2/10/09 Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and miscellaneous short poems

Last time we saw a number of things that we thought might be representative of Romantic poetry:

• wasn't satire, had no mock forms; generally, less irony; wit no longer central
• less emphasis on classical literature--in "Abbey," no allusions or use of classical forms (but...e.g. odes)
• in language, less poetic diction; a flowing, more natural progession of thought
• in prosody: blank verse; Romantics used a wide range of meters, but in general the heroic couplet has lost its prominence.
• poetry which is more personal than public or social
• a quite different theology or cosmology: the "presence far more deeply interfused" that Wordsworth describes we believe has to refer to the divine, but Wordsworth's conception of God is of a being who is immanent in all of nature and human beings, in contrast to the neoclassical view in which God is the top of a heirarchy.
• correspondingly, pride doesn't have the same centrality for Wordsworth that it does for Pope and Swift. This makes sense: if we see the world as a Great Chain of Being with humans well down the chain from God, knowing one's place is important, and pride a paramount sin. If we see God as being immanent in all beings, then there's no real separation or heirarchy: we can find God by looking inside ourselves, and what would be hubris for Pope is for Wordsworth something like transcendence.

Want to continue with this subject today by comparing the Preface to Lyrical Ballads with Pope's "Essay on Criticism."

I have in my office the Fourth Edition of the Norton; it begins the Romantic era from 1798 rather than 1785. Why the date changed is a subject for later in the class, but it's easy to see why the earlier edition picked 1798: that was the date of publication of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge's volume of poetry. The Preface in its present form wasn't added until later, but one might assume that Wordsworth had in mind to write the kinds of poetry he could later describe. And that poetry, if you believe the Preface, is different: he pitches the Preface as way of explaining and introducing "poems so materially different from those upon which general approbation is at present bestowed."

Language of this type helped to create a certain myth of the Romantics, an idea that there were creating something very new and fundamentally different from what had come before. For the moment, we're going to buy into this myth, because if you compare, say, Wordsworth and Pope, you do indeed get a very different conception of poetry.

Start with their conception of the poet:

• At this stage in his life, Wordsworth is basically a democratic poet, influenced by French Revolution. So his "a man speaking to men" is INTENDED to be a levelling move. Does it work as such?
  • stuck with a dilemma: if poetry is open to everyone, then makes a poet a poet?
    If poetry is overflow of emotion, and the best poetry shows the moral value of the world, then the poet is the one who has the most "comprehensive soul."
    (Needless to say, Pope would have considered this prideful.)
• No directly comparable passage in Pope that I can think of. But we can probably infer some things. Start with respect for "ancient rules"--who is in a position to learn the rules?
  • for Pope, the poet is an educated person who has spent a great deal of time mastering the CRAFT of poetry. Note the class bias, perhaps even an inference of being higher on the Chain of Being.
• However: if all humans "must alike from Heaven derive their light," and if "Nature to all things fixed the limits fit," who is more limited, Pope's educated craftsman, or Wordsworth's "more comprehensive soul"

How to write a poem:

• "overflow of spontaneous feelings" vs "art, not chance." What would each say to the other?

The subject of poetry:

• Wordsworth: "common life," "low and rustic life." Would Pope write about "low and rustic life."
  • semi-trick question. classical and neoclassical poetry treats of "low and rustic life" also, but in low forms: the pastoral, comedy. Wordsworth is taking the poor seriously

language of poetry:

• "language really used by men"--Wordsworth here is taking deliberate aim at neoclassical poetic diction, and it's easy to see the differences--no personifications, periphrases, etc.
• But Pope too deplores overly fancy language--the "Nature to advantage dressed" quote is a dig at false eloquence. So what is the underlying difference in their views of what poetic language is or does?
  • "dress" v. "spontaneous overflow of emotion"

purposes of poetry are harder to compare

• on the one hand: "poetry is the image of man and nature" is something Pope might have said.
• the poet as "upholder and preserver" who "binds together...the vast empire of human society" would also not be foreign to Pope, although Pope wouldn't have had to say it.
• but: state of excitement? What would Pope say about that?
  • neoclassicals generally skeptical of "enthusiasts"
• why would W even want something like this? historical argument: reading public devouring sensationalist literature; W claims is due to contemporary conditions: cities, war, press. W is therefore not praising "excitement" per se but rather trying to get people excited about higher things. How is this different from Swift's trying to "cure the vices of mankind"?
• pleasure: Let's assume for the moment that Pope would have agreed with Horace that the purpose of poetry is to "instruct and to delight." Wordsworth is clearly a moral poet, so how exactly does his view differ, if at all?
  • "acknowledgement of beauty of the universe"; so not in opposition or balance with "instructing"; rather, putting both eggs in one basket.

May come down to the issues in the next category, i.e. differences in how the two see the world: for W, mind and Nature are adapted to one another, and openness to nature is a kind of contact with the divine. Pope would be very skeptical of this move, because humans are irrevocably fallen.

1497 The overall picture: "The principal object...excitement.

On to some poems. For today, picking poems that are more typical of Wordsworth's poems in Lyrical Ballads (strictly speaking, "Tintern Abbey" not a ballad, although it appeared in Lyrical Ballads), though arguably less typical of Wordsworth's poetry as a whole.

"We are Seven" (1487):

• Does it fit Wordsworth's prescriptions, as we have seen them?
• is she mistaken?
• Is there some connection between this child's view and the philosophical view that we saw in "Tintern Abbey"?

"Expostulation and Reply" (1489)

• footnote treats this and "The Tables Turned" as a dialogue which overstates both sides of an argument about the merits of books v. the merits of nature. Is that true, or does one side win?
• what are the two sides, exactly?

"The Tables Turned" (1490)

• Here we don't even get both sides. Assuming that Wordsworth is not saying "never read again," what is he advocating?

"A slumber did my spirit seal" (1510)

• assuming that this is a poem about the death of someone the speaker loved,
• when did slumber seal his spirit? before or after the death? Is the speaker now awake? What would it mean to wake?
• is the final quatrain comforting or despairing? Why?

"I wandered lonely as a cloud" (1537)

• note the similarities to "Abbey": if daffodils are so great in person, why is this a poem about remembering them?

"My Heart Leaps Up"

• in what sense is the child father to the man?
• what would it mean for the days to be bound in natural piety? (the footnote, arguably, explains the rainbow...but not the binding)