A Sweet Unrest

Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites

 

I started reading The Prelude again and was hit immediately with what had irritated me so the first time around: he sounds like such a bossy know-it-all.  A book I have about Wordsworth takes great pains to assure me that this is not the case and that all his revisions actually indicate the opposite, a lack of confidence, and maybe that's true but that is not how it reads.  

Book Fifth is about books, but it's also about how books can never be as instructive as nature and how lots of free time in childhood spent roaming in the great outdoors is far superior to reading.  I don't know what that means for a girl who spent her formative years in a Section 8 apartment complex in the city but be that as it may there were a couple things I liked.

por ejemplo:

Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,
And they must have their food. 

He means books but has maybe just explained the existence pop music?

About growing up:

                           ... that dubious hour,
That twilight when we first begin to see
This dawning earth, to recognize, expect,
And in the long probation that ensues
(The time of trial, ere we learn to live
In reconcilement with our stinted powers), 
To endure this state of meagre vassalage... 

That certainly struck a chord and then this I found so heartbreaking.  I'd read in another article about him that one of the great sorrows of his later years was feeling like he'd lost the sense of inspiration and enchantment of his youth.

                                     ... I am sad
At the thought of raptures forever flown;
Even unto tears I sometimes could be sad
To think of, to read over, many a page -
Poems withal of name - which at the time
Did never fail to entrance me, and are now
Dead in my eyes as a theatre 
Fresh emptied of spectators.

I wasn't going to put any music with this but those words made me think, take an inventory I guess, and I was kind of pleased to realize that I don't feel this way.  I can go back and read certain things I liked and even more intensely listen to things I liked and can often feel the way they made me feel back then- like life is full of endless possibilities just waiting out there- even if the feeling is fleeting.  This still makes me feel that way:

The Style Council - My Ever Changing Moods (12")

I've written about this one before, how I can remember very clearly being in my bedroom and hearing it for the first time, how it probably changed my life because it changed everything I listened to.  I went from Stevie Nicks to this.  Intellectually I know there had to have been other things in between, otherwise how was I even listening to a radio station that would play this, but emotionally there wasn't- this was like suddenly, unexpectedly finding a big missing part of my own self and I've been skulking around the import aisles ever since.

Wordsworth writes about his own youth and remembers strolling through the lanes chanting favorite verses aloud with a friend:

And though full oft the objects of our love 
Were false, and in their splendor overwrought,
Yet surely at such time no vulgar power
Was working in us - nothing less in truth
Than that most noble attribute of man
(Though yet untutored and inordinate),
That wish for something loftier, more adorned,
Than is the common aspect, daily garb,
Of human life. 

I mean, he really could be talking about music.

x

Cider With Wordsworth

I was reading Cider With Rosie, which I wound up liking a lot, and one of the little tales in there that I especially liked was a story he told about an old soldier, a frail, elderly man who lived in the woods and who came to their door asking for a cup of tea.   His mother invited him into the kitchen and gave him a meal whenever he appeared, to the shock of the children.  It reminded me of the stories my grandmother used to tell about growing up during the Depression and people coming to the door of their Oklahoma farm for food and how her family always found something to share no matter how little their was because they had more than most.  And funnily, because I didn’t think much of it had stuck, it reminded me of Wordsworth meeting the soldier in The Prelude.  

I really struggled with The Prelude when I tried to read it two years ago, and I only made it half-way through before the deep fatigue and complete inability to concentrate that characterizes early pregnancy, at least for me, took over and I abandoned old WW somewhere in London.   He may have been at the theater.  I never thought I’d go back to it but I had to at least check for that passage with soldier to see if I was hallucinating.  I wasn’t though: the soldier is there just as I remembered and it gave me pause because maybe there is a tiny sliver of hope for me in my effort to spackle over the cracks in my education, sleep-deprived and pressed for time though I am.  

Wordsworth is ambling along, communing with nature as usual when he first sees the soldier:

                   He was of stature tall,
A foot above man's common measure tall,
Stiff in his form, and upright, lank and lean-
A man more meagre, as it seemed to me,
Was never seen abroad by night or day.
His arms were long, and bare his hands; his mouth
Showed ghastly in the moonlight; from behind,
A milestone propped him, and his figure seemed
Half sitting, and half standing.  I could mark
That he was clad in military garb,
Though faded yet entire.  He was alone,
Had no attendant, neither dog, nor staff,
Nor knapsack; in his very dress appeared
A desolation, a simplicity,
That seemed akin to solitude. 

He watches him awhile before greeting him

I asked his history, he in reply
Was neither slow nor eager, but unmoved
And with a quiet uncomplaining voice,
A stately air of mild indifference,
He told in simple words a soldier's tale-
That in the tropic islands he had served,
Whence he had landed scarcely ten days past;
That on his landing he had been dismissed,
And now was travelling to his native home.

It's dark and late and Wordsworth offers to take the soldier to a friend's house for the night.

Assured that now my comrade would repose
In comfort, I entreated that henceforth
He would not linger in the public ways
But ask for timely furtherance, and help
Such as his state required.  At this reproof    
With the same ghastly mildness in his look
He said 'My trust is in the God of Heaven,
And in the eye of him that passes me!'

