The general discussion of Wordsworth's poetry, and his little poetic manifesto, I was wondering if people want to do next. Do we want to continue discussing the Preface?
I'm thinking we could go into a discussion of Tintern Abbey next.
Open to suggestion, I'm just poking at you guys to try and keep the thread going.
Ah, exam year. Oral or written or both? Hope you have a fairly open teaching schedule so you can really relish some of that reading time. At least in my program the exams weren't as bad as the suspense leading up to them, and the reading I got done then was not only great for the diss., but just marvelously enriching for me as a human being. But I digress...
That's a very good question. Certainly any time you use literature as a way of leading people to open up onto a larger emotional or philosophical plane, there is going to be a push in some sort of direction, because poetry arises out of the particulars of stories, places, people and a poet's choice of his particulars, of his subject are going to affect the kind of contemplation that emerges from that poem. I don't feel when reading the poetry, however, a strong sense of Wordsworth as someone who's strongly pushing an agenda on the reader in the way I do with, perhaps Shelley's work sometimes. If I had to lean in one direction or the other, I would say that Wordsworth's poetry seems to be much more about a generalized heightened awareness of our world, ourselves and each other, than it is about leading the reader into a specific line of thought.Oh, that's good. Yeah, I get that sense, too. The poems frequently are conduits through which to see our relationship with others. Do you think it's just about recognizing and contemplating our relationships? Or, do you think Wordsworth is trying to push our contemplation in any one direction?
I agree. There is one aspect of his art in the way he attends to both the people surrounding him and the interior life of himself and others, that I think would have been equally great had he been an observer of cities like Dickens rather than a lover of the country.There is something sublime about how Wordsworth draws intersubjectivity from such ordinary occurrences as grief for a lost lover. The Preface claims that it's the poems choice of subject (rural life) that opens up this beauty, but I tend to think Wordsworth's art is a little richer than that.
Yes!Burning questions? No, I think I'm already burned out from last two posts. Let's talk poetry!
"In rime sparse il suono/ di quei sospiri ond' io nudriva 'l core/ in sul mio primo giovenile errore"~ Francesco Petrarca
"Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."~ Jane Austen
I'm up for reading Tintern Abbey next.
Nothing wrong with your posts at all, Paul. I know that I for one have just been busy. Glad you've joined in.
Tintern Abbey is very long, so I'll start by posting the first stanza here. If people want to discuss it some other way, that's fine by me. The whole poem can be found here: http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html
I'll look forward to hearing what others have to say about this opening, but one place would be to start with the word "nostalgia" that came up earlier. Certainly the opening speaks directly to the passage of time and sets this up to be a poem of past reflection and nostalgia at the visiting of a place associated with the past. The repetition of certain phrases "five long years" and "once again" reinforces this reflective quality and I hear also shades of the same sort of melancholic tone with which Milton opens up his lament Lycidas:Originally Posted by Wordsworth
Indeed, I hadn't thought of it before, but these two poems would make for interesting comparison, both in terms of their use of language and diction and in terms of their position as poems in which the poets explore the very different roots of their respective poetic craft in terms of a rural landscape. (I regret that people on this thread will, as you can already see, have to occasionally put up with Renaissance digressions from me.)Originally Posted by Milton
Reading this over again, the other thing that struck me so forcibly was just how masterful Wordsworth is as a nature poet. He not only describes the scene so that you practically feel you can practically hear the water flowing by you, but he also manages to convey the feelings connected with the experience of being in beautiful natural surroundings. In these lines, for example:
He moves from a description of the landscape to that feeling of closer connection with something higher that one so often experiences but finds impossible to describe when experiencing the natural world, and he does it neatly, directly, without any elaborate and sappy description necessary. Right up there with Chaucer's very different but equally effective description of the world at the start of the Canterbury Tales, which is also remarkable for the way it seamlessly binds the natural, the human and the divine.Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
OK, I'm done for now, and I can tell I'm just going to slide into Spenser next, so I'll let others have their say.
"In rime sparse il suono/ di quei sospiri ond' io nudriva 'l core/ in sul mio primo giovenile errore"~ Francesco Petrarca
"Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."~ Jane Austen
Thanks Petrarch.
It's funny that his title includes tintern Abbey to which he doesn't refer in the poem. Has he moved away from organised religion to a more personal version? he also refers to hermits and vagrant dwellers. Perhaps he feels a kinship with these types of people in his natural inclination to be alone, though he is warm to Dorothy later on.
All good stuff. I just want to go back a little and add a few things about the use of language here before commenting on a few things in the “Tintern Abbey” piece, though as was said we could speak about that one all year, like many good poems, though I haven’t got all year, nor do I suspect has anybody else for that matter, so I’ll just add a point about the use of language.
