The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 22, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #60 ｜ Childe Harold's Pilgrimage with Rory： Part IV


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

149.91

Word count

3,612

Sentence count

108

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 And so I'd like to start the discussion about Canto 4, actually, with some of Byron's own words.
00:00:20.960 And there's two parts that I wanted to read. This particular issue prefaces where he says
00:00:28.560 to his old friend and travelling companion, Hobhouse, he says,
00:00:33.040 My dear Hobhouse,
00:00:34.520 After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold,
00:00:39.840 the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public.
00:00:43.640 Imparting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,
00:00:50.120 to one whom has beheld the birth and death of the other,
00:00:53.380 and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship
00:00:58.200 than, though not ungrateful, I can or could be to child Harold
00:01:03.100 for any public favour reflected through the poem On the Poet.
00:01:08.280 To one whom I have known long and accompanied far,
00:01:12.140 whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow,
00:01:16.780 glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity,
00:01:20.640 true in counsel and trusty in peril,
00:01:22.560 to a friend often tried and never found wanting, to yourself.
00:01:28.020 And again, I just think that's such a remarkable passage.
00:01:31.580 I don't think AA would like it.
00:01:33.200 It hasn't got full stock for half the power.
00:01:36.720 There's something as well here about the fact that people actually just wore their hearts on their sleeves far more.
00:01:45.160 In today, it almost feels like we're scared to communicate to one another how deeply we actually feel about one another.
00:01:54.880 and part of this is because of how restrictive and reductive the use of English language has
00:02:03.020 become. People simply just don't know how to write like this anymore. But I think the two
00:02:08.200 actually go hand in hand with one another. I think that people are afraid to convey,
00:02:13.460 because again, this is a lifelong friend and that the language reflects this.
00:02:18.760 Also, I think there's probably hangups just left over from Victorian polite society as well.
00:02:23.180 yeah if i wrote that to you and someone else saw it be like yeah but that was weird day yeah right 0.58
00:02:29.600 yeah you would yeah be like a gay but but there is something wonderful about it and i think that this
00:02:36.320 is it reflects just in that one paragraph the sort of man that byron was like everything he was 0.69
00:02:42.880 a sensitive young man right and everything that he felt he felt extremely deeply whether it be
00:02:50.520 friendship or vengeance or whatever it may be it was an email yeah and then there's one more thing
00:02:56.020 that i just wanted to draw on as well because this comes back to something we were discussing
00:03:00.200 the very beginning in part one of this discussion which is that with regard to the conduct of the
00:03:05.920 last canto there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding and that little
00:03:11.920 slightly if at all separated from the author speaking in his own person the fact is that i
00:03:18.320 become weary of drawing a line which everyone seemed determined not to perceive. Like the
00:03:23.980 Chinese and goldsmith citizen of the world, whom nobody would believe to be Chinese, it was in vain
00:03:30.100 that I asserted and imagined that I had drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim,
00:03:35.560 and the very anxiety to preserve this difference and disappointment at finding it unavailing,
00:03:41.200 so far crushed my efforts in the composition that I determined to abandon it altogether and have
00:03:47.060 done so. The opinions which have been or may be formed on that subject are now a matter of
00:03:53.540 indifference. The work is to depend on itself and not on the writer and the author, who has no
00:03:59.900 resource in his own mind beyond the reputation transient or permanent, which is to arise from
00:04:06.260 his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. So you can see him just being like, all right,
00:04:11.780 fine if you're going to insist that there's no distinction between harold and me then i will just
00:04:18.220 do away with any pretense but it's like it's still saying i insist that there was yeah a distinction
00:04:24.520 i believe him yeah i do believe him well you know what you are right and i i believe it too and i've
00:04:31.980 thought about this more and i think one of the things that it reflects upon is the fact that in
00:04:37.500 many ways even from the beginning i think in part one harold i think represented the man that byron
00:04:44.680 wished he was yeah that's who he represents he is a man who yeah fine and you know uh lived up
00:04:52.440 a life of hedonism in london but byron always wished he could be harold that he could pull
00:04:58.580 away from those glorious or tragic you know fits of passion and ecstasy and actually just draw him
00:05:06.920 himself out into the land of nature and wonder, beyond temptation, beyond corruption, so that he
00:05:14.960 could live a more Christian existence, because it tortured him. And Byron always, for whatever
00:05:22.020 people think of him and the people that he surrounded himself by, people purely atheists
00:05:26.360 like Percy Shelley, Byron did always insist on his religiosity. He always insisted on his being
00:05:33.980 a believer and got very defensive when people tried to strike against him on that note.