I don't think we hear any more about the soldier in The Prelude.  The soldier in Cider With Rosie dies in the woods.  The other thing I thought about when reading it was that, at least in this country, we still haven't figured out how to do right by the people we send to fight our wars. 

Anyway, I am going to try to finish The Prelude.  After the World Series.  

 

The Prelude: Book Four

This is the only one so far that didn't improve with a second reading. It's called Summer Vacation and, really, that's it. Wordsworth comes home from Cambridge for the summer. He goes on long walks with the dog and he meets an old soldier. Everything is the same, yet everything is different.

It isn't like this really, but it made me think of the end of the Billy Collins poem I read earlier, Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey (in this):

(...)

And when we put down the book at last,
lean back, close our eyes,
stinging with print,
and slip in the bookmark of sleep,

we will be schooled enough to know
that when we wake up
a little before dinner
things will not be nearly as good as they once were.

Something will be missing
from this long, coffin-shaped room,
the walls and windows now
only two different shades of gray,

the glossy gardenia drooping
in its chipped terra-cotta pot.
And on the floor, shoes, socks,
the browning core of an apple.

Nothing will be as it was
a few hours ago, back in the glorious past
before our naps, back in the Golden Age
that drew to a close sometime shortly after lunch.

The Prelude: Book III

I swear I'm still reading it. In Book III, he goes to Cambridge. I liked his description of the excitement of seeing the school for the first time:

The place, as we approached, seemed more and more
To have an eddy's force, and sucked us in
More eagerly at every step we took.

and a few lines later:

I roamed
Delighted through the motley spectacle
Gowns, grave or gaudy, doctors, students, streets,
Lamps, gateways, flocks of churches, courts and towers-
Strange transformation for a mountain youth,
A northern villager.

I always really enjoyed school, especially the beginning of the term when everything was new, l so I liked this bit. Wordsworth is excited about starting at Cambridge but he admits later that he didn't really apply himself to his studies, and that wasn't me at all. Or not in the same way, I guess.

I went to modest state schools for both college and graduate school and I put myself through the whole way. I didn't live on campus, I lived near my work, so I didn't have that whole sequestered-from-the-world college experience. I did have fun, my school had a little modern dance company and I performed in that and it was fantastic but at the time I always wished I could spend more time studying and less time working.

The funny thing is that now, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I felt like I never had enough time to study but I still got good grades. Being so young yet completely responsible for my own future gave me a confidence that I didn't have before and I don't know how it applies to Wordsworth, but that's is what Book III got me thinking about.

The Prelude: Book Two

On to Book Two then- Wordsworth and his boyhood pursuits and how important nature was to him growing up. He describes an adventure with some friends, after which they dropped off 'the minstrel of our troop' on a small island (let's hope he lived there)...

And rowed off gently while he blew his flute
Alone upon the rock, oh then the calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart and held me like a dream.

Gorgeous. And I absolutely have to stop and talk about a song here because of that phrase, weight of pleasure. I'd heard it before:

If I care enough I will break your heart
Under the weight of pleasure

Different kinds of pleasure, I guess. Any Chris Whitley song is going to have an erotic element that I just don't see so far in Wordsworth. Wordsworth found inspiration and transcendence in nature. Whitley found it... elsewhere. But the need to transcend- I see it everywhere. That's what it's all about.

mp3: Chris Whitley - Vertical Desert

On the album Rocket House, buy here or on iTunes.

Glittering Idly in the Moon

I loved this image from Book One. Young Wordsworth sneaks out one night and steals a skiff:

...It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain echoes did my boat move on,
Leaving behind her still on either side
Small circles glittering idly in the moon
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light.

Here's to troubled pleasure and secret midnight adventure!

The Prelude: Book One, Take Two

I am hell-bent, not on compromise, but on making sense of Wordsworth. 104 degrees and a head full of steam. Or something. Here it goes.

I started rereading The Prelude and, as usual, things aren't quite as grim as they appeared last week. I do understand some of it, maybe even a lot of it. It wasn't so hard to read through this time either so maybe I am also getting used to the language.

He starts out leaving the city behind him (so many good songs start out that way but I have to focus on this right now), he is happy to be back in nature, feels breezes both literal and creative, lets us know he's been stuck a while and is now happy to ramble freely but will soon want to apply himself to something. He starts talking about some of his frustrations with himself, his writing, and as I read this passage (lines 228-271) I wondered, how did it not grab me the first time through? Especially this:

Far better never to have heard the name
Of zeal and just ambition, than to live
Thus baffled by a mind that every hour
Turns recreant to her task, takes heart again,
Then feels immediately some hollow thought
Hang like an interdict upon her hopes.
This is my lot; for either I still find
Some imperfection in the chosen theme,
Or see of absolute accomplishment
Much wanting- so much wanting in my mind
That I recoil and droop, and seek repose
In indolence from vain perplexity,
Unprofitably travelling towards the grave
Like a false steward who has much received
And renders nothing back.
(Lines 257-271)

Unprofitably travelling towards the grave? I get that feeling.

