An Organized Discussion of the Romantics

[ktm5124]

The purpose of this thread is to create a discussion setting for the study of the Romantics. To allow for an organized and effective discussion we will be imposing the following structure:

1) The poets will be studied in the order proposed by the user Alexander III, i.e.

Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Blake

2) Each poet will have a discussion leader, who will be solely responsible for making the selections.

OrphanPip expressed willingness to lead the discussion on Wordsworth, but I do not know the level of his interest. If he would like he could get the ball rolling, or else we will choose someone else.

[Buh4Bee]

Excellent! Where will the sources come from?

[Sebas. Melmoth]

The purpose of this thread is to create a discussion setting for the study of the Romantics Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Blake.


Okay, you're talkin' early British Romantics there--(as contrasted with German Romantics and later French and British Romantics).

[Petrarch's Love]

An organized discussion on these forums? One that does not eventually morph into a discussion of elitism with frequent references to Harry Potter and Dan Brown, or lapse into oblivion because it is being lead by an absent minded, overworked graduate student? Count me in! I love the British Romantics. Keats is my favorite, but Wordsworth is a close second. I'm happy to join in the discussion whenever the organized ones commence posting.

[OrphanPip]

Okay, you're talkin' early British Romantics there--(as contrasted with German Romantics and later French and British Romantics).

Ya we established that we would be discussing the British Romantics, this has a few advantages, mainly the fact that translations are often not public domain so it is difficult to make the poems accessible to everyone for free.

@Jersea: For me at least I'll post poems or put a link up for longer stuff.

OKies since I volunteered to do Wordsworth, I guess I'll jump right in.

The beginnings of Romanticism in England are often put at the feet of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads. When the collection was reprinted Wordsworth provided a preface that explained the philosophy behind the poems.

The entire preface can be read here for those interested:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Preface_to_The_Lyrical_Ballads

The preface can be summarized into a few key arguments, without going into too much depth. The first is that most suitable subject matter for poetry is the everyday experiences of everyday people. Secondly, he argued that poetry should be written in a language used by real men, distancing himself from the use of rhyme and the other complex trapping of early Augustine poetry. Instead, Wordsworth extols the virtues of rhythm in language and argues that simple, plain language is better for expressing the natural order of things. Thirdly, he says that the basic everyday experiences have to be written about in a way that makes them revealing of human nature.

There's also a good deal written in the preface about the role of the poet, mainly that poets are special visionary prophets almost. You can read that if you want, but I think it's not too relevant to the Lyrical Ballads. It would be more relevant if we want to discuss the very long autobiographical Prelude.

Working with the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads from 1800, the best known poems from the work are often called collectively the Lucy poems, "Tintern Abbey" is of great importance too, so I think those will be the poems we'll begin with. If anyone else has suggestions please feel free to give them.

The first of the Lucy poems in the collection:



And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"

I think pertinent questions we could ask is if Wordsworth is achieving what he sets out to do according to the Preface. Ignore the fact that Wordsworth complains about the use of rhyme, then chooses to write a ballad, a rhyming form.

[Quark]

The purpose of this thread is to create a discussion setting for the study of the Romantics. To allow for an organized and effective discussion we will be imposing the following structure:

Nicely done, ktm. I think you have quite a few posters' interest. Some of them seem half-way intelligent, too. So long as Virgil doesn't come in and screw it up, you should have a good discussion.


I think pertinent questions we could ask is if Wordsworth is achieving what he sets out to do according to the Preface. Ignore the fact that Wordsworth complains about the use of rhyme, then chooses to write a ballad, a rhyming form.

The Preface does seem to beg that question. Is Lyrical Ballads really so revolutionary as Wordsworth indicates? I think you've hit on a good starting place OrphanPip, and I'll post a response in a day or two. Right now, I have to go reread the collection. I wasn't expecting the thread to start so immediately, as the idea for it was floated out just a couple of days ago.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Good stuff all round.

The Lyrical Ballads is clearly the best place to start with Wordsworth. Was it was revolutionary as Wordsworth claimed? I think that much of its "revolutionary" nature came to the adverse reaction it received, which caused a few ripples, as opposed to the actual poems themselves. I think that the question of taking "everyday" people as subjects is not really the issue here, the issue is in the mode in which he depicted them, in very reduced language which for many clearly weakens the poetry. For instance Wilde said "there is much in Wordsworth we have to dismiss" which sort of sums up the general opinion and reaction to The Lyrical Ballads pretty well in all respects.

With that said there is also some good poetry here - as previously mentioned "Tintern Abbey" the best of them them all for me, as well as other bits and pieces of quality. I don't think that anyone was dismissing Wordsworth as a poet at all, just some of the more obviously weaker aspects of his "experiment" and in the mode in which they were delivered.

I'll certainly contribute later if I may, when I find the time, but I must work and I am absolutely burning for a coffee.

[Seasider]

I hope we may include Michael in the discussion of Wordsworth's poetry. It is moving and compassionate without lapsing into sentimentality.

[ktm5124]

Ah, thank you so much OrphanPip. I am off to a chess tournament right now, but I hope to make a post later tonight or tomorrow.

[Paulclem]

An interestng looking thread. It'll be a good refresher for me. Thanks Ktm and Orphan.

[Petrarch's Love]

Thanks for starting things off, OrphanPip! :)


The preface can be summarized into a few key arguments, without going into too much depth. The first is that most suitable subject matter for poetry is the everyday experiences of everyday people. Secondly, he argued that poetry should be written in a language used by real men, distancing himself from the use of rhyme and the other complex trapping of early Augustine poetry. Instead, Wordsworth extols the virtues of rhythm in language and argues that simple, plain language is better for expressing the natural order of things. Thirdly, he says that the basic everyday experiences have to be written about in a way that makes them revealing of human nature.

There's also a good deal written in the preface about the role of the poet, mainly that poets are special visionary prophets almost. You can read that if you want, but I think it's not too relevant to the Lyrical Ballads. It would be more relevant if we want to discuss the very long autobiographical Prelude.

Working with the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads from 1800, the best known poems from the work are often called collectively the Lucy poems, "Tintern Abbey" is of great importance too, so I think those will be the poems we'll begin with. If anyone else has suggestions please feel free to give them.

The first of the Lucy poems in the collection:

I think pertinent questions we could ask is if Wordsworth is achieving what he sets out to do according to the Preface. Ignore the fact that Wordsworth complains about the use of rhyme, then chooses to write a ballad, a rhyming form.

Some very good opening questions, and a nice way to start off discussion. I should say at the opening of this discussion that, while I've read a great deal of the poetry from the Romantics, I've done almost no formal study in this period and hadn't read the preface to Lyrical Ballads since my undergraduate years. Like all defenses and generalized manifestos of poetry, I imagine there are many gaps between the theory he maps out on a generalized level in the preface and the practice of his own poetry. Few if any have ever followed their own idealized doctrine perfectly in practice. (This is certainly true, for example of Sidney, who breaks several rules outlined in his Defense of Poesy when penning his own verse.) However, I will start in this post by first bringing up what I think is an historical difficulty in terms of fully coming to grips with the preface, and then thinking through a few of the ways I do see him practicing what he preaches.

I think the very first thing we would need to know more about in order to properly address OrphanPip's question is exactly what the context of the preface is. Having just re-read it, it's apparent to me that much is defense and/or polemic aimed at a certain way of thinking about and writing poetry that he takes for granted people would be familiar with at the time. Without being a person in the late 18th/early 19th century (or a scholar who has read intensively in that period) to whom it would be clear what he is reacting against, I am finding it difficult to assess exactly what it is he's proposing or to what degree he is or is not succeeding.

