Percy Byssiie Siielley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822), was one of the great En­glish lyric poets. He experimented with many literary styles and had a lasting influence on many later writers, particularly Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy.

His life. Shelley was bom on Aug. 4, 1792, in Sussex into a wealthy and politically prominent family. He had a stormy career at Eton College and Oxford University, from which he was expelled in 1811 for writing a pamphlet called «The Necessity of Atheism».

In August 1811, Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Wcstbrook, the daughter of a former coffeehouse owner. He aban­doned her in 1814 and ran away with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Although both said they did not believe in marriage, Shelley and Mary Godwin were married in 1816, after Harriet drowned her­self.

Shelley believed the Irish were being oppressed by their En­glish rulers, and tried to rouse the Irish to rebel against England. He wrote «Queen Mab» (1812—1813), a revolutionary poem which attacked both political tyranny and orthodox Christianity. In 1816, Shelley and his wife formed a close friendship with the poet Lord Byron in Geneva, Switzerland. After March 1818, Shelley went into permanent exile in Italy. There he wrote a sequence of impor­tant poems, including «Prometheus Unbound» (1820), «The Witch of Atlas» (1820), «Epipsychidion» (1821), and «Hellas» (1821) The death of an acquaintance, the English poet John Keats, in­spired Shelley's elegy «Adonais» (1821). On July 8,1822, Shelley drowned during a storm while sailing near Leghorn, Italy.

His writings. Shelley's poems are emotionally direct, but diffi­cult to understand intellectually. Much of his poetry is autobio­graphical, including his most famous lyric «Ode to the West Wind» (1819). Shelley's spiritual attitudes were intensely personal and tended lo oppose traditional Christian views. Shelley fell that spiri­tual truth was not based on either supernatural revelation or natural experience. Instead, he thought truth could be understood by the imagination alone. The role of the imagination as a spiritual guide is the subjcct of «Mont Blanc» (1816). This powerful meditative poem first revealed Shelley's mature style.

In his most ambitious long poem, the lyrical drama «Prometheus Unbound», Shelley attempted to combine his imaginative faith with his hopes for humanity. Like much of Shelley's work, this play is based on classical Greek models. Prometheus, the creative power in humanity, is liberated by Demogorgon, a mythical figure who stands for inevitable change in human events. At the end of the play, earthly rulers and government institutions are defeated and love and beauty reign, but perhaps not forever.

Shelley's poetry became somber after the revolutionary hope expressed in «Prometheus Unbound». The Irish poet William But­ler Yeats described Shelley's theme as an increasing conflict be­tween infinite desire and the inability fully to realize such desire. «Epipsychidion» expresses Shelley's love for an Italian noble­woman, Emilia Viviani. This poem tries to achieve a vision of ideal love finding its lasting home in an earthly paradise. The poem ends in despair of its own quest.

In 1821, Shelley wrote his famous essay «А Defence of Po­etry». The work is valuable for its insights into every poet's gen­eral ideas and Shelley's views on the role of imagination in po­etry.

Whether Shelley had begun to find some definite faith, philo­sophical or otherwise, we do not know, but his final poems arc as grim and sorrowful as any he wrote. The last love lyrics that Shelley wrote are serene only in their hopelessness. According to his pow­erful unfinished poem on human defeat, «The Triumph of Life», good and the means of accomplishing good cannot be reconciled. However grim his final vision, Shelley always looks toward the hope of inspiration, as in the «Ode to the West Wind»: Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophccy!