赏析Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1827), English Romantic poet who

rebelled against English politics and conservative values. Shelley drew no

essential distinction between poetry and politics, and his work reflected the

radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near

Horsham in Sussex, into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley,

was a Sussex squire and a Member of Parliament. Shelley attended Syon

House Academy and Eton and in 1810 he entered the Oxford University

College.

In 1811 Shelley was expelled from the college for publishing The

Necessity of Atheism, which he wrote with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Shelley's

father withdrew his inheritance in favor of a small annuity, after he eloped with

the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner.

The pair spent the following two years traveling in England and Ireland,

distributing pamphlets and speaking against political injustice. In 1813 Shelley

published his first important poem, the atheistic Queen Mab.

The poet's marriage to Harriet was a failure. In 1814 Shelley traveled

abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the philosopher and

anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836). Mary's young stepsister Claire

Claremont was also in the company. During this journey Shelley wrote an

unfinished novella, The Assassins (1814). Their combined journal, Six Weeks'

Tour, reworked by Mary Shelley, appeared in 1817. After their return to

London, Shelley came into an annual income under his grandfather's will.

Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in 1816. Shelley married Mary

Wollstonecraft and his favorite son William was born in 1816.

Shelley spent the summer of 1816 with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva,

where Byron had an affair with Claire. Shelley composed the "Hymn To

Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc". In 1817 Shelley published The Revolt

Of Islam and the much anthologized "Ozymandias" appeared in 1818. Among

Shelley's popular poems are the Odes "To the West Wind" and "To a Skylark"

and Adonis, an elegy for Keats.

In 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where Byron was residing. In 1819

they went to Rome and in 1820 to Pisa. Shelley's works from this period

include Julian And Maddalo, an exploration of his relations with Byron and Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama. The Cenci was a five-act tragedy based

on the history of a 16th-century Roman family, and The Mask of Anarchy was

a political protest which was written after the Peterloo massacre. In 1822 the

Shelley household moved to the Bay of Lerici. There Shelley began to write

The Triumph of Life.

To welcome his friend Leigh Hunt, he sailed to Leghorn. During

the stormy return voyage to Lerici, his small schooner the Ariel sank

and Shelley drowned with Edward Williams on July 8, 1822. The

bodies were washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the presence of

Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, they were burned on the beach. Shelley

was later buried in Rome.

西风颂

O Wild West Wind, thou breathe of autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each likes a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring hall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

1

狂野的秋风啊，你这秋的精气！

没看见你出现，枯叶已被扫空，

像群群鬼魂没见法师就逃避——

它们或枯黄焦黑，或苍白潮红，

真是遭了瘟灾的一大片；你呀，

你把迅飞的种子载送去过冬，

让它们僵睡在黑黢黢的地下，

就像尸体在各自的墓里安躺， 直到你那蔚蓝的春天妹妹呀

对梦乡中的大地把号角吹响，

叫羊群般的花苞把大气吸饮，

又让山野充满了色彩和芳香。

狂野的精灵，你正在四处巡行，

既拉朽摧枯又保护。哦，你听！

II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thane arty surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere