Bloody great book. I think a lot of people don't realize that as a poet/writer Byron was in a sense closer to 18th century satirists like, say, Swift than he was to his Romantic so-called cohorts ... and yet he's often considered some kind of "arch"-Romantic. Naah. His great talent, I'd say, was a comic one, and it's in Don Juan -- even unfinished as it is -- that this comic genius burns most brightly. It isn't just the funny-as-hell "Hudibrastic" rhymes he often employs, it's ... oh, hell, he was just such a funny damned bastard. Mean, spiteful, but funny. ( )

So much better than I remembered from college. The rhymes, humor, and slights. Life may certainly be not worth a potato when you are looking for a rhyme for Cato. A fun novel length poem ( )

This was tremendous fun to read. Byron's personality infuses the work and he's a likable, open-hearted narrator. It's a picture of England just before the clouds of Victorian prudery turned love from a game to a chore. It also has a strong anti-war subtext that I wasn't expecting. A great read and a real surprise!
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One of my favorite works of poetry. Fantastic. A man's poet. ( )

It's been said (I can't remember by whom) that a great book should be read once in youth, once in middle age, and once in old age, just as a great building should viewed at dawn, in daylight, and at dusk.

I first read Byron's Don Juan when I was 25 years old. It was a Penguin edition, and I remember being very swept away by Byron's sexually-charged romance. I had always thought of 19th century poets as being very, well, Victorian. "We shall talk about love but it must be chaste, innocent love. No sex please; we're Victorian". Byron had no such prudish streak. Don Juan is filled with passion and love in equal measure. It has a sensuality that would have horrified Byron's contemporaries, but which shows a profound respect for love, sex, and women that was unheard of during his own era.

Now, as I'm closer to middle age then youth, I'm looking forward to revisiting Byron's Don and see if any of my perceptions have changed.