‘Due Bounds’ and ‘Due Precision’: Don Juan (i)

Abstract

One of Byron’s most sustained flights occurs in canto VI of Don Juan, where he pursues the ramifications of his hero’s plight, disguised as a woman in a harem: on the one hand there is the innocent Dudù, with her less-than-innocent dreams as she shares a bed with Juan; on the other is the lustful Gulbeyaz, with her own thoughts about this new arrival. Byron plays off the one relationship against the other, and the canto as a whole depends for its effect on this juxtaposition and eventual intermingling of feelings, and ideas about feelings. Towards the end of the canto, when Dudù has finally been settled after her Tond hallucination’, Byron turns his attention towards Gulbeyaz:

With the first ray or rather grey of morn,

Gulbeyaz rose from restlessness, and pale

As Passion rises with its bosom worn,

Arrayed herself with mantle, gem, and veil.

The nightingale that sings with the deep thorn,

Which fable places in her breast of wail,

Is lighter far of heart and voice than those

Whose headlong passions form their proper woes.