'Satan Singing' or, Revolutionary Music and Freedom's Song in Byron

The Byron Society AGM starts at 4:30 and is followed by a Reception at 6:30 and Jon Gross' lecture at 7. Jon's talk explores the improvisational music of Adam Mickiewicz in Dzaidy, or “Forefather’s Eve”, comparing such unrehearsed songs of exile with Byron’s treatment of poet laureates in Don Juan ( Bob Southey and “The Isles of Greece”). Where (in which nation?) was spontaneous song possible in the early 19th century, and how did Mickiewicz, Pushkin, and Byron respond to the censorship of their publishers (John Murray, for example) and Czar Nicholas (to take another), who viewed them as Satanic poets or “Satan singing” (as Mickiewicz puts it in Dzaidy).

Host or Publisher The Byron Society