FACT AND FICTION

'Shelley dominated my imagination and my affection for many years. When I went to Italy in 1892 my first place of pelgrimage was Casa Magni, where Shelley spent the last months of his life. I loved him not only for the reasons I have already mentioned but also for an extraordinary quality of light, like sunshine after a storm. I have spoken of his landscapes as unreal, but this same quality is to be found in some actual landscapes, especially those on eastern shores of the Atlantic. I have found it in Cornwall, in the Connemara, and on the mountains of Skye, and sometimes in north Wales: a magical, transfiguring quality in Shelley's poetry that I found intoxicating. In this aspect, I do not know of any poet to equal him.'

Betrand Russel: Fact and Fiction