珀西·比希·雪莱

Percy Bysshe Shelley，1792-1822

       Percy Bysshe Shelley was born August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England. The eldest son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, with one brother and four sisters, he stood in line to inherit not only his grandfather's considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament. He attended Eton College for six years beginning in 1804, and then went on to Oxford University. He began writing poetry while at Eton, but his first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he voiced his own heretical and atheistic opinions through the villain Zastrozzi. That same year, Shelley and another student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, published a pamphlet of burlesque verse, "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson," and with his sister Elizabeth, Shelley published Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire. In 1811, Shelley continued this prolific outpouring with more publications, including another pamphlet that he wrote and circulated with Hogg titled "The Necessity of Atheism," which got him expelled from Oxford after less than a year's enrollment.  Shelley could have been reinstated if his father had intervened, but this would have required his disavowing the pamphlet and declaring himself Christian. Shelley refused, which led to a complete break between Shelley and his father. This left him in dire financial straits for the next two years, until he came of age.

       That same year, at age nineteen, Shelley eloped to Scotland with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook. Once married, Shelley moved to the Lake District of England to study and write. Two years later he published his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. The poem emerged from Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher William Godwin, and it expressed Godwin's freethinking Socialist philosophy. Shelley also became enamored of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary, and in 1814 they eloped to Europe. After six weeks, out of money, they returned to England. In November 1814 Harriet Shelley bore a son, and in February 1815 Mary Godwin gave birth prematurely to a child who died two weeks later. The following January, Mary bore another son, named William after her father. In May the couple went to Lake Geneva, where Shelley spent a great deal of time with George Gordon, Lord Byron, sailing on Lake Geneva and discussing poetry and other topics, including ghosts and spirits, into the night. During one of these ghostly "seances," Byron proposed that each person present should write a ghost story. Mary's contribution to the contest became the novel Frankenstein. That same year, Shelley produced the verse allegory Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude. In December 1816 Harriet Shelley apparently committed suicide. Three weeks after her body was recovered from a lake in a London park, Shelley and Mary Godwin officially were married. Shelley lost custody of his two children by Harriet because of his adherence to the notion of free love.

      In 1817, Shelley produced Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem that, because it contained references to incest as well as attacks on religion, was withdrawn after only a few copies were published. It was later edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam (1818). At this time, he also wrote revolutionary political tracts signed "The Hermit of Marlow." Then, early in 1818, he and his new wife left England for the last time. During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works, including Prometheus Unbound (1820). Traveling and living in various Italian cities, the Shelleys were friendly with the British poet Leigh Hunt and his family as well as with Byron.

      On July 8, 1822, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley was drowned in a storm while attempting to sail from Leghorn to La Spezia, Italy, in his schooner, the Don Juan.

       珀西·比希·雪莱（英文原名：Percy Bysshe Shelley，公元1792年8月4日—公元1822年7月8日），英国著名作家、浪漫主义诗人，被认为是历史上最出色的英语诗人之一。英国浪漫主义民主诗人、第一位社会主义诗人、小说家、哲学家、散文随笔和政论作家、改革家、柏拉图主义者和理想主义者，受空想社会主义思想影响颇深。

       雪莱生于英格兰萨塞克斯郡霍舍姆附近的沃恩汉，12岁进入伊顿公学，1810年进入牛津大学，1811年3月25日由于散发《无神论的必然》，入学不足一年就被牛津大学开除。1813年11月完成叙事长诗《麦布女王》，1818年至1819年完成了两部重要的长诗《解放了的普罗米修斯》和《倩契》，以及其不朽的名作《西风颂》。1822年7月8日逝世。恩格斯称他是“天才预言家”。       

      1792年8月4日，佩西·比希·雪莱生于英国苏塞克斯郡霍舍姆附近的菲尔德·普莱斯一个世袭从男爵的家庭中。父母思想都陈腐庸俗，雪莱自幼与父母不亲，后有四妹及一弟。雪莱六岁时即被每日送往一教士处学拉丁文。