00:05:40.080 And so, yeah, he longs to be this stoic Harold who could break free from these passions,
00:05:45.000 but never could, really.
00:05:46.960 And so, of course, this brings us to the final canto, the longest canto.
00:05:52.240 And because it's running up to five, the one we'll have to cover in the shortest amount
00:05:56.980 of time.
00:05:58.080 But challenge accepted.
00:05:59.180 Yeah, it's probably my least favorite, apart from the end, it's probably my least favorite canto anyway.
00:06:04.620 Really?
00:06:05.340 Yeah, I just find it a bit. It goes on a bit.
00:06:09.820 It is extensive. It is very extensive.
00:06:13.020 Let's begin with, as we always do, stanza one, shall we?
00:06:18.380 I stood in Venice on the bridge of sighs, a palace and a prison on each hand.
00:06:23.660 I saw from out the wave her structures rise, as from the stroke of the enchanter's wand,
00:06:29.020 A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
00:06:32.100 Around me, and their dying glory smiles
00:06:35.120 O'er the far times when many a subject land
00:06:38.340 Look to the winged lion's marble piles 0.68
00:06:41.120 Where Venice's Satan state
00:06:43.020 Throned on her hundred isles
00:06:45.280 And he goes on, so he begins by just talking about
00:06:48.720 the pure enchantment
00:06:51.200 that the very word Venice summons
00:06:54.180 in the minds of people
00:06:56.120 And he talks about the castle and the prison, right?
00:07:00.300 And so you have two things on there at the same time.
00:07:03.720 They're both symbolic.
00:07:04.680 One is symbolic, of course, of the majesty
00:07:07.600 and the civilizational grandeur of Venice.
00:07:11.300 And then you have the prison,
00:07:13.320 and it's really talking about how crushing Venice now is.
00:07:19.480 It's talking about how these two things always work in tandem.
00:07:23.460 On the one hand, you have this great civilizational vitality, but at the same time there, because you have civilisation, you must always have suppression as well.
00:07:34.340 And this is, because you are right, it goes on for a very, very long time.
00:07:39.700 So just to kind of go through some of the main talking points of what Byron discusses here, he talks a lot about Tasso, talks about Tuquatu Tasso.
00:07:50.620 He begins to talk about Dante when he goes to Florence.
00:07:55.940 He begins to talk about Boccaccio, and he begins to talk about Petrarch,
00:08:01.140 who was a very, very famous poet and someone that I've spoken about briefly before,
00:08:06.960 very famous for the Petrarchian sonnet, which Shakespeare employs in Romeo and Juliet
00:08:12.840 to convey why they fought, very, very clever language by Shakespeare employs
00:08:19.020 to explain why they fall in love at first sight,
00:08:22.300 and he does it through a Petrachian sonnet.
00:08:25.720 And, of course, Dante needs no introduction.
00:08:28.000 He's one of the most famous poets of all time,
00:08:30.200 but also a writer who was very much persecuted in his own time
00:08:33.560 and found himself exiled from his own Florence.
00:08:36.920 Was there a amount of Dante to Byron as well?
00:08:40.420 Well, this is the overarching themes, isn't it?
00:08:43.200 Whenever he's talking about these writers,
00:08:45.280 He's always talking about a society that wishes to crush individual creativity, people who have minds of their own.
00:08:57.040 Because on the one hand, innovation is remarkable.
00:09:03.680 Innovations in war, innovations in agriculture, all of these things can lead to productivity and can lead to abundance and can...
00:09:13.520 Freedom.
