Alexander Pope English poet and satirist Date of Birth: 21.05.1688 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an English poet and satirist who was born on May 21, 1688 in London. Although he did not attend university and had limited knowledge of ancient Greek, he was incredibly industrious. His translation of Homer's epic poem, the Iliad, which was published in six volumes from 1715 to 1720, was successful and vibrant. He later undertook the translation of the Odyssey (1722-1726) with the help of others.

Pope's parents were Catholics, and due to the passing of a law that expelled Catholics from the cities of London and Westminster, the family moved to Hammersmith and then to Binfield in the Windsor Forest in 1700. It was in the peaceful rural environment of Binfield that Pope's personality began to take shape. His literary tastes and desire to compensate for his physical weakness influenced his admiration for the epic tradition and heroic qualities, which he highly valued and developed. He revered Homer, Virgil, and Milton. Similar to Virgil, Pope entered literature with his Pastorals in 1709. His first significant success came with the poem An Essay on Criticism (1711), which defended ancient authors and called on critics to be gentle and tolerant. Readers were drawn to Pope's impeccable common sense, the universal views of his time expressed in the poem, and the aphoristic nature of his formulations. His natural inclination for satire and his inclination towards epic poetry led to the creation of the mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714). The poem tells the story of two feuding families over a lock of hair that a young lord playfully cut off from his beloved. Using a lofty epic style to narrate mundane events, the author gently mocks the pretentiousness of the fops and coquettes who gather to have a good time. Inspired by his friends, Pope embarked on translating the Iliad. Despite not having studied at university and having limited knowledge of ancient Greek, Pope's translation, published in six volumes from 1715 to 1720, was successful and vivid. Later, with the help of others, Pope embarked on the translation of the Odyssey (1722-1726).

During the Jacobite uprisings in 1715, Pope, being a Catholic, fell under suspicion. Whig writers criticized him for his friendship with Tories such as Jonathan Swift and Dr. Arbuthnot. The enmity was instigated by the Whigs in Addison's circle. Pope began to associate more frequently with peers and printers, which prompted his family to move closer to London in 1716, to Chiswick, where his father died a year later. In 1719, Pope moved with his mother to Twickenham, to a house on the banks of the Thames, where he lived until his death. Even before the move, Pope published a volume of Works in 1717, which included new works such as Eloisa to Abelard, a reimagining of a medieval love story, and Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. After completing the translation of the Iliad, Pope began preparing an edition of Shakespeare's plays, which was published in 1725. He was the first to make significant efforts to verify Shakespeare's texts, but his work went largely unacknowledged. Pope even acquired a rival in the form of Lewis Theobald (1688-1744), who ridiculed his work in The Restored Shakespeare (1726). Later, Pope satirized Theobald in The Dunciad, using him as the central figure of Prince Dullness. The attacks on Pope's talents, religious beliefs, political views, and personal character by Theobald and others prompted him to turn to satire. However, his motivation was not just a sense of injury. The spirit of the time - fierce backstage battles between politicians, scandalous disputes in the royal family, and the widespread mania of stock market speculation - gave him hope that he could heal through ridicule. Pope believed that he himself adhered to the golden mean and that extremes should be avoided at all costs. As a Catholic, he could only participate in politics as an observer without the right to vote; his neutrality allowed him to maintain close friendships with both of the great political rivals of his time - Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and Robert Walpole.

Pope was a bookish person by nature, and his first major satire, The Dunciad, depicted the ambitions and stupidity of second-rate writers. His hapless heroes were all dullards, and the word "dunce" had both the meanings of a pedant and a foolish idiot. Pope himself portrayed Theobald as the embodiment of pedantry but, realizing that not much could be gained from such a character, he pushed him into the background in Book II and made him sleep through all the events of Book III in the 1728 edition. The complete Annotated Dunciad (The Dunciad Variorum) was published in 1729, and in the thoroughly revised edition of 1743, Pope replaced Theobald with the playwright and poet laureate Colley Cibber (1671-1757). Book IV of the poem celebrates confusion and stupidity. If The Dunciad satirized those who made a living with an unremarkable pen, then in An Epistle to the Earl of Burlington (1731), Pope mocked the lack of taste in architecture and the fine arts, which was inherent in those who had more money than taste. Lord Burlington, a reforming architect and Pope's old friend, read the poem in manuscript and approved it. The "dunces" seized the opportunity and spread the poem, accusing Pope of malice and ingratitude towards his patrons. Pope combined this poem with three others to form a series called Moral Essays, one of his most elevated works.

In 1733, several significant new works by Pope were published, including the first of his Imitations of Horace (1733-1739) - the First Satire from the Second Book. The poem defends satire and sharply criticizes corrupt politicians. Satire is presented as the "army of virtue" that should freely express everything it deems necessary. Among his later imitations, the notable one is his work Augustus. Imitation of the First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace: To Augustus (1737). Laughter and sarcastic irony turn Horace's restrained praise of the divine Augustus into a veiled mockery of the august King George II, the corpulent English monarch. Pope, like Horace, pretends that he is merely drawing the busy monarch's attention to the benefit that unadorned poetry brings. Pope's inventiveness allows him, like Horace, to pretend that he is only drawing the busy monarch's attention to the benefit that unadorned poetry brings. Pope's most famous poem in the style of the imitations of Horace is An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734). The poem was published following Pope's great work An Essay on Man (1733-1734). He published the essay anonymously to deceive his detractors and presented himself as a philosopher, which was a surprise to many. In Epistle I, the universe is portrayed as a marvelous creation, with all its parts in perfect harmony because that is how God conceived and created them. Epistle II examines the essence of man, his self-love, virtue, and ruling passion (the latter described so candidly that it shocked readers, contrary to the author's intentions). Epistle III discusses the interdependence of man and society, the development of humanity from a primitive to a civilized way of life, and in Epistle IV, Pope reflects on what happiness is. As a system of beliefs, the poem is quite contradictory, but as a brilliant poetic reflection on "eternal" questions of philosophy, it may remain the best philosophical poem in the history of literature. It had an influence on the formation of interests and opinions among the general public until the end of the 18th century and beyond, comparable to that of The Spectator magazine by Joseph Addison. The fact that Pope never mentioned Christianity in the poem made it a kind of Bible for the deists of the time. Whether Pope was a devout Catholic is another question, but he was more of a Catholic than a freethinker, as evidenced by the criticism of freethinking in Book IV of The Dunciad.

Pope wrote excellent prose, but it has not brought him as much fame as his poetry, although he gained recognition in his time as an author of epistolary writings. At that time, it was not customary to publish one's own correspondence, but Pope managed to present his case in such a way that it appeared as if it was someone else who published his letters for the first time, and he had no choice but to publish the "authentic" texts in self-defense. Pope's Letters were published in 1735, 1737, and 1742. Pope called his life a "prolonged illness"; he indeed had poor health but usually remained active and responsive. In the winter of 1743-1744, he developed kidney inflammation and asthma. Pope passed away in his home on May 30, 1744.