The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

Julia is presented, neither as a pious hypocrite nor as a slut, but as a young woman, married to an older man she does not like, tempted to commit adultery with an attractive boy. The conflict between her conscience and her desire is per­fectly genuine. Byron is not saying that it is silly of Julia to pray because there is no God, or that marriage is an unjust institution which should be abolished in favor of free love. The comedy lies in the fact that the voice of conscience and the voice of desire can both be expressed in the verbal form of a prayer, so that, while Julia's conscience is praying to the Madonna, her heart is praying to Aphrodite. Byron does not pass judgment on this; he simply states that human nature is like that and implies, perhaps, that, in his experience, if Aphrodite has opportunity on her side, the Madonna is seldom victorious, so that, in sexual matters, we ought to be tolerant of human frailty.

Byron's choice of the word giggle rather than laugh to describe his comic intention deserves consideration.

All comic situations show a contradiction between some general or universal principle and an individual or particular person or event. In the case of the situation at which we giggle, the general principles are two:

x) The sphere of the sacred and the sphere of the

profane are mutually exclusive.

2,) The sacred is that at which we do not laugh.

Now a situation arises in which the profane intrudes upon the sacred but without annulling it. If the sacred were an­nulled, we should laugh outright, but the sacred is still felt to be present, so that a conflict ensues between the desire to laugh and the feeling that laughter is inappropriate. A per­son to whom the distinction between the sacred and the pro­fane had no meaning could never giggle.

If we giggle at Julia's prayer, it is because we have been brought up in a culture which makes a distinction between sacred and profane love. Similarly, we miss the comic point if we read die following lines as a satire on Christian dogma.

as I suffer from the shocks of illness, I grow much more orthodox.

The first attack at once proved the Divinity;

(But that I never doubted, nor the Devil); The next, the Virgin's mystical Virginity;

The third, the usual Origin of Evil; The fourth at once established the whole Trinity

On so uncontrovertible a level, That I devoutly wished the three were four On purpose to believe so much the more.

If these lines were satirical, they would imply that all people in good health are atheists. But what Byron says is that when people are well, they tend to be frivolous and forget all those questions about the meaning of life which are of sacred im­portance to everybody, including atheists, and that when they are ill, they can think of nothing else. One could imagine a similar verse by Shelley (if he had had any sense of humor) in which he would say: "The iller I get, the more certain I become that there is no God." Shelley, as a matter of fact, complained that he was powerless "to eradicate from his friend's great mind the delusions of Christianity which in spite of his reason seem perpetually to recur and to lie in ambush for his hours of sickness and distress," and, had Bryon lived longer, the prophecy Sir Walter Scott made in 1815 might well have come true.

I remember saying to him that I really thought that, if he lived a few years longer, he would alter his senti­ments. He answered rather sharply. "I suppose you are one of those who prophesy that I will turn Methodist." I replied—"No. I don't expect your conversion to be of such an ordinary kind. I would rather look to see you retreat upon the Catholic faith and distinguish yourself by the austerity of your penances."

The terms "sacred" and "profane" can be used relatively as well as absolutely. Thus, in a culture that puts a spiritual value upon love between the sexes, such a love, however physical, will seem sacred in comparison with physical hunger. When the shipwrecked Juan wakes and sees Haidee bending over him, he sees she is beautiful and is thrilled by her voice, but the first thing he longs for is not her love but a beef­steak.

The sacred can be evil as well as good. In our culture it is considered normal (the normal is always profane) for men to be carnivorous, and vegetarians are looked upon as cranks.

Although his anatomical construction Bears vegetables in a grumbling way, Your laboring people think beyond all question Beef, veal, and mutton better for digestion.