Jonathan Gross – författare

Byron concealed himself in various literary disguises, a process he called “mobility.” In this study of influences on Byron’s verse and Byron’s European impact, I explore these borrowings and transformations as they manifested themselves in his reading. At issue is the very concept of romantic poetic voice. Framing himself in the tradition of the Irish yet cosmopolitan Thomas Moore, Byron adopted continental guises, imitating both Italian writers and political heroes, such as Dante, Machiavelli, and Tasso. In establishing an Italian identity, Byron relied upon the Italian writers he translated (Pulci, Dante), Thomas Moore’s “Fudge Family in Paris,” and Shelley’s “Julian and Maddalo,” as well as Goethe’s Faust. This Europeanization of Byron should not conceal the fact that Byron adopted poses from his predecessors, such as Walter Scott, in order to fashion himself as a Scottish poet who also happened to be English. Byron became the writers he read: Moore, Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, Foscolo, Lady Morgan, and Madame de Staël. Those who imitated Byron, particularly Alexander Pushkin and Adam Mickiewicz, became the best interpreters of his literary example while transforming it, and explained what it meant to be a Harold in Muscovite Cloak, or a Polish Byron, to be both delimited and emancipated by Byron’s example.

Words of the Prophets treats graffiti as a form of political prophecy. Whether we consider austerity in Thessaloniki, Camorra infiltration in Naples, the fall of Communism in Gdansk, or the rise of gang warfare in Chicago, graffiti is a form of democratic self-expression that dates back to Periclean Athens and the Book of Daniel. Words of the Prophets offers close readings of 400 original photographs taken between 2014 and 2021 in Philadelphia, Venice, Milan, Florence, Syracuse, and Warsaw, alongside literary works by Pawel Huelle, films by Andrezj Wajda, Antonio Capua, and music videos by Natasha Bedingfield and Beyoncé. A third of the book is dedicated to interviews with Krik Kong, Iwona Zajac, Ponchee.193, Jay Pop, Ser, Simoni Fontana, and Mattia Campo Dall’Orto.