Wordsworth-poetry for IGNOU classes

Wordsworth -The Prelude  The Prelude begun in 1799 and was completed in 1805, but was published a year afterthe poet’s death in 1850. In this workthe poet describes his experiences of growing up as a man and a poet with fullness, closeness and laborious anxiety that is unique in English literature. The Preludeisthe finest work ofWordsworth’s great creative period.Wordsworth conceivedthe idea of writing history ofthe growth of his own mind, andthe various texts ofthe poem cover a very long period inthe poet’s life during which his style and opinion both changed considerably. The Preludeis in factthe first long autobiographical poem written in a drawn out process of self- exploration.Wordsworth worked his way towards modern psychological understanding of his own nature and more broadly of human nature. Third, he places poetry atthe centre of human experience. This introspective account of his own development was completed in 1805 and, after substantial revision, published posthumously in 1850. Many critics rank it asWordsworth’s greatest work. The Preludebegins with an account ofthe poet’s childhood inthe English Lake Country.       He first gives a record of that innocent life out of which his poetry grew;then he goes on to explore howthe mind develops. He reveals a strange world, andthe deeper we dive into it,the stronger it becomes. Likethe short poem, besides touching upon many other things, this long poem tracesthe development ofthe poet’s attitudes to nature, his poetic genius, and his understanding of fellow-beings andthe spirit ofthe universe; he moves fromthe typically childhood animal pleasures, through adolescent, sensual passion forthe wild and gloomy, tothe adult awareness ofthe relation of our perception ofthe natural world, and finally to our sense ofthe human and moral world.Wordsworth basically tries to recapture and recordthe full and intense life lived throughthe senses as a child and as a youth.The child orthe first stage is characterized by a vague understanding ofthe influence ofthe nature’s moral influence becausethe child is indulged in mere bodily pleasures;the adolescent phase is marked with dizzy ruptures; he speaks of youthful love of freedom and liberty, which he enjoyed in rambles throughthe woods and onthe mountain paths where he did not feel fettered bythe claims ofthe society and schoolwork. But those pleasures soon ended naturally afterthe youth began to understand human suffering so that, back inthe nature, he began to make ‘spiritual interpretation of Nature as a living entity, by following whose ways he could get rid ofthe eternal problems of human misery. At one phase of his youth,Wordsworth became strongly attracted tothe cause ofthe French Revolution, feeling that he was tied emotionally and spiritually tothe popular struggle againstthe monarchy. Butthe destructiveness ofthe revolution andthe popular indifference tothe real causes andthe real heroes, andthe corrupted nature ofthe leading revolutionaries, disillusioned him, and he returned home spiritually broken, feeling thatthe innocent blood has poisonedthe real causes of liberty. At that phase of life, he turned tothe nature, findingthere not onlythe solace but alsothe law and order lacking inthe human society.Wordsworth opposedthe mechanical reasoning ofthe materialistic sciences andthe logical philosophy as too superficial to probe intothe sciences andthe logical philosophy as too superficial to probe intothe meaning and experience of life and nature.Wordsworth has said, “To every natural form…. I gave a moral life”. Histheory has been called one of natural pantheism for this reason.       The Preludeis an autobiographical poem but it is not onlythe poet’s personal confessions; it is an account ofthe growth of a poet’s mind. In it he tellsthe story of his inner life formthe earliest childhood up to 1798. Butthe events do not always follow each tothe in chronological or even logical order, forthe poem is shaped by a kind of internal logic ofthe growth of mind rather than bythe sequence of eternal events.The development is roughly chronological but even asthe poem has progressed well into adulthood, at significant points, reference is made back to his childhood contrasting later attitudes, or illustrating important aspect of histheme.The poet’s faith is however based on intuition, and not on reasoning, to understand or analyze life or nature. But his mysticism is not an escape from common experience, withthe help of some kind of fancy, but a probing deep into common things and experience. His poetry has in fact been called ‘the highest poetry ofthe lowest and prosaic things”. According toWordsworth’s The Prelude, nature had two basic formative influences onthe poet’s mind: one was of inspiration with its beauty and joy, andthe other one was that of fear and awe-inspiring influences that disciplined his mind since early in life.       The Preludepresents a unique and original understanding of min, life, creativity and such other things in its examination and linking ofthe factors both important and trivial, which go to make up a complex human personality.The poet indeed has an amazing gift for graspingthe significant ofthe apparently insignificant, and seeing all things as part of meaningful whole. He tries to show us what he and his poetry are made of, andthey are made not only of great events and emotions of marriage and passion, and French revolution, but of small things that a less observant or creative mind would have forgotten: of boating expeditions, of chance meeting with old sailors, or dreams, ofthe noise ofthe wind inthe mountains, ofthe sight ofthe ash trees outside his bedroom window.       It is interesting to note that while The Preludeis a poem rooted inthe past, a culmination of many traditions of thought and culture, it is atthe same time thatthe first great modern poem. In itWordsworth is essentially concerned with human nature, with aspects of consciousness and being that are still relevant to our modern interest and predicaments. The Preludepresentsthe poet inthe quest for his identity. It shows thatWordsworth is trying to seek a point of stability within himself. It is an attempt to establish a principle of continuity and equilibrium within change. He said, “The vacancy between me (present) and those days which yet have such self presence in my mind is so great that sometimes when I think ofthem I see two consciousnesses,the consciousness of myself and that of some other being in me”. Thistheme has indeed obsessedthe modern imagination, replacingthe quest of Everyman or Bunyan’s Pilgrim. In so far as The Preludeis concerned withthe growth of a poet’s mind, it anticipates allthese modern works, which might be lumped together underthe common title of “A Portrait of an Artist t as a Young man.”       The Preludeis a modern poem in another sense; it is a self-reflective poem. By this we mean a poem that has a part of it subjectthe writing onthe poem itself. The Preludeis a poem that incorporatesthe discovery of its ‘ars poetica’. It’s surelythe true ancestor of all those subsequent works of art that coil back uponthemselves. Boththe beginning andthe end ofthe double, quest,the voyage of self-exploration andthe effort of articulatethe experience are perhaps those spots of time includedthe earliest moments of moral and spiritual awareness andthey are usually associated with intensely felt responses tothe nature even when he was a child.