For example, all that talk about prose-like verse seems to be much less about rhyme (which is what we generally think of as making poetry sound like prose) and much more about diction and the sort of words, metaphors and turns of phrase employed. He illustrates the sort of thing he's against more clearly in the appendix to the preface, available here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/lbprose.html and quotes a few examples, one of which I'll reproduce here for comparison:


By way of immediate example, take the following of Dr. Johnson.

"Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,
Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise;
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice;
Yet timely provident she hastes away,
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;
When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,
She crops the harvest and she stores the grain.
How long, shall sloth usurp thy useless hours,
Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers?
While artful shades thy downy couch enclose,
And soft solicitation courts repose,
Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight,
Year chases year with unremitted flight,
Till want now following, fraudulent and slow,
Shall spring to seize thee, like an ambushed foe."
[The Ant]

From this hubbub of words pass to the original, "Go to the Ant, thou Sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, 0 Sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that travaileth, and thy want as an armed man." Proverbs, chap. 6th.

Thus, in his concern about poetry being composed in the "language of men" he seems to be waging a debate about what might be called high, special or traditional language versus the language of his own times. This is, of course, a debate that crops up frequently across the history of literature, most radically when it came to the shift of the literary and scholarly language from Latin to the various "vulgar" tongues, but also again and again within debates about English poetry. There's a constant back and forth over when drawing on older language, or specialized forms of language is productive and when it is better for a poet to stick to the sort of diction he might expect to hear from people he talks with daily. Within the Renaissance, for example, (my own period of specialization) the 16th century poet, Edmund Spenser, favored forging an English epic poetry filled with conscious archaisms that rooted the language in its own past traditions, while the 17th century poet, John Milton tended to avoid such archaisms in favor of more familiar English words written in blank verse. (Though one is quick to point out, Milton employs these English words using a distinctly Italian/Latinate style of diction that makes his verse sound like anything but common prose of the day.)

In comparison to some 18th century verse I've read (and again, I'm no expert here) the Lucy poem that OrphanPip posted does seem to be a fairly successful example of a poem that, for the most part, avoids intentionally archaic, artful or contorted diction and syntax within the context of the time in which it was written. Certainly there are few, if any, words that strike me as especially unusual or consciously allusive or artful, and with a few small exceptions the syntactical construction is relatively straightforward even by modern standards. If one ignored the rhyme, one could easily read as prose a stanza like this one: "Upon the moon I fixed my eye all over the wide lea; With quickening pace my horse drew nigh those paths so dear to me." Yes, a prose writer would probably write "I fixed my eye upon the moon" (at least these days. I'm trying to think if "upon the moon I fixed..." would be a more common construction in 18th/19th century prose). However, it's much less contrived than other poetry I've read around the time, and may well have struck contemporaries as significantly more "prose-like." Perhaps someone else on this thread can speak more knowledgeably than I regarding the historical context, however?

Before signing off, I also wanted to open up one of the other major points he makes in the preface as regards his subject matter. He is very interested in his poems serving a distinct purpose: "to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement." This seems to be referring to what we often talk about as the great sense of interiority that pervades the Romantic style. In relation to the poem posted and others in the Lyrical Ballads I was especially interested in his premise with regard to poetry "that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation and not the action and situation to the feeling." This strikes me as a very accurate description of the way a poem like "Strange fits of passion have I known" works. The events in the poem, in which the man is taking a ride through a moonlit scene to visit a beautiful girl he's in love with, are not especially interesting. What grips the reader is those final lines in which the thought comes to him: "If Lucy should be dead!" The poem is constructed in such a way that this fear is presented as an interior feeling that shifts the way we interpret the actions of the poem, which at first seemed to be setting us up for an account of his ride to Lucy's cottage. The reader following this poem with some expectation that the "action and situation" are going to be the interesting part of this poem, that the surprising thing will be something that happens when he and his horse arrive at the cottage, will need to shift gears when the surprise of the poem turns out to be what is going on in the mind of the poem's speaker. The last lines of the poem place an emphasis on feeling and interior thought as the things most important to pay attention to and to grapple with. There is no concrete event that calls for attention and interpretation. Instead there is merely this sense, this fear on the part of the speaker, and it is all the more troubling and effective as a final line than, say, the speaker finding his girlfriend dead because it is unclear whether this is a thought that emerges from some sort of real expectation that she may be dead, or is simply an unfounded anxiety on the part of a man riding through a lonely and suggestive night landscape, or the constant obsession of a mind that's gone a bit over the edge. It makes the reader contemplate the way emotions come about within a person's mind: what motivates, stirs, creates a feeling for someone. The final line also, along with the inimitable opening line, helps to position the group of Lucy poems more generally as poems that will be very much about the feelings of their speaker.

So there are some thoughts on my end for now. I'll be interested to see what other people post.

[JBI]

It's funny - before you get jumpy, you mention that you want to look at things in an organized manner, yet you put the poets in a rather awkward order - certainly chronology makes the most sense in this regard... The French Revolution-inspired poets, and the second generation poets have a very different feel - Blake and Wordsworth and Coleridge are like another movement. In all honesty, having participated in poetry bookclubs on this forum, I can say now that the proposed structure will not have enough people to carry it forward, and is overcomplicated - there are maybe only 10 people who really post on the poetry board seriously, and if you have 6 leaders, ultimately the material is rather thin - democratic sort of mutual enjoyment has proven time and again to be the most suitable method of conversation on these boards - it comes down to it being a few friends chatting on a certain poem they each find interesting as being the best moments these forums generally have.

[OrphanPip]

It's funny - before you get jumpy, you mention that you want to look at things in an organized manner, yet you put the poets in a rather awkward order - certainly chronology makes the most sense in this regard... The French Revolution-inspired poets, and the second generation poets have a very different feel - Blake and Wordsworth and Coleridge are like another movement.

There's a reason for that, people just wanted to change things up rather than put Coleridge and Wordsworth together, and Blake's complexity seems to have scared people into putting him at the end.

I agree a chronological order is more intuitive, but a variety in the discussion may make it easier for people to keep up with it longer.

[JCamilo]

Organized is such a unfit word... Byron is not exactly akim to Keats or Shelley, who was considerable under influence of french revolution as well. If anyone wants they can link any group of those 6... the contemplative, the rebels, the philosophical, the anti-Pope, drug users, the metaphysics... all will make sense, all will be irrelevant. I also think talking about them without German poetry makes no much sense...

Anyways, Lyricall Ballads is indeed revolutionary. Somehow, I think of the effect of Duchamps Fountain. The thematic deslocation is very relevant.

[OrphanPip]

Anyway, do half the people on this forum just troll for threads they can disagree with? For f*ck sake people, discussing specifically English poets makes it so people don't have to buy translations, or struggle to find them online. Moreover, most of the forum members are more familiar with English Romantics. The thread when the thing was being organized would have been the appropriate place to air complaints. :rolleyes:

f.y.i. Organized means it was pre-organized, how this was going to be done was established before hand, how is organized "such an unfit" word. Take your knee-jerk, pedantic responses and shove them. If we were to read every single Romantic, and their influences, we would be at this for years.

I wanted to leave an opportunity for some other people to post after Petrarch, but it's mostly been the usual Litnet fair of *****ing and moaning about any given thing.

