The symbiotic relationship of man and the environment in Wordsworth's Prelude

Instead of waking up to the usual and annoying sound of my alarm this morning, I woke up to the sound of rain. The rain came suddenly and in a matter of seconds was a pretty fierce down pour, it was beautiful. However, the beauty gave way to fear as the wind picked up and became audible in my bedroom. I don’t know what I was afraid of, perhaps the hearing and imagining the power of Nature. The wind that is benign most days was making its presence known, making it voice heard. Ok, that’s a little anthropomorphic and anthropocentric, but that’s one way and for some the only way we understand Nature. For example, one of my students pointed out on Monday how the gloomy weather was fitting for midterms. I agreed and added that it was fitting for both students and teachers. Both incidents made me think of the Wordsworth’s lines in Tintern Abbey “the mighty world / Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, / And what perceive” (lines 106-108). The symbiotic relationship of man and the environment is paradoxically both real and imagined. We have a real and tangible relationship to nature and the interrelated system, but we also project onto nature our hopes, fears, desires, and emotions. For example, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) demonstrates the real impacts of the environment on the self. Wordsworth’s Prelude illustrates the symbiotic relationship of man and the environment and the impacts of the environment on the self.

Wordsworth’s describes Nature, specifically the wind, as his muse. Wordsworth apostrophizes the “gentle breeze” and refers to wind as a “[m]essenger” and “friend” (lines 1, 5). Wordsworth’s childhood and adolescence is shaped by Nature and describes his soul as having “[f]air seed time” and growing up “[f]ostered alike by beauty and by fear” (lines 306,307). The coupling of the words fear and beauty allude to moments of sublimity. Wordsworth’s “destroy[ing]” and” plunder[ing]” of nature evokes the feeling of nature responding to his actions. For example, after preying on captive birds Wordsworth states “I heard among the solitary hills / Low breathing coming after me, and sounds / Of undistinguishable motion, steps / Almost as silent as the truft they trod” (lines 330-333). Wordsworth’s conscience causes him to hear footsteps which he imagines are chasing after him. Nature can be a beautiful and gentle muse and can cause terror and fear. Wordsworth acknowledges that Nature “oftentimes, when she would frame / A favor’d being” pursues them “[w]ith gentleless visitation” though to achieve “the self-same ends” “employ[s] /Severer interventions” which Wordsworth states was his experience with Nature (lines 364-366, 369, 371). Nevertheless, these moments of sublimity “[t]he terrors, all the early miseries, /Regrets, vexations, lassitudes” have “infus’d” Wordsworth’s mind with “thoughts and feelings” now make up a  “calm existence” when he is “worthy of [himself]” (lines 357-362). Wordsworth’s Prelude is an example of the symbiotic relationship of man and the environment, both real and imagined.