These Beauteous Forms: William Wordsworth on the Nature of Poetry and Emotion

On the cusp of the nineteenth century, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Lyrical Ballads, a compilation of their experimental poetry. It was a reaction to the formal, Victorian poetry of the time; in his famous Preface, Wordsworth expressed a belief that the "humble and rustic life" (Searle 86) was a fitter subject for poetry than what was chiefly being written at the time. He also famously declared that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Searle 86). For this reason, Ballads is often considered to be the one of the earliest romantic works, expressing the sentiments that would later characterize an entire generation. Writers like William Blake, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and John Keats gloried in the sumptuous overflow of unbridled passion, confirming Charles Baudelaire's definition of the philosophy as "...situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling" ("Romanticism").

After the romantics came the modernists, whose philosophy, in the words of nineties author J.G. Ballard, "lacked mystery and emotion, was a little too frank about the limits of human nature and never prepared us for our eventual end" (Ballard). Modernism in art and literature reflected modernist philosophy in the rest of the world; it was marked by radical social change based on humanist principles. Many modernist writers, such as Ezra Pound and Y.B. Yeates, "either flirted with fascism or openly espoused it" (Keep). This triumph of the cerebral over the carnal is evident in modernist literary theory. In his essay "Tradition and Original Talent," modernist poet T.S. Eliot briefly expressed his theory on balladry: "poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape these things" (Searle 125).

Romanticism, which glorified emotional expression, and modernism, which mocked it, have usually been considered opposing viewpoints. However, Wordsworth's iconic theory of poetry is not quite what it seems to be. In his Preface, he goes into much greater detail than one short catchphrase can express:

I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is more dishonourable to the Writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time, that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From such verses the Poems is these volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy purpose. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formerly conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of our past feelings (Searle 86).

A casual perusal of Wordsworth's densely structured opinions might skim over his crucial disclaimer. Poetry, he admits, is concerned with feeling - but it is much more than that. Without thought, poetry is useless.

An excellent example of the marriage between thought and feeling is found in one of Coleridge's poems, "Kubla Khan." Its primary function is to describe a dream or vision that the writer had (likely while under the influence of opium), but this does not become clear until halfway through. Coleridge begins with a lengthy, evocative description of the "pleasure-dome" built by the emperor Kubla Khan (Searle 107). He then relates his own vision back to this legendary "deep romantic chasm:"

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played;

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To deep delight 'twoud win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice! (Searle 108)

By putting his dream into this context, and bringing in a historical base of comparison, Coleridge is doing just as his friend and colleague described. "Kubla Khan" is precisely what Wordsworth called "emotion recollected in tranquility" (Searle 92).

Though he defines poetry as an escape from feeling, nowhere does Eliot state that it must be devoid of all emotion. Wordsworth's sentiment clashes very little with modernist thought; some of his poems are just as oblique and disconcerting as any modernist work. "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal" reads:

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees (Searle 98).

It's easy to get tangled up in the tradition language and meter of "Slumber," but a careful examination reveals distinctly avant-garde features. Aside from the most superficial presentation, there is little difference between this and the last stanza of Eliot's iconic "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown (Searle 128).

Both poems are heavy with powerful imagery of death, and in both, any particular significance is unclear.

Despite vast philosophical, ideological, and chronological gaps, Wordsworth and Eliot manage to reach some kind of consensus on the nature of poetry. It is not all emotion, but it is not all thought either. What makes a poem great is the perfect combination of both. The poets who can be found in anthologies today experienced emotions to which we can all relate, but all possessed a special insight and manner of expression. As Wordsworth concluded his Preface, "rom what has been said, and from a perusal of the Poems, the Reader will be able clearly to perceive the object which I have proposed to myself: he will determine how far I have attained this object; and, what is a much more important question, whether it be worth attaining; and upon the decision of these two questions will rest my claim to the approbation of the public" (Searle 94).

Works Cited

Ballard, J.G. "A handful of dust." 20 Mar. 2006. The Guardian. 23 Nov. 2006.

Keep, Christopher, Tim McLaughlin, and Robert Parmar. "Modernism and the modern novel." 2000. The Electronic Labyrinth. 20 Nov. 2006.

"Romanticism." Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. 27 Nov. 2006.

Searle, Leroy, ed. Course Reader: English 202 - Introduction to the Study of English Language and Literatures. Seattle: University of Washington. 2006.