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ISSN: 1998-2003, Volume: 8, Issue: 1, Page: 49-55, January - February, 2013
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND IDEALISM
Md. Faisal Haque*1*
Md. Faisal Haque (2013). William Wordsworth and Idealism . Bangladesh Res. Pub. J. 8(1): 49-55. Retrieve
from http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/admin/journal/upload/1308106/1308106.pdf
Abstract
A close study of William Wordswoth reveals him as not merely a poet of nature
portraying it physically. Rather, it proves him as a prophet who seeks to assemble
the real ideas behind the nature. Unlike his contemporary critics and philosophers,
he believed that imagination is not a ‘decaying sense’ and the mind is not a ‘white
paper void of all characters’ or a ‘tabula rasa’. Contrarily he attributed a power of
creativity upon imagination affirming it as the only way to walk through the mind
and ultimately to unearth the ‘life force’ of the nature. And at the same time, he
argued of the mind to be far from the domination of objective sensation. This
paper attempts to explain how William Wordsworth, as a romantic poet, has
exposed the abstract reality in his poetry. His most prominent poems_ ‘The Prelude’,
‘Tintern Abbey’ and ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ will be discussed to do the
task. And ultimately Wordsworth will be revealed as an idealist romantic poet.
A Brief of Idealisms’
Those passages of life in which
We have had deepest feeling that the mind
Is lord and master, and that outward sense
Is but the obedient servant of her will.
The extract from Wordsworth’s poem ‘The Prelude’ somehow alludes, the pioneer
of idealism, Plato’s doctrine who believed that ‘full reality’ is achieved only through
thought.
Another neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus who, in his Enneads, has strived to affirm
that “the only space or place of the world is the soul” and that “time must not be
assumed to exist outside the soul” furthermore comes to be reviewed in the
Wordsworthian lines mentioned above. Like these two philosophers, Wordsworth
emphasizes on the vitality of mind to reach the reality that shapes the nature and
ultimately the whole world. But unlike them, he does not deny the existence of the
external world or the nature. Additionally, he introduces an invisible life force that exists
beyond the forms of nature and for this, as he thinks, imagination is inevitable which
remains innate in the human mind. He describes the mind as “creator and receiver both”
and it becomes so by “working but in alliance with the works, which it beholds”. This
manifests that his concept is akin to the doctrine of objective idealism_ postulating that
there is only one perceiver which is mind and it is one with that which is perceived, and at
the same time it becomes opposite to the subjective idealism. More broadly to say, it
accepts common sense but rejects naturalism_ the view that mind and spiritual values
emerge from material things. Wordsworth being innate to the nature, brings out in his
poetry its true concepts or ideas what it represents every moment. And he has done so by
imposing a creative power to his imagination. That is why, what he thinks, imagination is
the ladder to culminate the real world of ideas beyond this pictorial nature or the external
world.
Plato, the pioneer of Idealism and the romantic poet Wordsworth come to an
analogical relation in consideration of some points, but they seem to diverge from each
*Lecturer, Department of Social science and Language, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology
University, Dinajpur-5200, Bangladesh.
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other in a certain view. Wordsworth tells, while talking in the context of ‘Ode: Intimations of
Immortality’, that when he was a child, the world around him seemed dreamlike and
vivid, something more than real; and he felt himself to belong to another world. He starts
his poem ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ with the lamentation over the loss of his
childhood memory of heavenly sights. And from the starting point, the poem considers the
whole life of a human being as an exile from an earlier and more perfect state. It refers
that man lives in the world of senses, and in space and time, with a recurrent feeling that
he has known or capable of knowing a more perfect state. Many myths like the Garden
of Eden and the Golden Age have defined the living sense of the human beings as
transient and imperfect. The concept, given by Plato, of man’s exile from the world of light
and perfect forms has influenced the literary myths to a great extent which express the
general feeling of separation from heaven. This is why; it will not look incongruous if
Wordsworth makes use of this myth. The first four stanzas of the poem look like an elegy
lamenting over the loss of childhood sights. The poet says:
Wither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
But the next four stanzas (v-viii), in addition to lamenting over the lost visionary
power, make the use of the myth of ‘pre-existence’ to show the business of living and
interaction with the world of senses which is a burden to the soul. In these stanzas,
Wordsworth directly uses the Platonic myth of cave. Here Wordsworth’s ‘prison-house’ is
equivalent to Plato’s ‘dark cave’. To Wordsworth, the nature is a ‘foster-mother’ but not a
true mother of the soul. It gradually gets the child adapted to by separating him from his
heavenly world and it happens when the child is weaned from his recollections of the
celestial world. Though an analogy between the poet and Plato stands through the use of
this myth in this poem, Wordsworth has distinguished between the use of a myth and
believing it as a doctrine. More plainly to say , he rejected the view that he was in favor of
belief in a ‘prior state of existence’ what he referred as an ingredient in the Platonic
philosophy. ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ superficially brings out a picture of belief in a
pre-existent state of greater perfection and happiness but Wordsworth claims that this is
not meant by the poem. And he says that he does not versify the Platonic myth in the
poem. Maurice Bowra in “The Romantic Imagination” says:
The theory of recollection goes back to Plato, but Wordsworth did not
take it from him, nor is his application of it Plato’s. His sources are
Coleridge and Henry Vaughn. Coleridge had played with the idea of
pre-existence as an explanation of a feeling that we have in a previous
existence done something or been somewhere.
