"PEOPLE'S ANCESTORS ARE HISTORY'S GAME": BYRON'S DON JUAN AND RUSSIAN HISTORY

Bludov's complaint about Byron's supposedly subversive politics and the manner in which he was perceived to flout conventional moral laws was, of course, what made him attractive to the Russian radical intelligentsia and aristocracy. This was particularly the case when one considers the tense political and social atmosphere that pervaded Russia during the 182Os. Byron tells us that the primary historical source for his Russian cantos in Don Juan is Histoire de la nouvelle russie (1820) by the Marquis Gabriel de Castlenau.6 Yet his knowledge of Russian history and affairs was more direct than a written work of history. Indeed, Don Juan contains a possible reference to knowledge of Russia that is more immediate than the Histoire:

As Nina Diakovna and Vadim Vacuro have observed, Byron was acquainted with some of his Russian readers. Among those he met were the "diplomat and man of letters Prince E B. Kozlovsky," Vyazemsky, Admiral Cicagov, and Count A. G. Stroganov (143). Diakovna and Vacuro gloss this stanza by stating that Byron possibly knew of his reputation in Russia. It is more pertinent perhaps to tease out the intriguing and suggestive connections Byron makes between Russia in the age of Catherine the Great and Russia under Alexander II.

The stanza quoted above begins with an arch reference to Alexander's dubious entitlement to the throne signified by the exclamation mark at the end of the first line. Alexander's route to power, like his grandmother's, was effected by political murder, with Alexander acquiescing in the deposition, if not the manner, of his father's death: Paul I was assassinated by the Palace guards in 1801. The word legitimate is rendered in a highly ambiguous fashion and means at once both legitimacy by birth and the legal right to rule. Paul I was probably the son of one of Catherine the Great's numerous lovers and therefore illegitimate: "Thus the claims of Paul and subsequent tsars to a divine right to rule were associated with a very dubious past" (Westwood 20). Byron's irony-laden use of the term legitimate is made more pressing by a further layer of reference to the condition of European politics. As Byron's recent editors have noted, both Talleyrand and Alexander used the term legitimacy to refer to the restoration in France of the Bourbon dynasty in 1814, a major consequence of the Congress of Vienna. The word grand invokes the Grand Alliance of European powers created in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, a word that in its present context drips with the scorn that Byron reserves for the governing politicians of his day (Steffan, Steffan, and Pratt 655n).7

Alexander's stock in the theatre of European politics rose dramatically after Napoleon's failure to incorporate Russia into his empire in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Russia under Alexander I achieved a position of power in the European political scene that would not be witnessed again in the world until 1945. Alexander's popularity in Europe was such during these years that "he felt free to play the role of arbiter of Europe" (Westwood 24). The foundations for this new-found eminence were Alexander's position in the Quadruple Alliance and the Holy Alliance, the members of the former being Russia, Great Britain, Prussia, and Austria. The Quadruple Alliance "contained an article foreshadowing the concept of the 'summit conference,'" the means by which rulers and leading ministers could meet to discuss any threat that might appear to European stability. Insofar as the Holy Alliance was concerned, this was a product of Alexander's newly discovered piety and has been blamed for ruthlessly suppressing legitimate rebellions by oppressive rulers in Spain, Portugal, Naples, Piedmont, and Greece. Through the offices of the Congress of Vienna and in conjunction with the Quadruple Alliance, the Holy Alliance "enabled Alexander and his fellow-rulers to coordinate their actions against what were genuine liberation movements" (Westwood 24). In such circumstances, the direction of Byron's sympathies can hardly be doubted. Alexander suffers accordingly in Byron's barbed comments regarding the legitimacy of his position and, therefore, his actions.