Shelley was very clever from an early age. When I was a teenager, I studied at Eton College, a school for aristocratic children, and 18 10 entered Oxford University. He has a wide range of interests in social science and natural science, especially the book On Political Justice by william godwin, a famous British thinker. Influenced by bourgeois democracy and utopian socialism, he opposed oppression and slavery, religious superstition and advocated reforming society through education. 18 1 1 year, he wrote a philosophical paper "The Necessity of Atheism", which proved the existence of God by logical reasoning and promoted atheism, so he was expelled from school. Seeing his guilt for his father, he had to leave home and live alone.
1865438+From February to April, 2002, my new wife Harriet and I went to Dublin to support the Irish people's struggle against British rule, and published a letter to the Irish people and a declaration of human rights, advocating national independence, religious liberation, freedom, equality, fraternity and human rights. After I came back from Ireland, I continued to write poems, criticize tyranny and publicize revolution.
The long poem Queen Mabu (18 13) is the first important work written by Shelley in his early years. It describes Queen Mabu, who is in charge of human destiny, traveling around the universe with the soul of a young girl, Antie, surveying the past and the present, commenting on the world, and expressing the poet's views on social history, politics and philosophy. Shelley condemned feudal tyranny and religious superstition through Queen Mabel's mouth, criticized the money relationship of capitalist system, and publicized utopian socialist thought. He pointed out that "in its infancy, human flowers were destroyed by emperors, priests and politicians". Freedom is trampled and intelligence is suppressed. In the era of capitalism, the rise of commerce, the opposition between the rich and the poor, gold "rules everything on the earth", "all human skills and natural production can be traded with money"; The world is full of hunger, disease and sudden death. However, in the eternal world, change is the basic law of nature. With people's rational awakening and intellectual liberation, "Happy Earth" will become a "paradise on earth". This poem once had a strong influence on the British people and was regarded as the "Bible" by the later chartists.
Shelley's critical attitude and rebellious spirit aroused the envy of the ruling class. 18 14, Shelley divorced his wife and married godwin's daughter Mary. The reactionary British authorities used the marriage incident to slander him, causing the poet to leave the motherland angrily and settle in Italy.
The famous poem Islamic Uprising (18 18) was published before the poet went abroad. It was originally named "Leon and Cessna" with the subtitle "Revolution in Huang Jincheng". The beginning of the long poem is a fable, which describes the fierce struggle between the serpent and the eagle in the sea and sky. Both sides lost and the goshawk fled to the sky. The serpent fell into the sea and was rescued by a fairy. The struggle between the snake and the eagle symbolizes the struggle between good and evil in the world. It is a prelude to a long poem and a key to understanding its theme.
The main part of this long poem is a fictional "Huang Jincheng Revolution", which describes Islamic Huang Jincheng, the hometown of heroes and heroines Leon and Sisna. Due to the tyrant's rule, Huang Jinguo in the past became a dark hell on earth, people suffered and their lives were destroyed. Leon and Cessna were also arrested and humiliated. Therefore, they used propaganda as a weapon to make speeches everywhere, awakened the masses with the ideas of truth, justice, freedom and kindness, disintegrated the enemy, and the mighty uprising team rushed into the palace to overthrow the tyrant's autocratic rule. People demanded the execution of the evil tyrant, but Lyon released him out of kindness. Soon, the tyrant made a comeback and made a counter-revolutionary restoration. The revolutionary people were killed, and Leon and Sisna were tied to the fire and burned to death. Finally, there was a bang, flames were blazing, and the tyrant fell to the ground. Leon and Sisna woke up with the help of the fairy and wandered in the long river in a boat.
Through the description of the Huang Jincheng revolution, the long poem reproduces the fighting spirit of the French bourgeois revolution in the18th century. At that time, the French Revolution faced setbacks, feudal forces were restored crazily, and the reactionary holy alliance ruled the European continent.
In the long poem "Islamic Uprising", Shelley enthusiastically affirmed the French people's revolutionary struggle against autocratic rule, and preached the optimistic belief that justice will prevail over evil, which is a powerful inspiration to the European people's revolution. However, Shelley did not approve of the violence of the French Revolution, as he confessed in the preface: "When advocating a major reform of human mental state to promote the human social system, I will never compliment those rude and malicious emotions-these emotions are always mixed with extremely beneficial social reforms. Revenge, jealousy and prejudice have no place in poetry. Only love, as the only rule governing the spiritual world, is praised everywhere in poetry. " This reflects the poet's ideological weakness.
During his stay in Italy, Shelley cared about the life and struggle of the British working class and working people, sympathized with and supported the liberation movements of the Spanish, Italian and Greek people, and became close friends with the poet Byron, with great enthusiasm for creation.
The famous poetic dramas Prometheus Liberated (18 19), Chyi Chin (18 19), Greece (182 1) and the long poem. Adoni (182 1) and the popular short poems ode to the west wind (18 19), To the Lark (1820) and Song for the English (65438).
Chyi Chin, a poetic drama, is adapted from Italian historical stories in the 6th century/kloc. Count Chyi Chin, a feudal aristocrat, was an "incorrigible devil". He has been engaged in the activities of "lust and lust, killing people for their lives" all his life, with cruel means and numerous crimes. However, because the Pope took bribes and deliberately sheltered and connived, he repeatedly escaped punishment.
Chyi Chin is not only savage, but also shameless. Not only did he do evil outside, but he also harmed his relatives at home. He killed his son, raped his daughter and beat his wife. Completely immoral. After her daughter Beatrice was humiliated and ravaged, many complaints were invalid and unbearable, so she had to conspire with her family to hire an assassin to kill Chyi Chin. After the incident, the judge acquitted them, but the Pope insisted on putting them to death. Finally, Bertelli, accompanied by his mother and brother, calmly walked to the execution ground.