One of the reasons for me, and for many, that Wordsworth fails, or at least partially fails, in his experimental use everyday language and in using that to give voice to minority voices, can simply be found in the quality of some of the poems themselves. If you take the start of “Simon Lee” for example:
Now there is a lot that Wordsworth is obviously trying to achieve in poems such as these where he takes up the story of the everyday man. Obviously as a result of that he tells the story of Simon Lee here by using simple language in a simple ballad form, but does the poem work? For me no and it’s as simple as that. For me this is just poor poetry and there’s no excuse for that, whatever the intention. Wordsworth fails in his attempt to represent the minority figure through simple language, purely because the poem is just not good enough and for no other reason and it really is as simple as that.In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man,
I’ve heard he once was tall.
Of years he has upon his back,
No about, a burthen weighty;
He says he is three score and ten,
But others say he’s eighty.
Compare this level of language with that of say, Blake, and in his hands though we have a very different result:
From The Little Black Boy
MY mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O, my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:
'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_...black_boy.html
Here Blake takes another minority figure, not an old labourer (huntsman) like Wordsworth but a black boy, a double minority if you like that of being a child and of being black in his society, but all the same they represent minority voices where the language is simple and childlike to help achieve that aim. What Blake has managed to achieve in this poem and in many others though is to use the simple language in order to bring out and to further the poem completely and to develop the message(s) that he wants to achieve (quite ahead of it’s time perhaps?) Whereas Wordsworth’s piece does the opposite; his use of simple language in “Simon Lee” for me clearly reduces the strength of the poem, and whatever the intention, Wordsworth for me completely fails there as I’ve already said.
There are times when Wordsworth uses simplicity more effectively in LB for example in such pieces as “Anecdote for Fathers” or in “We are Seven” but at times Wordsworth really does fall flat. “Goody Blake, and Harry Gill” is better and we can champion Wordsworth cause, but at the end of the day is he producing good art with it?
“His cheeks were red as ruddy clover” to rhyme with “lusty drover” hmm? So again for me the use of simple language in this ballad doesn’t do anything to enhance the poem’s message and the overall result is not terribly good at all.Young Harry was a lusty drover,
And who so stout of limb as he?
His cheeks were red as ruddy clover,
His voice was like the voice of three.
Auld Goody Blake was old and poor,
Ill fed she was, and thinly clad;
And any man who pass’d her door,
Might see how poor a hut she had.
(“Good Blake and Harry Gill” verse three)
The poem “The Idiot Boy” is an interesting one to look at as well. This is a long one and one that I have mixed feelings about in a way. Wordsworth again uses the simplicity of the ballad as a vehicle to represent minority figures, figures that perhaps were under even greater threat by the affects of industrialisation, however for me it just doesn’t really work again. In this poem I think he does a better job of balancing the quality of the poem with the use of very simple language, but still he doesn’t really manage to quite pull it off. It’s still not really a good poem.
Compare all of that with “Tintern Abbey” though and we have a whole different thing altogether. This poem for me is Wordsworth at his best and the change in tone and the overall feel for the poem is immediately striking in comparison with his experimental ballads. I may be slightly biased as I adore this poem and probably therefore promote it beyond its value, but even so I think this is a truly wonderful piece.
For me this is just magical stuff, though like I say I am bringing positive baggage with me, but still Wordsworth command of language here, even within the first four lines, is quite breathtaking. As a side note Wordsworth here does more for marginalised figure in the last lines of this section then he managed from the whole of Lyrical Ballads, it’s certainly more beautiful (even if they are romanticised), but of note should also be the title of the poem which is extremely particular, being in full of course: “LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798.” What we have here is almost a log of a diary entry, noting the exact moment of a particular walk, the importance being not the walk itself (nor the Abbey) but the feelings evoked from a return to this particular spot.LINES
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798
FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
What is of importance is the feelings that Wordsworth recalls for himself and his sister which return to him in this particular surrounding, like a piece of music that suddenly evokes a powerful memory, here it is nature which acts as the restorative for positive thought. This is something at the heart of a great many of Wordsworth pieces of course, but none stronger than in this one for me. The love of nature is elevated beyond the simple joy that it immediately brings, but the feeling and harmony is carried over sort of protecting him from of any obstacles that life throws up. The poem goes on to recall:
This is of course where one aspect of Wordsworth’s philosophy comes into play; nature the healer, nature the restorative to all the ugly aspects of life.Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not bee to me,
As in a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration.
Returning to the opening of the poem though there is such a wonderful energy and excitement which seems quite effortless, there is an obvious level of joy in his return to “these steep and lofty cliffs” to “these waters” to the repose under “this dark sycamore” etc, etc. There are some wonderful expressions for me in this part of the poem that are a joyful to eye and the ear whether it is the in sweet murmur of the mountain-springs, the wild seclusion the line “the quiet of the sky” it’s all wonderful stuff in a pure aesthetic sense, again it is simple stuff but this time it really works where his other poems seriously fail. Wordsworth here commands the language instead of him being commanded by the language and rigidity of the ballad form in his hands as part of his so called experiment. Wordsworth here is allowing himself to write in a much freer sense and the result is infinitely better.
But this poem is more than just aesthetically pleasing as there are clearly underlying philosophical elements of interest which could open up a whole world of tangents of discussion, but I merely wanted to touch upon the use of language from the weaker ballads to this far superior effort.
Just a note to say that unfortunately I have to cut out for a bit just as we're getting into Tintern Abbey. I'm off to commune with nature myself for the next ten days in Yosemite Valley, where I have many childhood memories "glad animal movements" all gone by and where I first contemplated the "still sad music of humanity."
Look forward to seeing how the discussion shapes up when I return.
"In rime sparse il suono/ di quei sospiri ond' io nudriva 'l core/ in sul mio primo giovenile errore"~ Francesco Petrarca
"Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."~ Jane Austen
Wordsworth's interaction with Dorothy here is a little complicated, but I think you're right to see Wordsworth's views as something changing. So much of the poem is about the gains and losses associated with age. Initially, Wordsworth experienced the woods with a more immediate primal enjoyment, but in later years he learns to look on the scene with an eye to its spiritual joys. The poem is great at subtly contrasting these things. The change is noticeable even with his senses. He literally sees the scene differently than he might have before. Now, in 1798, When he looks to the "pastoral farms" he doesn't see farms so much as "wreathes of smoke" which he imaginately turns interprets as evidence of "vagrant dwellers" or "some hermit's cave." The Wordsworth of 1798 takes in the scene very differently than the childish Wordsworth of 1793. One definitely could say that between these two points, Wordsworth also lost sight of Tintern Abbey, but gained a view of nature (or, at least, nature as it's seen in this poem).
I might caution, though, against phrasing the religious slant of the poem as a conflict between "organized religion" and "personal vision," as that may make it sound a little too new-agey. I think that the criticism leveled against Christianity has less to do with it's hierachy or doctrine, but more to do with it's inadequacy in the face of new social and scientific issues. As I quoted Frederick Schiller earlier in the thread, at the time there was a radical shift that unhinged social classes from each other and severed man's intuitive recognition of objects from reality. This is the "the expansion of knowledge and the division of labor" that Schiller was refering to. Suddenly, it was an unavoidable problem that if you were a basket weaver you had different interests than the basket seller and the basket consumer. I think the criticism of Christianity is that it can't bring these people together. It's a social problem that needs to be addressed. It's not just about protecting "private vision." Rather, it's about furnishing a new myth that everyone's "private vision" is really quite similar, and that everyone in the basket economy is on the same side. Wordsworth's nature in this poem or the Lucy from the previous poems become the highest common denominator between different people--people who economically, political, or whatever have different interests. This probably comes out more in The Prelude. "Tintern Abbey" only refers rather vaguely to "sad music of humanity." In any case, I think the problems with the religion of the absent Tintern Abbey is about its inability to reassure people listening to that sad music.
The poems are pretty close in their outline. Both are reflections on people lost in the past (dead friend/past self). Both turn into recognitions of personal and professional growth. Both use a lot of nature and religious imagery. I think the similarities might be superficial, though. I'd be hard pressed to say that Milton and Wordsworth really agree on any of the topics they bring up. Wordsworth path to poetry seems entirely different from Milton's--so are his motivations. Religion and nature seems to play differnt roles, too. The contrasts, though, are sometimes just as enlightening as the similarities. Yet it's a big task, so I might just wait on that until you get back. Have fun in the wilderness.
lol, Neely. Good post, by the way. I want to say something about the Blake/Wordsworth comparison, too. I just have to find time.
Last edited by Quark; 08-07-2010 at 12:59 PM.
"Par instants je suis le Pauvre Navire
[...] Par instants je meurs la mort du Pecheur
[...] O mais! par instants"
--"Birds in the Night" by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). Join the discussion here: http://www.online-literature.com/for...5&goto=newpost
I love this poem and think it is one of the great poems in the English language. When I read it on screen today I was very taken with the effect of "tracking" that he achieves...starting with the long shot of the cliffs and waterfalls and big sky and moving slowly to the sycamore and the row of cottages, then the hedgerows and then closing in on the plumes of smoke that suggest human activity and finally to the figure of the hermit and his fire. it's Poetry in Motion to coin a phrase.
Yet the focus is upon introversion and a visual connection with the hermits rather than the abbey. He places us there at a concrete time and place - as Neely points out - and proceeds to not mention the abbey.
I didn't mention conflict, but I thought that it perhaps reflected a personal inclination.
Hmm, my question is, do we read "Lines" as anticipating his "Ode" or as a different stage - the difference of time in Wordsworth's earlier poem - is that a similar notion of the figured fall from Eden that is in his later work, or is it still an early idea, that he hasn't developed by this point?
I don't know. His Ode seems a whole darker ball game to me, a loss or realisation of youth or an understanding of the brevity of life - it seems quite a different stage altogether but I'm not really sure.
I like the contrast of the changeable - seasons, vagrants, hermits with the seemingly unchanging - the view of the cliffs and the landscape. Does he pick out vagrants and hermits as people with whom he has a kinship of view rather than the farmers and abbey goers?