Petrarch's Love makes some very good points. I think she is right that a poem like "Strange fits of passion have I known" is a lot more prosaic than a lot of other poetry from the period, and Wordsworth himself does a good job of illustrating that its language is much simpler than earlier poems.

She also makes a good point about the use of the ending with relation to Wordsworth's professed desire to make us contemplate human emotion. My experience discussing that poem with others is that it really does engender a variety of interpretations, we can't help but wonder what's going on in the head of that guy, especially given we know very little about Lucy. I think something similar happens in "She dwelt among the untrodden ways."



She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love;


A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

- Fair as a star when only one

Is shining in the sky.


She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

We're lead to think a bit about what happened to Lucy, but even more so we wonder what the relationship with the speaker was. Lucy is used consistently in the poems as a sort of undefined love interest of the speaker, we learn very little about her, and she is essentially a device used by Wordsworth to explore emotions related to unrequited love.

For those who want to read the other Lucy poems: "I travelled among unknown men", "Three years she grew in sun and shower", and "A slumber did my spirit seal." A quick google search will find all three easily.

[ktm5124]

At the same time that Wordsworth is reacting against the last two centuries of verse, I believe there is also a nostalgia present in his poetry, which might seem at the first paradoxical. Wordsworth's poetry does not look forwards to the future but backwards; he may be advocating the everyday language of men, but he is at the same time advocating a rustic way of life that is starting to become a little old-fashioned. Wordsworth admits that men-of-age had become more city-seeking than ever before and, if my history is not wrong, I believe men started to work in factories around this time with machines and steam power. The recommendations in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) did not take long to be put in play, and one can imagine the division of labor that was introduced at the time. Wordsworth says of his time,



The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.--When I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavoured to counteract it; and reflecting upon the magnitude of the general evil, I should be oppressed with no dishonorable melancholy, had I not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it which are equally inherent and indestructible; and did I not further add to this impression a belief that the time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed by men of greater powers and with far more distinguished success.


One sees that Wordsworth is not only reacting against imitative poetry, but is more profoundly reacting against the time he lived in, the manners of time, the predominant ways of life... uniformity, conformity, and somewhat surprisingly also the 'vulgar' novels that were being written at the time, which featured the 'extraordinary incidents that men craved for'. Instead of writing a poetry that depicts these new trends in living, Wordsworth chooses to depict the low and rustic life:



maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that situation our elementary feelings exist in a state of greater simplicity and consequently may be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings; and from the necessary character of rural occupations are more easily comprehended; and are more durable; and lastly, because in that situation the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The language too of these men is adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.


Wordsworth is often described as a nature poet, but what motivated him to explore the theme of nature? One idea is that it is a reaction against an emerging industrial and urban way of life; while Wordsworth looks to the present for his form he looks to the past for his content. Inasmuch as his Preface is a manifesto for a new form of poetry, it is also a manifesto for old habits of mind. The themes of nature and rustic life go hand-in-han d; the rural life comes into everyday contact with the 'best objects in life' - with nature. The men who interest Wordsworth are those who stay in contact with the earth. I think the fact that he uses their language is less a reaction against archaisms than it is an homage to a way of life that has become nostalgic.

In "Strange fits of passion I have known" the speaker comes to a sudden and surprising final thought, which is almost a non sequitur to the rest of the poem: "If lucy should be dead!" What reason does he have to believe this? None whatsoever. This thought can be inspired by nothing else but nature; it is prophesied to him by the sinking moon, by the hill on which he is rising, the cottage in the distance and the night that is progressing. I also believe, though I am a little confused on this subject, that Wordsworth allows for the speaker to be dreaming all the while: "In one of those sweet dreams I slept." One can see, then, how nature alone provides the inspiration for the speaker's feelings - how his final thought is not led up to by reason but by an imagination in accordance with the progression of the night, an imagination affected by the impetus of nature.

[Paulclem]

I think you make some interesting points Ktm, particularly about the claimed progressive nature of his subject in rejecting the industrialisation that was occurring apace. You comments reminded me of Blake's Dark Satanic Mills, which illustrate a theme already set. As I was reading the earlier comments, and Wordworth's preface, his desire for a simplification of the language reminded me of Orwell's essay on the language promoting the same thing. It's funny that this theme continues today with the plan engish movement, and the variations on this with common complaints about various literacies such as text language.

I think your comments upon the poem are also pertinent given the moon is a sybol for the female and it takes place entirely in his head.

[Quark]

After rereading the collection yesterday I think I'm finally up to answering the big question:


I think pertinent questions we could ask is if Wordsworth is achieving what he sets out to do according to the Preface. Ignore the fact that Wordsworth complains about the use of rhyme, then chooses to write a ballad, a rhyming form.

And that is a big question. It involves defining what Wordsworth set out to do, and interpreting whether the poems fit the prediction. The first step of this is doubly hard because Wordsworth is not exactly forthcoming about what he means in some places. Which poets "think they are conferring honour upon themselves, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men?" What are the "certain powers in the great and permanent objects?" Wordsworth raises these questions in a context that he hardly bothers to reproduce for the reader, but rather assumes a certain level of knowledge--what is now historical knowledge. So I'm going to have to fill in some of the missing information here in order to fully answer the question. Some of it's probably obvious, but I suppose someone's got to bring it up.

Wordsworth was not alone when he tried to turn poetry toward more ordinary, colloquial language. In fact, one of the literary fads of the 1790's was the German ballad Leonore by Gottfried August Bürger. The notice from the Monthly Magazine in 1796 for the English translation of the Ballad included this bit of praise:


His [Bürger's] extraordinary powers of language are founded on a rejection of the conventional phraseology of regular poetry, in favor of popular forms of expression, but by the listening artist from the voice of agitated nature.

This review is also where Wordsworth and Coleridge first came across Bürger, a writer who has been called the "immediate inspiration of Wordsworth's interest in the ballad" (S.M. Parrish The Art of the Lyrical Ballads 1973). When Wordsworth wrote the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads he was participating in a sea change that was already well underway. His reaction to it is unique--and it's one the of the few lasting ones that anyone cares to read--but it's still one that should be understood as part of a discussion. Wordsworth wasn't single-handedly changing literature forever, but rather was noticing the change and giving it a certain direction. The society that had given rise to neoclassical poets (those that "think they are conferring honour upon themselves, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men") was starting to pass away. The nineteenth-century readership would not be a closely knit group of well-educated men, but rather would change into a diverse crowd of people from different classes and levels of education. Imitating Horace and making some clever rhymes would no longer carry a work into multiple editions. Neither Bürger nor Wordsworth were directly responsible for this, but they did determine the direction of what new poetry would be. Much of the motivation behind their pleas for "common" language is a desire to encourage the new lesser-educated readers to read poetry and replace the former academic readers. As Bürger would put it:


Anyone who denies [popularity] in theory or in practice puts the whole business of poetry on a false track and works against its true purpose. He draws this universal, human art out of the sphere of influence that it belongs to, pulls it away from the marketplace of life and exiles it to a narrow cell like that in which the surveyor measures and calculates or in which the metaphysician expounds on something obscure before his few students

The desire to speak to in a large "marketplace" rather than to a "few students" is palpable. Wordsworth may be operating with similar motives when he says in the Preface that he hopes to speak to the whole of mankind rather than "furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation."

