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Manfred: Transcending the RealManfred is less a poem about religion than it is a poem about magic, but those twoactivities bear a close relationship to one another. Ceremonial magic is a typicallyunlicensedderivative of religious practice, and has been condemned by religiousorthodoxy since at least classical times. 374While magic appears briefly in the curse stanzas of CHP IV (130-8), and in thetransformations in The Deformed Transformed (1.1.153ff), Manfred is Byron’s mostthorough exposition of the other side of religion. Like Faustus, or Kehama inSouthey’s Curse of Kehama, Manfred is immediately known to be wicked merely bybeing a magician. The poem presents the characters’ relations with God through faith,Manfred’s relations with others through his unique power and knowledge but alsothrough their common mortality, and, further, the hero’s own situation, in his despairand his sense of self. In the process, it takes into view his interactions with themysterious figure of Astarte. Religion operates as a significant background to all ofthis. What is particularly important here is the nature of the alternative cosmologyand its inhabitants, since such a fantastic setting frees the writer to recreate the veryuniverse, making the choices of reinvention significant. It is especially worthconsidering how heterodox Manfred is not, given this freedom.When published in 1817, Manfred was sufficiently unusual as to be called “wild andoriginal”, 375 and also “unintelligible”. 376 Claims of plagiarism from Goethe’s Faust,Marlowe’s Faustus, and Maturin’s Bertram were issued, and contested. 377 What wasnot contested, and what was most roundly condemned, was the incestuous relationship374 Q.v. Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman world (London; New York:Routledge, 2001), passim.375 Champion, June 22, 1817, p.197, RR, II, 532; see also Francis Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review, XXVIII(August 1817), 418-31, RR, II, 881-8: p.429 (887), “a work of genius and originality”; Gentleman'sMagazine, LXXXVII-ii (July 1817), 45-47, RR, III, 1106-1108: p.46 (1107), “the wildest and theworst” of Byron’s works.376 William Roberts, British Review, X (August 1817), 82-90, in RR, I, 451-5: p.84 (452); see also JohnWilson, in the Galignani edition, p.338n, on the poet being overwhelmed by “the strength and novelty”of the work”.377 Q.v. Francis Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review, August 1817, p.431 (888).238