289
Wordsworth
"Elegiac Stanzas"
Aristotle (4th C. B.C.) and Descartes (after resolving his doubts)(17th. C) use the verb "to see" literally to mean the physical and mental act of seeing the external world as it is. Pascal (17th C.) seems to use "to see" literally (we see parts and wholes of the world), but he in fact uses it only figuratively, since our mind always misrepresents what we see. Our eyes only appear to see the sun's orbit as it is, as a gigantic whole in relation to the part, earth; this "whole" refers figuratively to the miniscule part that the sun's orbit is in relationship to the orbits of the visible stars. The whole we see is thus always a figure for its opposite, the part, and the part we see is a figure for its opposite, the whole. We thus never see, as we imagine, a part or a whole of the universe. All we see is a confused middle between the two. Plato (4th C. B.C.), who like Pascal doubts perception and cannot overcome his doubts, also uses "to see" figuratively. When he talks about seeing things in the outside world, he uses "to see" to represent figuratively what he sees within himself.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Romantic poets, particularly in England (Wordsworth), Germany (Goethe), and France (Lamartine), used descriptions of visible, natural objects literally, but they also did so metaphorically (figuratively) in order to represent indirectly ("express") the poets' inner emotions, ideas, and imaginations. To quote Pascal: "Instead of receiving the ideas of these things in their purity, we colour them with our own qualities, and stamp with our composite being all the simple things which we contemplate." In Romantic poems, it matters not only what the poets perceive, but also how they perceive it, since this manner of perceiving the world is a metaphor for their inner selves.
Many (but not all) Romantic poets tend to subordinate representations of the exterior world to their subjective representations of their interior world, as if the outer world were merely a projection of their "poetic" interior world, an expression of their poetic vision. Some come very close to treating interpretations of representations as being purely subjective and personal interpretations of the world, just as many people do now-a-days.
For the Romantics, the inner world that they project onto the outer world is not "reason," as it is for Plato. Rather it is emotion, the imagination, and memory, which many Romantics thought to be superior to reason.
We saw a similar redefinition of the objective outer world into figures of a subjective inner vision when we compared realist paintings (Gustave Courbet) and realist photos (Joseph Frank) --which emphasized the reality of the object of the viewer’s gaze and de-emphasized the subjectivity of the painter’s or photographer’s particular manner of painting -- to more subjective paintings and photos (Munch's "The Cry," Modigliani’s nude -- which de-emphasized the object of representation by redefining it in terms of the particular way in which the painter or photographer painted this object) See Visual Art and Representation (http://lilt.ilstu.edu/jhreid/paintingov.htm), also attached to the Representation class page.
Romanticism, by the way, was a literary and artistic movement that occurred in England and Germany at the end of the eighteenth century and in France between 1820 and 1845 (See Delacroix's paintings). Many, but not all, Romantics were aristocrats who hated the reality of a society that was increasingly dominated by commerce, the bourgeoisie, and nascent democracy. These aristocrats wanted to flee the economic rationality and pragmatism of the bourgeois cities and of the industrial revolution (in England) in order to return to an idealized (both remembered and imagined) past life which they associated with the country (where their wealthy castles and property were), their emotions (especially love), solitude, heaven, and an eternal order (i.e. in which they were superior to all other classes and everyone knew their place).
The desire to return to an ideal past has Judeo-Christian overtones (the French Aristocracy was closely allied with the Catholic church). The Judeo-Christian tradition speaks of an ideal, innocent time in the Garden of Eden before man's Fall into the knowledge of good and evil and before becoming, according to Augustine, mortal. Similarly, Romanticism speaks of a desire to return to a lost, innocent, timeless, immortal and heavenly paradise before the Fall into a middle class world. The ideal past is associated with emotion, childhood, country life, the seemingly timeless aristocratic hierarchy of classes and, for some, the natural person (like the American Indians). The Fall out of this paradise was for Romanticism a Fall into the economic, rational, and pragmatic world of industry, and historical change, particularly change in social classes.
Wordsworth "Elegiac Stanzas"
Many Romantic painters and poets idealized their own visual impressions (produced by plays of light) as does the young Wordsworth described in this poem. They were precursors of the impressionist painters. Unique, visual impressions seemed to testify to their genius in seeing and representing the world in a unique way, one that was a metaphor for their subjective, inner emotions, ideas, and dreams.
But Wordsworth's description of himself as a Romantic poet is embedded within a story of his life as change.
Vocabulary whose particular meanings in this poem you may not know:
deplore: "to feel or express grief for"
rueful: "Mournful, regretful"
Kind: "family, lineage"
WWWebster Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary)
Read the note below the poem before you begin answering the questions.
Note:
1. Stanzas I-III (lines 1-12). What is the object of the poet's descriptive representation: the castle that Beaumont later painted or its reflection on the water? Why? What characteristics does the poet attribute to this object of representation?
*2. Stanzas IV-VIII.
*a. According to these stanzas, if Wordsworth had been a
painter at the time he saw the castle and if he had represented it (or its
reflection) as he saw it at that time, how would he have painted (and thus
created) the reality of the sea and
sky in front of him? The castle? What does this painting tell us
about the way in which his mind constructs reality? In support of your
answers, cite details of the specific way in which he would have painted the
castle and the sea.
*b. How does Wordsworth suggest that his hypothetical pictorial representation of castle and sea is not accurate? that he was or was not "seeing" the castle and its surroundings as they were? What also were his eyes "seeing," in the castle and the sea, i.e. what were they expressing (representing indirectly) besides a castle and a sea? What does the metaphor of the painting say about the accuracy of vision en general?
*c. What does the inaccuracy of this representation and the "expression" of something else say about Wordsworth's young self, when he first say the glassy see?
3. Stanzas IX-XI According to these stanzas, how has Wordsworth changed as far as his manner of reacting to a similar scene is concerned? With what contrary attributes does he characterize his state of mind?
*4. Stanzas XII-XIII (Note that the poet is grieving for the death of his brother. See note at bottom of poem.) After the death of his brother, how, according to the poem, does Wordsworth now see the castle? the sky and sea? in Beaumont's painting of them? What is the relationship now between the castle and nature in the painting according to the poet? What does this relation tells us about the poet's new relation with his emotions?
5. Stanzas XIV-XV This poem recounts a story of death and rebirth which takes place as one works through the process of mourning (grieving) someone's death. What has died in this poem? What is born out of this death?