February 24, 2011 Concerning Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply”

Wordsworth set up a heavy weight battle between the ideas of the Enlightenment and his own Naturalist inclinations with Expostulation and Reply. Written in 1798, Reply is a response to the Enlightenment movement, which began to appear in English literature during the mid-18^th century. Immanuel Kant wrote a very influential piece in 1784 called, What is Enlightenment? The main claim of this essay is that Enlightenment was, “Mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error"(Porter, The Enlightenment)¹.

In Expostulation and Reply, William is having a conversation with Matthew. Matthew starts with his expostulation, saying, “Where are your books? That light bequeath’d To beings else forlorn and blind…”(Lyrical Ballads 103, L: 5-6). Here Matthew claims that wisdom comes from humanity’s use of reason, and that books are the means by which humans transfer progress “From dead men to their kind”(Lyrical Ballads 103, L: 8). He continues to explain that Wordsworth isn’t the first human to be on earth and that he should work toward some grand human purpose which was started by those before him.

 William has different ideas about the human condition. In his reply, he begins by explaining that our natural senses are not our choice, and the human Will cannot affect the senses. Instead of using reason to problem solve, we humans “can feed this mind of ours, In a wise passiveness”(Lyrical Ballads 104, L: 23-24). Nature is always speaking to humanity through the senses, and in its totality it will speak more than men could ever seek to gain using reason. By just sitting on a rock, smelling a flower, gazing at trees, and listening to a babbling brook, a human can connect with the message that resides in the Natural world around him or her.

Both perspectives contribute something unique to the enlightenment debate. Matthew tends to see humanity as a unique being continually striving toward an inborn purpose, whereas Wordsworth views humans as part of a greater Natural existence. Enlightenment is achieved in one argument through man’s use of reason and innate thinking to emancipate thought. In Naturalist thinking, however, we must merely access the boundless knowledge broadcasted through Nature’s beauty to mature the collective human consciousness.

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

February 17, 2011: Concerning “We Are Seven” by Wordsworth

           “She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad; Her eyes were fair…Her beauty made me glad”(Lyrical Ballads pg 70, L:8-12). Who is this young girl, and why does Wordsworth deem her story worth telling? What sticks out to me is the young girl’s purity and innocence. She ‘said’ she was eight years old, but the fact that the author includes that this is information revealed by the girl makes the reader suspect that she may actually be younger. This playful lie reveals her childishness. The Maid’s ‘rustic, woodland air’ and the fact that she was ‘wildly clad’ connects her in an intimate way to Nature. Rustic, around the time that Wordsworth wrote this poem, had many meanings including, “rude or country workmanship; of a plain or simple form or structure; spec. constructed of undressed branches or roots of trees”(OED ). This direct reference to trees, the wild, what grows naturally and what is untamed comes to the mind of the reader when thinking of this untainted Maid.

            Another definition used during Wordsworth’s time for ‘rustic’ was: plain and simple; unsophisticated; having the charm of the country”(OED). I love the phrasing used here. Wordsworth’s adventure takes place in the uncultivated English countryside, and he is trying to poke at his alleged ‘sophisticated’ poet contemporaries. He uses the Maid as a symbol to reveal the importance and simple beauty of what is wild and Natural.

            One more connection between human and plant life, or what is natural, stuck out to me in this Poem. When the narrator insists that the Maid’s family now only comprises five members, the Maid replies, “their graves are green, they can be seen…”(Lyrical Ballads pg 71, L: 36-37).  The obvious connection between what is ‘green’ and what is ‘alive’ is constructed in this phrase. Perhaps it is because the Maid sees the green grass, and in her innocence believes that something must be alive in brother and sister that allows the grass to grow over their graves. Maybe Wordsworth was trying to tell the reader that death is really just part of a inborn process, and some part of Nature within us unites with the rest of Nature in the end.

Want more on being human and plant simultaneously? 

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/126403-its-not-easy-being-green-swamp-thing-ecology-and-the-sometimes-slimy/

February 10th: Concerning “The Nightingale” by Coleridge.

