When Juan is sixteen, Donna Julia falls in love with the handsome young man and finds opportunities to be in his company. She saw to it that he received a thorough training in the arts and sciences but took great care that he should learn nothing about the basic facts of life.Īmong Donna Inez's friends is Donna Julia, the young and beautiful wife of Don Alfonso, a middle-aged man incapable of engaging her affections. The education of Juan became the primary interest of his mother. Donna Inez was on the point of suing her husband for divorce when he died of a fever. Juan's parents did not get along well with each other because Don José was interested in women rather than in knowledge and was unfaithful to Donna Inez. And actually (here he sounds very young-Wordsworthian) the whole nature is my altar, because it “springs from the great Whole/Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.Don Juan was born in Seville, Spain, the son of Don José, a member of the nobility, and Donna Inez, a woman of considerable learning. Even though Byron lived at the time and in the place with no great Marian devotion, he addresses the argument of his many Protestant peers, describing the beauty of a non-specific image of the Virgin “That painting is no idol, ’tis too like.” Are you surprised, he seems to ask? Some say I have no devotion, but let’s see who’s better at praying. How beautiful were these evening moments when the bells were ringing and even though it was so quiet, “the forest leaves seem’d stirr’d with prayer”.

rebel commoner) and sneeringly quotes Wordsworth’s “pedlars” and “waggons” as the examples of what is bad in his poetry, which I guess is that it is too common for Byron.įortunately he stops and goes back to his subject: the lavish party is over, Juan and Haidee admire the sunset, and Byron unexpectedly launches into a very lyrical “Ave Maria”.

The real reason for his dislike of Wordsworth seems to come out in the following stanza, which sounds unpleasantly snobbish – he not only believes Wordsworth is far inferior to Dryden (whom Wordsworth criticized), but calls him “Jack Cades” (a 15th c. I’m not a big fan of Wordsworth, but I think Byron is just nit-picking. He should have asked for Pegasus, or Charles’s Wain, or at least a balloon, argues Byron. But isn’t every epic poem bound to be a bit boring, asks Byron, rhyming “epopee” with “ennui”? Then he launches, having made a side-swipe at Robert Southey, into an attack on Wordsworth, criticizing him for wishing in one of his poems to sail through clouds. James Joyce – “Ulyss… on James Joyce – “Ulysses” (“Lest…īyron or rather his narrator admits he’s too fond of digressions (but of course we know that’s the point of the poem).

James Joyce – “A Por… on James Joyce – “A Portrait of t…Ĭonsider sunk costs… on Rudyard Kipling –…Ĭonsidering Sunk Cos… on Rudyard Kipling –… James Joyce – “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (ctd.).

Don juan by lord byron