Searching for Byron: Our Quest In Rome

Let me just get this part out of the way by saying my experience in Rome looking for Byron differs from my experience in the Yorkshire Moors and Sherwood Forest in that I do not like Byron. I find it difficult to find any element of Byron's work or character that I admire in any way. I feel like the majority of his work consists of him whining about his "plight" (and I use that term very loosely) in life. He was so put upon because so many great men came before him in his family line, and he could not even aspire to equal these great men so he might as well just give up. Then there was the whole if you are bored you might as well just go die mentality that he echoes throughout, or then we have the happiness is the worst thing that could possible happen to you and if you are happy you might as well die because you have nothing further to achieve or look for. So as I have said I am not a Byron fan, had a been asked to hike something similar to the Moors in quest of Byron's inspiration, I would have made it about a mile, and once my feet started to bleed I would have just given up. There would have been no higher power pushing me, there would have been nothing fueling my determination, I would not have felt like I was missing anything. In Sherwood forest, I felt a connection to childhood. Had I read Byron as a child I may have turned out like Emily Bronte, I could have written a beautifully twisted novel, had virtually no social skills, and had a rather large dog named Keeper for a companion. Maybe, I should cut Byron a little bit of a break. I mean without him we wouldn't have this concept of the Byronic hero (Amy Weinhouse etc). I mean Bryon kind of invented this concept that self destruction is the only way to produce legitimately good art. I mean Amy Weinhouse may be a complete train wreck but she produces some pretty good music. So is there something to be said for destroying yourself to produce a hit? I mean would Byron have been as massively popular as he was without his many escapades? Would we still read him or take pleasure in it if he weren't a complete and total hot mess?

So ultimately, after all of Byron's whining he opts to leave England and travel. Hence his autobiographical poem (which he claims is not autobiographical) Childe Harold. Rome is an area filled with a variety of different architecture types/styles. Some of which even have a strong Egyptian influence. When venturing through Rome I wondered what Byron may have seen when writing Childe Harold. In addition, what information would he have known about the various architecture and the other elements of Roman history surrounding him? Furthermore, how would this have affected his poems? It wasn't until our guided tour/hike of the Roman Forum and Palentine Hill that I finally got some answers. Our tour guide, as part of our little tour had a couple little comments that she made about Byron. (By the way she was also not a Byron fan, go figure, I mean with all of the things that he has to offer). But she talked about how in Byron's day he would have seen little of what we were actually able to see based on the fact that a great deal of excavation has been done since that time. Therefore, clearly the little that he saw (comparatively) must have had a profound influence on him. In addition, our tour guide told us of a park that housed a monument to Lord Byron. So of course the following day we went in search of said monument. Our tour guide had neglected to mention that this park was contained about a thousand monuments. We spent much of our last day in Rome searching for Byron, with little luck. I was very eager to find him, due to the fact that most of the monuments had been graffiti ed on and I was interested to see what these people had written on the bust of Byron. (Please note that unfortunately we never did find Byron's bust, we found its location on a map, but ultimately the map proved to be of little help).

So now to the question regarding the gift shop. Since we were in Rome, there was no Byron gift shop per se, oddly he wasn't a main focus in Rome (he kind of had all of that hundreds upon hundreds of years of Roman history and architecture to compete with). However, Lauren and I were completely ecstatic when we found a store called Byron. We were like "Oh My Gosh we have to take a picture of this for Ruth!" And would you believe what this store was? It was a men's clothing store, with various other men's apparel. I mean how fitting is that? And right in the window there was a bright pink tie, I totally think that if Byron had lived during the modern era, he definitely would have worn pink.