S.
LAXMANA MURTHY
Wordsworth
was primarily a poet. He was neither drawn to nor was interested in literary
criticism in the way and to the degree his friend and collaborator Coleridge was. Yet Wordsworth meditated deeply on those
problems which relate to the vocation of poetry in general and the kind of
poetry he was then writing in particular. This is quite inevitable because
every creative writer introduces a new possibility in the realm of art which
demands proper evaluation. Constant revaluation of the past in terms of the
present is an important factor which sustains the function of
criticism-explication and elucidation in response to the substantive dictates
of a modified sensibility. It demonstrates the incongruity between new
experience and old expression. Every moment in poetry is characterised
by human self in crisis which urges reaction against the modes both obsolete
and obsolescent. It proves all too clearly that the old modes have lost their
potential for creative experiment having exhausted the native strength of their
idiom. This is the historical dialectics of poetry. The burden of the past is
not jettisoned; its usability is under ceaseless review. What is often regarded
as finally shed, leaves its subtle impact on its consequent.
The
Romantic movement represents a definite stage in this
dialectic and Wordsworth is its spokesman. In his criticism of the limitations
of the past and in his plan for the present and concern for the future, he has
in his mind the undeniable obligation of criticism as part of a literary
revolution. It has to establish the literary values in a world that sets a high
premium on power and scientific methodicity. The
critic must discover the avenues for existence and assert the unique validity
of humanity. This critical principle has prompted Wordsworth to state his
thoughts on poetry and its function clearly and cogently in his famous Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800. When the first
edition of the slender volume of poems was launched forth two years earlier by
Wordsworth in collaboration with Coleridge it did not
meet with immediate success. Hazlitt complained that
the un-accountable mixture of seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the Lyrical Ballads was such that fools
laughed at it and wise men scarcely understood. He went on to compliment
Wordsworth on his remarkable originality of Ballads which brought him the lonely
eminence in that the vulgar did not read them, the learned did not understand
them and the great despised them.1 Six years after its publication,
it was thus greeted by a reviewer in Philadelphia:
I
know few performances which have assumed the name of poetry and which have
obtained a considerable share of celebrity, so truly
worthless as Wordsworth’s Lyrical
Ballads... 2
In
fact immediate success would have simply surprised Wordsworth himself. He was
conscious that it was an innovation in matter and style which by its very
nature could never find ready and acquiescent audience. The strength and
validity of an innovation are, not infrequently, in direct proportion to the
measure of resistance it provokes and meets effectively. Quiet acceptance is
silent absorption which is worse than flagrant denouncement. In the case of Lyrical
Ballads, the absence of resistance would have assuredly meant that the 18th
century classicism discovered no appreciable challenge in it to its
continuance. Wordsworth would have felt sad, had he found that his new efforts
were just in consonance with “the present public taste.” This was not to be. He
was glad. Before he wrote the Preface, Wordsworth had read a good many
reviews of his new venture, and he was able to reflect on the sort of
objections his poems were meeting. In spite of his initial reluctance to theorise, he took great care to defend the principles of
poetic art on which his collection was based. The Preface thus came to
be “a remarkably literate, coherent and rich analysis of what Wordsworth felt
throughout his literary career to be the central topics of criticism”.3
He made himself clear on the vital points–the poet, the poetry, its subjects,
aims and style. The Preface can be
regarded as the manifesto of the Romantic poetry.
Wordsworth
believes that a creative artist is obliged to be articulate about the
principles of art that shape and mould his practice. In agreement with Coleridge he states that “every great and original writer,
in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by
which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which be is to be seen”.
4 The Preface as a theoretical
statement is merely a necessary part of the educative programme without which
informed taste could never be consolidated to welcome and establish the new
school in opposition to the old. He persuaded to do it as he had “a deep
impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind,
and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon
it, which are equally inherent and indestructible”.5 For Wordsworth
the first volume of his poems was “an experiment...to ascertain how far, by
fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a
state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quality of pleasure
may be imparted, which a poem may rationally endeavour
to impart”.6 This experiment, he was sure, would be greeted with
derision and not a few might wonder by “what species of courtesy” this could be
called poetry. Wordsworth was convinced that he shocked the old sensibilities
into new awareness and it was his duty to win them to his school by “a
systematic defence of the theory upon which the poems
were written.” In what follows an attempt is made to study a few concepts of
his defence.
His
defence has necessitated a new look at what perennially constitutes all literary inquiry: the poet,
the poetry, its nature and aims. “The poet,” Wordsworth states, “is a man who
being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long
and deeply.” He is a responsible visionary firmly rooted to the earth with an
uncanny sense of fact. His active participation in the experience shared by all
enables him to see into the heart of things. Wordsworth defines the poet with
disarming simplicity as “a man speaking to men.” This trite and seemingly
commonplace assertion has for its authenticity the whole French Revolution behind it. The charismatic
triad of slogans –
With
the addition of all these clauses, it appears that the poet who is introduced
as a man speaking to other men ceased to be as simple as that. He has the power
and ability to an extraordinary degree to display thought and feeling. The
external fact and human self act and react, and the process is continuous. He does
not, however, merely adhere to the fact in order to copy or report faithfully.
