Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, Vol. 5: Don Juan

Primitivism in British Modernism: Roger Fry and Virginia Woolf on French Post-Impressionists, African Sculpture, and the Ballets Russes

“…29 Lieven's description of Nicholas Roerich's designs for Prince Igor demonstrates the image of Russia that appealed to Western audiences: But where thermometers sunk down to ten, Or five, or one, or zero, she could never Believe that virtue thaw'd before the river. (Canto X) 38 According to Byron's narrator, life at the Russian court is excessively and chaotically luxurious, 'a hurry / Of waste, and haste, and glare, and gloss, and glitter' (Canto X). 39 At the same time, he argues that European dresses and ceremonies of the Russian nobility are only a surface, and that in an amorous 'flurry' one could see '…”

Byron and Ottoman love: Orientalism, Europeanization and same-sex sexualities in the early nineteenth-century Levant

“…Nor was Byron disappointed by his Levantine experience; the ‘vice … in all its agreeable varieties’ (Marchand, 1973a: 241) in which he indulged there confirmed his sense, as he playfully rhymed, that ‘What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, / Is much more common where the climate’s sultry’ (Byron, 1986: 29). The ‘vices in fashion … in Turkey’ are ‘Sodomy and smoking’, he wrote.…”

“…Byron is not known to have had any contacts with the transgender people he called ‘neutral personage[s]/ Of the third sex’ (Byron, 1986: 248), and there was no wider gay community for him to belong to. His homoerotic bonds with friends and schoolmates were for him an element in a profoundly individual, not to say lonely, sense of sexual identity.…”

“…Since Byron seems not to have been attracted to pre-pubescent boys, the more accurate term would be ephebophilia: sexual desire for post-pubescent males whose secondary sexual characteristics are not yet fully developed (youths ‘slight and slim, / Blushing and beardless’ (Byron, 1986: 47)). ‘When boyish blood is mantling, who can ‘scape / The fascination of thy magic gaze?’, he asked (Byron, 1980b: 33), and rhapsodized, ‘sweeter … than all / Is first and passionate love’ (Byron, 1986: 49). The three males whom Byron loved most or had the strongest sexual attachments to – John Edlestone, Nicolas Giraud and Lukas Chalandrutsanos – were all 15 when the attachments began (Crompton, 1985: 237–8).…”

“…In this respect his passion would not have surprised the ancient Greeks, and it was not strange to the Greeks or other Ottoman peoples of Byron’s own time. He in his turn found Levantine adolescents very attractive: ‘These few short years [between 13 and 16] make wondrous alterations’, he wrote, ‘Particularly amongst sun-burnt nations’ (Byron, 1986: 31).…”