Page: 97
Anyway, Wordsworth is talking of another world that is heavenly but he does not
consider this world, in which the child has ascended, as shadowy what is claimed by
Plato. He confers prophecy on a child introducing him as a ‘best philosopher’ and reader
of ‘the eternal world’. Wordsworth further urges that the child is a prophet or philosopher
and knows the truths, what the adult people are searching, because it is close to the
heavenly ideas. What subtle concept of the poet about the child is, he is paradoxically at
once the bearer of the heavenly messages and the same time he is willing and eager to
adapt in the world of senses. This concept of the child philosophy distinguishes
Wordsworth from Plato as he does not deny this world of senses.
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of May!
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The above extract from the poem ‘Immortality Ode’ expressing the poet’s
yearning to reach world of the true ideas. He wants to be united with that world but he
wants to do so through the events of nature_ he will join the ecstasy of the ‘bird’s song’
and feel the ‘gladness of May’ via his thought. Thus, he will not allow himself to be
separated from the heavenly joy. He refuses to be exiled neither from the world of idea
nor from the natural world. So here is the comparison between Wordsworth and Plato that
both of them are idealist but the former of them does not agree with the denial of this
natural world what is claimed by the latter one.
The difference between Plato and Wordsworth exposes the poet’s acceptance of
the existence of the natural objects which are merely not some shadows. Instead, he
infuses a ‘life force’ on them. And a close study of ‘The Prelude’ confirms it. In ‘The
Prelude’ Wordsworth says, immediate after the birth, the baby desires to be close to a
fellow human what happens to him by intuition. Consequently, he becomes close to his
mother and responds eagerly to the physical and emotional expressions of his mother’s
love. His mother’s love stimulates his spiritual growth which passes into the ‘torpid life’. His
perception of his mother as being, who is now a separate one from himself, leads him to a
similar perception of the external objects. The child develops his ability to organize his
visual impressions arranging the elements of the material world into a unified and
coherent whole:
eger to combine
In one appearance, all the elements
And parts of the same object, else detach’d
And loth to coalesce.
This is clear that the child is gradually ascending to the world of senses or objects
but he does not look at them as separated from him. Rather, the objects are unified with
his soul and mind. In ‘Tintern Abbey’ he further goes on to say:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought.
And rolls through all things
This is the truth, what the poet says, that similar to the child who begins to sense the
outward objects through his mother’s love, which is an awakening breeze to him, the poet
connects himself to the external world through his soul and mind. Wordsworth never
secludes the forms of objects from the soul and mind. On the contrary, he makes the
objects live. He strives to unearth the hidden ‘life force’ that lingers among the
surrounding objects. He can do it because he feels the existence of these objects
roaming in his mind and dream. However, the poet says that ‘the vital soul’ is ‘the first
creative gift’. In reverse, the objective philosophical truths are merely the subordinate
output of the living mind. So mind is prior to philosophy. And to discover the ‘life force’
laden in the objects is to bring out philosophy from them. In the first two books of ‘The
Prelude’ Wordsworth narrates how his simple physical perception of nature in his
childhood got replaced by a response to the natural world that was more spiritual and
more conscious. He began to be aware of the hidden force at work within nature, in the
complex ways in which humanity is related to the non-human universe. The three episodes
that recur in ‘The Prelude’ have a pattern. At first, Wordsworth describes an incident that
happened to him in his boyhood, and then recollects the insights that it held. The first
episode describes that the poet, as a boy, robbed other boys’ woodcock trapping
snares. By this time, the boy’s relationship with nature has been more self-conscious and
consequently more troubled. Now he feels uneasy to have the sense of guilt of theft.
Besides, he thinks that the trapping of woodcock is destructive to nature. When he feels
his independent existence, it seems to him a further violation of nature’s peace:
moon and stars
Were shining over my head; I was alone
And seemed to be a trouble to the peace
That was among them.
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The stealing of birds trapped by others which he certainly knows to be wrong
simply adds a burden of guilt already oppressing him. The poet says:
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trode.
