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BANGLADESH RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL 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. Haque 50 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! http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/ William Wordsworth and Idealism 51 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. http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/ Haque 52 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 http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/ 53 William Wordsworth and Idealism 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. http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/ Haque 54 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. http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/ 55 William Wordsworth and Idealism 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 Bloom, Harold. (1961). The Visionary Company. New York: Cornell University Press Bowra,Maurice. (1950). The Romantic Imagination. U.S.A. and Great Britain: Oxford University Danby, John F. (1960). The Simple Wordsworth. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Durrant, Geoffrey. (1969). William Wordsworth. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press. Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy. (1996). The Norton Anthology of Poetry. United States of America: W.W. Norton & Company Gardiner, Alan. (1987). The Poetry of William Wordsworth. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Hossain, Md. Shaokat. (2006). History of Western Philosophy. (In Bangla Version). Dhaka: Thithi Publication. Hough, Graham. (1957). The Romantic Poets. London: Hutchinson & Co (Publishers) LTD Jones, Alun R. and Tydeman, William. (1972). Casebook Series,Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. Roark, Dllas M. “Introduction to Philosophy.” 1 December 2012 http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/roark-textbook/ Chapter-10.htm Williams, John. (1993). New Casebook, Wordsworth. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/