Memory as a Source of Salvation in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey - Book Report/Review Example

Suzana Zdravkovska 10 November 2008 Memory as a source of salvation in Wordsworths "Tintern Abbey" Favourite quotes Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them." ~ Charles Simic, American Poet born in 1938 2. ”Poetry ... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." ~ John Keats, English Poet (1795-1821) 3. "No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Poet (1772-1834) 4. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” ~ William Wordsworth, English poet (1770-1850) http://www.poetryamerica.com/poetry_quotes.asp At one time or another, depending on life experiences and different circumstances every single person on this globe becomes a poet, consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly. However, not everybody is capable of pouring these inner feelings off into poems others could enjoy greatly. The period of romanticism in England (1800-1832) gives five great poets divided in two groups, i.e. two generations of poets: the older (Wordsworth and Coleridge) and the younger one (Byron, Shelley and Keats). Wordsworth was the oldest among these poets but he outlived all of them and he experienced the Victorian age, too. In spite of his journey to France where he spent almost two years of his life, he remained faithful to the district where he was born, that is Lake District, “whose landscapes and people were to inform many of his poems” (“Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama”, Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia, Dana, Compact Edition, HarperCollins College Division, New York, ISBN 0-673-52415-9, p.879). Wordsworth’s first significant work is his mutual collection of poetry with Coleridge, “Lyrical Ballads”, fist published in 1798. The most impressive and the most valued among Wordsworth’s poems in the “lyrical Ballads” is “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798, shortly known as “Tintern Abbey Revisited. Wordsworth wrote the poem in 1798 on the occasion of revisiting the old Abbey in the region of the Wye River after five years’ absence. The poem abounds in the poet’s meditations about this renewed “encounter” with the landscape whose beauty had excited him so much in the past. The poem is quite long (160 verses) and it is written in blank verse in a relatively praised style of an ode. The poem opens with a statement about the poet’s five years’ absence. Right after this statement, a vivid, impressionist description of the landscape follows. Wordsworth manages to conjure up the picturesque place and the varied landscape in which the wild and the cultivated, the pleasant and the horrifying, human and heavenly things mix together through several of his strongly perceived and felt details. In the second part of the poem (lines 24-50) Wordsworth discusses the way memories of that particular perceiving of the nature have affected him in the time of his absence. With inspired eloquence he tells us these feelings have been his solace, his salve, means of maintaining his mental health, maybe even more than that: …To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened: -…” (“Tintern Abbey” lines 37-42) Then, Wordsworth describes that “blessed state” as a complete physical tranquillity, almost lethargy or a dream in which only the soul is alive and in which “… While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.” (“Tintern Abbey” lines 48-50) Some commentators with inclination to superstitions believe it is a description of “the mystical experience” i.e. the moment when a person’s soul joins with ”God”. Of course, scientifically well-educated people cannot believe this, but they can believe in some extraordinary psychic states, something between hallucinations and dreaming. However what matters to the readers are not Wordsworth’s visions, but the way he conjures up everything. In his “The Study of Style” Marco Mincoff says: “There is in fact no end to the varieties of vision one might enumerate. And one cannot say that intrinsically any one type is better than another. Probably one will on the whole be attracted to those authors whose vision is more or less in tune with one’s own…”(Mincoff, Marco, “The Study of Style”, “PLEIADES” Publishing House, Издателска Къща ПЛЕЯДА, Sofia, 1998, Chapter X, Vision, p.228). Seen from this angle, we can say that Wordsworth’s verses describe a special state of happiness caused by his memories, the state, which some prefer to call “heaven” or “paradise”. It is not only a condition of blessed peace and harmony with the universe. It also includes Wordsworth’s altruistic mood, because memories that cause such condition lead to “acts of kindness and of love” (“Tintern Abbey” lines 35-36). “… This great poem is not a celebration, though it would like to be. It is almost a lament. Wordsworth wants the poem to be about renovation, about carrying the past alive into the present, and so being able to live on into the future with a full sense of continuity. "Tintern Abbey" is all the more powerful for breaking away from Wordsworth’s intention. The poem’s subject, despite the poet, is memory. Is the story he tells himself about memory a visionary lie? Though he is eager to renew his covenant with nature, has he adequate cause to trust that nature will renew her past movements toward him? The poem does not trust its own answers to these questions. What Emerson following Coleridge, called the law of compensation, now comes into operation. ’Nothing is got for nothing,’ Emerson grimly observed. Wordsworth now knows consciously his love for nature as he begins to know his bond to other men, but this knowing is darkened by shadows of mortality. An urgency enters into the second half of the poem, as the poet begins to press for evidences of continuity with the ardors of his earlier self. Simply, he seeks what religion calls salvation, but his quest is displaced into a wholly naturalistic context. He knows only nature and his own mind; he remembers when nature gave him a more direct joy than he now has; and farther back there was a time when he knew himself only in union with nature. Desperately, he affirms that nature will not betray him, but the deep reverberations of this seminal poem hint distinctly at how troubled he is” (Global Campus, Distance Learning at Columbus State, Wordsworth Lecture, http://global.cscc.edu/engl/262/WordsworthLex.htm ). These “…’acts of kindness and of love’ affirm much more than a considerate bearing towards another person. ‘Kindness’, here embraces the universal cause formerly associated with the revolution in France. Written at the end of the revolutionary decade ‘Tintern Abbey’ admits the realities of change, loss, disappointment – but the poem also asserts a ‘cheerful faith’ that nature and memory may yield ‘life and food / For future years’ (“Tintern Abbey” lines 65-66), (Wordsworth, William, “Selected Poetry”- Introduction, Edited by Nicholas Roe, Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England, 1992, p.xv). It is interesting to mention that right after these mentioned lines, Wordsworth expresses his deep doubts about whether these happy memories really have that power to heal, console and calm one’s soul. In the middle part of the poem, Wordsworth describes his spiritual history through reflective thinking. As a boy he has experienced nature passionately and immediately, while now he is not capable of such enjoyment (pleasure). However he has acquired an abundant compensation for that in other gifts. Now he is able to hear “the still, sad music of humanity” (“Tintern Abbey” line 92), and to feel “… A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things…” (“Tintern Abbey” lines 95-103) The final part of the poem is weaker than the rest of the poem although it contains apostrophes to his friend Coleridge and his sister Dorothy. The better parts of the poem, already mentioned above, actually deal with the difference between youth and old age, or the difference in viewing and accepting the nature and the world, as well as the theme of the inner peace created by memories of some earlier experienced beauty that widens a persons view to the omnipresent mysterious essence of nature. In fact it is poetry that is more fascinating than convincing. It is the poetry of escape into the illusionist paradise. MLA formatted: The Purdue OWL. 26 Aug. 2008. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2008 . Sources: 1. Poetry Quotes, http://www.poetryamerica.com/poetry_quotes.asp 2. “Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama”, Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia, Dana, Compact Edition, HarperCollins College Division, New York, ISBN 0-673-52415-9, p.879 3. Mincoff, Marco, “The Study of Style”, “PLEIADES” Publishing House, Издателска Къща ПЛЕЯДА, Sofia, 1998, Chapter X, Vision, p.228 4. Global Campus, Distance Learning at Columbus State, Wordsworth Lecture, http://global.cscc.edu/engl/262/WordsworthLex.htm 5. Wordsworth, William, “Selected Poetry”- Introduction, Edited by Nicholas Roe, Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England, 1992, p.xv Read More