Profesora Lucyfera wykłady o paleontologii i kosmologii. „Kain” Lorda Byrona
Profesora Lucyfera wykłady o paleontologii i kosmologii. „Kain” Lorda Byrona

Summary/Abstract: In "Cain", Byron presents the religious and scientific controversies of his epoch, rewriting the story of the Biblical second fall from the perspective of characters marginalized in "The Book of Genesis" and testing the reliability of the Bible and science in explaining the past. Referring to a rising interest in paleontology and geology, the poet makes his Lucifer a spokesman of Georges Cuvier’s hypothesis that the earth has been destroyed repeatedly by global cataclysms. When Byron’s Prince of Darkness undertakes an initiation journey with Cain through Hades’s former worlds and the infinite space of the universe, he tries to instill in him a sense of his own insignificance and of the rebellion against God and the human condition. The picture of creatures, more powerful and wonderful than people, who inhabited the earth in the past is supposed to lead to the conclusion that humans’ place in the world and in history is insignificant. A lecture on prehistory is also meant to predict the future because cyclical catastrophes cause the continuous degradation of creatures on earth. Byron attempts to reconcile the implications of paleontological discoveries with religious dogmas in reference to mysteries of the past and the truth about the universe. He combines poetical imagination with the biblical story and (pseudo)scientific latest trends.

• Details
• Contents