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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Byron's Cain
Contributor:
Michaels, Leonard
imprint:
Modern Language Association of America, 1969
Published in:PMLA
Language:
English
ISSN:
0030-8129
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>Self-pitying and suicidal, Cain complains bitterly about his circumstances but unlike other Byronic heroes he suffers no personal guilt and, aside from his intelligence, nothing explains the radical difference between him and his pious, uncomplaining family. After Abel is murdered, however, a basis for Cain's distinctive temperament exists because he becomes none other than Cain, infamous Biblical murderer; as if he had read the Bible, he asks, "Am I then my brother's keeper?" Theological questions proliferate in the play, but, in the manner of his questioning, Cain repudiates their personal significance as well as any serious effort to engage them, and, because his quizzical intelligence leads him-as self-proclaimed enemy of death-to murder, consciousness itself seems finally repudiated. Thus, "Cain" resembles theatre of the absurd, for it treats consciousness as the excellent human capacity to discover its own inadequacy. Paradox and irony are everywhere in "Cain" and constitute Byronic playing as well as a play. "Cain" may represent loss of respect for traditional cosmologies, but it seems also to represent loss of faith in a poetic mode, even in story itself-except, perhaps, the kind of anti-story Byron tells.</p>