Читать книгу The English Poetic Mind - Charles Williams - Страница 9

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Like harmony in music; there is a dark

Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles

Discordant elements, makes them cling together

In one society.

This is precisely the achievement of the great poets; in each of them discordant elements are united in one society by the inscrutable workmanship of their genius, and the society is the style.

But in the earlier period this unison is not yet consciously present. All things have the character ‘of danger or desire’.

The surface of the universal earth

With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,

works ‘like a sea’. For Wordsworth it was ‘the 16 Presence of Nature’ which brought this about, but it need not be only his kind of Nature to which such a disturbance is due; cities and men may produce it also.

There ensues on this a kind of personal determination by the poet. He encourages himself; he subjects himself at every opportunity to the experiences in which he discerns this power; in effect, he takes care that his soul ‘is unsubdued’ by the world. Wordsworth described himself as becoming attentive to the details of the things he observed, their ‘transitory qualities’. But also he breathed in moods ‘by form Or image unprofaned’, moods in which ‘visionary power’ came to him. Visionary power here is identified with ‘shadowy exultation’. Such moods are of use to the soul—to the poetic genius—because the memories of them teach it how it felt; they provide it with a sense of possible sublimity

whereto

With growing faculties she doth aspire,

With faculties still growing, feeling still

That whatsoever point they gain, they yet

Have something to pursue.

This is the labour of poetry; this is the very sense which attends on the writing of poetry. This ‘something to pursue’ is the something which lures and provokes the great poets into their greatness. The ‘sublimity’ of their experiences is the height to which they desire their analysing and synthesizing poetry to reach, and the infinite by which they measure their achievements.

But the poetic sense is still very much under the domination of the poet’s personal enjoyments. The 17 subjects of his contemplation receive part of their effect from his own mind. Wordsworth says

What I saw

Appeared like something in myself, a dream,

A prospect in the mind.

The mind in fact imposes its own enjoyment on outer things; the sun, the birds, the wind, the fountain, the storm, appeared much more like themselves because Wordsworth willed them to be, and he derived increased transport from this knowledge. He coerced ‘all things into sympathy’. Unless, intoxicated by his own feelings, he could feel ‘the sentiment of Being spread o’er all’, he was not perfectly contented. The young romantic poet, the young and violent Wordsworth, insisted on sending ‘the fleshly ear’ to sleep. It was natural; it was romantic. Even Milton had his L’Allegro and Il Penseroso—and everything in each of those great poetic gardens was lovely.

In the Third Book this process continues. The poetic mind is still imposing its own world on the world.

I had a world about me—’twas my own;

I made it, for it only lived to me,

And to the God who sees into the heart.

But with this imposed unity went a no less strong sense of observed diversity. The strongest workings of his genius at that time were ‘searching out the lines of difference’. It is at this point that Wordsworth exclaims in awe at the youthful might of ‘souls’. He again attributes this power to every man: all do things ‘within themselves’ while earth 18 is new. This is the ‘genuine prowess’ communicated from the point within the mind where each is single, from the poetic centre.

Nevertheless, in the new world of Cambridge this imagination for a while rests, except in its concern with mythology. It seeks the apprehension of antiquity and the powers of antiquity—Newton, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton; and by a natural but regrettable transition Wordsworth for some time leaves off talking of the creative soul and goes on to talk of William Wordsworth, Universities, Presidents, and Deans. It is not till he (symbolically) returns to ‘his native hills’ that he begins again to be interesting. The Fourth Book contains the famous dedication episode, but it is led up to by a warning of a change in apprehension. Something opens which Wordsworth calls ‘human-heartedness’. Objects which have hitherto been ‘the absolute wealth of his own private being’ now cause other thoughts ‘of change, congratulation, or regret’. Poetry is feeling the first faint stirrings of universal mortality as opposed to the attributed universalism of the poet’s young emotions. The order of progress, he tells us, was from fear to delight and hope (‘love enthusiastic’), and thence to this new thing. Poetry is beginning to write more about things, and less about what the poet felt about things.

Here Wordsworth knew of a difficulty which he was honest enough to admit. It would have been better to concentrate on solitary study, meditative peace. He ought to have done this. Yes, only—only the sense of his real dedication came to him not at such a concentration, but after a night of music 19 and dancing and laughter and ‘shocks of young love-liking’—presumably with the ‘frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland’. Shakespeare perhaps would not have been surprised.

Book VI (Cambridge and the Alps) underlines another state of young genius. He is now dedicated; the poetic genius is conscious of its capacity, and looking forward (as Milton did) to doing lasting work. He is aware (1) of the more fanciful side of poetry, Spenserian visions; but also he is concerned with (2) abstractions—especially geometric; and (3) with indulgent moods of sadness. There is emphasized a consciousness of the difference between the youthful poetic apprehension and the mature. Even geometry is still ‘a toy To sense embodied’; it is not yet a world ‘created out of pure intelligence’. When, writing the Prelude, he looked back, he was conscious of his idleness at that time; perhaps because he was aware of the greater poetic material he might then have gathered. But he could not regret it, for all this time poetry itself was collecting itself in increasing power. It is still in an ‘unripe state of intellect and heart’, and later on (in Book VIII) we are told how Wordsworth always, at this time, attempted to decorate mere facts: an elder-tree growing by a mortuary must have a dismal look; a yew must have a ghost by it; a widow who has once visited the grave of her husband must do it every night.—‘Dejection taken up for pleasure’s sake’ is a line which might describe her as well as Wordsworth. But the best description of the poet approaching poetry, of the great poet at work, occurs in those noble lines (VI. 592-616) which follow the crossing of the Alps.

Their immediate application is to Wordsworth’s consciousness of the nature of man. But their secondary application is only less important.