User:Etschmidt/The Bride of Abydos

The Bride of Abydos is a poem written by George Gordon, Lord Byron in AD 1813. One of his earlier works, The Bride of Abydos is considered to be one of his “Heroic Poems”, along with The Giaour, Lara, the Siege of Corinth, The Corsair, and Parisina. These poems’ almost immediate commercial success made Byron a literary star in Britain.

Plot
Divided into two cantos, and further into more than a dozen stanzas each, The Bride of Abydos has a rather straightforward plot. After an initial description of the Turkish stetting (1.I), the story opens with the ruler Giaffir rebuking his supposed son, Salim. Salim professes his love for his half-sister, Zuleika, Giaffir’s daughter (1.II-III). Angered, the Pasha refuses Salim to have a key to the royal harem and upbraids him with insults (1.iv-v). Zuleika herself appears, radiant in beauty, and soon she is forbidden to marry Salim; she tacitly complies (1.vi-viii).Later, she exclaims her love to Salim and mourns her fate that would be without him. He, in turn, decries Giaffir’s judgment as well and vows vengeance (1.ix-xii). The First Canto closes as Zuleika notices a change in Salim’s demeanor and wonders about his evasive language. He comforts her with the knowledge that he still retains the harem key and promises to reveal himself in toto later that night (1xiii-xiv). The Second Canto again opens with a chthonic description of the Turkish lands and the grotto where the two lovers meet (2.i-viii). Cloak thrown aside, Salim is dressed as a dashing pirate and declares that Zuleika is not his sister. She is surprised and listens as Salim relates how Giaffir had killed Abdallah, Salim’s father and Giaffir’s brother. (2.ix-xv). Salim’s story continues as he tells her that he learned of his true identity from one of his father’s loyal servants, Haroun, and that since Salim himself as raised by Giaffir, he was detested and maltreated (2xvi-xx).

He became a pirate so that he could gather a posse for revenge, and asserts his lust for Giaffir’s blood; the silence at the end of Salim’s tale is interrupted by the reports of weapons belonging to Giaffir’s men. (xxii). Salim, wishing to kiss his love one last time, tarries to leave the cave, and soon is falls, dying on beach, the fatal blow administered by Giaffir himself (xxiii-xxv). The second cantos thus ends with Zuleika dying in sorrow for Salim and Giaffir is forced to live out the rest of his life in solitude.

Publication
Byron wrote and published his Bride of Abydos at the age of twenty-six. In a letter to a friend, he himself notes the nature of its composition “for the sake of employment”. In his personal Diary of 16 November 1813, Byron claims to have written The Bride “stans pede in uno”. (a direct quotation from Horace’s Satires 2.10, decrying the rapid production of poor verse for commercial gain). Byron, however hastily he wrote, return and revised many times The Bride, nevertheless, the manuscript tradition reveals only minor tweaks to the poem. In another letter Byron expresses his intent to concoct an illicit love affair between the true brother and sister, but he settled on its final format before actually penning the story.