With Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, the man Byron had idolized since his youth meets an inglorious end, and with him, Byron’s hopes for a new age. He laments: ‘I am utterly bewildered and confounded’! After such disappointment, how does Byron view his fallen hero?
In ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte’ (1814), Byron summons a cast of characters from history, mythology, fact and fable, searching for some counterpart for Napoleon who can ‘dazzle and dismay’, and represent both the best and worst of humanity. ‘Weigh’d in the balance’, Byron writes, ‘hero dust is vile as vulgar clay’. This paper goes through the Ode, introducing Byron’s dramatis personae and discussing what they reveal about Byron’s imagination.
In a final twist, however, less than a year since the Ode, Napoleon escapes from exile in a sensational return to power. As he looms over Europe again, how will Byron’s characterizations hold up?