“They pluck'd the tree of Science / And sin”: Byron's Cain and the Science of Sacrilege
Titel:
“They pluck'd the tree of Science / And sin”: Byron's Cain and the Science of Sacrilege
Auteur:
Karkoulis, Dimitri
Verschenen in:
European romantic review
Paginering:
Jaargang 18 (2007) nr. 2 pagina's 273-281
Jaar:
2007-04
Inhoud:
This essay considers the significance of Byron's appeal to contemporary geologic thought in Cain, particularly the catastrophism of Georges Cuvier. After surveying Cuvier's work, as well as the theologically motivated sanitization of Cuvier by his English translators, I explore Byron's engagement with “apocalyptic geology,” a term that refers not only to geologic catastrophism but also to the epistemic break located in the asymmetrical structure of Cain. Because the disjuncture between the biblical world of acts 1 and 3 and the scientific cosmos of act 2 produces a schism that cannot be contained within a productive dialectic, Cain's experience in act 2 remains an inaccessible excess, a radical negativity that resists being economised. Cain's apocalyptic desire, far from bringing him towards any kind of telos, leads instead to a traumatic repetition of the (un)original Fall. That Cain's journey through space and time effects this unsettling rupture with the past, resulting in both his murder of Abel and the drama's lack of resolution, suggests that Byron could not successfully incorporate scientific theories of non-teleological apocalypse into the text of sacred history.
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