Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Yet as faith must not be easy, Aurora herself is elusive, and she "scarcely look'd aside" when Juan attempts to flirt (XV.78). But, after concentrated effort on Juan's part, she at last begins "once or twice to smile, if not to listen" (XV.80), and then "she began to question" (XV.81), joining into conversation. Through Juan's ability to tame his presumptuousness and act humbly, Aurora shows her virtues. Whereas Haidee spoke an indecipherable foreign tongue, Aurora proves to be easily understood, graceful and versatile in public rapport. She begins to display less "indifference" to Juan (XV.83), responding now to his "deference," to his "delicate dissent," and even to his "good looks" although she "look'd more on books than faces" (83-85). We learn that the appeal of her conversation does not fade when we find Juan, alone that night, unable to forget that Aurora's eyes were "more bright / Than Adeline (such is advice) advised" (XVI.12). After this, "He sighed;-the next resource is the full moon, / Where all sighs are deposited; and now / It happened luckily, the chaste orb shone / As clear as such a climate will allow" (XVI.13). The Catholic Aurora, then, represents a beautiful and spiritual purity accessible within real human life.

But Juan will not explore his spiritual longings. Fickle, he wanders from his room late at night where he encounters what appears to be a ghost of one of the Abbey's long-dead monks. This encounter startles Juan, pushing him figuratively away from Christianity and literally away from Aurora. Even when, during the next morning's breakfast, Juan "caught Aurora's eye on his, / And something like a smile upon her cheek" (XVI.92), Juan is flustered rather than gratified. As a result of Aurora's glance Juan "grew carnation with vexation, / Which was not very wise and still less witty" but "his senses / By last night's ghost [had] been driven from their defences" (XVI.93). Had he tried again to make conversation with Aurora he might have regained his voice, but fearful instead, he let the ghost-sighting render him "as silent as a ghost" (XVI. 107).

Byron makes sure that we regard Juan's unwillingness to speak with Aurora as a bad thing. As Byron tells us,

Aurora had renewed

In him some feelings he had lately lost

Or hardened; feelings which, perhaps ideal,

Are so divine, that I must deem them real:

The love of higher things and better days;

The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance

Of what is called the world, and the world's ways;

The moments when we gather from a glance

More joy than from all future pride or praise . . .

(XVI.107-8)

Anyone "That hath a memory, or that had a heart" would be filled with happiness at this but Juan, "apprehensive of his spectral guest . . . sate, with feelings awkward to express" (XVI.109, 111). Unable or unwilling to cast off his awkwardness, Juan seeks the ghost a second time and, upon encountering it, finds it to be another of the guests, the Duchess FitzFulke, in disguise. This Duchess is "voluptuous" and "frolic" (XVI.123), of all the Abbey's guests the most earthly and "graceless" (XVI.49). Byron would "rather not say what might be related / Of her exploits" but informs us that these exploits were most "ticklish" (XIV.42). Alas, the irresolute Juan forgoes the chaste Aurora and consents to lascivious Fitz-Fulke's advances. When we meet him again, in his last appearance in the poem, Juan is no longer animated and gentlemanly but "wan and worn, with eyes that hardly brooked / The light, that through the Gothic windows shone" (XVII.14). It may be because of Juan's abandonment of the spirituality represented by Aurora that Byron intended to ultimately bring Juan to an ignoble demise (see BLJ 8:68 and Medwin 165), guillotined during the French Revolution.