ABSTRACT
In 1821 Byron’s Cain, a Mystery – a romantic drama of Lucifer’s temptation of Cain, and the killing of Abel, resembling in style an inferior Faust Part II – appeared. B. replied with this little variation on it. He picks up certain of Byron’s themes: first, the chief argument of Lucifer and Cain, in which Jehovah is denounced for his treatment of Adam and Eve, first tempting and then punishing: ‘Cursed be / He who first invented life that leads to death!’ (Cain II ii 18-9). B. uses this only to deny it: life does not lead to death; mortal ‘life’ is unreal, and only Eternity knows true life. From elsewhere in Cain B. takes up Adam’s puzzled misery and Eve’s fierce rejection of sin and sinner. Finally he takes up the biblical line Byron had reshaped – Genesis iv 10, which in Cain iii is spoken by ‘the Angel of the Lord’: ‘The voice of thy slain brother’s blood cries out, / Even from the ground, unto the Lord.’ B. writes that the punishment of Cain is therefore due not to Jehovah, who only wishes forgiveness and reconciliation, but to the vindictiveness of Abel’s shade.
