William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
A worksheet on reading Wordsworth and Romantic
Poetry.
"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually reproduced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins."
--Remember that Wordsworth thought that poetry should be in the voice of the common man, not the affected voice of the very educated man. Incidents from common life.
--"Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey" can be thought of as a kind of story. It is the poet's return to a pastoral/sublime space where he is able to reflect on his youthful passion awakened in this place, and the way the mature self is able to reflect upon the experiences of the past and the beauty of nature. The poem is finished with some reiterations of the thoughts he had been having, this time filtered though the way the landscape is reflected off his younger sister, Dorothy, who will also become an accomplished poet.
--"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" contains many of the same themes about nature and the difference in experiencing nature from infancy to old age. This poem is somewhat less personal, more programmatic and intellectual. The experience outlines begins much earlier, in infancy, when the poet feels that the human is closer to the divine nature of God, and later "must fit his tongue," (act, think, speak less "naturally") to social roles and institutions. This seems a loss beyond measure, but, the poet insists "We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind."
John Keats (1795-1821)
Having died so young, it is difficult to read the notes on death
in Keats' work and not think of his own young passing.
The notion we spent a little time on was the notion of Keats of "negative
capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainty, Mysteries,
doubts, without an irritable reaching after fact and reason."
There is ample material use to frame negative capability in the poem "Ode
to a Nightingale." Read in particular stanza 4, which speaks of the darkness
in which the poet's imagination is allowed to bloom.
Here is a link to a lengthy interpretation and reading of "Ode
to a Nightingale." Here is another
analysis.
The poem "To Autumn" has some nice structural devices--the seasonal flux in stanza one (which almost seems to reverse the natural order of the seasons). The concentration on sight in the second stanza, of hearing in the third.
Giacomo
Leopardi (1798-1837)
His poem, "The Infinite," seems almost to have been made to demonstrate the terrible beauty of the concept of negative capability. Look at the almost willful acceptance of the blind spot the hedge makes. And the way the concentration on the vastness of nature creates a kind of awesome fear. "And thus it is in that immensity my thought is drowned; And sweet to me the foundering in that sea."
| An alternate translation of "The Infinite." | Another translation of "The Infinite." |
| Always dear to me was this lonely hill, And this hedge, which from me so great a part Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze. But as I sit and watch, I invent in my mind endless spaces beyond, and superhuman silences, and profoundest quiet; wherefore my heart almost loses itself in fear. And as I hear the wind rustle through these plants, I compare that infinite silence to this voice: and I recall to mind eternity, And the dead seasons, and the one present And alive, and the sound of it. So in this Immensity my thinking drowns: And to shipwreck is sweet for me in this sea. |
These solitary hills have always
been dear to me.
|