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An audio recording of Canto IX of Byron’s Don Juan

CatherineTheGreat

Here’s a record­ing — about 2-years old — of Can­to IX of Don Juan.

The record­ing (MP3) is in three parts. It’s best to read along with the text of the poem if you can because the verse is quite com­plex. Also please use head­phones. You’ll find the qual­i­ty much bet­ter.

[There is 5–10 sec­onds of silence at the head of each record­ing]

  1. Vers­es 1–21
  • An attack on the Duke of Welling­ton for being a Tory and a leech; too vain to know the true impact his vic­to­ries had on Euro­pean free­dom
  • An apos­tro­phe (“Death laughs..”) to death —- the sub­ject is nev­er far from the sur­face of Don Juan
  • A mean­der­ing philo­soph­i­cal rumi­na­tion on “being” that is short and wit­ty enough to hold its place in the poem
  • An abrupt tran­si­tion to…

2. Vers­es 21–42 

  • A brief glimpse of Juan en-route to St Peters­burg whose dis­tant prospect leads to…
  • An aside on autoc­ra­cy, dem­a­goguery and the abuse of pow­er that ends when Byron seems to remem­ber him­self and returns briefly to…
  • Juan on the snowy road with Leila. Short­ly after­wards, in the midst of a rhetor­i­cal fig­ure about Fame, Byron pre­tends to have lost the thread of his argu­ment and bequeathes it to pos­ter­i­ty… which results in…
  • A spec­u­la­tion about the future and how the Geor­gian era (and George IV) will appear when reduced to being the sub­ject of a future arche­ol­o­gy.
  • Then, once more, Byron pulls him­self up and deter­mines to restart the nar­ra­tive. He cuts straight­way to the court of the Empress Cather­ine where Juan is to present gen­er­al Suvorov’s dis­patch­es from the suc­cess­ful siege of Ismail.

3. Vers­es 43–85 

  • Juan’s appear­ance at Court
  • Catherine’s court, courtiers, her appear­ance, blood­i­ness and promis­cu­ity
  • Juan’s pre­sen­ta­tion to the Queen and her infat­u­a­tion with him
  • A series of asides on lust and pow­er and an apos­tro­phe, to the vagi­na
  • Juan’s flat­tered but ‘gen­tle­man­ly’ acqui­es­cence in an ‘assign­ment’ — in Catherine’s boudoir — like­ly to make him wealthy and pow­er­ful at Court
  • A clos­ing scene in which Juan is tak­en in hand by a woman who “checks-out” the Queen’s prospec­tive lovers.

I hope you enjoy the read­ing. Com­ments are wel­come.