            I enjoyed Coleridge’s Nightingale for the fact that it compares the dejected state of Man to the liberated state of nature. In lines sixteen through twenty-three the author describes “some night-wondering Man whose heart was pierc’d with…neglected love”(Lyrical Ballads 48). This melancholy Man has “fill’d all things with himself”(Lyrical Ballads 48). I thought it interesting that even though he refers to this hypothetical man as just ‘some’ man, he capitalizes the ‘M’ in Man. By capitalizing that word, Coleridge immediately universalizes the wanderer’s unhappy state, causing the reader to become aware of his or her own experiences with injustice, lost love, and emptiness. The fact that this Man has filled all things with himself is referring to the human condition of causing our own alienation from what is Natural. The author is showing us that we are obviously unhappy with the world we have created, and so invites us to stretch our limbs beside a brook in a mossy forest-dell (Lyrical Ballads 48, l. 25-26).

            Coleridge then continues, inviting us to surrender our whole spirit, song, and ephemeral existence to nature’s immortality (Lyrical Ballads 48, l. 31-32). This jump from the simple physical act of sitting down in a forest to full submission of spirit seems to be a fluid transition in Coleridge’s mind. The aforementioned situation relies on the supposition that there is some part of humanity that is still connected to nature. If we put ourselves in the right position physically or psychologically, perhaps we can turn the metaphorical switch back on. This would enable humanity to reunite the Nature within us with the Nature we see around us. Only in such an integrated state can Man truly understand, appreciate, and even participate in the beauty around Him. I think that when we take time to align our physical, emotional, and spiritual states with Nature, we begin to see part ourselves in the beautiful and varying song of the Nightingale.


As a simple side note, i would like to  point out that Philomela's song (referred to in line 39 of The Nightingale) is as follows:

Now that I have no shame, I will proclaim it.
Given the chance, I will go where the people are,
Tell everybody; if you shut me here,
I will move the very woods and rocks to pity.
The air of Heaven will hear, and any god,If there is any god in Heaven, will hear me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomela_(princess_of_Athens)

I thought it was interesting that she mentions that she will move the woods and rocks to pity, before talking about heaven or gods. This follows Coleridge's style in "The rime of the Ancient Marinere" in that the Marinere's spontaneous reaction is to nature first, and then he follows with the religious action of blessing the 'slimyy things' ( See Lyrical Ballads pg. 31, lines 274-279)

February 3rd: Concerning “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”

Coleridge’s Rime takes the reader on an epic journey from the Marinere’s country to the South Pole, through seas filled with “a million million slimy things”, and back again(Lyrical Ballads 1800, pg. 30). During this journey through the unknown, supernatural occurrences and superstition lull the reader into belief that anything could happen next. The story’s structure is broken into seven parts so that we are always left with a desire to trudge along and survive the tale along with the Marinere. Analysis of Coleridge’s use of repetition and tetrameter structure reveal the author’s intention to archaize this lyrical ballad.

The ballad’s tetrameter structure is based on the structure of classical Greek poetry, “in which an `iamb` consisted of a short syllable followed by a long syllable”(http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/iambic%20tetrameter). The English basically borrowed the term to describe a way in which they patterned their own syllables in language and poetry. Coleridge also uses repetition in several instances, for example early on in the journey when the Mariner says, “Merrily did we drop, below the kirk, below the hill, below the lighthouse top”(Lyrical Ballads 1800, pg. 24). Such configuring of language hearkens back even to the extremely ancient tradition of orally passing stories to generation after generation. No one can put a date on when humans first started telling each other stories, and bringing us into this mindset was part of the author’s intentions. Writing Rime in this way helps frame communication the way it was when men were in the state of nature¹. The way Coleridge merely organized his words reveals his true intentions of thrusting the reader into some primitive state in which the impossible becomes possible.

[1] In order to clarify, by state of nature I am referring to the hypothetical condition (presumably in the far distant past) before men were organized into political systems. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature).