Half Dust Half Deity Lord Byron s Manfred as a Hero of Consciousness
In Lord Byron’s Manfred, the title character performs no great deeds typically associated with the classical hero; there are no beasts slain, no innocents rescued, no relics redeemed, and no tyrants overthrown. ... How, then, does Manfred earn the title of “hero? ... Manfred is a hero of consciousness; his is a heroism found not in the flexing of his limbs, but in the manner of his thinking and the indomitable nature of his will. Manfred has been compared to Goethe’s Faust, but it is important to note how the sources of the two characters’ powers differ. It is through the strength of his own mind that Manfred acquires his abilities, not by pacting with a supernatural entity. ... One spirit theorizes that, were Manfred not a mortal and therefore bound to his physical being, he would have made “an awful spirit. ... Each morsel, Manfred makes clear, was hard won and purchased with his own torment; “terrible ordeal, and such penance/As in itself hath power upon the air.” Where Faust sold his soul, Manfred, the ultimate free thinker, constructed within his mind his own damnation. He is also a man divided, “half dust, half deity,” as Manfred himself observes. The Abbot discerns this “mix,” but, lamenting what Manfred celebrates, deems it an “awful chaos – light and darkness – /And mind and dust – and passions and pure thoughts,/Mix’d, and contending without end or order.