''Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation'' (1818– 19) is a poem in 617 lines of enjambed

heroic couplets A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the ''Legend of ...

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

published posthumously in 1824.

Background

This work was penned in the autumn of 1818 at a villa called I Capuccini, in Este, near

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

, which had been lent to Shelley by his friend

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and Peerage of the United Kingdom, peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and h ...

, and it was given its final revision in 1819. Shelley originally intended the poem to appear in '' The Examiner'', a

Radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...

paper edited by

Leigh Hunt James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet. Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centr ...

, but then decided instead on anonymous publication by

Charles Ollier Charles Ollier (1788–1859) was an English publisher and author, associated with the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. Early life From a Huguenot background, Ollier began life in the banking-house of Messrs. Coutts. About 1816 he was ...

. This plan fell through, and ''Julian and Maddalo'' first appeared after Shelley's death in a volume of his works called ''Posthumous Poems'' in 1824 (see 1824 in poetry), edited by his widow

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic fiction, Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of scie ...

. It is inspired by conversations Shelley had with Byron in Venice in 1818, in which they explored their different outlooks on life. The bitter cynicism of Count Maddalo in the poem reflects closely Lord Byron's views, as Julian's atheism and faith in the potentialities of man does those of Shelley himself. It is written in a conversational, natural style, which had not until then been usual in Shelley's works, and which may have been partly suggested by Byron's poem '' Beppo''. ''Julian and Maddalo'' was in its turn a strong influence on the

dramatic monologue Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the ''dramatic monologue'' as it applies to poetry: Types of dramatic monologue One of the mo ...

s of

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...

Synopsis

"Julian and Maddalo" is prefaced by a prose description of the main characters. Maddalo is described as a rich Venetian nobleman whose "passions and…powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength"; while Julian is said to be

an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible…He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy.

The poem proper then begins with a depiction of the two title characters riding through a Venetian scene and discussing the subjects of religious faith, free will and progress. Julian

Argued against despondency, but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.

They then board the Count's gondola and pass a lunatic asylum, which provokes from Maddalo a comparison between the inmates' situation and the futility of all mortal life. The next day Julian visits Maddalo and meets his baby daughter (based on

Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and Peerage of the United Kingdom, peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and h ...

's daughter Allegra), whose childish innocence inspires him to a statement of his own optimistic belief in the power of Good. Maddalo dismisses Julian's creed as

utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...

n, and compares him with a former friend who has since gone mad known as the Maniac. They again take the gondola to the madhouse to meet this man, the Maniac, who tells them a confused and disconnected account of an ill-fated romance and of his abandonment by his lover. (This character has been identified by scholars as a composite of Shelley himself and the poet

Tasso TASSO (Two Arm Spectrometer SOlenoid) was a particle detector at the PETRA particle accelerator at the German national laboratory DESY. The TASSO collaboration is best known for having discovered the gluon, the mediator of the strong interaction an ...

; the lover perhaps as

, whose relationship with the poet had lately been under some strain.) Julian and Maddalo are downcast by the Maniac's story, Maddalo commenting that

Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.Line 544.

Julian leaves Venice but, returning many years later, asks Maddalo's daughter about the madman or the Maniac and is told that his lover had returned and again left him, and that both were now dead.

Notes

External links

Online edition at EverypoetJulian and Maddalo. Percy Shelley's ''Posthumous Poems''. A Digital Edition of the 1824 Collection.The Death of Shelley and the Birth of the Maniac: Rethinking "Julian and Maddalo". Michael Wassermann. 25 March 2011. Prezi.com.
{{Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1818 poems 1819 poems Philosophical poems Dialogues