My favorite opening line so far is that flippant “Hail, Muse! et cetera.” at the top of Canto III. Perfectly captures the tone.
Second place is probably the opening of Canto IV: “Nothing so difficult as a beginning / In poesy, unless perhaps the end…”
#byron#don juan#Cantos II and IV are my favorites so far#the shipwreck! the romance! the dream sequences! the confrontation!#that random interlude with the Italian opera singers on the pirate ship!#but there are also some passages in Canto V that I keep coming back to#like the death of the military commandant (5/XXXIII-XXXIX)#and Juan's conversation with the Englishman (5/XIII-XXV)#(love reading that part aloud and doing different voices for them)#I will be very sad if Byron kills off John Johnson at Izmail