Just as Wordsworth met some unfavorable reactions in England, though, Bürger roused powerful opposition from the German public. One the strongest cases against Bürger was made by the famous critic, poet, and dramatist Frederick Schiller. He argued that since "the expansion of knowledge and the division of labor" there is no single humanity that the poet can court. When one pretends to write for humanity with common language they are actually just pandering to the lowest common denominator. True art for Schiller must "abandon actuality" (which is divided between classes and scientific disciplines), and instead "soar with becoming boldness above our wants and needs, for art is a daughter of freedom and takes her orders from the necessity inherent in minds, not from exigencies in matter" (Aesthetic Letters, 1791? ). Between Bürger and Schiller there was an argument about where poetry would go once Neoclassicism dissolved. Would it play for sympathy with the newly literate masses, or would it pursue an abstract, metaphysical understanding of humanity?

Interestingly, Wordsworth tried to combine these two direction in the Preface. Even though Bürger's Leonore had a large influence on Wordsworth's view of form, he was never fully convinced that Bürger was a good poet. He held on to some of the same reservations that Schiller worried about. In a letter to Coleridge Wordsworth would criticize Bürger for his reliance on "incidents" which "are among the lowest allurement of poetry." He concludes: "I do not find those higher beauties which can entitle him to the name of a [I]great poet." In the Preface, it's "incidents" that the ignorant, urban masses most want: "where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident." Contrary to what he perceives as an unhealthy taste, the Lyrical Ballads are designed so that "the feeling therein developed gives the importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling." This "feeling" would be something closely allied to Schiller's metaphysical truth. The Preface has it that the "passions" evokes are designed to be "incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature."

In this way, Wordsworth tries to combine both sides of the argument. He wants to encourage a less literate audience to appreciate art, but he also wants to elevate his audience with the "beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Is he successful? Looking at just the first part (encouraging new readers), I would say yes--eventually. Initially, he wasn't successful with very many readers at all, but eventually his works did become the accessible gateway into poetry he meant them to be. After all, almost all the Victorians saw him in this light. He even plays a large role in the poetic education of JS Mill. I think even to this day the Lyrical Ballads is an excellent introduction to poetry, and I frequently suggest it to people looking to get into the form. It's something that can be read without much prior reading (contrary to what the above paragraphs would have you believe). Yet it also something with a lot of payoff. Death, familial love, joy of life, contemplation, theistic doubt, almost all of the themes still resonate, and the poetry brings them to you in such a clear way.

The second goal in the Lyrical Ballads is harder to gauge: does the Lyrical Ballads bring readers closer to what's permanent or intrinsic in the world? This is so hard to measure, in fact, that I'm going to go get something to eat and finish this later.

[OrphanPip]

Wordsworth's interest in the rural, simplistic life is probably related to the growing industrialization of the time. However, I think it has more to do with the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that man is naturally good, and society harms man by distancing them from their simple natural state. I've tried reading Rousseau's Origins of Inequality, and it's a painful read, I think it's mostly nonsense (well intentioned though), but it was certainly influential nonsense that influenced generations. I'm not adding anything too revolutionary to the discussion though haha.

Tying Rousseau's philosophy in with Quark's post, I think Wordsworth might have thought that his depictions of humans in nature, and basic human emotions and experiences was approaching what he thought was the intrinsic good of people, but I don't think many people would agree with that view today.

[ktm5124]

I think you make some interesting points Ktm, particularly about the claimed progressive nature of his subject in rejecting the industrialisation that was occurring apace. You comments reminded me of Blake's Dark Satanic Mills, which illustrate a theme already set. As I was reading the earlier comments, and Wordworth's preface, his desire for a simplification of the language reminded me of Orwell's essay on the language promoting the same thing. It's funny that this theme continues today with the plan engish movement, and the variations on this with common complaints about various literacies such as text language.


Definitely - Wordsworth's arguments crop up again and again in history. When I came upon the line in the Preface where Wordsworth explains his desire to depict the low and rustic life, noting the simplicity and greatness of their passions, I was reminded of a comment made by Steinbeck, where he said that, in the time of his writing, nobility was most present in the poor. This is very similar to Wordsworth's sentiment.


Quark - what an interesting post! I had no idea about the discussion you raise that was going on prior to Wordsworth. When I have time I will make a more substantial reply... I am ashamed to say I am at work right now :-)

[kasie]

Bear in mind, too, Wordsworth's early life - he was born and brought up in the Lake District, an isolated area of lakes and hills, then as now, largely untouched by industrialisation. The influence of the beauty of nature is a subject which recurs in his later work, especially in The Prelude. He would have been much in the company of plain-speaking folk.

Thanks for the background information, Quark - it's new to me too. Though I'm a great believer in the Text, the whole Text and nothing but the Text, I'm increasingly coming to believe that the more we know about the thinking surrounding the inception of a work, it's Zeitgeist, so to speak, the more is added to its comprehension.

[Petrarch's Love]

Some great replies so far (despite the opinions of certain nay-sayers who clearly never learned the old maxim, "if you can't say anything nice..." :rolleyes:)

Quark--Thanks for the additional historical context. (Is the romantic period an area of expertise for you? And if it is, do we get to pelt you with all our burning historical and contextual questions? :D) I had assumed that he was taking part in some sort of contemporary discussion, but had little to no knowledge of who he was either rejecting or following, so this is useful.


In this way, Wordsworth tries to combine both sides of the argument. He wants to encourage a less literate audience to appreciate art, but he also wants to elevate his audience with the "beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Is he successful? Looking at just the first part (encouraging new readers), I would say yes--eventually. Initially, he wasn't successful with very many readers at all, but eventually his works did become the accessible gateway into poetry he meant them to be. After all, almost all the Victorians saw him in this light. He even plays a large role in the poetic education of JS Mill. I think even to this day the Lyrical Ballads is an excellent introduction to poetry, and I frequently suggest it to people looking to get into the form. It's something that can be read without much prior reading (contrary to what the above paragraphs would have you believe). Yet it also something with a lot of payoff. Death, familial love, joy of life, contemplation, theistic doubt, almost all of the themes still resonate, and the poetry brings them to you in such a clear way.

I think this is an excellent point, both about Wordsworth and possibly many of the well known romantic poets. I personally was ushered into the world of poetry via Wordsworth and Keats (or, perhaps more accurately, I began to appreciate poetry in a more full and profound way for the first time reading them) and, like you, sometimes recommend them to people as "gateway" poets. :)


We're lead to think a bit about what happened to Lucy, but even more so we wonder what the relationship with the speaker was. Lucy is used consistently in the poems as a sort of undefined love interest of the speaker, we learn very little about her, and she is essentially a device used by Wordsworth to explore emotions related to unrequited love.

Since you've brought up "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," I wanted to add to this the very powerful way in which the dynamic you are describing also prompts an identification with the speaker on the part of the reader, which in turn opens the reader up to a broader consideration of his/her connection with others. The poem is set up to emphasize that Lucy was a person that we the readers neither knew nor cared about. Then, when the degree to which the speaker of the poem cared comes out at the end, it not only prompts us to wonder about his relationship to her, but also to identify with the speaker as someone who cares for someone as we ourselves have cared for people important to us in our lives. As a result of this identification with the speaker, the reader is further invited to identify Lucy with someone he or she has loved and perhaps also to realize that the people we love may be considered just as inconsequential to others as Lucy was to us (at least before we read this poem). The move to end the poem on this personal note makes us more aware of the Lucys of the world, more apt to feel that we should be more mindful of the way people we may not know or think we have a bond to are potentially people whom we could (and perhaps should) care about ourselves. So, I would add to my previous post that it is not only a glimpse of open interiority in which we become interested in the mind of the speaker, but a glimpse of potential shared interiority, in which we shift our perception to that of the speaker that makes Wordsworth's poetry remarkable. The way "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" moves us to feel that we are, to use the words of another poet, "involved in mankind" is certainly what makes the poem especially beautiful to me, and I imagine this is true for most readers of the poem.

