Volume 44, Number 6 · April 10, 1997
The Romantic Circle
By Richard Holmes
What is a Romantic poet supposed to look like? One answer is, simply, like Lord Byron: beautiful, brooding, and damned. Byron's image—the dark, curly locks, the mocking aristocratic eyes, the voluptuous mouth, the chin with its famous dimple, and the implicit radiation of sexual danger—became famous throughout Britain after the publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812). By the time of his death in Greece twelve years later it had launched an international style. The dark clothes, the white open-necked shirt exposing the masculine throat, the aggressive display of disarray and devilry, these were the symbols of the Romantic poetic type: the Fallen Angel in rebellion.
Feature, 3076 words
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