New light on the secret life of Lord Byron

How will the biographies of today's figures be written a hundred years from now, when oceans of digital information, whether true or contaminated by AI, will be available for each potential subject? Shall we imagine it?

Well, to begin with, the human biographer of the future will have to multiply themselves to investigate a vast array of available archives, both digital and analog, but they will also have to intensify their creative vision, since, more than ever, they will be forced to develop bold hypotheses, given their inability to cover more than a tiny part of the data that the person under investigation left scattered throughout the network.

The biographer seeking the truth about the character (in case the concept of truth is still valued in the future) will have to equip themselves with the means to decontaminate the information from their sources from playful algorithms, so one can imagine their screen full of data-checking applications: “Which of the 898 profiles of this influencer of 2025 is the good one, assuming that among the fake ones there are not some created by themselves to create confusion or cloak themselves in mystery?” This will be their tribulations.

The biographer of the future will navigate an ocean of data contaminated by AI.

In fact, we're not far from this imagined model. Wikipedia itself is a biographical platform open to modification and updating of data, both by the person profiled and by others. It's not unreasonable to see it as the pioneer in converting traditional biography into a participatory process.

But the work of today's biographers shouldn't be underestimated in any way. If not across oceans, they also navigate seas of data and references where there are still unexplored depths. The difference is that the sources are still relatively reliable, free from algorithmic pollution.

This does not mean, however, that today's researcher is spared the arduous task of stripping those he writes of the aura that surrounds their lives. We recently witnessed a thorough review of the figure of Giacomo Casanova : new studies suggest that the Venetian writer was not an extroverted sexual predator, but rather a man who, to a certain extent, respected women and lived in the shadow of a deep melancholy.

About another heartthrob of universal literature, Lord Byron, Debate has published a biography in Spanish whose author has had access to some of the depths that hold secrets about the subject. In her book Byron , Fiona McCarthy (who died in 2020) addressed the complexity of a poet who always had a vocation for posterity.

There are concrete revelations, such as the cause of his exile from England in 1816. There has always been speculation about a number of reasons, among which rumours of incest with his stepsister Augusta predominated, but, according to McCarthy (who had access to unpublished correspondence), there was only one reason: a formal accusation of homosexual practices that carried the risk of execution.

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But beyond this, the author shows us a poet obsessed with his image and the possibility of encountering English tourists following his footsteps in any Italian city. Sometimes he avoided them, and other times he made himself known.

His dissolute life during the three years he spent in Venice was exaggerated in his letters to London by Byron himself, who, moreover, devoted many hours of his stay to writing and studying the Armenian language. The biographer states that "Byron had such an insatiable thirst for fame that he would try every means to achieve it: this frequently led him to express opinions completely at odds with his actions and his own feelings."

In conclusion: Lord Byron, a bicentennial figure who still captivates us as much for his poems (his Don Juan is a masterpiece of literature) as for his attitude to life and the beauty of his portraits, would be, if he were alive today and had accounts on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or Twitch, an intolerable nightmare for biographers of the future.

The most passionate lover New details about Fornarina

Biographer Fiona McCarthy sheds new light on Byron's passionate Venetian lover, Margherita Cogni, nicknamed "La Fornarina" for being the wife of a baker (conveniently endowed with money to gain her consent). The biographer says that while Cogni and Byron were making love, she would cross herself when she heard the church bells ring. The fact that she could neither read nor write pleased the poet: unlike his other lovers, Cogni couldn't send her annoying letters when he left her for someone else.

The most sophisticated lover Arpalice Taruscelli and her entourage

Fiona McCarthy tells us about “a more professional scene-maker” who also shared a bed with Lord Byron (it is speculated that he slept with 200 women during his Venetian period). She was an opera singer and had the sophisticated name of Arpalice Taruscelli. “She is the most beautiful bacchante in the world and a woman to perish in,” the poet wrote in a letter. In addition to Byron, “Taruscelli already had a complicated retinue of lovers, ex-lovers, and an official cavaliere servente, a colonel in the Austrian army.”

The confirmation Hard worker and great swimmer

Chateaubriand wrote that it was a shame that Byron squandered his Venetian time indulging in the good life instead of writing. He was wrong. He lacked information. McCarthy's biography confirms that the poet, in addition to advancing his work, spent many afternoons studying the Armenian language on the island of Saint Lazarus and helping his spiritual preceptor, Father Paschal, write a grammar of Armenian in English. He combined these afternoons of study with swimming, at which he was an adept practitioner. The biography confirms his long swim from the Lido to the site of the current train station, crossing the entire length of the Grand Canal.