“Gyaur” Byron in brief


Opens the poem of stanzas about the beautiful nature, torn by the storms of violence and arbitrariness of Greece, the country of the heroic past, bent under the heels of the invaders: “Here and these islands: / Here – Greece, she is dead; / But in the coffin is good; / One scares: where Is there a soul in it? ” Intimidating the peaceful population of the blossoming valleys, a gloomy figure of the demonic horseman appears on the horizon, a stranger both for the enslaved and for the enslavers, eternally bearing the burden of the fatal curse. Symbolical is his name, which literally means in translation from Arabic “not believing in God” and with Byron’s light hand became synonymous with robber, pirate, and other faith. Looking at the idyllic picture of the Muslim holiday – the end of Ramazan – hung with weapons and tormented by an incurable inner pain, it disappears.

The anonymous narrator melancholy notes the desolation that reigned

in the once noisy and lively house of Turk Hassan, who perished by the hand of a Christian: “There are no guests, there are no slaves since then,” the Christian saber turban sliced! ” A brief, enigmatic episode invades the sad lamement: a rich Turk and servants hire a boatman, ordering him to drop a heavy bag with an unidentified “load” into the sea.

Unable to turn away from the memories of his beloved wife and his wife, which is painfully punished, Ghassan lives only with a thirst for revenge against his enemy, Giaur. Once, having overcome a dangerous mountain pass with a caravan, he encounters in a grove with an ambush set up by robbers, and, having learned in his leader of his abuser, grasps him in a deadly battle. Giaour kills him; but tormenting the character with mental torment, mourning for the beloved, remains unsatisfied, like his loneliness: “Yes, Laila sleeps, taken by the wave / Hassan lies in the blood thick… / Anger is satisfied, the end is to him / / And away to me – one! “

Without a clan, without a tribe, rejected by a Christian civilization,

a stranger in the camp of Muslims, he tears of sorrow for the lost and departed, and his soul, according to the prevailing beliefs, is doomed to the fate of a vampire from generation to generation bringing trouble to the descendants. Another thing is the death of the brave Ghassan: “He who fell down with the giaour, / All are rewarded in paradise above!”

The final episodes of the poem take us to a Christian monastery, where for the seventh year a strange visitor has been living. Having brought generous gifts to the abbot, he is accepted by the inhabitants of the monastery as an equal, but monks are alien to him, never catching up for prayer.

The bizarre ligature of the stories from different people gives way to the confused monologue of Giaour, when he, powerless to spare the suffering that does not leave him, seeks to pour out the soul to the nameless listener: “I lived in peace.” Life gave me / A lot of happiness, more – evil… / Nothing was Death to me, believe me, / And in the years of happiness, and now?! “

Carrying the burden of sin, he is not killing himself for killing Gassan, but because he could not, he could not get rid of the painful execution of his beloved. The love for her, even beyond the grave, became the only thread that binds him to the ground; and only pride prevented him from doing the judgment himself. And yet – a dazzling vision of the beloved, who was dreaming of him in a delirious delirium…

Saying good-bye, Gyaur asks the newcomer to give it to his long-time friend, who once foretold his tragic destiny, the ring – in memory of himself – and buried without the inscription, having forgotten oblivion in the offspring.

The poem is crowned with the following lines: “He died… Who, where he is from / / The monk is dedicated to those secrets, / But he must conceal them from us… / And only a fragmentary story / he loved and killed whom. “


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“Gyaur” Byron in brief