napoleon. While in Spain, Harold watches a bullfight that makes a huge impact upon him: he is torn between admiration and disgust at the, albeit elegant, brutality of the event. Overall, Harold is characterized as deeply melancholic, unable to partake in the joy around him; he laments the dark secret that keeps him restless and apart from the rest of humankind.

In the second canto, Harold makes his way to Greece. His view of the Acropolis in Athens gives Byron the opportunity to discourse on the ancient Greeks and their contributions to civilization. Harold cannot help but compare the glories of the ancient Greek monuments to their much less noble present-day situation. Indeed, the extent of humankind’s fall from the heights of the ancients is a recurring and important theme of Byron's. This canto is also notable for including some of the first reputable descriptions of Albania in English literature.



In the third canto, Byron cautions that much has changed with his protagonist Harold since the first two cantos were published. Historically, this is often connected with Byron's own precarious position at the time: after the failure of his marriage, and accusations of incest between Byron and his half-sister Augusta, his reputation was irreparably damaged, and he fled England. The strain of his personal life seems to surface in the third canto in the form a new, darker, bitterer Harold. Seeking to free himself from the entailments of social life, Harold seeks solace in wild nature. He feels a rapport with the wild places of the earth. In France, he visits the site of the Battle of Waterloo, and again his thoughts turn political and philosophical. Later, at Lake Leman (today Lake Geneva), he reflects on French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. In this canto, Harold also considers the works and philosophies of Wordsworth and Shelley (the latter being a real-world friend of Byron's), and in particular their meditations on nature (with which he cannot bring himself, in the end, to agree). Harold cannot shake his sense of isolation and estrangement from other humans; although he holds out hope that goodness yet remains in the world, claiming not to be a complete cynic.

In the fourth canto, Harold is in Italy. He begins in Venice, whose decay does not diminish its beauty because of its exceptional spirit. In Rome, Harold finally dies. Byron, intruding again into the poem, admits a certain amount of regret over having left England, expressing his wish that he will be remembered among his countrymen. He avows that his soul will always belong to England and one day will return to it. The canto ends, famously, with one of the most quoted sections of Childe Harold:
Byron's address to the ocean.

Childe Harold inaugurated the literary archetype of the “Byronic hero,” a darkly glamorous figure – reminiscent of Lord Byron himself, and later iterated in several of his other works – characterized by his charisma, moodiness, and mysterious past. Debates about how much Harold was simply a literary avatar for Byron himself raged even during his day, and in the preface to the fourth canto, he addresses the controversy directly. The topic continues to draw interest among scholars. Regardless, Childe Harold stands as one of the most idiosyncratic and enduring of Romantic works, and one that, incidentally, emphasizes the importance of travel to the development and growth of the self in a way that seems strikingly modern.