Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

nullPercy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822 波西 比希 雪莱Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822 波西 比希 雪莱one of the greatest of the English Romantics, the greatest idealist among the Romantic poets A nonconformist （不保持一致的人） throughout his life. Had a sensitive and inquisitive naturenullHis belief in human perfectibility, his conviction that beauty and love could guide life’s meaning, and his radical but perceptive social and political philosophies nullAs a young student at Sion House Academy and then at the famous private school of Eton, he developed attractions to science and especially to gothic romances that were to influence his adult preoccupations and writing. nullWhile attending Eton Shelley began to read radial literature and decided to devote his life to opposing hypocrisy and injustice. nullShorty after entering Oxford University he was expelled for refusing to deny authorship of a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism.” His expulsion created a breach with his father that was never mended. nullhis motives were often misunderstood. He himself acknowledged that his good impulses often backfired on him and were “the source of all sorts of mischief.” He was regarded by most of his contemporaries---those who did not know him personally---as scarcely less than a monster. nullAs a result of his strong commitment to unconventional social views, Shelley was considered a revolutionary and was treated like a pariah. nullAt his death Shelley’s volumes of poetry remained for the most part unsold, his public undiscovered. null Despite financial difficulties and personal worries of his own, Shelley had always been singularly generous to others. In Switzerland and Italy Byron had come to know the younger poet well. He was, so the lord insisted, “the best and least selfish man I ever knew. I never knew one who was not a beast in comparison.” nullWilliam Wordsworth believed that “Shelley is one of the best artists of us all: I mean in workmanship of style.”