Although he has “the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men” he
should realise the need to impart “immediate pleasure
to a human being possessed of that information which may be expected from
him...as a
If
any literary work is emotionally ‘depressing,’ there is something wrong with
either the writing or the reader’s response. Art seems to produce a kind of
buoyancy which, though often called pleasure, as it is for instance by
Wordsworth, is something more inclusive than pleasure. 10
Wordsworth
indicates its inclusive nature in his assertion that by the grand elementary
principle of pleasure man “knows, and feels and loves and moves.” In other
words, Man has his entire being in pleasure. Wordsworth’s emphasis on pleasure
goes much deeper than this. The poet, Wordsworth feels,
works under the only restraint of giving pleasure and no other obligation would
ever bind him. His ability to evoke pleasure derives its sustenance from his
abundant enjoyment of self, and it is not divorced from the experience of fact.
Celebration of feeling and pleasure to the neglect of fact would lead the poet
into the workings of fancy, an inferior agency which brings in its train
allegories and exploded mythologies. Devotion to fact in exclusion of feeling
would, on the contrary, make an odious presentation of sensory data in verse.
Prof. Basil Willey has shown convincingly how delicately Wordsworth balances
his statement that poetry should deal boldly with substantial things under the
poetic obligation of imparting pleasure. The
entire discussion converges into the subtle and pivotal distinction of
“imaginary” from “imaginative.”
Being
“the rock of defence of human nature” poet will
follow “an atmosphere of sensation.” Even the scientific knowledge with its
positivistic reductions is welcome to his domain where his humanising
power is at work. Wordsworth makes it boldly clear:
...he
(the poet) will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in
those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation
into the midst of the objects of the science itself...if the time should ever
come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which
they are contemplated...shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying
and suffering beings. 11
In
the pursuit of scientific knowledge, the pleasure obtained by the scientist is
essentially subjective and does not lend itself to expression. The poet on the
other hand feels, communicates and thus enables men to share it. Wordsworth
suggests that while in the vocation of scientist man is lost, in that of poet man
is present as its essence. Poet matters as man. With his unique gift of humanization which derives itself from
the deep realisation of relationship and love poet
becomes an “upholder and preserver” of human nature. He will find the vast
empire of human society “in spite of difference of soil and climate, of
language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out
of mind, and things violently destroyed.”
Poetry
should interest mankind permanently. Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is often commented upon as
inadequate. The injustice done to this important definition in critical analyses
is largely due to the failure to read it in connection with earlier remarks. It
is in fact inseparably connected with the source and purpose of poetry. Almost
all the critics who have taken an anti-Romantic stance have picked up “the
spontaneous overflow” in isolation as their starting point. Wordsworth, it
should be remembered, has never undermined the importance of conscience and
deliberate efforts on the part of the poet. He has pointedly said that poet has
no divine afflatus. He has a purpose and an obligation. When the poet is
conscious of obligations, duties and purposes of his art, he cannot in the same
breath be unconscious of what he is doing while doing it. This compels a new
look at the “spontaneous.” The word does not mean automatic or frenzied
outburst. The poetry has its origin in the sensibility which is found in “a
man...who had also thought long and deeply.” Wordsworth is not simply repeating
the central premises of Romantic criticism–the importance of poet’s mind and
passions and the usual belief that creation is natural, automatic and
effortless. The emotion alone would not become poetry. Neither its sudden
expression. It is contemplated till the tranquillity
disappears and “an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of
contemplation is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the
mind.” These remarks should be read in the context of the primacy of pleasure
in poetry. Poet should be able “to excite rational sympathy.” His expression is
bodied forth deliberately with common experience for its source “as other men
express themselves.” Poetry, as Wordsworth finds it, cannot be fanciful,
imaginary and fantastic. It alone has the power to lend ‘divine spirit’ to
science and welcome it as “a genuine inmate of the household of man.”
Wordsworth
was aware that his view of poetry, being very un-conventional, would put much
of the time-honoured literature beyond its confines.
He has remarked that “in order entirely to enjoy the poetry which I am
recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily
enjoyed.” He was clearly in revolt against the accepted norms in regard to
subject matter and language. He comes out boldly,
Why
should there be
A
history, only of departed things,
Or
a fiction of what never was? 12
He
is convinced that “the discerning intellect of Man” would discover that love
and passion are “a simple produce of the common day.” He puts forth his
manifesto:
The
principal object...proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations
from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was
possible in a selection of language really used by men...and...to make these
incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them...primary laws of our
nature...Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that
condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they
can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and
more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary
feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity...; because the manners of
rural life germinate from those elementary feelings,...are more easily
comprehended, and are more durable; and...because in that condition the passions
of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature.