00:09:13.800 freedom, all these sorts of things. But civilization also requires a certain level of conformity
00:09:21.720 as well. And this is one of the things that he talks about towards the end of Canto 3,
00:09:27.000 with the storm, how the storm is a storm on its own terms. It doesn't have to
00:09:33.280 satiate the opinions of this man or this institution. It just gets to be its authentic
00:09:40.480 self and so he's constantly referring back to nature again using that natural imagery to bring
00:09:47.240 about these moral points but then we also have of course the question of decline yes and which is
00:09:54.460 of course very prominent and i've made a note here to read from uh stanza 11 so i'll go to that
00:10:02.980 the spouseless adriatic mourns her lord and annual marriage now no more renewed the book and tear
00:10:10.080 Lies rotting unrestored
00:10:12.240 Neglected garment of her widowhood 0.97
00:10:14.600 Saint Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
00:10:17.760 Stand but in mockery of his withered power
00:10:20.660 Over the proud place where an emperor sued
00:10:23.000 And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
00:10:25.580 When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower
00:10:28.860 The Swabians sued and now the Austrian reigns
00:10:32.240 An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt
00:10:34.580 Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces
00:10:36.420 And chains clank over sceptered cities
00:10:39.240 Nations melt from power's high pinnacle
00:10:42.400 When they have felt the sunshine for a while and downward go
00:10:46.160 Like lawine loosened from the mountain's belt
00:10:49.580 Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo
00:10:53.200 The octogenarian chief Byzantium's conquering foe 0.97
00:10:57.080 Before Saint Mark still glow his steeds of brass
00:11:00.580 Their gilded colours glittering in the sun 0.83
00:11:03.440 But is not Doria's menace come to pass? 0.98
00:11:06.600 Are they not bridled, Venice, lost and won? Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done
00:11:12.620 Sinks like a seaweed, into went she rose 0.99
00:11:15.820 Better be whelmed beneath the waves and shun 1.00
00:11:18.480 Even in destruction's depths her foreign foes 1.00
00:11:21.540 From whom submission rings an infamous repose 0.98
00:11:24.800 So again, just obviously every stanza is written with enviably beautiful language
00:11:31.480 Every single one of them
00:11:33.060 But as well here, I mean, he's talking about the fact that Venice was not just some small city state.
00:11:42.300 It was a place that, because of its maritime power, punched above its weight time and time again.
00:11:50.020 A lot like, not just similar to Scotland, you know, as a nation that has always historically punched above its own weight.
00:11:56.840 When you look at the raw logistics of what it had to deal with,
00:12:02.200 You look at the Scottish landscape and stuff like that.
00:12:05.560 And here as well, the fact that Venice is a city born out of the water.
00:12:10.420 You look at what it began with.
00:12:13.040 And the fact that, as he harkens on here with old Enrico Dandolo,
00:12:18.300 Bo and I, in my younger years, before I joined full time,
00:12:22.800 we talked about the Fourth Crusade and Dandolo's part in it.
00:12:26.420 And look, on the one hand, Dandolo was a remarkable figure,
00:12:30.140 a man over 90 years old i haven't read about him oh well he was over 90 years old when the crusaders
00:12:36.860 of the fourth crusade came to him and told him oh um if you will we've come here we all want to go
00:12:43.580 to the holy land to retake jerusalem and he basically says to them well we'll we'll have a
00:12:48.540 deal i will you will pay me 33 000 francs whatever florins i can't remember what it was um and i
00:12:56.460 will build you this number of ships." And essentially, one thing leads to another,
00:13:01.660 escalation of events. Christians end up sacking the Christian city of Zarda, modern-day Croatia, 0.89
00:13:09.660 and then obviously ends up leading to the sack of Constantinople. And so, 0.75
00:13:14.860 obviously, morally repugnant to be killing another set of Christian, another Christian kingdom, 0.80
00:13:21.580 and weak at crippling a key Christian power, regardless of Greek Orthodox distinction, 0.94
00:13:27.660 whatever it may be, and weakening it in such a way that the Optimans were able to obviously end
00:13:34.300 up walking over it. But the fact is that Dandolo, remarks on here as well, the gilded collars,
00:13:42.700 steeds of brass. Dandolo, once he arrived in Constantinople himself, was responsible for one
00:13:50.540 of the worst cultural vandalisms of all time up there with nero and the burning of rome up there
00:13:58.860 with the french revolution uh up there with henry the eighth and the monasteries i mean you're