KTMand OrphanPip also bring up some important points about the probable influence of both the dawning industrial age and of the philosophy of figures like Rousseau upon Wordsworth's poetry. I doubt that any would dispute that both of these had an impact on Wordsworth's world view. However, I think that Kasie brings up an extremely important point in reminding us all that Wordsworth was also someone who had considerable first hand experience of nature and the rural countryside.

I would like to explore a particular word that KTM brings up in relation to this point. This word is "nostalgia." I'll quote part of KTM's post:


At the same time that Wordsworth is reacting against the last two centuries of verse, I believe there is also a nostalgia present in his poetry, which might seem at the first paradoxical. Wordsworth's poetry does not look forwards to the future but backwards; he may be advocating the everyday language of men, but he is at the same time advocating a rustic way of life that is starting to become a little old-fashioned.

I think you're absolutely right that "nostalgia" is an important term to bring up in relation to Wordsworth, however I think it may be even more complex and paradoxical a term than you suggest here. As Kasie suggests, nature and rural life were not, in fact a part of the past for Wordsworth but very much his present, and a treasured part of his present experience throughout the majority of his life. It's always a good idea when possible to start by looking at the obvious answer, and in Wordsworth's case the most obvious answer to the question of why he was a nature poet was that he loved the natural world. He comes across as a person and a poet who had a very true and profound attachment to nature as the thing which helped him to most clearly understand the ground (literal and figurative) he had in common with fellow human beings and also helped him to most closely connect with the roots of his own emotional and spiritual parts.

This said, you're right that living in the industrial age also played a considerable role in the way he situated himself as a nature poet, and the contrast between the emerging industrial no doubt was a large part of what prompted him to think about and express his love of nature so strongly and consciously in his work. He addresses this perhaps most clearly in the well known sonnet, "The world is too much with us" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15878 However, in thinking of Wordsworth as a nostalgic poet, he is certainly not one for whom nostalgia means that he is sitting around in a city thinking of the good old days of rural life from a considerable distance, because the rural life was a tangible part of his own present life (and this is one of the reasons that he is, not only a nature poet but a good nature poet). He did, however, see the potential for that life to become a thing of the past, and I think that as a result of that we do see a sort of crafted nostalgia emerge in his poetry, an idealized view of the natural world and its rustic people that creates a sense of nostalgia within the person for whom that life does seem to be a thing of the past. There certainly was a very real past nostalgia evoked for some readers of his own time and this is true to an even greater extent for the majority of us as readers of the 21st century. It may be worth considering whether Wordsworth would have thought of himself as looking "backwards" necessarily in writing about the natural world, or if he would have thought in terms of intervening to bring attention to and preserve what he saw as a vibrant part of his present world and what he imagined potentially continuing into the future. Perhaps one could call this almost a defensive or pre-emptive nostalgia: an attempt to create a sense of nature and rural life as a "lost place" that we all deeply treasure in order to inspire others to seek it out and to begin to value it before it truly is lost altogether. Certainly he has been partially successful in this given the numbers who flock to England for the purpose of making pilgrimages to the Lake Country. :nod:

Of course, when it comes to Wordsworth and nostalgia the poem that could keep us talking for a year or two is "Tintern Abbey", but I'm not sure if we're ready to move on to that one yet or not. When we do, (speaking of poetic tourism) I've got some lovely b&w shots of the ruins looking spooky and romantic at dusk that I can post.

[Quark]

Tying Rousseau's philosophy in with Quark's post, I think Wordsworth might have thought that his depictions of humans in nature, and basic human emotions and experiences was approaching what he thought was the intrinsic good of people, but I don't think many people would agree with that view today.

Thanks for bringing that up OrphanPip because that really helped put together something that was hard for me to say. There's something that's not really satisfying about Wordsworth's philosophy: other than the obvious unanswered questions that his verse brings up like "why am I listening to someone talking about 'anchoring' their mind with nature rather than going out an 'anchoring' my own mind in nature?" No, there's something deeper that's always prevented me from fully agreeing with Wordsworth's program (and there really is a program if you read works like The Prelude). It's not there isn't enjoyment, and even great art to be found in Wordsworth. It's just that his message sometimes is a little shallow--particularly when you compare it to works like Rousseau's Discourses. I could be wrong about this. After all, there are plenty over very sophisticated people whose lives have been changed by the Lyrical Ballads or The Prelude, and I don't think that's a bad thing. If the poems bring hope and kindness into some people's lives that's actually probably a good thing. Granted, my heart is two sizes too small, but I won't begrudge anyone spiritual growth--even if it's from works that I find less than complete.

This is my post, though, so I'm going to voice my own reservations about Wordsworth's philosophy. As the Preface lays it out, the Lyrical Ballads' goal is to trace the contours of man's untarnished mind--the progression of his thoughts and affections. And, while it's fashionable (and frequently necessary) for academic or scholars to rephrase declarations like this in historical or political terms, I'm going to take Wordsworth at his word and evaluate the poems based on the claims he makes for them in the Preface. Do they accurately follow the course of our innate consciousness? No, I don't find the poems compelling representations of our untaught minds. I actually find Rousseau far more interesting when he discusses--with truly revolutionary implications--how man first enters the world without attachment or desire. Rousseau's primitive man can take any form in the future. Rousseau's primitives represent something far more alien than Wordsworth's quaint rustics. The primitive man is something inaccessible to Rousseau, and that adds it a certain profundity that is lacking with Wordsworth. Rousseau's Discourses are a powerful reminder that the status quo is not the status quo ante, and that society can take many different forms--since none of them were determined by man's innate nature. Wordsworth's rustics maybe show us that we can cultivate a warm, benign gaze if we contemplate nature and the fond moments from our past. There's nothing really revolutionary in that. In fact, later generations (who had other philosophies entirely) found Wordsworth easy appropriate for their own purposes. To Victorian readers (sorry to keep going back to that, but it's what I know), Wordsworth was used to encourage the kind of warm sentimentality that Victorians thought should knit together families and lovers. It was considered an antidote to harsh societal pressures--not really a revolutionary statement about what's innate in mankind. Wordsworth's poetry lends itself to this kind of appropriation in a way that Rousseau doesn't. To me, that weakens the message. I've never been able to find the kind of meaning in Wordsworth that I do in, say, Rousseau.

Don't misunderstand, though, I'm not (if I could double underline I would) saying Wordsworth was a bad poet--just a bad philosopher. The poetry is very powerful, so that's what I want to get to. I will get to it, too. I've just been juggling a few book clubs at once, so haven't had time to give this my full effort. Now that I'm through the Preface, though, I'm eager to post something about the poems.


Quark - what an interesting post! I had no idea about the discussion you raise that was going on prior to Wordsworth. When I have time I will make a more substantial reply... I am ashamed to say I am at work right now :-)

Well, before it sounds like I'm completely taking credit for those observations, let me point out that many scholars have written about the Schiller/Bürger arguments. Many of the quotations I used were culled by Martha Woodmansee in The Author, Art, and the Market (1994?). She puts Wordsworth in a slightly different light, though. Still, I didn't do all of that work myself. I love LitNet and everyone on it, but no one is worth that much research!


