Manfred Follow Up: Alice Levine Lecture Highlights and Interview

Alice Levine, who gave a paper entitled "Manfred: Byron’s Other Don Juan" in the "Manfred: Gravitas and Its Other" panel at the Manfred Symposium, offered insights into the gender politics shared by Manfred and Don Juan. She gives an exclusive interview on her work to K-SAA (below), and you can also see highlights of her talk here: 

Did you feel like the performance of Manfred supported or challenged some of the ideas and issues that you presented at the symposium? Were any of the textual and linguistic details of Manfred that you identified in your paper lost in or enhanced by the performance?

By having women read the parts of the spirits in Manfred, the Red Bull Theater performance both challenged and, indirectly, supported my thesis, which focuses on gender.  Both Manfred and the source material for Don Juan share a deep structure that is distinctly gendered:  taboo relations with women (or a woman) forming the first part of the protagonists’ sagas; the homosocial final scenes highlighting an anxiety about male performance and power that is implicit throughout the works.  The performance thus erased the gender distinctions in Byron’s drama that culminate in Manfred’s triumphant rejection of a powerful, male, “dusk and awful figure . . . like an infernal god,” who seeks to claim him in his final hour.  However, I found the performance’s playful transgendering to be a point of interest, rather than weakness, because it caused us to think about the significance of gender in Manfred.

Were there any papers whose investigation of Manfred surprised you? Why?

What ended up surprising me was Manfred—but that, of course, is thanks to the new light shed on it by the papers.  Individually and taken all together, they presented fresh interpretive, intertextual, cultural, historical, and performance-related issues within and surrounding Manfred, revealing the poem to be more multilayered, richer, and stranger than the poem I thought I knew very well before the seminar began.

Was there a coherent dialogue established between panels throughout the symposium that contributed to an overall understanding of Manfred? How did different panels work in dialogue with one another?

Interconnections between papers of different panels did, I believe, contribute to a coherent dialogue about Manfred over the course of the seminar.  Papers on different topics could be seen to resonate with respect to shared approaches or areas of interest, such as the following:  cultural contexts (Landsown, Manning, McDayter); gender issues (McDayter, my paper); imagery and frames of reference (Gross, Richardson); textual or interpretive instability (Stabler, Stauffer).  All the papers could be seen to form a dialogue with and provide a background for McGann’s keynote address, in its attention to the dense and difficult passages in Manfred that continue to tease its closest readers into and out of thought.

Do you think some of the romantic issues that the symposium investigated spoke to more contemporary concerns around politics, social issues, climate change, gender etc.? For example, what are the rhetorical and/or political implications of Manfred—a play about a powerful, male conjurer—in light of Mr. Trump’s presidency in the US? How might one wealthy ruler speak to the other?

Donald Trump and the Chamois Hunter: A Dialogue

Somewhat freely adapted from Act 2, Scene 1 of Lord Byron’s Manfred

Scene:  Trump Tower Penthouse Terrace

C.H.     No, no—yet pause—thou must not yet go forth:  Thy mind and body are alike unfit— 

D.T.     Not true.  All rumors spread by the lying press. 

C.H.     Thy garb and gait bespeak thee of hereditary wealth—  One of the many chiefs, whose castled crags,  Look over the lower valleys—which of these  May call thee lord? 

D.T.     All of them—they all call me Lord,  Well, actually, they say President, but . . . uh . . . well, you know.  Of course, overseeing a vast empire like this,  It takes an immense amount of work,  But I’m not complaining.  I like to work.  Philosophy and science, and the springs  Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,  I studied all those things, you know, at Wharton  (The greatest business school in the world),  But who knew it would be so complicated? 

C.H.     Well, sir, pardon me the question,  And be of better cheer.  Come, taste my wine;  ‘Tis of an ancient vintage. 

D.T.     Wine?  Looks like blood to me.  Have you ever seen or tasted Trump Wine?  Now that has the greatest color, the greatest color red;  And our 750 ml bottles are bigger than anyone’s.  I’m making American wine great again. 

C.H.     Man of strange words, and some half-maddening sin— 

D.T.     Strange words?  You mean, like “priming the pump”?  It’s an expression I came up with a few days ago.  And what sin?  It’s not like I slept with my sister.  Look, I have done men good— 

C.H.     I would not be of thine order for the free fame  Of William Tell. 

D.T.     William Tell—an example of someone who’s done an amazing job  And is getting recognized more and more, I notice.