The poetic drama lashes the dissolute tyranny of the nobility and the hypocrisy and malice of the Pope by realistic means, which shows the poet's anti-feudal and anti-church stance. On the attitude towards violence, Shelley's thought is contradictory. He not only objectively affirmed the necessity and rationality of resisting evil forces by violent means, but also advocated treating people with "kindness and forgiveness", opposed "tooth for tooth, tooth for tooth" and advocated "using peace and love to change the perpetrators from despicable emotions."
1819 August 16, 80,000 people in Manchester, England, held a rally in St. Peter's Square, demanding the reform of the parliamentary system and the abolition of corn laws. The reactionary authorities sent troops to suppress it, killing more than 400 people and creating the famous "Petrou Massacre" in history.
When Shelley learned about it abroad, he was extremely indignant and wrote many political poems, such as "Masked Parade of Tyranny" and "Singing for the British", to protest against the British government's cruel suppression of the people. In the long poem Masquerade of Tyranny, the poet pointedly pointed out in vivid language that a group of executioners, such as "murder", "deception" and "hypocrisy", are wearing the masks of "God, law and king" and marching on the land of England under the leadership of tyranny. They throw their weight around and get carried away, while the British people are in a position of oppression and slavery. The poet finally called on the British people to fight for freedom:
Get up, like a lion waking up,
Too many of you can't be subdued,
Get rid of your shackles quickly,
Like dew that sticks to you when you fall asleep—
You have many people; They are in the minority.
In the short poem "A Song for the English", the poet tells the British people through a clear and fluent poem: You work hard, cultivate the land and weave, but the wealth you create is occupied by a group of parasites. It is absolutely intolerable that the steel weapons you forged get into the hands of tyrants and in turn become tools to suppress you. The poet shouted:
Sow-but don't let tyrants search;
Looking for wealth-don't let swindlers do it;
Weave-don't weave cotton-padded jacket for lazy people;
Forge weapons-protect yourself.
Shelley is an enthusiastic political poet and an excellent lyric singer. He wrote many lyric short poems with fresh style and beautiful artistic conception, praising nature, love, life and ideals, showing his passionate pursuit of light, freedom, happiness and beauty, giving people positive inspiration and artistic enjoyment.
Ode to the west wind is Shelley's famous short lyric poem. The poet praised the fierce and powerful west wind with heroic and unrestrained passion. He praised the west wind for destroying decay and sweeping away the broken branches and leaves on the ground; He praised the west wind for dispersing clouds in the sky with majestic air, summoning hail, rainstorm and thunder, and singing Corona songs for the world at night; He praised the west wind for awakening the sleeping sea, setting off turbulent waves and shaking the flowers and trees on the seabed; He praised Zephyr as both a destroyer and a protector. The west wind spreads the seeds of life everywhere, prompting the arrival of colorful spring.
"ode to the west wind" adopts symbolic art and has far-reaching influence. Shelley's praise of the west wind in nature is actually a praise of the revolutionary storm in human society. He praised the violent and powerful revolutionary movements such as the west wind for destroying all reactionary and evil forces. He praised the revolution for not only ruthlessly destroying the dark old world, but also sowing the seeds of the new world. He expressed his strong desire to join the revolution, saying that he should be the horn of the revolution, the trumpet of prophecy, spread revolutionary ideas to people and predict a bright future.
In the short poem To the Lark, Shelley injected the poet's own soul into the Lark, a kind of "cheerful spirit":
You jump off the earth,
Fly, fly,
Like a fire in the blue sky
Spread your wings.
This lark, flying high in the blue sky, sings loudly. It despises the filth of the world and hates empty and flashy tones. With sincere and warm feelings and beautiful and simple songs, it tells the inner sadness and love, tells the yearning for light and freedom, and tirelessly spreads sympathy, joy and hope to mankind. This is a self-portrayal of Shelley's image, which embodies the poet's spiritual realm, social ideal and artistic ambition.
The lyric drama Greece is Shelley's last important work published before his death. Against the background of 182 1 year, the Greek people's armed uprising against the rule of Turkish Sultan Mamoud. In the poetic drama, the poet remembered the glorious history of Greece, praised the revolutionary struggle of the Greek people against Turkish oppression and for independence and freedom, exposed the sinister intentions of the reactionary governments of Britain, Austria, France and Russia towards Greece, and predicted that the Greek national liberation movement would surely win the final victory.
1822 On July 8, Shelley was caught in a storm while sailing at sea and capsized and died at the age of 29. Marx deeply regretted Shelley's early death and warmly praised him as a true revolutionary and socialist depth bomb. Engels called Shelley a "genius prophet".
In Shelley's time, Europe was experiencing the French bourgeois revolution and the reactionary restoration of holy alliance. The bourgeois ideology of freedom and democracy is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, while the autocratic rule of the aristocratic bourgeoisie is quite powerful; The early workers' movement rose, the national liberation movement flourished, and the theory of scientific socialism was not yet born.
In his short life, Shelley used bourgeois democracy and utopian socialism as weapons, opposed tyranny and religious superstition, advocated freedom and democracy, equality and fraternity, sympathized with and supported the workers' movement and the national liberation movement, and yearned for a world of great harmony without oppression and exploitation. Shelley is an advanced representative of the trend of the times and Prometheus in the field of poetry. Through his poetry creation, he spread the flame of revolution to the oppressed people and enslaved nations.