00:14:04.520 looking at a man who was burning down the brasses and riches of antiquity right just to but byron's
00:14:12.280 making a point this from this one city-state of venice this is a state that changed the world
00:14:19.980 Yeah. Yeah. And now it finds itself subjugated. And so he goes through all of these points about
00:14:26.500 decline and he goes on to, I simply don't have time to read every stanza again, always goes
00:14:31.920 without saying, I very much encourage people to read these things for themselves after you've
00:14:37.640 heard us analyze them. But then we get this very, very romantic part in stanza 19, where he just
00:14:45.280 says, I can re-people with the past, and of the present there is stiller for eye and thought,
00:14:51.080 and meditation chastened down enough, and more it may be than I hoped or sought, and of the happiest
00:14:56.880 moments which wrought, within the web of my existence, some from thee, fair Venice, have
00:15:03.000 their colours caught. There are some feelings time cannot be numb, nor torture shake or mind would
00:15:09.460 now be cold and numb but from their nature will the tannin grow loftiest on loftiest and lest
00:15:15.960 least sheltered rocks rooted in barrenness where naught below of soil supports them against the
00:15:22.160 alpine shocks of eddying storms yet spring the trunk and mocks the howling tempest till its
00:15:28.980 heightened frame are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks of bleak gray granite into life it
00:15:35.520 came and grew a giant tree the mind may grow the same i really love this idea that he lifts on of
00:15:41.760 just re-peopling the past right and he just says to himself you you must have done this you're a
00:15:49.740 romantic man like i am you you must have just sat somewhere just in quiet contemplation imagine
00:15:55.200 imagined yeah just seeing the ghosts of the people walking before you putting the old stones back on
00:16:02.160 the broken castle and trying to picture it i think it's about toying me in the last episode
00:16:08.880 yeah yeah when i go to places like um london paddington or whatever i think about right
00:16:16.120 yeah yeah even in places where there's not even sign of decay yeah one could argue about london
00:16:22.520 paddington being a sign of decay but you know what i mean like it's not just relegated to
00:16:27.680 a derelict civilization, it's also just things that seem in good order around us now.
00:16:35.480 And you think about, okay, but when people stood here centuries ago, what would this
00:16:41.800 spot have looked like then?
00:16:43.360 Yeah.
00:16:44.360 And it's a very healthy thing to do.
00:16:45.860 Yeah, yeah.
00:16:46.860 Just as a... 0.93
00:16:47.860 It's quite a gothic thing to do as well.
00:16:49.200 Yeah, well...
00:16:50.200 You talk about ghosts.
00:16:51.200 Yeah.
00:16:52.200 We're gothic beings, aren't we?
00:16:53.200 You and I.
00:16:54.200 begins to talk about Laura and Petrarch, and obviously Laura as well. Petrarch had this
00:17:01.080 woman, this ideal woman who he named Laura, that he always wrote these romantic sonnets about,
00:17:08.540 and it was always supposed to be a form of unrequited love. And so there is also something
00:17:15.020 here in the romantic sense of civilization as well. There's a romance for something that you
00:17:20.160 cannot have, whether it be in a woman or whether it be in some old greatness that no longer exists.
00:17:28.980 And obviously he relates this to Tasso as well. And then he also begins to, as it goes much further
00:17:35.140 through, as he talks about all of these great writers that have inspired him. I mean, he goes
00:17:40.160 on to say, it's very personal with it. He says, you know, I dreamt of Venice since I was a boy,
00:17:44.540 you know and we all have those places i've still got plenty that i've dreamt to visit ever since i
00:17:52.340 was a child that i still haven't seen and one of the things that i suppose is quite encouraging
00:17:56.800 for a man like byron is the fact that actually when he arrived in venice despite everything he's
00:18:02.540 saying he wasn't actually disappointed well unlike he was with grace right yeah yes he was actually
00:18:09.500 he found venice to be very enrapturing he found it to be very very beautiful
00:18:14.240 yeah and even with its decay the decay actually um you know worked within the quality and charm
00:18:22.420 of the place itself he was able to to synthesize these two things so i want to talk about
00:18:28.020 just an aside i want to talk about spengler because i think this emphasizes the point
00:18:33.320 You know, obviously we think of a linear history from antiquity up to the modern day, whereas Spengler splits it into different civilizations, you know, Magian, the classical civilization, Western, Faustian civilization.
