ABSTRACT
Published 1832; ‘Juvenilia’. It was considerably rewritten for 1842; T. began such revision very soon after 1832 (Mem. i 141, 145). It was written 1830–31: ‘the idea of this came into my head between Narbonne and Perpignan’ (T.), during his tour of the Pyrenees with Arthur Hallam, summer 1830. Hallam sent it, as The Southern Mariana, the title in H.Lpr 142, to W. B. Donne, 13 Feb. 1831: ‘It is intended, you will perceive, as a kind of pendant to his former poem of Mariana [p. 3], the idea of both being the expression of desolate loneliness, but with this distinctive variety in the second that it paints the forlorn feeling as it would exist under the influence of different impressions of sense. When we were journeying together this summer through the South of France we came upon a range of country just corresponding to his preconceived thought of a barrenness, so as in the South, and the portraiture of the scenery in this poem is most faithful. You will, I think, agree with me that the essential & distinguishing character of the conception requires in the Southern Mariana a greater lingering on the outward circumstances, and a less palpable transition of the poet into Mariana’s feelings, than was the case in the former poem’ (AHH,p. 401; Mem. i 500–1). Hallam wrote to T., 24 Sept. 1832: ‘Mariana in the South seems the right title; I perceive you mean to refer only to the former one, not to republish it’ (AHH,p. 652). In a copy of 1830, T. inserted the titles of additional poems, presumably considering, before 1832, a revised edition of 1830. Before Mariana, he wrote Prologue to the Marianas; this either has not survived or has not been recognized. After Mariana, he wrote A Southern Mariana. (See C. Sturman, TRB iv, 1984, 123–4.)