The child senses that he has committed guilt to nature by doing the act of theft. As
a result, he can hear the solitary hills’ language that is pursuing him. The ‘low breathings’
and ‘quiet footsteps’ symbolize something to the boy. To remind him of his guilt, the
landscape thus has a moral influence on the child. This sort of symbolization exposes
Wordsworth as the creator of life force in the hills. The second ‘bird nesting’ episode again
expresses the poet as a guilty boy who is committing an illicit act. He was bent on a willful
act of misdeed, the objectivity of which was ‘mean’ and ‘inglorious’. And in
consequence of willful act violence, he is being identified as a ‘plunderer’ who has
interrupted the tranquility of nature. But when he hangs on the ‘rock face’, the secret life
of nature is being revealed to him and he can sense that nature has changed itself. To
him the sky seemed not a sky of the earth. The sound of the wind was a ‘strange
utterance’ to him. The poet says:
With that strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear! The sky seemed not a sky
Of earth- and with that motion moved the clouds!
Another episode is the ‘boat stealing’ episode. The juvenile poet, Wordsworth,
takes away a shepherd’s boat and rows it out on to a lake. When he travels away from
the rocky cave where the boat was anchored, he again feels the agony of guilty sense.
Like the first one, it was also an act of stealth but it was a moment of ‘troubled pleasure’
and ‘romantic adventure’. This sort of pleasure enriched his enthusiasm to run the oars
more forcibly. The romance of adventure pictured the simple boat as an ‘elfin pinnace’.
The speedy movement of the boat exposes the boy’s extra confidence the he felt in
association with total environment of that time. Abruptly an illusion victimizes the boy that
caused him to get baffled. When he was leaving away the cave, he gazed upon the top
of the ridge and it seemed to him that behind the ridge there was nothing but sky. He
further rowed out on to the lake and he glimpsed a more distinct peak behind the ridge.
The more he went far away from the shore, the more the sight of the mountain came to
him. The poet says:
I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars.
The altered sights of these natural objects must have some rational explanation.
The poet’s imagination transforms the mountain into a ‘living thing’ which pursued him
while leaving the cave. This is how the poet discovers the ‘life force’ that remains innate in
the natural objects.
For more clarification of the Wordsworthian treatment of natural objects, in which
he discovered life force as discussed in the previously in this text, somehow a brief
discussion of what objective idealism is and how it appears in his poetry is required. What
problem lies in the objective idealism is to know the ‘priori’ truths which are known only in
the mind. Travelling a lot in pursuit of these, it comes to an ultimate conclusion with the
concept of a single world explanation and the single world is the Spirit or the Absolute. The
Whole is manifested in the fragmented parts or sub-units and in the way it becomes
concrete. Spirit is the total sum of everything that remains concrete in nature or man. The
term ‘objective’ means something that is ‘necessary being’. But on the other hand, matter
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remains in a state of ‘becoming’ or process. Here it is clear that, for perception, spirit is a
necessary being that shapes the matters or objects. However, Wordsworth does not think
that he is separate from the natural world. He feels neither his own nor nature’s
independent physical existence. More clarification affirms that his oneness with nature is
the oneness between his spirit and the objects of nature. Wordsworth was quoted in
Isabella Fenwick note:
I was often unable to think of external things as having external
existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart
from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going
to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss
of idealism to reality. At that time I was afraid of such process. In later
periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a
subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the
remembrances.
In other way to say, that he cannot think himself separate from nature reveals a
spiritual relation between him and nature where spirit or mind is the bridge to make this
oneness. In ‘Tintern Abbey’ the ‘groves and copses’ the ‘pastoral farms’ and the
‘houseless woods’ within the deep seclusion of the valley of the Wye are connected with
a sight of ultimate unity of being. After being absent for several years and having
wandered many places, Wordsworth now finds in the valley of the Wye the same support.
The sight of the valley of the Wye provides the same support because of his spirit’s
innateness to it. Geoffrey Durant says:
The study of this passage resembles Newton’s statement of the ethereal
spirit which, in his account of the universe, interpenetrates both the
material world and the human mind.
