Alright, time to rant a little about Wordsworth. I feel like there haven't been too many extreme rants as yet...so I'll just get the dialogue going (don't worry Doug...this will be a substantiated rant).
Don't get me wrong. I do enjoy a good Wordsworth poem. He's not my favorite poet ever, but he's not half bad. What I would first like to point out, however, is how pretentious Wordsworth is. I love that, first page (practically) of his preface, he says he was unwilling to write a preface, "because, adequately to display my opinions and fully to enforce my arguments, would require a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of a preface" (560). Essentially, he doesn't want to write a preface, because, he has just too much to say (even though he also says "I am not a critic" (556)). Fascinating. He wouldn't do justice to his thoughts in a short preface, so instead he writes one approximately seventeen pages long. I don't know how long the average preface is...but this one seems a little lengthy. Also, I love how Wordsworth classifies the poet. He says that "among the qualities which I have enumerated as principally conducing to form a Poet, is implied nothing differing in kind from other men, but only in degree" (570). Don't worry, we're not different, just a little better.
Alright, more substantiation. I don't know how many of you have read Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils" (link included so you can look and I'm not copy write infringing or anything...), but it's not the...simplest word choice. I don't know that I'd call it "a selection of language really used by men" (561). I'll admit that I may be completely wrong here, but I don't know that words like "jocund," "oft," and "o'er" are necessarily common language. They're definitely not "low and rustic," nor is his scenario of a man relaxing and contemplating on a couch (561). Perhaps I read Wordsworth wrong, and by low and rustic he doesn't mean the working class, but the educated class. In that case, by all means use "jocund." One thing Wordsworth does claim, that this poem is particularly strong to emphasize, is that "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" (573). "Daffodils" itself is a poem about recollecting something beautiful while lying tranquilly on a couch.
Thinking back Wordsworth's pretentious behavior, I love that he sets up poetry as a universal. I do honestly appreciate this, as up to this point, poetry itself hasn't been quite so highly elevated. Now, however, Wordsworth claims that "the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time" (569). I don't say Wordsworth is wrong; he does make a pretty good argument for his claim. I just appreciate that, as a poet, he takes this stand. Really, if I was a poet, so strongly invested in my work, I'd probably make the same stand. (Also, anyone feeling Hegel's zeitgeist? "Poetry is the image of man and nature" (568)?)
All this to say, I don't think Wordsworth is a bad poet, and I don't think everything he says is pretentious, artificial, and to be disregarded. He makes a strong argument for poetry, and I appreciate that he's not so buried in technical terms that we can't make out what he's saying. As a poet, I think we need to read him. We need to consider what he's saying, and what impact that is making on the evolution of poetry. But, that doesn't mean we can't laugh, just a little. I know I did.
I find his pretentiousness more justified when I consider that his audience would necessarily be someone who has taken an interest in reading his book. While he does prove to be critical, I think it is important to judge that he is not "a critic" in the sense that he muses on the merits and ideas of a type of poetry using very broad generalizations, but he is not making claims that this is a universal standard for how to assess art.
ReplyDeleteI feel a lot better about the preface when I take this as his own inner resolution and passion being excited. He writes his theory like a poet. Unlike many people we have read, he does not even speak as much about the conventions of a poem beyond subject and meter. His focus is much deeper. While he addresses the question "what is a poem?" he really cares about "what is a poet?"
I agree with you Nat when you brought up Hegel. The whole time I was reading Wordsworth, I just kept thinking about reacting against the self, and Hegel's preference for poetry just under music in the ranking of art.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I disagree that he was pretentious. I think his word choice could very well have applied to the common person of his time. However more so, I think Wordsworth was operating on his French Revolution ideals of who the common man was, meaning all of humanity could access brotherhood, liberty, and "jocund".
This comes off to me as idealistic (and maybe a bit pretentious), but also unintentionally offensive. I think the poor guy really did want think about flowers on his couch.
By the way, I've seen his couch. It's in his house. Which you can see here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043735&id=1019670088&l=a989baea93
Yeah I would agree with Sarah about 'jocund'. I think I'd just call that 'poetic license'-- he's reaching for what he can best use in the poem, as rustically as he is able-- and French Revolution ideals are all up in his rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteThat said I think he is super-annoying. The way he keeps repeating himself and his logic sort of falls all over the place seems to me to be him trying to justify how he is writing this treatise on poetry when he doesn't really know what he is saying. He has this big idea and he doesn't know how to talk about it-- possibly because it is not a spontaneous overflow of emotion as recollected in tranquility? I get the feeling he is just spewing on the page; all the spontaneity is there and none of the orderliness implied in 'tranquility'.
...Although he revised a number of times so maybe he was totally logical when writing this and he just liked things to be convoluted.
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ReplyDeleteI have to say that I agree with you there, Natalie. Wordsworth’s big talk does make him seem pretentious and hypocritical; but I’m willing to cut the guy some slack. Maybe he just doesn’t measure up to his own standards. Look at Coleridge; for all of STC’s espousing poetic unity and a disdain for allegory, only a few of his poems displayed his precious concept of oneness, and his great works are considered allegory-central (“Kubla Khan,” seriously? No allegory at all?). I’m not saying Wordsworth is a saint, or that he isn’t possibly a rather formidable egotist, but there’s a strong chance that he just didn’t make his own cut.
ReplyDeleteI mean, look at his picture. If that's not the aftermath of a face-palm, I'm not sure what is...
N,
ReplyDeleteI think he's a good poet, but just a terrible theorist. In a way, aren't all writers and theorists pretentious jerks? Don't they all say they adhere to ideas that we suspect they don't. I think that our class proves that we are all subject to criticism as quickly as we write something down for someone else to read.