Though I'm a great believer in the Text, the whole Text and nothing but the Text, I'm increasingly coming to believe that the more we know about the thinking surrounding the inception of a work, it's Zeitgeist, so to speak, the more is added to its comprehension.

Yeah, I too want to return to the text after all of those contextual notes, but I don't think there's a single one-size-fits-all approach to poetry. Some questions invite a historical approach (as I thought OrphanPip's did), but others demand close analysis of the text. That's what's great about LitNet. So many perspectives are represented on the forum, and eventually you hear from everyone.


Some great replies so far (despite the opinions of certain nay-sayers who clearly never learned the old maxim, "if you can't say anything nice..." :rolleyes:)

Easy there.


Quark--Thanks for the additional historical context. (Is the romantic period an area of expertise for you?

If you talk to the committee approving my exam list, then, yes, I'm a complete expert on the romantic poetry. Otherwise, no. Really, I'm much more comfortably with later prose.


And if it is, do we get to pelt you with all our burning historical and contextual questions? :D)

Burning questions? No, I think I'm already burned out from last two posts. Let's talk poetry!


I think this is an excellent point, both about Wordsworth and possibly many of the well known romantic poets. I personally was ushered into the world of poetry via Wordsworth and Keats (or, perhaps more accurately, I began to appreciate poetry in a more full and profound way for the first time reading them)

I can't remember who exactly got me into poetry first. More evidence that Rousseau is right: the pre-poetry Quark is unrecoverable.


Since you've brought up "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," I wanted to add to this the very powerful way in which the dynamic you are describing also prompts an identification with the speaker on the part of the reader, which in turn opens the reader up to a broader consideration of his/her connection with others.

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?


The move to end the poem on this personal note makes us more aware of the Lucys of the world, more apt to feel that we should be more mindful of the way people we may not know or think we have a bond to are potentially people whom we could (and perhaps should) care about ourselves.

That's probably a better way of putting what I called a "warm, benign gaze." I might add (but you probably already covered this in your first post) that the poem also encourages us to read our own lives in terms of our private Lucys. Lucy reminds us to value our own affections and truths above those recognized purely in society.


So, I would add to my previous post that it is not only a glimpse of open interiority in which we become interested in the mind of the speaker, but a glimpse of potential shared interiority, in which we shift our perception to that of the speaker that makes Wordsworth's poetry remarkable. The way "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" moves us to feel that we are, to use the words of another poet, "involved in mankind" is certainly what makes the poem especially beautiful to me, and I imagine this is true for most readers of the poem.

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.

[Paulclem]

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"

The poem has rather a startling, anti-romantic ending. Is he saying that Nature - personified here - Mother nature - has her gentle boon, but our "wayward thoughts" intrude upon it, much like his contemporary society was intruding upon Nature with the industrialisation?

On Petrarch's point about Poetic tourism, I recall hearing that the Romantics popularised hoidays, walking and the general appreciation of nature in a way that was not done before. I can't see the working class population doing this but probably the middle classes. Perhaps they were were the ones who benefited from the increased wealth of the industrial revolution. Ironic?

[JCamilo]

But what would be ironic? All romantics (or at least most of them) are not from industrial class or anything close to that. I think Keats was the only the only one who was close from non-upper middle class. They are intelectuals, many with academic formation, some even from nobility or sustained by it. They did not wrote for the lower economic classes either (who could not probally even read) and Coleridge even complained by the increase of romance popularity in the sense that writing for the popular market would kill poetry.

In this sense, think how notable is Coleridge criticism. When he disagree with Wordsworth about the language of Lyrical Ballads ,saying Wordsworth did not wrote like their subjects but created the illusion so the reader could feel like it was said by the subject while it was a highly stilized poetic language he is just telling about this irony: we are apart. Social wise, experience wise and educational wise. Nobody who considered that a poet should be a philosopher would think otherwise, of course.

As the feeling, which is what matters, I saw another day here in the forum the textbook differences between classic and romantic (one have emotion, other reason,etc) which is obviously flawed, since we may find individual examples that deny it all. I think the real difference is how they keep walking. They all Johnhy Walker, but it is how. Classical guys walk looking foward, they feel the loss, but they consider it unavoidable and go ahead. Hence so much irony in the classical texts, that is a good way to make up for the contradictions. While the romantic, even loving all the progress, even when optimistic, walks looking over shoulder. He can not leave behind and yet have the sense it is gone. Lucy is dead after all. This, because like Wordsworth said, they will write when all feelings are smothered by contemplation, It is gone. We can see it in Keats duality on the odes to Grecian Urn or Nighitingale, Coleridge remembering a poem that he had forgot, Blake need to balance the devil and the good in one good and one self, Shelley atheism and at sameticime a sense of faith, even Schiller aesthetics, when beauty is gone and is ever, almost unattanaible or Baudelaire Paris, Emily Dickinson powerfull vocation and reclusive life... Byron would go to hell to paradise, but he would carry hell with him. But he knew he could not have both worlds.

[Paulclem]

I was questioning - is it ironic that in trying to establish a rustic simplicity of language- but not necessarily ideas - that the readership would be the people who benefited from an industrial background. Just speculation, and looking back i don't think I was clear.

[Jeremydav]

Keats will always be my favorite of the Romantics. It is my personal belief that he was the most skilled, and that his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" remains a poem representative of the period for me.

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

[Quark]

The poem has rather a startling, anti-romantic ending. Is he saying that Nature - personified here - Mother nature - has her gentle boon, but our "wayward thoughts" intrude upon it, much like his contemporary society was intruding upon Nature with the industrialisation?

There's been a lot of talk of industrialization recently, and I do want to touch on that eventually. But, for now, maybe it's best to look at just this poem's "wayward thoughts." I think one could potentially read "wayward" as simply erroneous or willful, but the dream here is presented in rather glowing terms ("fond," "sweet," etc.). Perhaps a safer reading would interpret the "wayward thoughts" as unguided musings. After all, what happens when we're involved in some kind of repetitive action--like watching horses hooves rising and never stopping? The sense of constant action turns into a sense of inaction. A noise if repeated long enough will get tuned out by the hearer. Repeated motions come to be no motion at all with time. We get drowsy in the calm of monotony, and our minds become unhitched from our bodies and surroundings. Thoughts wander randomly. This is the thought process of the poem. It's interesting that it's this process, and not some logical string of realizations that lead to the last lines. It's not as though the speaker thinks to himself that he's afraid to lose Lucy because of this or that reason. Rather, it's the non-linear, dreamy process of one drifting off that leads him to his epiphany. Far from being anti-Romantic, this seems extra-Romantic.

I suppose you could interpret the repetitive action of the poem as indicative of industrial labor, and conclude that the dream is a fevered one. When I get more into the industrialism thing later, I'll say a little more about why I tend to put that reading toward the back of my mind (although not completely out of it).

[Paulclem]

Yes - I'm exploring the idea of why dead and not absent or rejecting him. I'm looking for a wider implication. The moon is descending and dropped - which seems to prompt this wayward thought.

[JCamilo]

I was questioning - is it ironic that in trying to establish a rustic simplicity of language- but not necessarily ideas - that the readership would be the people who benefited from an industrial background. Just speculation, and looking back i don't think I was clear.

