Criticism > Poetry > Shelley, Percy Bysshe - Joseph Warren Beach (essay date 1936)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe - Joseph Warren Beach (essay date 1936)

Joseph Warren Beach (essay date 1936)

SOURCE: "Shelley's Naturalism," in The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth-Century English Poet1ry, The Macmillan Publishing Company, 1936, pp. 209–41.

Why T. S. Eliot found Shelley "repellent":

The ideas of Shelley seem to me always to be ideas of adolescence—as there is every reason why they should be. And an enthusiasm for Shelley seems to me also to be an affair of adolescence: for most of us, Shelley has marked an intense period before maturity, but for how many does Shelley remain the companion of age? I confess that I never open the volume of his poems simply because I want to read poetry, but only with some special reason for reference. I find his ideas repellent; and the difficulty of separating Shelley from his ideas and beliefs is still greater than with Wordsworth. And the biographical interest which Shelley has always excited makes it difficult to read the poetry...

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