Lord Byron as a consistent advocate of interests of the working masses
Byron's poems are filled with slogans calling for fighting against the existing unjust order of things. Another theme of his poetry is the plight of the broad masses of the people. It is noteworthy that Byron does not doubt that the people will throw off the shackles of injustice. Not surprisingly, among other poets, he especially honored Dante, who was a political activist and patriot. Byron himself was also constantly looking for an opportunity to direct his forces to public work. True, the final result of his social activities never suited him fully.
That is why in Byron's poetry one can see some contradiction. On the one hand, he firmly remained faithful to the values of the revolution of 1789. With the help of irony, he struggled with the fact that the moral ideals of that revolution, faced with reality, were grossly distorted. On the other hand, he also directs his irony against the naive belief that the political ideals of the revolution will be realized. It is from here that the paradox of Byron appears: against the backdrop of ideas about the importance of the struggle for the rights and dignity of the people, the image of a proud single hero who is detached from the masses and lives in his own inner world is actively emerging.
The satirical poem "Hours of Idleness" Byron published when he was only twenty-one years old. However, despite his youth, he clearly laid out in his satire bold and progressive ideas that had become most important to him for the rest of his life. These are thoughts about the high duty of the poet, the teacher of mankind, and the educational purpose of all true poetry.
Even more sharply, Byron spoke, returning from a two-year trip to southeastern Europe, which lasted from 1809 to 1811. After the return, Byron defended the oppressed people in parliament and in his new poem "Childe Harold s Pilgrimage." The public was shocked by how the poet described the suffering of the British workers in his speech against the death penalty law for the Luddites, that is, the destroyers of machines. A strong impression on contemporaries was also made by how fervently Byron glorified freedom and opposed the enslavement of Greece and Spain in "Childe Harold s Pilgrimage".