I think it would only ironic if Wordsworth and Coleridge intention was to address the rustic public and not just propose a poetical valorization of the language.
Pehaps what you see as ironic in the inner contradiction of Rousseau idealism, which is fundamentally flawed, albeit fundamental as ideal.

[Paulclem]

I think it would only ironic if Wordsworth and Coleridge intention was to address the rustic public and not just propose a poetical valorization of the language.
Pehaps what you see as ironic in the inner contradiction of Rousseau idealism, which is fundamentally flawed, albeit fundamental as ideal.

No I didn't see that.

[OrphanPip]

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.

[Paulclem]

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.

Sounds good. (Thought I'd completely killed the thread there. Would that be poetic paranoia?).

[Petrarch's Love]

If you talk to the committee approving my exam list, then, yes, I'm a complete expert on the romantic poetry. Otherwise, no. Really, I'm much more comfortably with later prose.

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...



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?


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.



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.

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.




Burning questions? No, I think I'm already burned out from last two posts. Let's talk poetry!

Yes!

[Petrarch's Love]

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.

I'm up for reading Tintern Abbey next.



Sounds good. (Thought I'd completely killed the thread there. Would that be poetic paranoia?).

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


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.

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:


YET once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

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.)

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:


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.

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.

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.

[Paulclem]

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.

[LitNetIsGreat]

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:


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.

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.

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_little_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?


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)

“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.

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.


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.

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.

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:


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.

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.

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.

[Petrarch's Love]

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.

[LitNetIsGreat]

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.

Was it something I said? :yawnb:

Have a good time.

[Quark]

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.

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 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:

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.

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.


Was it something I said?

lol, Neely. Good post, by the way. I want to say something about the Blake/Wordsworth comparison, too. I just have to find time.

[Seasider]

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.:smile5:

[Paulclem]

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.

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.

[JBI]

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?

[LitNetIsGreat]

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.

[Paulclem]

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?

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi All--Back from my time communing with nature in Yosemite and ready to talk Wordsworth again. Lots of good thoughts to respond to, but first I thought I would share some photos of Tintern Abbey and its environs that I took in the twilight time of my one day in Wales last September. The ruins and the surroundings are still much as they were in Wordsworth's time and, apart from the presence of a paved road, motor vehicles and a few other such modern conveniences, my impression was that the area is still very much a "wild secluded scene" dotted by "pastoral farms,/Green to the very door." Wish I had some more of the natural surroundings, which are quite beautiful, but here are a few of the Abbey and the area right next to it, which I snapped before darkness fell. I knew it was a ruin before I went there, but I was unprepared for the unique beauty with which the ruined abbey merges with the landscape and for the wild natural beauty of that landscape. The merging of passing human endeavor with the natural world is quite striking, even if you haven't read the poem. How many, if any, other places in the world can you look through the stone frame of a gothic window to see glimpses of green hill and sky?

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/647-2.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/639-2.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/601-1-Copy.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/635-Copy.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/593-2-Copy.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/627-1-Copy.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/618.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/617.jpg

[Virgil]

Petrarch, I've read that poem so many times but I've never bothered (or thought of) looking up pictures. Thanks! Now I should go back and read it and see if the pictures add anything to the poem.

[kasie]

.....How many, if any, other places in the world can you look through the stone frame of a gothic window to see glimpses of green hill and sky?

Quite a few in UK, actually, PL - we have rather a lot of ruined abbeys, thanks to Henry VIII, many of them in secluded countryside. :smile5:

[ktm5124]

Wow, thanks Petrarch's Love! Tintern Abbey truly does "merge with nature", as you say. What a fitting subject for a poem that praises nature.

I'd like to raise one question before I sign off - this internet cafe is closing, but take a look at the following passage:

Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings

The speaker is clearly an introvert, but does Wordsworth truly value the importance of human connection, between persons and persons, or does he lose sight of this in his exclusive relationship with nature?

[LitNetIsGreat]

I love that section, I've got that bit and a little more memorised. I can see where you are coming from with the introvert angle, but I see this passage not necessarily mocking all human contact, just negative contact. So, the theory is I suppose, that in the grandness of nature, of such happy thoughts and memories "the sneers of selfish men" and the small-minded "evil tongues" are forgotten or ignored, completely paled into significance by remembering these good times in the presence and grandness of nature. However, I suppose you could make a case for the fact that was somewhat introverted, the line "the dreary intercourse of daily life" at least suggests that he is bored with general contact, though close to the heart of poem is the deep affection that he holds with his sister, so it seems to me more likely that Wordsworth's scorn is directed at what is negative and bitter in human relations and life in general rather than all human contact.

[Petrarch's Love]

Quite a few in UK, actually, PL - we have rather a lot of ruined abbeys, thanks to Henry VIII, many of them in secluded countryside. :smile5:

Well, that's true I suppose. People have been commenting on them at least since Shakespeare's reference to "bare ruined choirs." I guess I was thinking in terms of places I've been outside the UK where gothic structures have more often managed to keep their roofs! :)



Wow, thanks Petrarch's Love! Tintern Abbey truly does "merge with nature", as you say. What a fitting subject for a poem that praises nature.

I'd like to raise one question before I sign off - this internet cafe is closing, but take a look at the following passage:

Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings

The speaker is clearly an introvert, but does Wordsworth truly value the importance of human connection, between persons and persons, or does he lose sight of this in his exclusive relationship with nature?


I love that section, I've got that bit and a little more memorised. I can see where you are coming from with the introvert angle, but I see this passage not necessarily mocking all human contact, just negative contact. So, the theory is I suppose, that in the grandness of nature, of such happy thoughts and memories "the sneers of selfish men" and the small-minded "evil tongues" are forgotten or ignored, completely paled into significance by remembering these good times in the presence and grandness of nature. However, I suppose you could make a case for the fact that was somewhat introverted, the line "the dreary intercourse of daily life" at least suggests that he is bored with general contact, though close to the heart of poem is the deep affection that he holds with his sister, so it seems to me more likely that Wordsworth's scorn is directed at what is negative and bitter in human relations and life in general rather than all human contact.

I'll start by quoting the passage in question again with a few lines before and after that were left off in ktm's post:


...And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.

I agree with Neely that I don't feel that these are lines that reject human companionship, though I suppose it is possible to read them that way. I think the lines are talking about finding solace in something larger and more constant than ourselves when we are fed up with the failings of humanity, which is a very different thing than giving up on humanity or wanting to escape from people and not deal with them. If anything, it is someone who has not shied away from other people, who has been open to others, dealt with them and seen their faults and who has consequently been burned sometimes who is most apt to be thinking about the "evil tongues" "selfish men" "harsh judgments" etc. and to be looking for some way of coping with the less loveable side of people. Identifying that there are such defects in us and in our daily lives and suggesting that we can find solace for this in turning to something constant and eternal in nature need not necessarily be an "introverted" move. Certainly, I think these lines hearken back to what are arguably the most famous lines in the poem:


...Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue...

There's a lot of meaning packed into these lines, but one is clearly that he sees that there is no way anymore that he can divorce the experience of nature from his experience of humanity. His fellow human beings and his experienced understanding of them are a part of him now, for better or for worse. Humanity has music to it; it can be beautiful, but it also can be sad. Sad because we are inconstant on many levels. We can be inconstant in that, unlike nature, people may betray a trust, may behave badly toward each other, or simply callously toward each other. And we can be inconstant in that we change, age and ultimately die, while the natural world continues. He does not say that he resents this awareness of the sad and inconstant nature of people. He calls this an awareness "Abundant recompense" for what he has lost and describes it as "Not harsh nor grating," despite the fact that it has the power "to chasten and subdue."