William Wordsworth. Page:41
Newton talks of a subtle spirit that pervades and lies in all gross bodies. He
hypothesizes that by the force or attraction of this spirit; the particles of bodies attract one
another at near distance and cohere. However, the ethereal sprit of Newton that is the
medium of bond among the earthly objects is not exactly similar to the Wordsworthian
view of spirit. To Wordsworth, spirit is something that paves him to the heavenly world or
the world of reality whatever it may be termed. In ‘Tintern Abbey’ he expresses that he
finds the rhythms dwelling on this ‘green earth’. He affirms that the stars and the heavens
include to ‘All that we behold’ from this earth. He affirms a world that is created by an
intermarriage of the mind and the senses instead of any unseen world. What he is
assumed that he needs this world for his moral and spiritual nurture. The poet says:
Well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Wordsworth here shows that the order and significance is given to the world of
senses at such an extent what is provided by the perceiving mind. The perceiving mind is
the founder of the objects but it needs them for its use. The poet calls the natural objects
‘the anchor of his purest thoughts’. It is to ‘nurse’ his mind and to ‘guide’ him to his
destination from where he has ascended as a child. But we must mark that the poet is
ultimately putting his faith in his own power of imagination to take the nature in the
previously mentioned ways. Wordsworth thinks, what is found in ‘The Prelude’, that the
child’s mind interacts with the external objects and the imaginative power acts as via to
lead him to the conception of reality. What he versifies:
The light of senses
Goes out in flashes that have shown to us
The invisible world.
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The poet, here again, responds to the external world as a medium of proper
perception. The idea, he seeks, is initially dependent on the senses of the external objects
but later it becomes something that transcends the sensory. It means that the idea of the
whole world is apprehended by the sights and senses but the supreme vision of the pure
reality comes when the sights turn to be insights. And ultimately the invisible world comes
to be visible, as if through a flash of light where the flash maker is the spirit or imaginative
power. So it is clear that Wordsworth holds a firm belief about the true perception of
reality which, as he affirms, is possible through the amalgamation of the external objects
and imaginative power or spirit where the latter on is the master.
To Wordsworth, while spirit is the master for proper perception of nature,
imagination is something more powerful to make the master which remains innate in it.
Imagination, as the poet thinks, leads his mind to discover the life force among the
inanimate objects. This is why; he attributes a creative power to imagination. Nonetheless,
Wordsworth differs from Coleridge, who denies any existence of the external world, to
evaluate imagination, both of them have agreed in a certain point. Maurice Bowra says:
Wordsworth certainly agreed with Coleridge in much that he said about
the imagination, especially in the distinction between it and fancy. For
him the imagination was the most important gift that a poet can have,
and his arrangement of his own poems shows what he meant by it. The
section which he calls “Poems of the Imagination” contains poems in
which he united creative power and a special, visionary insight.
The Romantic Imagination. Page: 18
Wordsworth turns to define imagination as ‘insight’ which is rational. To him, the
external world is not something that is shadowy; rather it is a source of thoughts to him. But
he says that the task of imagination is to make communication between his own soul and
that of natural objects. Thus, through imagination, he can understand nature’s language,
its life force and ultimately comes in a close communion with it. This is how, he forms ideas
about nature through imagination and eventually transcends to the real world that exists
in the soul of nature. The poet versifies of imagination:
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
The poet explained the word ‘imagination’ as higher import that operates in the
mind to view upon the external objects that exist, as some merely faithful copies, in the
mind. He further believes that only through the exercise of imaginative power, the external
world will be treated as alive with life force and energy in it. To quote Alan Gardiner:
For Wordsworth, the imagination is also the faculty that enables us to
penetrate beyond the surface of the material world, to ‘see into the life
of things’. It is through the exercise of the imagination that we perceive
the invisible connections of the universe and so become aware of its
ultimate unity. This inner harmony is revealed to us through the medium
of nature, and before we reach the stage of greatest perception we
respond to the external forms of nature with our senses. But if we progress
from this to a genuine insight into the hidden reality of the natural world,
we reach a state which transcends the sensory and in which the
operation of the senses is therefore inactive.
The Poetry of William Wordsworth. Page:109
In ‘Tintern Abbey’ Wordsworth says:
the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened.
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The world around him is ‘unintelligible’ when it is too much complicated with the
daily affairs. But according to the poet, the power of human mind can reorder it as
something rational. When it comes to be reordered by mind, it does not seem
unintelligible to the poet; his imagination shapes it in rational way, and gives the true forms
of its reality reaching beyond it. Consequently the mountains and the stars in the poem
come to be seen in a pattern which responds to the poet’s mind. This is the way;
Wordsworth treats his surrounding world through his own imagination and unearths the
real world beyond it.
Whenever Wordsworth is at his best the natural scene he stands before is
assimilated to something other. It ceases to be something merely
external and becomes what may be called a mental landscape; a state
of being the mind partakes of with the object and the object with the
mind.
Danby, John F.,The simple Wordsworth, p.109
With the above citation from the great critic Danby, we may come to the
conclusion that Wordsworth’s treatment of nature is something through which he
transcends beyond the sensory of its external beauty to somewhere else where he
discovers the truth when, with the implication of imagination as a via, the oneness
between mind and objects begins to stand. This confirms the poet as a passive idealist
rather than a sensationalist.
Reference
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