It's only after all this that he goes into the Was it for this and the beautiful descriptions of what nature meant to him as a boy that filled my head the first time around.

#@!% Wordsworth

Not really. I mean, I am angry, but I'm angry with myself and taking it out on him. I haven't been paying attention, I've been coasting along and now I realize that I am six books into The Prelude and I have no idea what is going on. None. It was the passage about Mount Blanc and Chamonix that brought it home. Since I've been there I felt I could, finally, relate to one of his experiences so I stopped to think about it and that's when I noticed that I don't understand any of it. Here is the beginning of the passage:

That day we first
Beheld the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye
Which had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be.

OK, what? It's one of the most jaw-dropping sights in the world, so what is the problem? So I reread this book, which is called Cambridge and the Alps, and I found this passage which I vaguely remembered. This is about his life at Cambridge, before the trip:

And not to leave the picture of that time
Imperfect, with these habits I must rank
A melancholy (from humours of the blood
In part, and partly taken up) that loved
A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,
The twilight more than the dawn, autumn than spring-
A treasured and luxurious gloom, of choice
And inclination mainly, and the mere
Redundancy of youth's contentedness.

I think I get this part, it's like choosing to wear all black and listen to a lot of Smiths maybe. So then I thought that his mopey reaction to Mont Blanc was a matter of teenage moodiness (actually I don't know exactly how old he is at this point, but that is the least of my worries and anyway it's post-university, so an angsty time). I was going with that, but then what he says next still doesn't make any sense to me. Here's the whole passage:

That day we first
Beheld the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye
Which had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be. The wondrous Vale
Of Chamouny did on the following dawn,
With it's dumb cataracts and streams of ice,
A motionless array of mighty waves,
Five rivers broad and vast, make rich amends,
and reconciled us to realities.

So then to the OED (the two-volume Shorter- I once worked in a place that had the entire glorious 20 volume set and it was shelved right next to my desk, so basically heaven on earth as I spent slow periods happily reading away and it looked like I was working) to find out that 'dumb cataracts' means silent waterfalls. OK... I still don't know what he is saying here. Imagining Mont Blanc is better than seeing it, the waterfalls are silent, the water is frozen, the waves are motionless and.. what? What does this mean? Anyone? Bueller?

While I await your thoughts (please!), I am going to start the whole thing over from the beginning. I will understand this.

And later, when I'm not in a temper, I may admit that the language is rather beautiful whether or not I get it.

The Romantic Imagination

I picked this book up used and I like it. It's a collection of lectures given at Harvard in 1948-1949 by CM Bowra. The first and last chapters are about the English Romantics in general, and each of the middle chapters is devoted to one of the major Romantic poets. For each poet, Bowra looks at a representative poem in detail (for example, for Keats he takes Ode to a Grecian Urn) and he uses this as a departure point to discuss the poet's work, career and his place in Romantic thought.

I've found this book to be extremely helpful and a pretty good read too. I keep returning to it- it's the perfect companion to my project of reading through the Romantic poets. Here's a quote I love- Bowra is discussing how important the real, everyday world was to the Romantics:

"There are perhaps poets who live entirely in dreams and hardly notice the familiar scene, but the Romantics are not of their number. Indeed, their strength comes largely from the way in which they throw a new and magic light on the common face of nature and lure us to look for some explanation for the irresistible attraction which it exerts. In nature all the Romantic poets found their initial inspiration. It was not everything to them, but they would have been nothing without it; for through it they found those exalting moments when they passed from sight to vision and pierced, as they thought, to the secrets of the universe."

I can definitely see the truth of this in the Keats I read, and the importance of nature to Wordsworth is made very clear right from the beginning of The Prelude as well. But, say for us today, can this kind of inspiration only come from nature? Or is it possible to see whatever the 'familiar scene' is, even if it's a city scene, in a 'new and magic light'? Do you have to be in nature to pierce the secrets of the universe?

Hmmm, Wordsworth

So, I'm not finding Wordsworth to be quite as immediately lovable as Keats. I'm a couple books into The Prelude (1805) and I'm feeling kind of eh about it. Maybe part of why it was so easy to fall for Keats is that Edward Hirsch's introduction to his poems is really informative, but also so admiring and exuberant that I couldn't wait to get cracking after reading it. The person who wrote the introduction to my volume of Wordsworth does not have Hirsch's joyous enthusiasm. It's super dry, academic writing and it makes me appreciate how lucky I was to start with Keats and Hirsch.

Then too, with reading so much depends on my own mood as well. I'm hoping to get a couple of uninterrupted hours to myself this weekend, and that I'll be mostly awake and really able to concentrate. That might do the trick. But right now I'm having a bit of trouble getting my footing.

In other news, I found a book of Billy Collins poetry. In my house! I have no idea how it got here. It appeared like magic and I'm so grateful for it. I can sneak a few lines of Billy Collins when I'm supposed to be doing something else and it resonates, it's not work. The language stays with me and then I have something to ponder while I go about the more mundane tasks of the day. And in this found volume, there is a even a poem called Lines Written Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey which seems to poke a little fun at old Wordsworth.