He is describing the paradoxical feelings that many of us often have toward our fellow human beings, and I think that one thing that is important about both these passages is that they retain a supremely balanced ambiguity, refraining from either jubilation in the beauties of others or despair at the flawed nature of others. Take, for example, the central line in the passage I've just quoted: "The still, sad music of humanity." The lines before have set the reader up to anticipate a description of "gifts" that provide "ample recompense," and yet these gifts are sad. Then there is the question of the word "still." The comma would suggest it is one of two adjectives describing the "music of humanity": "still" and "sad." Yet, how can music be still (silent)? Read without the comma (does such a version exist I wonder?) the line would suggest that the music is still sad, that the sound of humanity continues to be a sad one. Read with the comma, however, it suggests that humanity's music is a still one. This could connote a number of things. It could suggest a quiet, peaceful sadness. It could suggest something unmoving, perhaps even fatal or stagnating in this music. It could denote a sad music that is generally unheard, that we do not often enough pay heed to because it is not something that we can receive knowledge of through one of our five senses in interacting with fellow human beings, but through attending to what is unseen, unheard with regard to each other (I like this last possibility best myself). The line quavers between music and stillness, reflecting a mind hovering in a space between sadness and joy. The lines that follow continue hovering in this manner. He very carefully alludes to this music as being "of ample power/To chasten and subdue" rather than stating that it does chasten and subdue. Thus, the statement is really functioning more like a question in the way it opens up for the reader the possibility that one could be subdued by this awareness of the way people are but without saying whether it does subdue or not. From this point on the question remains in the poem. Is he chastened and subdued? Is the sadness and the stillness breaking him or is that thing that makes this music, this knowledge an abundant recompense for the loss of childhood innocence and ignorance worthwhile?

This brings us back to the passage KTM brought up. Clearly he is enumerating some of the unpleasant and banal qualities of people and society in those lines. But why is he doing so? Is it to suggest that he has indeed been "chastened and subdued" by these things and can only find refuge by fleeing from them into communion with nature? Or is it to suggest that it is by strengthening ourselves with thoughts of the constancy of nature as it leads "from joy to joy" then we will be able to engage fully with humanity without fear of being so chastened and subdued by the sorrow?
The lines remind me very much of some of my favorites by Keats (who perhaps had this poem in mind when penning them?):


A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

Despite the "o'er-darkened ways" of depression, bitter cynicism, unkindness, disengagement etc. that we could explore, it is important to remember that there is something beautiful, something eternal, something unchanging and ever joyful that we can tap into in life, and that this will always be sustaining. I personally find that both the lines from Keats and those from Wordsworth encourage the second of the two directions I suggested before quoting the Keats. That is, far from encouraging an introverted retreat from others, I find in these lines the source of something that can enable a person to go openly out among others, to connect with them freely and to have the ability not to fall apart when they disappoint. By having no illusions about people, by recognizing their flaws and inconsistencies and then by also recognizing something--be it nature or beauty or God as author of them both--that is eternal and reliable as a source of comfort and joy, it becomes easier to forgive and forget those little human errors when they come along. I like to think that the "healing thoughts" with which the poem is intended to provide his sister are thoughts intended to strengthen her (and we the readers, whom he is addressing also indirectly) against despair, not just as a means of escape from sadness, but as a means of confronting and overcoming all the obstacles such sadness may place in the way of connecting with others.

Part of the brilliance of the poem, however, is that he does not tell us exactly how to take all of this. We know that there is a potential to be subdued and a potential to be healed, but whether the knowledge of these things is to encourage us or dissuade us from bonding with our fellow human beings is an open question. Part of what makes the poem so moving is that he is laying open this profound uncertainty and making explicit a state of mind vacillating between the certain and the uncertain that, at times, haunts us all.


Much could be said at this point regarding nature and religion, but both myself and my keyboard are tapped out at the moment.

[JCamilo]

I do think there is a difference between Keats and Wordsworth. Wordsworth is a negative character, Keats is not. His melancholy is some short of socratic dialogue between the nature of art. Since he is a later romantic, he seems to have absorbed all ideals and criticism - Schiller, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc - and refined it. He does not explain anything, he pratices it. However his poems quickly evolved to be all about the same theme. Keats see permanence and destruction at sametime, always. Obviously, this is more developed when we see the odes, but even there how quick the beauty for ever is dependable on us, our reaction to it. He is seeking the aesthetic effect of reading, not the immutable text. No wonder Borges said that Ode to a Nightingale was the poem that taught what poetry is.
The maturity of Keats that many like to imagine would not be the poems that would make Milton and Shakespeare find a "rival", it would be the critical maturity.

[Petrarch's Love]

I do think there is a difference between Keats and Wordsworth. Wordsworth is a negative character, Keats is not. His melancholy is some short of socratic dialogue between the nature of art. Since he is a later romantic, he seems to have absorbed all ideals and criticism - Schiller, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc - and refined it. He does not explain anything, he pratices it. However his poems quickly evolved to be all about the same theme. Keats see permanence and destruction at sametime, always. Obviously, this is more developed when we see the odes, but even there how quick the beauty for ever is dependable on us, our reaction to it.

I would agree with the general characterization that Keats tends to be more positive than Wordsworth, though I'm not sure that I would say that Wordsworth is always necessarily a negative character. I think that shifts and changes through the stages of his life and through the shifts in his poetry. I agree that Keats is more consistently concerned with the fine balance between permanence and destruction as you say.


He is seeking the aesthetic effect of reading, not the immutable text. No wonder Borges said that Ode to a Nightingale was the poem that taught what poetry is.
The maturity of Keats that many like to imagine would not be the poems that would make Milton and Shakespeare find a "rival", it would be the critical maturity.

Could you clarify a little more what you mean here? I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean by the "aesthetic effect of reading" versus "the immutable text?" Not agreeing or disagreeing, I just don't follow what you're referring to. Also, do you mean that you think Keats wouldn't have grown to rival the work of Milton or Shakespeare, or just that he may possibly have risen to such heights but just in a different way than people usually suppose?

Don't want to distract people from Wordsworth too much, but was interested in clarifying the point.

[JCamilo]

Could you clarify a little more what you mean here? I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean by the "aesthetic effect of reading" versus "the immutable text?" Not agreeing or disagreeing, I just don't follow what you're referring to. Also, do you mean that you think Keats wouldn't have grown to rival the work of Milton or Shakespeare, or just that he may possibly have risen to such heights but just in a different way than people usually suppose?

Don't want to distract people from Wordsworth too much, but was interested in clarifying the point.

Too Borges (and some others) poetry, literature or art, is not the work. It is not the book. But the aesthetic effect of the act of reading. It is reading the artistic fact (beautry that surprises us) not the production of the text. (at least until we learn to them the production of text is a product of reading).
That is contrary to the notion that once the text is written, it is in the stone (the vision that a text is what the the author proposed) very commun on critics until the XX century. Keats is already working on this direction (the nightingale is not about his song, but about the effects on the listener and the urn has a dialogue with the viewer).
I have read some visions that keats too young death, when he was just starting stopped the english poetry to have a genius akim to Milton or Shakespeare (which is irrelevant, since Keats is a genius on his own) but my opinion Keats would be another kind of genius, one that was able to produce in such quality and quantity and apply the critical sense he had almost innate. When he was dead he already knew what poetry was, he could not explain, he could show us.