In the expanded Preface to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth articulates a revolution in style and language. Wordsworth’s poetry presents the “incidents and situations from common life” in the “language really used by men” (409). Wordsworth rejects the notion that the “incidents and situations from common life” are undignified poetic subjects and that poetic language must be ostensibly ornate. The poet, according to Wordsworth, “thinks and feels in the spirit of the passions of men” and writes “not for Poets alone, but for men” (417). Therefore, poetic subject matter and language should express the “general passions and thoughts and feelings of men” as they are associated with things they know, namely, the Nature within and without (417). Otherwise, poets and their poetry are encouraging “admiration which depends upon ignorance” and pleasure from “what we do not understand” (417). Wordsworth engages the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and understanding to advocate his shift in style and language and “excite rational sympathy” (417). Nature becomes the vehicle through which man can understand himself and cultivate this “rational sympathy.”
Through Nature man can understand his own mind and through poetry he can see “the image of man and nature” (415). The poet, according to Wordsworth, “considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature” (415). The framing companion poems “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned” articulate the importance of studying and contemplating nature. In “Expostulation and Reply” the narrator compares reading books to “drink[ing] the spirit breath’d / From dead men to their kind” (lines 7-8). In “The Tables Turned” the narrator rejects books and declares “Enough of science and barren art; / Close up these barren leaves;” (lines 29-30). Wordsworth is not rejecting knowledge but rejecting the early modern movement to close off from nature in favor of solitary confinement with ideas. Closing off from nature and turning solely to books is associated with death and emptiness, limiting the knowledge of the self that is acquired through the introspection of our image in nature. In “The Tables Turned” the narrator invites the readers to look up from their books stating “Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher” (lines 15-16). In “The Tables Turned” nature offers a true and accessible light, whereas in “Expostulation and Reply” light is being “beqeath’d” from one person to another. Nature has “powers” that can"feed" us and excite our minds via “wise passiveness” (“Expostulation and Reply,” lines 21-24). Wordsworth advocates contemplating accessible forms in nature to teach us more about ourselves.
In “The Tables Turned” the narrator states that “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man; / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can” (lines 21-24). How exactly the vernal wood teaches man about himself and of “moral evil and good” Wordsworth does not explain, but he does know that “Our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things; / -We murder to dissect” (lines 26-27). The enjambment functions to emphasize how our isolation from nature distorts the beauty of our minds in nature and the beauty of nature in our minds. We violate nature in order to understand and justify this violation in the name of progress. However, the religious resonance of the line “We murder to dissect" to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” drives home the violation. Wordsworth as a “worshipper of Nature” illustrates Williams’s point about the death of God and the embrace of nature. For Wordsworth nature is “[t]he anchor of [his] purest thoughts, the nurse, / the guide, the guardian of [his] heart, and soul / Of all [his] moral being” (Tintern Abbey, line 110-112). Nature can teach us about ourselves, each other, and our environment. Poetry, according to Wordsworth, is the language that can show us an “image” of both.
Yuliana, I like your comment, "We violate nature in order to understand and justify this violation in the name of progress". That comment and your choice of Wordsworth quote, “We murder to dissect” made me think of the debates over using cadavers as teaching tools. The idea that we "violate nature to understand" makes knowledge and learning seem unnatural. All of this takes me back to Paradise Lost and the initial transgression of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This link definitely emphasizes Wordsworth's exhortation to learn from nature with added caveat of making sure it's the "right kind" of nature.
ReplyDeleteYuliana, you seem to have mastered the early Wordsworth in one week! Now that's sympathetic imagination! Okay, enough exclamation points. Of course the place where Wordsworth's readers struggle (then and now) is when we try to figure out what exactly "it" is. For some readers, Wordsworth articulates a spirit, an ontology if you will, of the non-human world--a presence that disturbs us (as he says in Tintern Abbey). But for many readers, the question is what is this spirit, this presence? What exactly is an impulse from a vernal wood, and how can or does it teach us more than the sages can? If there is a spirit in the woods, is it a ghost, a wood nymph, a genii? Yes, these are literal and sort of dumb questions but I'm trying to get at what we don't know, and much of the power of Wordsworth's poetry relies on silence, on not knowing what wise passiveness is, on the gap between the two stanzas of the little 8 line poem on death, A slumber did my spirit seal--the gap is the blank space which marks the death of the girl who is the subject/object (clever pun?) of the poem. This missing 'it' is easily dismissed by some readers as pantheism or mushy new-age spirituality and maybe that's what it is. But most thoughtful readers think something far more deeply interfused is going on here and that maybe not-knowing and not-naming is the sign of the greatest power.
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