Cartas y Poesías Mediterráneas. Península Ibérica, Malta, Albania, Grecia y Turquía, 1809-1811 (review)

The earliest translation of Byron, a translation of the Siege of Corinth, appeared in Spain as early as 1819, followed by other short works in successive years. By 1828 the Oriental Tales Mazeppa and Parisina were available in Spanish, followed in 1829 by the major, later works. But a selection of the letters did not appear until 1976, followed in 1999 by the letters of the Venetian period, both of which are wanting for a proper critical overview. Emilio Castelar's Vida de Byron (1873) brought the poet's life to the Spanish reader, but it was long after the Civil War (1936-39) that the first real critical appraisal appeared in Esteban Pujals' Espronceda y Lord Byron (1972). The Diario de Cefalonia y otros escritos (1975) was the first attempt to cover Byron's Mediterranean journeys but the translation, as the editor of this volume notes, was full of 'abundant and, at times, hilarious errors, which change completely the sense of the original'.

This compendium of letters and short poems attempts to rectify this problem by subjecting the original texts to the most exacting editorial criteria, the guidelines for which are set out in the final part of the extensive and scholarly introduction. As Agustín Coletes Blanco remarks, the major problem for the translator is, of course, the rendering of Byron's voice into Spanish. Coletes Blanco solves this problem by providing the Spanish reader with helpful and elegantly conceived explanatory notes, which go some way towards conveying Byron's fondness for idiosyncratic registers, shifts in tone, archaisms, parodies and foreign and Classical terms. Following the masterly example of Andrew Nicholson, Byron's distinctive use of dashes is also preserved.

In total, the edition comprises the 127 letters and poems that Byron composed on his Mediterranean and Levantine journeys between June 1809 and July 1811: 92 letters (beginning in Falmouth), 28 poems and 7 minor items. Each document is carefully annotated with relevant footnotes supported by preparatory reading in cultural studies of the period, discussions of the Orient dating from Byron's time, Hobhouse's Albanian journals and other sources. Former studies of the letters, notably those of Prothero and Marchand, have been consulted and the edition is rounded-off by detailed and exhaustive onomastic, toponymic and subject indices and a list of illustrations. The edition includes 34 plates relevant to the text along with various portraits of Byron and his friends. There is also a map of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean indicating the places Byron visited and a comprehensive bibliography of all the texts reproduced in the volume. The whole edition bespeaks meticulous scholarship and attention to detail as well as a complete grasp of its subject. To achieve this, Coletes Blanco has immersed himself in the writings of Byron's friends and contemporaries as well as the major (and minor) studies of the poet: Galt, Moore, Nicholl, Langley Moore, Graham (on Hobhouse), Page, Drinkwater, Borst, Marchand, Vassallo, Garrett, MacCarthy, Jump (misprinted Dump), Dundan (sic) Woo, John Backett (sic) and, of course, McGann and Andrew Nicholson's superlative Lord Byron: Complete Miscellaneous Prose.

For the Spanish reader, besides the letters and poems that relate Byron's experiences on his two-year journey, Coletes Blanco offers an extensive introduction of some 136 pages. He sets the scene for Byron's desire to undertake what was, in effect, the aristocratic Grand Tour, necessarily restricted in 1809 to those parts of the Mediterranean world free from French control. After his financial crisis and the vain attempts to sell the Rochdale lands, Byron sought adventure and the ideal of experiencing a dreamed-of Greece with all the promise of sexual freedom. The author concludes that 'thus, as much the contemporary taste for things Oriental as geopolitical circumstances combined to...