      1800年，作讽刺诗《一只猫咪》，此为雪莱诗全集中所载雪莱最早的一首诗作。

      1802年，入萨昂学校（SionHouseAcademy ），该校在勃兰特福德 （Brentford）附近。

      1804年，雪莱被送到伊顿贵族学校，并在此度过了六年的中学生活。伊顿公学在当时有一些在现代社会看来粗俗野蛮的规矩，比如，低年级学生就是高年级学生的“学仆”或奴隶。每个“学仆”要替他的“宗主”铺床叠被，刷衣刷鞋，如不服从，均要接受处罚。但身体瘦弱的雪莱却以他的激烈反抗的形式表示了他的不予服从，以至得了一个“疯子”的外号

        他的墓志铭是引自莎士比亚《暴风雨》中的诗句：他并没有消失什么，不过感受了一次海水的变幻，他成了富丽珍奇的瑰宝。

乔治·戈登·拜伦（1788—1824）

George Gordon Byron

      George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788, in London, England. He grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland, and inherited his family's English title at the age of ten, becoming Baron Byron of Rochdale. Abandoned by his father at an early age and resentful of his mother, who he blamed for his being born with a deformed foot, Byron isolated himself during his youth and was deeply unhappy. Though he was the heir to an idyllic estate, the property was run down and his family had no assets with which to care for it. As a teenager, Byron discovered that he was attracted to men as well as women, which made him all the more remote and secretive.

       He studied at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Trinity College in Cambridge. During this time Byron collected and published his first volumes of poetry. The first, published anonymously and titled Fugitive Pieces, was printed in 1806 and contained a miscellany of poems, some of which were written when Byron was only fourteen. As a whole, the collection was considered obscene, in part because it ridiculed specific teachers by name, and in part because it contained frank, erotic verses. At the request of a friend, Byron recalled and burned all but four copies of the book, then immediately began compiling a revised version—though it was not published during his lifetime. The next year, however, Byron published his second collection, Hours of Idleness, which contained many of his early poems, as well as significant additions, including poems addressed to John Edelston, a younger boy whom Byron had befriended and deeply loved.

       By Byron's twentieth birthday, he faced overwhelming debt. Though his second collection received an initially favorable response, a disturbingly negative review was printed in January of 1808, followed by even more scathing criticism a few months later. His response was a satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which received mixed attention. Publicly humiliated and with nowhere else to turn, Byron set out on a tour of the Mediterranean, traveling with a friend to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey, and finally Athens. Enjoying his new-found sexual freedom, Byron decided to stay in Greece after his friend returned to England, studying the language and working on a poem loosely based on his adventures. Inspired by the culture and climate around him, he later wrote to his sister, "If I am a poet ... the air of Greece has made me one."

       Byron returned to England in the summer of 1811 having completed the opening cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem which tells the story of a world-weary young man looking for meaning in the world. When the first two cantos were published in March of 1812, the expensive first printing sold out in three days. Byron reportedly said, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

       His fame, however, was among the aristocratic intellectual class, at a time when only cultivated people read and discussed literature. The significant rise in a middle-class reading public, and with it the dominance of the novel, was still a few years away. At 24, Byron was invited to the homes of the most prestigious families and received hundreds of fan letters, many of them asking for the remaining cantos of his great poem—which eventually appeared in 1818.

       An outspoken politician in the House of Lords, Byron used his popularity for public good, speaking in favor of workers' rights and social reform. He also continued to publish romantic tales in verse. His personal life, however, remained rocky. He was married and divorced, his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke having accused him of everything from incest to sodomy. A number of love affairs also followed, including one with Claire Clairmont, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley<’s sister-in-law. By 1816, Byron was afraid for his life, warned that a crowd might lynch him if he were seen in public.

