Byron’s Unacknowledged Armenian Grammar and a New Poem

In November 1816 Byron started frequenting the Mekhitarist monastery on the Venetian island of San Lazzaro, where he studied Armenian with the learned Father Paschal Aucher (Yarut‘iwn Awgerean,¹ 1774–1854). Byron profoundly identified with “an oppressed and a noble [Armenian] nation” that had preserved its spiritual heritage through centuries of “proscription and bondage.”² He soon undertook to champion the Armenian language and literature and to this purpose collaborated with Father Aucher on two books. The first, Grammar English and Armenian (1817), was an English textbook for Armenians written by Aucher and corrected by Byron. The second book, A Grammar Armenian and English (1819), was Byron’s project: a grammar of classical Armenian for the use of English speakers, complete with model English translations entitled “Exercises in the Armenian Language.”³ A few years later, Byron proudly claimed that he had “compiled the major part of two Armenian & English Grammars” for Aucher.⁴ However, the published books were credited solely to Aucher and did not mention Byron’s intellectual contribution. What had been Byron’s actual share in the “compilations”? In the absence of manuscripts, we can answer this question only on the basis of biographical information and textual analysis. Unfortunately, Byron’s biographers have neglected this episode and have underestimated its impact upon Byron’s work, while textual analyses, hindered by the language barrier, have been lamentably few. In fact, no Byron scholar seems to have read the 1817 book, while only one section of the 1819 volume, the “Exercises in the Armenian Language,” has attracted significant critical attention. As an inevitable consequence, only a few pages from G1819 and no text from G1817 have so far been recognized as Byron’s work, a state of affairs clearly at variance with Byron’s claim.

In this article I use a multilingual approach to identify some of Byron’s corrections to G1817 and to argue that he wrote most of the English text of G1819, i.e., the “major part” of the grammar section proper, as well as all the “Exercises in the Armenian Language.” The “exercises” are comprised of four pieces that are already part of the Byron canon, four extracts of doubtful authorship, and a hitherto unnoticed short poem. I print this poem below, and I distinguish between Aucher’s and Byron’s contributions to the grammar section of G1819 (Byron wrote some 117 pages). I also present evidence confirming that the four extracts hitherto tentatively attributed to Byron are indeed by him. I argue that we should add all these texts (totaling approximately 123 pages) to the Byron canon, while we should avoid any pieces that made their first appearance in the subsequent editions of G1819, long after Byron had stopped collaborating with Aucher.

This essay’s first part entirely revises current accounts of Byron’s Armenian studies, using previously unexamined historical testimonies to establish the circumstances of the two books’ production. Byron came to the monastery in order to translate the very texts that were published without his name as the “Exercises in the Armenian Language” of G1819. He kept visiting the Armenian fathers for more than two years (not a mere couple of months as usually assumed), and he made more translations than previously supposed. He proofread G1817 and rendered into English the grammar section of G1819, which Aucher had written for him in Italian. He also wrote the “Exercises in the Armenian Language,” translating them from the Armenian originals with the aid of Latin and Italian versions. Early in 1819, longstanding tensions between the two men exploded over Byron’s intended preface to G1819. Byron stopped visiting the monastery but left his manuscripts with Aucher, who published them in G1819, omitting Byron’s name from the title page. As the years went by, Aucher relented, acknowledging Byron’s contributions in an autobiography and in front of pupils and visitors who later recorded his words. Other monks also gave Byron due credit for writing the English part of G1819, and I quote the most important of these statements.

They help orient the analyses...