Marino Faliero and Lord Byron's Paradoxical Stance on Politics

Marino Faliero and Lord Byron's Paradoxical Stance on Politics

Marino Faliero is the product of the Regency period and cannot be separated from Byron's political concerns at the time. Marino Faliero may be seen, though exaggerated, as the self-image of Byron in the sense that he is an aristocrat who rebels against his own class in order to establish a better commonwealth, if any. Democracy in the opposition to monarchy is not the form of government Faliero wants, though he is now in collusion with the plebeian leaders. Even though Faliero resists aristocracy, it seems that he still paradoxically adheres to the aristocratic ideal, and cannot escape it. After deeply implicated in the conspiracy, Faliero begins to feel conflict as an aristocrat against the aristocracy, his own family origin. This is associated with a similar situation Byron would have caught at the time. Byron as a politician was not a democrat in today's sense, notwithstanding his familiar image as a champion for popular freedom. For him freedom and the resistance against tyranny was an aristocrat's noblesse oblige based on a classical ideal of liberty rather than on an idea of democracy conceived in equahtarianism. Away in Italy, facing the climax of the popular turbulence in England around 1819-1820, Byron clearly revealed his basically conservative political stance. This conservatism seems to be incompatible with liberalism he had shown in his support for the Italian nationalists and later for Greek independence. But within the inconsistent and paradoxical mind of Byron, these opposites coexist without excluding each other. This kind of paradox is found in the very nature of Regency England as well as in Byron-one of the most representive poets of the age.