       Forced to flee England, Byron settled in Italy and began writing his masterpiece, Don Juan, an epic-satire novel-in-verse loosely based on a legendary hero. He also spent much of his time engaged in the Greek fight for independence and planned to join a battle against a Turkish-held fortress when he fell ill, becoming increasingly sick with persistent colds and fevers.

       When he died on April 19, 1824, at the age of 36, Don Juan was yet to be finished, though 17 cantos had been written. A memoir, which also hadn't been published, was burned by Byron's friends who were either afraid of being implicated in scandal or protective of his reputation.

       Today, Byron's Don Juan is considered one of the greatest long poems in English written since John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Byronic hero, characterized by passion, talent, and rebellion, pervades Byron's work and greatly influenced the work of later Romantic poets.

       乔治·戈登·拜伦（George Gordon Byron，1788—1824），是英国19世纪初期伟大的浪漫主义诗人，代表作品有《恰尔德·哈洛尔德游记》、《唐璜》等，并在他的诗歌里塑造了一批“拜伦式英雄”。他不仅是一位伟大的诗人，还是一个为理想战斗一生的勇士，积极而勇敢地投身革命——参加了希腊民族解放运动，并成为领导人之一。

       乔治·戈登·拜伦：1788年1月22日出生于伦敦一间被租用的简陋房子里。父母都出自没落贵族家庭。他天生跛一足，并对此很敏感。十岁时，拜伦家族的世袭爵位及产业（纽斯泰德寺院是其府邸）落到他身上，成为拜伦第六世勋爵。 [1]  1801年，为了同拜伦的贵族地位和身份相称，家里决定送他到一所素有名望的学校——哈罗公学就读。这所在1571年由约翰·里恩创建的学校，在英国历史上培养了许多知名的人物，其中对拜伦十分崇拜的丘吉尔首相就是这所学校毕业的。

       哈罗公学毕业后，1805－1808年在剑桥大学学文学及历史，他是个不刻苦的学生，很少听课，却广泛阅读了欧洲和英国的文学、哲学和历史著作，同时也从事射击、赌博、饮酒、打猎、游泳、拳击等各种活动。1809年3月，他作为世袭贵族进入了贵族院，他出席议院和发言的次数不多，但这些发言都鲜明地表示了拜伦的自由主义的进步立场。 

       剑桥大学毕业后曾任上议院议员。学生时代即深受启蒙思想影响。1809-1811年游历西班牙、希腊、土耳其等国，受各国人民反侵略、反压迫斗争鼓舞，创作《恰尔德·哈洛尔德游记》（Childe Harold's Pilgrimage，1809-1818）。其代表作品有《恰尔德·哈洛尔德游记》《唐璜》（Don Juan，1818-1823）等。在他的诗歌里塑造了一批“拜伦式英雄”。拜伦不仅是一位伟大的诗人，还是一个为理想战斗一生的勇士；他积极而勇敢地投身革命，参加了希腊民族解放运动，并成为领导人之一。

       从1809－1811年，拜伦出国作东方的旅行，是为了要“看看人类，而不是只在书本上读到他们”，还为了扫除“一个岛民怀着狭隘的偏见守在家门的有害后果”。1809年6月26日，离开英国，去东方（南欧和西亚）游历。在此后的半年内，先乘船到葡萄牙里斯本；再骑马到西班牙南部的塞维利亚和加的斯，经撒丁岛、西西里岛、马耳他岛到阿尔巴尼亚，会晤了那里的统治者阿里·帕夏；12月25日抵达希腊名城雅典。拜伦此次出国远游，饱览了各地的自然景色，观察了各国的社会生活和政治制度，接触了各阶层的人们。他亲眼看见了给法国侵略者以沉重打击的西班牙游击队，看见了在土耳其铁骑蹂躏下正在聚集力量准备发动解放斗争的希腊人民，这次旅行也激发了他对南欧各民族文化的强烈兴趣。这些，都对他的思想和创作产生了重大影响。在阿尔巴尼亚开始写《恰尔德·哈罗德游记》。 [2]  《恰尔德·哈洛尔德游记》的第一、二章在1812年2月问世，轰动了文坛，使拜伦一跃成为伦敦社交界的明星。然而这并没有使他和英国的贵族资产阶级妥协。他自早年就知道这个社会及其统治阶级的顽固、虚伪、邪恶及偏见，他的诗一直是对这一切的抗议。

