In 1797 a young brother and sister executed one of the more intriguing moves in the history of English literature: William and Dorothy Wordsworth took up residence in Alfoxden, Somersetshire, a stone's throw from Samuel Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. The...
[more]In 1797 a young brother and sister executed one of the more intriguing moves in the history of English literature: William and Dorothy Wordsworth took up residence in Alfoxden, Somersetshire, a stone's throw from Samuel Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. The three would form the most productive literary friendship of the era, a friendship that resulted in the publication of the groundbreaking "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798. English poetry would never be the same.
The collection begins with Coleridge's hypnotic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and concludes with Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey." The latter poem, one of Wordsworth's finest, is an ecstatic meditation on nature, the senses, and the sublime. In it, Wordsworth wrote as a lover, wandering through the green earth while the soul of humankind welled up inside him -- in other words, Wordsworth wrote with the voice of a true Romantic. "Lyrical Ballads" represents the earliest fruit of Romanticism's literary branch. Wordsworth had indulged in long walks with his sister Dorothy, taking notes on the outdoor life and improvising verse that would inspire much of his poetry. Together, they breathed in the beauty of nature and exhaled a new kind of poetry that prized emotion over reason, freedom over structure.
But as important as the "Lyrical Ballads" would become, it was Wordsworth's revolutionary "The Prelude" (published posthumously in 1850) that cobbled a new road for artists to travel. In this 13-book poem, Wordsworth celebrated a new language, an imaginative "language used by real men" that could sing the songs of common life. He abandoned intellectualism and contrived structure, opting instead to record his passions for natural and spiritual wonder in blank verse. The massive work is both philosophical and autobiographical -- it ruminates on human behavior, morality, and humankind's relationship with nature, while introspectively tracing Wordsworth's own memories and moments of spiritual growth.
"All good poetry," Wordsworth wrote, "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." But he also insisted on thinking deeply, on using a controlled passion. For him, poetry was the result of a rushing stream of feeling funneled by a delicate, well-crafted dam. The combination of artistic craft and profound spirituality meant for him, as for most Romantics, that the true poet was blessed with mythical qualities; according to Wordsworth, the poet had "a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul." Wordsworth felt that no ordinary man could be a poet, even though a real poet expressed only the most ordinary sights, sounds, and feelings in the most ordinary language.
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