Percy Bysshe Shelley (redirected from P. B. Shelley)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 

Born Aug. 4, 1792, at Field Place, Sussex; died July 8, 1822, in the Gulf of Spezia; buried in Rome. English poet. Son of a baronet.

Shelley studied at the aristocratic school of Eton from 1804 to 1810 and later at Oxford University, from which he was expelled for publishing the treatise The Necessity of Atheism (1811, with T. J. Hogg). His marriage to the daughter of an innkeeper in 1811 caused a break with his father. Shelley’s sociopolitical views developed under the influence of the ideas of the French Revolution and the works of 18th-century French Enlightenment writers, T. Paine, and especially W. Godwin, with whom Shelley became acquainted in 1813. In 1812 in Ireland, Shelley contributed to the propaganda for the political emancipation of the country from Great Britain (An Address to the Irish People, Declaration of Rights). A rebellious mood also characterized Shelley’s first works of literature—the anonymously published Gothic novels Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811), the collection of poems Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810, with his sister Elizabeth), and his early political poems. In 1814, Shelley met Godwin’s daughter, Mary, with whom he shared his subsequent destiny. Fleeing from persecution and slander, he lived permanently in Italy after 1818. He was drowned in a storm at sea.

In his first significant poetic work, the philosophical narrative poem Queen Mab (1813), Shelley’s revolutionary-democratic credo, borrowed largely from Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, was set forth in the form of medieval visions. From 1818 to 1822 the poet wrote most of his longer works, including the novella in verse Rosalind and Helen (1818, published 1819), with its destructive criticism of the idyllic patriarchal family; the narrative poem Julian and Maddalo (1818, published 1824), born out of debates with Lord Byron about the power of the human spirit; the romantic tragedy The Cenci (1819), which is set in the Italian Middle Ages and which vindicates violence in the struggle with tyranny; the narrative poem The Masque of Anarchy (1819), a reaction to the police’s firing on workers at a meeting in Manchester; the dramatic satire Oedipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820); the lyric drama Hellas (1821), devoted to a national liberation uprising in Greece; the narrative poem in honor of Keats, Adonais (1821); and the narrative poem The Triumph of Life (1822).

The main theme of Shelley’s philosophical-allegorical narrative poem The Revolt of Islam (1818; originally published as Laon and Cythna, 1817) and the revolutionary lyric drama Prometheus Unbound (1820) is the conflict between despotism and freedom. In these works, as in Queen Mab, Shelley declares the inevitability of the victory of good and justice, when the flourishing of the creative forces of nature and of liberated man will reveal to the world a realm of eternal beauty and harmony. A spirit of mythological antiquity runs through such philosophical poems of Shelley’s as “Hymn of Apollo,” “Hymn of Pan,” and “Song of Proserpine.”

Scenes of nature in Shelley are combined with a subtlety of observation and a sense of pantheism. Shelley the atheist believed in a spirit of nature; everything that was real for him was living (“Arethusa,” 1820, and “Love’s Philosophy,” 1819). Shelley perceived the political emancipation of mankind as consisting in the overcoming of evil in nature, as in “Ode to the West Wind.” The soul of the poet is seen as fused with ever-renewing nature, and it romantically transforms existence (“The Cloud” and “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills”). Shelley’s lyric love poetry, including “A Bridal Song” and “To Jane,” is humane and joyous, although it frequently contains a sorrowful, tragic note, as in “A Lament,” “To Night,” and “The Sensitive Plant.”

Essentially close to the ideas of socialism, Shelley, a “great prophet” in the words of F. Engels, left many war and agitation poems, for example “To the People of England” (1819). The social purpose of literature and the mission of the revolutionary poet are the central problem of the aesthetic treatise “A Defence of Poetry” (1822, published 1840).

Vivid imagination, melodiousness of verse, and richness of rhythm impart originality to Shelley’s poetry. It has had a vast influence on the poetry of the English-speaking countries and the world. Shelley’s works have been translated into many languages, including Russian.

WORKS

The Complete Works, vols. 1–10. New York, 1965.
The Letters, vols. 1–2. Oxford, 1964.
Notebooks, vols. 1–3. New York, 1968.
In Russian translation:
Polnoe sobr. soch., vols. 1–3. Translated by K. D. Bal’mont. St. Petersburg, 1903–07.
Izbr. stikhotvoreniia. Moscow, 1937.
Lirika. Moscow, 1957.
Izbrannoe. Moscow, 1962.
Pis’ma, stat’i, fragmenty. Moscow, 1972.

REFERENCES

Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 2, fasc. 1. Moscow, 1953.
Neupokoeva, I. Revoliutsionnyi romantizm Shelli. Moscow, 1959.
Morua, A. Ariel’: Roman iz zhizni Shelli i Bairona. Leningrad-Moscow, 1925.
Nikol’skaia, L. I. Shelli v Rossi. Smolensk, 1972.
Trelawny, E. J. Recollection of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron. London, 1931.
Peck, W. E. Shelley, vols. 1–2. Boston-New York, 1927.
Spender, S. Shelley. London, 1952.
King-Hele, D. G. Shelley: His Thought and Work. London-New York, 1962.
McNiece, G. Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea. Cambridge, Mass., 1969.
Chernaik, J. The Lyrics of Shelley. Cleveland-London, 1972.

A. B. GORIANIN