      1811－1816年，拜伦一直在生活在连续的感情旋涡中。在他到处受欢迎的社交生活中，逢场作戏的爱情俯拾即是，一个年轻的贵族诗人的风流韵事自然更为人津津乐道。拜伦在1813年向安娜·密尔班克小姐求婚，于1815年1月和她结了婚。这是拜伦一生中所铸的最大的错误。拜伦夫人是一个见解褊狭的、深为其阶级的伪善所囿的人，完全不能理解拜伦的事业和观点。婚后一年，便带着初生一个多月的女儿回到自己家中，拒绝与拜伦同居，从而使流言纷起。以此为契机，英国统治阶级对它的叛逆者拜伦进行了最疯狂的报复，以图毁灭这个胆敢在政治上与它为敌的诗人。这时期的痛苦感受，也使他写出像《普罗米修斯》那样的诗，表示向他的压迫者反抗到底的决心。1816年，拜伦居住在瑞士，在日内瓦结识了另一个流亡的诗人雪莱，对英国统治者的憎恨和对诗歌的同好使他们结成了密友。

       拜伦在旅居国外期间，陆续写成《恰尔德哈洛尔德游记》（1816-1817）、故事诗《锡隆的囚徒》（The Prisner of Chillon，1816）、悲剧《曼弗雷德》（1817）长诗《青铜世纪》（1823）等。巨著《唐璜》是拜伦最重要的一组诗，半庄半谐、夹叙夹议，有现实主义的内容，又有奇突、轻松而讽刺的笔调。第一、二章匿名发表后，立即引起巨大的反响。英国维护资产阶级体面的报刊群起而攻之，指责它对宗教和道德的进攻，是“对体面、善良感情和维护社会所必须的行为准则的讥讽”，“令每个正常的头脑厌恶”，等等。

      1824年不幸遇雨受寒，一病不起，4月19日逝世。他的死使希腊人民深感悲痛，希腊的独立政府宣布拜伦之死为国葬，全国哀悼三天。6月29日，灵柩运抵伦敦。 

      John Keats, (born October 31, 1795, London, England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal States [Italy]), English Romantic lyric poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.

     The son of a livery-stable manager, John Keats received relatively little formal education. His father died in 1804, and his mother remarried almost immediately. Throughout his life Keats had close emotional ties to his sister, Fanny, and his two brothers, George and Tom. After the breakup of their mother’s second marriage, the Keats children lived with their widowed grandmother at Edmonton, Middlesex. John attended a school at Enfield, two miles away, that was run by John Clarke, whose son Charles Cowden Clarke did much to encourage Keats’s literary aspirations. At school Keats was noted as a pugnacious lad and was decidedly “not literary,” but in 1809 he began to read voraciously. After the death of the Keats children’s mother in 1810, their grandmother put the children’s affairs into the hands of a guardian, Richard Abbey. At Abbey’s instigation John Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton in 1811. He broke off his apprenticeship in 1814 and went to live in London, where he worked as a dresser, or junior house surgeon, at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals. His literary interests had crystallized by this time, and after 1817 he devoted himself entirely to poetry. From then until his early death, the story of his life is largely the story of the poetry he wrote.

