Comparative Literature

XXVII. "Fair young man! thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain --a ghastly token -- And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be grey, Dark although to-night thy tresses be!"

XXVIII. "Mother! hear, oh hear my last entreaty! Let the funeral-pile arise once more; Open up my wretched tomb for pity, And in flames our souls to peace restore. When the ashes glow, When the fire-sparks flow, To the ancient god."

John Polidori

The Vampyre

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM GENEVA.

"I breathe freely in the neighbourhood of this lake; the ground upon which I read has been subdued from the earliest ages; the principal objects which immediately strike my eye, bring to my recollection scenes, in which man acted the hero and was the chief object of interest. Not to look back to earlier times of battles and sieges, here is the bust of Rousseau -- here is a house with an inscription denoting"

The Genevan philosopher first drew breath under its roof. A littlethe literary tradition of boththe Enlightenment and the out of the town is Ferney, the residence of Voltaire; where that2 3Romanticism. wonderful, though certainly in many respects contemptible,character, received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims, notonly from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries ofEurope. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the4house of that astonishing woman Madame de Stael : perhaps the first5of her sex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with, thenobler man. We have before had women who have writteninteresting-novels and poems, in which their tact at observingdrawing-room characters has availed them; but never since the days ofHeloise have those faculties which arc peculiar to man, been developed6as the possible inheritance of woman. Though even here, as in the caseof Heloise, our sex have not been backward in alledging theexistence of

An Abeilard in the person of M. Schlegel as the inspirer of her works. But to proceed: upon the same side of the lake, Gibbon, Bonnivard, Bradshaw, and others mark, as it were, the stages for our progress; whilst upon the other side there is one house,

An 18 Century Enlightenment philosopher who is believed to have said, "If there ever was in the world a warranted and proven history it is that of vampires."

A part of Geneva that lies between the Jura mountains and the Swiss border.

Another 18 Century Enlightenment philosopher from France.

A Swiss naturalist and philosopher who was born in Geneva. Bonnet believed all knowledge stemmed from sensations.

Born Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Madame de Staël was a very influential writer both in literary criticism and in politics.

A French abbess, writer, and scholar who lived in the twelfth century and was best known for her excellent reading and writing skills in all the classical languages.

In reference to the tragic

love affair between Heloise and Abelard in which Heloise’s uncle tears the two lovers apart.

Gibbon was a member of English Parliament as well as a historian who wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Bonnivard was another historian whose life became the inspiration for Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon.”

built by Diodati, the friend of Milton. which has contained within On the other side of the lake there is Villa Diodato, its walls, for several months, that poet whom we have so often read together, and who--if human passions remain the same, and human feelings, like chords, on being swept by nature’s impulses shall vibrate as before--will be placed by posterity in the first rank of our English Poets. You must have heard, or the Third Canto of Childe Harold will have informed you, that Lord Byron resided many months in this neighbourhood. I went with some friends

the lake in an English boat. There is a balcony from the saloonwhich looks upon the lake and the mountain Jura; and I imagine, thatit must have been hence, he contemplated the storm so magnificentlydescribed in the Third Canto; for you have from here a mostextensive view of all the points he has therein depicted. I can fancyhim like the scathed pine, whilst all around was sunk to repose, stillwaking to observe, what gave but a weak image of the storms whichhad desolated his own breast.

The sky is changed!--and such a change; Oh, night!

The Third Canto by Lord Byron is herereported. These verses focus on a storm And storm and darkness, ye are wond’rous strong,(some verses describe the environment Yet lovely in your strength, as is the lightand the places one could see lookingout of the villas). Of a dark eye in woman! Far alongFrom peak to peak, the rattling crags among,Leaps the lire thunder! Not from one lone cloud,But every mountain now hath found a tongue,And Jura answers

thro’ her misty shroud,Back to the joyous Alps who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night:--Most glorious night!

Diodati was the first theologian to translate the Bible from Greek and9Hebrew sources into Italian.

Milton was a poet most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Treasure; money.

Thou wer’t not sent for slumber! let me beA sharer in thy far and fierce delight,--A portion of the tempest and of me!

How the lit lake shines a phosphoric sea,And the big rain comet dancing to the earth!And now again ‘tis black,--and now the gleeOf the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,As if they did rejoice o’er a young; earthquake’s birth,

Now where the swift Rhine cleaves his way betweenHeights which appear, as lovers who have partedIn haste, whose mining depths so intervene,That they can meet no more, tho’ broken hearted;Tho’ in their souls which thus each other thwarted,Love was the very root of the fond rageWhich blighted their

life's bloom, and then departed--Itself expired, but leaving; them an ageOf years all winter--war within themselves to wage. 12

I went down to the little port, if I may use the expression, wherein hisvessel used to lay, and conversed with the cottager, who had the careof it. You may smile, but I have my pleasure in thus helping myAfter having imagined that Lord personification of the individual I admire, by attaining to theByron had written these verses knowledge of those circumstances which were daily around him. Ithere, the writer tries to find moreinformation about Lord Byron's have made numerous enquiries in the town concerning him, but canlife on the lake. After numerousenquiries he has learnt nothing, learn nothing. He only went into society there once, when M. Pictetexcept one fact about Byron's lifein society: he only went into took him to the house of a lady to spend the evening. They say he is asociety once. very singular man, and seem to think him very uncivil.

Amongst other things they relate, that having invited M. Pictet and Bonstetten to dinner, he went on the lake to Chillon, leaving a gentleman who travelled with him to receive them and make his apologies. Another evening, being invited to the house of Lady D---- H, he promised to attend, but upon approaching the windows of her ladyship's villa, and perceiving the room to be full of company, he set down his friend, desiring him to plead his excuse, and immediately returned home. This will serve as a contradiction to the report which yon tell me is current in England, of his having been avoided by his countrymen on the continent. The case happens to be directly the reverse, as he has been generally sought by them, though on most occasions, apparently without success. It is said, indeed, that upon Stanzas 92-94 of Byron's Third Canto of Childe Harold

Pilgrimage.12 A castle in Switzerland between Lake Geneva and the Alps where many13writers, including Lord Byron, frequented.

paying his first visit at Coppet , following the servant who had14announced his name, he was surprised to meet a lady carried outfainting; but before he had been seated many minutes, the same lady,who had been so affected at the sound of his name, returned andconversed with him a considerable time--such is female curiosity andaffectation! He visited Coppet frequently, and of course associatedthere with several of his countrymen, who evinced no reluctance tomeet him whom his enemies alone would represent as an outcast.

Though I have been so unsuccessful in this town, I have been morefortunate in my enquiries elsewhere. There is a society three or fourmiles from Geneva, the centre of which is the Countess of Breuss, aRussian lady, well acquainted with the agrémens de la Société, andwho has collected them round herself at her mansion. It was chieflyhere,