Mazeppa
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Mazeppa is a narrative poem written by the English romantic poet Lord Byron in 1819. It is based on a popular legend about the early life of Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709), a Ukrainian gentleman who later became Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks. According to the poem, the young Mazeppa has a love affair with a Countess Theresa while serving as a page at the Court of King John II Casimir Vasa. Countess Theresa was married to a much older Count. On discovering the affair, the Count punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting the horse loose. The bulk of the poem describes the traumatic journey of the hero strapped to the horse. The poem has been praised for its "vigor of style and its sharp realization of the feelings of suffering and endurance". This poem also inspired Alexander Pushkin to write his poem Poltava as an answer to Byron's poem. Published within the same covers with "Mazeppa" was the short story "A Fragment", also known as "Fragment of a Novel" and "The Burial: A Fragment", one of the earliest vampire stories in English.
Lord Byron
Lord Byron was an English poet and the most infamous of the English Romantics, glorified for his immoderate ways in both love and money. Benefitting from a privileged upbringing, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage upon his return from his Grand Tour in 1811, and the poem was received with such acclaim that he became the focus of a public mania. Following the dissolution of his short-lived marriage in 1816, Byron left England amid rumours of infidelity, sodomy, and incest.
In self-imposed exile in Italy Byron completed Childe Harold and Don Juan. He also took a great interest in Armenian culture, writing of the oppression of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule; and in 1823, he aided Greece in its quest for independence from Turkey by fitting out the Greek navy at his own expense.
Two centuries of references to, and depictions of Byron in literature, music, and film began even before his death in 1824.
More by Lord Byron
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