    In the summer of 1818 Keats went on a walking tour in the Lake District (of northern England) and Scotland with his friend Charles Brown, and his exposure and overexertions on that trip brought on the first symptoms of the tuberculosis of which he was to die. On his return to London a brutal criticism of his early poems appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, followed by a similar attack on Endymion in the Quarterly Review. Contrary to later assertions, Keats met these reviews with a calm assertion of his own talents, and he went on steadily writing poetry. But there were family troubles. Keats’s brother Tom had been suffering from tuberculosis for some time, and in the autumn of 1818 the poet nursed him through his last illness. About the same time, he met Fanny Brawne, a near neighbour in Hampstead, with whom he soon fell hopelessly and tragically in love. The relation with Fanny had a decisive effect on Keats’s development. She seems to have been an unexceptional young woman, of firm and generous character, and kindly disposed toward Keats. But he expected more, perhaps more than anyone could give, as is evident from his overwrought letters. Both his uncertain material situation and his failing health in any case made it impossible for their relationship to run a normal course. After Tom’s death (George had already gone to America), Keats moved into Wentworth Place with Brown, and in April 1819 Brawne and her mother became his next-door neighbours. About October 1819 Keats became engaged to Fanny.

    

       约翰·济慈（John Keats，1795年10月31日—1821年2月23日），出生于18世纪末年的伦敦，杰出的英国诗人作家之一，浪漫派的主要成员。 济慈才华横溢，与雪莱、拜伦齐名。他善于运用描写手法创作诗歌，将多种情感与自然完美结合，从生活中寻找创作的影子。他的诗篇能带给人们身临其境的感受。

      他去世时年仅25岁，可他遗下的诗篇誉满人间，他的诗被认为完美体现了西方浪漫主义诗歌特色，济慈被人们推崇为欧洲浪漫主义运动的杰出代表。

      在济慈青少年时期，他的父母便相继去世。他有三个弟弟（其中一个夭折）和一个妹妹，但那种过早失去父母的悲伤始终影响着济慈。在埃菲尔德学校（Enfield School），济慈接受了传统正规教育，在阅读和写作方面，济慈受到师长克拉克（Charles Cowden Clarke）的鼓励。年轻的济慈非常钟爱维吉尔（Virgil），14岁时，他将维吉尔的拉丁语长诗《艾涅阿斯纪》（“Aeneid”）翻译成英语。

    1810年，济慈被送去当药剂师的学徒。五年后济慈考入伦敦大学国王学院（King's College London），但没有一年，济慈便放弃了从医的志愿，而专心于写作诗歌，他早期的作品多是一些仿作。济慈创作的第一首诗是《仿斯宾塞》，接着又写了许多优秀的十四行诗，他的这些早期诗作收集在1817年3月出版的第一本诗集《诗歌》中。这本诗集受到一些好评，但也有一些极为苛刻的攻击性评论刊登在当时很有影响力的杂志《Blackwood's magazine》上。济慈没有被吓倒，他在来年的春天付印了新诗集《恩底弥翁》（“Endymion”），这是他根据古希腊一个美丽神话写成的，全诗想象丰富，色彩绚丽，洋溢着对自由的渴望，表现了反古典主义的进步倾向。

    1818年夏天，济慈前往英格兰北部和苏格兰旅行，途中得到消息说他的兄弟汤姆得了严重的肺结核，济慈即刻赶回家照顾汤姆。这一年年底，汤姆死了，济慈搬到一个朋友在汉普斯泰德（Hampstead）的房子去住，如今的人们已将那所房子认为济慈之家。在那里，济慈遇见并爱上了一位年轻的女邻居，方妮·布朗（Fanny Brawne）。在接下来的几年中，疾病与经济上的问题一直困扰着济慈，但他却令人惊讶的写出了大量的优秀作品，1818年到1820年，是济慈诗歌创作的鼎盛时期，他先后完成了《伊莎贝拉》《圣艾格尼丝之夜》《海伯利安》等著名长诗，最脍炙人口的《夜莺颂》《希腊古瓮颂》《秋颂》等名篇也是在这一时期内写成的。

     1820年3月，济慈第一次咳血，之后不久，因为迅速恶化的肺结核。1821年2月23日，济慈病逝于意大利罗马。他的书信，手稿等作品主要都收藏于哈佛大学Hughton图书馆，部分收藏于大英图书馆、位于北伦敦的济慈纪念馆等。