13
This
passionate concern for the common man and the language as spoken by him as
evidenced in the Preface have made
Carlos Baker call it “a declaration of the need for democracy in
poetry”.14 Nearly hundred and eighty years have gone by, we fail
quite understandably to realise the risk Wordsworth
ran when he declared his programme of independence from the
strictures of old themes and dry poetic diction. Wordsworth found that there
was no essential difference between the two modes of language employed in prose
and poetry. He repeatedly asserts with emphasis that the language of a large
portion of every good poem, save with reference to metre,
is no different from that of prose when it is well written. Wordsworth is
echoed subtly when Eliot remarks that poetry should be written atleast as well as prose. Nevertheless he is undeservedly
mauled for his comments on poetic diction and the importance of metre. In regard to poetic diction all that Wordsworth
wants to state categorically is that new authentic and realistic experience of
the poet can never find adequate expression in old inauthentic and stale
vocabulary which he may inherit as family property. It is difficult to disagree
with Wordsworth on basic issues. He has however failed to be precise and clear
about metre. His view that a selection of the spoken
language made with true taste and feeling and “if metre
be superadded thereto” would establish its own distinction, has landed him into
endless trouble. Coleridge in his Biographia
Literaria led not a very friendly attack on
Wordsworth for his views. It must be admitted that the Wordsworthian
belief that metre could be Superadded is unfortunate
and indefensible. It very much needed and deserved the Coleridgean
check. The critical battle on poetic diction and metre
has a long history. A large bulk of adverse criticism has however banked on the
supposed description in Preface of the metre
as “superadded charm.” What amuses one is the often overlooked fact that the
much-quoted phrase attributed to Wordsworth with a good deal of
ridicule, does not appear in Wordsworth. He has thus stated very clearly his
views on the use of language.
...the
language of prose may yet be well adapted to poetry... a large portion of the
language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good prose.
We will go further. It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can
be, any essential difference between
the language of prose and metrical composition...They both speak by and to the
same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of
the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not
necessarily differing even in degree. Poetry sheds no tears ‘such as angels
weep,’ but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins
of them both. 15
It
is a remarkably fresh evaluation of the function of language in poetry. He recognised that language and human mind “act and react on
each other,” and the process involves the entire society itself. Wordsworth
discovered a new poetic world and his revolution as Helen Derbyshire remarks,
emancipated the poetic subject and brought poetic language to its source in the
living tongue. 16 It was, as she further emphasises,
an assertion of the supreme value of life at all costs in poetry. Wordsworth
was a conscious artist deeply committed to human values. His place can be
ignored only on pain of total insensitivity to the voice raised in defence of man about to be engulfed in “a universe of
death.’ Basil Willey aptly commented on the importance of Wordsworth.
yet
as he is the first, so he remains the type, of the “modern” poets who, “left
alone” with a vaster material than his, must bear as best they can, unaided by
any universally held mythology, the “weight of all this unintelligible world”.
17
Wordsworth
bore the brunt of it cheerfully and looked ahead with prophetic vision. His
conception of poetry, though not unassailable, has enough to provide and
stimulate fresh insights into the poetic continuum.
1
Hazlitt, The
Spirit of the Age, Oxford University Press, London. 1960. p. 136.
2
The Literary Magazine and American
Register (Philadelphia), I (1804), p. 336.
3
Stephen Maxfield Parrish, The Art of Lyrical Ballads, Harvard University Press. 1973. p. 10.
4 W.
J. B. Owen (ed.), Wordsworth’s Literary
Criticism, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, London. 1974. p. 115.
5 Preface
to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads,
1800 rept. in English
Critical Essays: Nineteenth Century. Edited by Edmund D. Jones, Oxford
University Press, London. 1971. p. 6.
6 Ibid. p. 1.
7
Prelude ii, p. 254.
8
“Preface to the Excursion”
in Wordsworth’s Literary Criticism,
Op. cit. p. 173.
9 Preface to
the Lyrical Ballads, Op. cit., p. 14.
10 Northrop
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton
University Press. 1957. p. 94.
11 Preface
to the Lyrical Ballads. Op. cit. p.
16.
12 Preface
to the Excursion.
13
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. OJ. cit. p.
3.
14 Carlos
Baker, William Wordsworth, The Prelude:
Selected Poems and Sonnets. Holt, Rinehard and Winston, Inc. 1954. p. xi.
15 Preface
to the Lyrical Ballads, Op. cit. p. 9
16 Helen
Derbyshire, The Poet Wordsworth (Oxford,
1950), p. 56,
17 Basel
Willey, Op. cit. p. 309.