00:18:48.780 Right.
00:18:48.900 So I found it interesting that Byron goes to Greece and he kind of finds it alien in a sense.
00:18:55.200 You know, he doesn't describe it like that, but you can tell there's this alienation between what he's seeing and this ideal he's built in his head.
00:19:03.320 Whereas when he goes to Venice, which is very much part of Western civilization in Spengler's throne,
00:19:09.860 which really begins around 1400s or whatever, he has an affinity with it.
00:19:17.800 So, yeah, I just wanted to throw an aside in there.
00:19:20.660 Why does he make the distinction between Greece and Rome?
00:19:23.740 Because he's obviously not being the precursor and the Romans adopting so much of Greek culture.
00:19:29.160 Because he sees it as, it starts with mathematics, basically.
00:19:31.840 He talks about how different civilizations or cultures,
00:19:35.980 it begins with cultures.
00:19:37.200 So there's a cultural seed,
00:19:38.520 which then has its own predeterminate life cycle,
00:19:42.020 which then ends with civilization as a Caesar-like figure.
00:19:48.220 In the Roman case, or in the classical case, literally Caesar,
00:19:51.660 who then signals the end of that civilization.
00:19:55.500 It collapses into the state of the Fellaheen
00:19:58.700 and then another culture or seed on the periphery begins. 0.51
00:20:03.700 So with Greek and Roman civilization,
00:20:07.700 he talks about Euclidean geometry, right?
00:20:12.700 So Greek temples and obviously Roman architecture
00:20:16.700 comes from Greek architecture, really.
00:20:19.700 Sure.
00:20:20.700 So it's very much about the internal cellar
00:20:22.700 and then very logically set out columns and forms.
00:20:32.780 That's kind of this bounded space, right?
00:20:38.560 That's what defines the Roman and Greek culture or civilization.
00:20:48.000 When that disappears and you have the Gothic thing coming up,
00:20:51.460 what's gothic architecture that's how you see it really it's about it's more about um non-euclidean
00:20:58.940 space i.e massive soaring heights loads of light caused by buttressing right vice versa so there's
00:21:07.940 like very much a different ethos in these in these cultures and civilizations and you can map that
00:21:14.180 and you can see where really one civilization died and another began so in that sense it's not really
00:21:20.080 linear progression it's more about there's always barbarians on the on the outside this gets more
00:21:25.280 into um toy me but there's always a vital barbarian culture on the outside which is always waiting to 0.56
00:21:31.760 come in and sweep up right the detritus of the civilization which came before it um yeah i a bit 0.98
00:21:40.800 like um i suppose what alexander the great to the persian empire yeah because it was suffering so
00:21:46.240 much and basically the wheels were coming off it by that point again it's not really a linear
00:21:51.280 progression it's more uh like literally different things you know in the same way that you can't
00:21:58.560 embody what the roman would have thought because you're not a roman no right so again this is has
00:22:05.600 implications for the renaissance and the enlightenment you know they thought they were
00:22:11.680 returning to the classical world whereas actually you're creating a idol of it
00:22:19.200 which is very much inflected with the western way of thinking western meaning northern european
00:22:26.000 basically yeah by the barbarians yeah but it's interesting though because obviously byron on a
00:22:32.480 personal level um does feel some sense of continuity there yeah he does obviously see
00:22:39.760 there is something of a grand arc from Cicero to him.
00:22:45.200 Yeah, and of course there is. But there is merit to what Spengler says.
00:22:50.240 But where people say this side of the political sphere is pessimistic,
00:22:55.840 in the sense that our civilisation eventually are going to die,
00:22:59.520 where actually it's more like a sine wave. I think, because I follow Pagel and whatnot,
00:23:05.680 it's moving to a definitive point
00:23:08.440 just because
00:23:10.640 one civilization dies doesn't mean
00:23:12.420 it's not part of the same course of history
00:23:14.260 there is one history
00:23:16.460 with many different
00:23:18.540 forces
00:23:20.400 acting within it, it doesn't mean everything's
00:23:22.660 going to end one day
00:23:24.140 if you enjoyed this piece of premium
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00:23:35.680 Thank you.