Renu Barrett

George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron. The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems. 1816
Res Coll PR 4367 .A1 1816

This poetic work by Lord Byron became known to me when I was in primary school. My mother introduced it to my siblings and I by reading it aloud. She would recite it in a deep voice which frequently ended in whispers as the suspense in the story climbed higher. Her changing facial expressions filled me with awe of the poem's character and setting. Though it did not make complete sense, the mood of darkness and despair had created a lingering quest to understand this famous work as to why my mother considered it Byron's greatest work. Two years ago and thousands of miles later, I was able to make sense of that jumble. My family and I travelled to Lausanne and Montreux, Switzerland to unravel the mystery of the prisoner of Chillon. Lord Byron (1788-1824) arrived in Switzerland in 1816. The Prisoner of Chillon was drafted in 1816 in the Lausanne port of Ouchy, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman). Byron hired a boatman who took him for daily boat rides on the lake. One day the boatman told him the story of the most famous of the "residents" of the prisons of Chillon: François Bonivard, a Genevois monk and politician who was jailed there from 1532 to 1536 for inciting the people of Geneva to rebel against Savoy. Bonivard was chained to a pillar in the dungeon which was below lake-level during the four years of his captivity, and his pacing up and down the area to which his chain restricted him left an imprint on the stone floors of the dungeon. Bonivard's story caught Lord Byron's imagination. In the summer of 1816, together with Shelley, he visited the Castle of Chillon–built in the 12th century. Byron's name can still be seen today as it was carved into the pillar where the prisoner had been chained. Bonivard thus became the hero of Byron's famous poem The Prisoner of Chillon, written on the terrace of what is now the Hôtel d'Angleterre in Lausanne, overlooking Lac Leman. Byron's poem is a moving account of an individual's struggle of accepting pain and suffering rather than holding on to the hope of freedom.