Shelley, draft of Julian and Maddalo
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Object details
1819
In this section:
1819
Shelley began Julian and Maddalo in Este, near Padua, in late 1818. The poem recalls his long conversations with Byron in Venice in August, and their contrasting philosophies. Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman who dismisses Julian’s belief in man’s capacity for self-improvement. He offers to introduce Julian to a ‘Maniac' who has been disappointed in love: ‘his wild talk will show / How vain are such aspiring theories'. The Maniac's despairing soliloquy forms the heart of the poem.
Shown here is Shelley's draft of the opening of the poem, describing an evening ride taken by Julian and Maddalo along the Lido. The rhyming couplets skilfully evoke the loose, fluid movement of a conversation, though as this heavily worked manuscript shows, creating this effect did not come easily. It has been suggested that the sketch is of the Pyramid of Caius Sestius in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome, which Shelley first visited in November 1818 and where his ashes lie buried. It is tempting to relate the floating eyes to the draft lines (perhaps they are the 'Twin images of the blue Heaven' belonging to Maddalo's young daughter), but they may well have been drawn at another time.
Of the poor menial man, where thriftless
toil
The I love all drearwild waste
And solitary places, where no fear
where you wetaste
Of mane The pleasure of believing what youwe see
Is boundless, as we wish our soul to be
was this [?wide] Ocean shore
And such is the wide [O] Ocean, and this land
As More barren asthan its waves . . the winds whichthen drovedrove [bore]
The awakeningliving spray along the sunny air,
[Strand] And that [divinest] [depths] of Heaven laid
Heaven was [ ] bare
remotest cope
Even [to] its deepest[profoundest] [Blue] [by] the keen North
[Were] [From] which; a spirit [like] [broke]
When like one spirit which delight [breaks] forth
To harmonize [with]Harmonizing [solitude], & [it] sent
Into our hearts aerial merriment
And[So] as we rode we talked–––– such talkswift
it [chanced] [that] I
Winging & the light thought
ClothingWinging itself in laughter lingered not
But flew [ever] from brain to brain
LadenCharged with lightmemories of remembered years
hours
[recorded] [years] hours
But [fled] like busy bees from the flowers, to flowers
Charged w But Flew from brain to brain
But flew from lip to lip & brain to brain
But flew from brain to brain, such glee was ours
Charged like with light memories of remembered [?hours]
Such pleasant [term] [ ] [as] those
[?shore]
How beautiful is sunset oh,when the glow [flow]
Of Heaven is spread above a land like thee ––
Tower shade of
Thy mountains & thy towers [crested] Italy
Percy Bysshe Shelley; (1822) Mary Shelley; (bequest, 1851) Sir Percy and Lady Shelley; (bequest, 1889) Lady Shelley; (bequest, 1899) John C.E. Shelley (later Sir John Shelley-Rolls); (gift, 1946) Bodleian.
Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, XV (1990), ed. Steven E. Jones, esp. pp. 66-7, 173-4.
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