8.

Wordsworth’S Theory of Poetry in the Lyrical Ballads

The high priest of Nature, William Wordsworth was the harbinger of Romanticism in the
eighteenth century. He along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge initiated the Romantic Revival. The
publication of the Lyrical Ballads, a joint venture by Wordsworth and Coleridge is a milestone in
the history of literature. It was published in the year 1798 under the title, „Lyrical Ballads, with a
Few Other Poems.

This Preface is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory and is one of the
masterpieces in English criticism. However, Wordsworth was primarily a poet and not a critic. In
the Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads he informed the readers that the Lyrical Ballads was an
experiment. In the Preface he explained in detail what his theories about new poetry were and
what was to be looked for in his own poems. The Prefaces, when analysed, resolve into certain
declarations about the objectives of poetry, others concerning the methods by which these
objectives are to be attained, and certain effects dependent on these axioms. Throughout the
Preface, he is concerned with to state the facts of poetic creation than to attempt to explain them.

The overall intention of Wordsworth is two-fold, that is, to relate poetry as closely as possible to
common life, by removing it in the first place from the realm of fantasy, and in the second by
changing it from the polite or over-sophisticated amusement to a serious art. He speaks about the
main subject of poetry. He says that poetry should choose incidents and situations from common
life and it must be related in ‘a selection oflanguage really used by men.’ With the help of
imagination, ordinary things should be presented in an extraordinary way. Ultimately these
methods should reflect the primary laws of nature.

Wordsworth has an exalted conception of poetry. According to him “poetry is the breath and
finer spirit of all knowledge; it is impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all
science”. He not only defines poetry; but also explains the process involved in the production of
poetry. His theory of poetry is comprehensive in the sense that it tells us the qualification of the
poet, the function of poetry and recommends the language of poetry.

In Wordsworth‟s opinion poetry should have a purpose. It must achieve something positive.
What he defines as its purpose is not something ethical but rather psychological. The purpose is
‘to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement’.
Accordingly, deep emotion is the fundamental condition of poetry. It is the feeling that matters.
Wordsworth discards Aristotelian doctrine that the plot or the situation is the first and most
important thing. For Wordsworth the first thing is feeling. It is objected that Wordsworth
emphasizes feeling and ignores thoughts, but it is not true. It is true that he attaches great
significance to feeling, yet he maintains that valuable poems can only be produced by a man who
has thought long deeply. And he adds that the feeling developed in a poem gives importance to
the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.
Hence the purpose of poetry is to proceed from the simple ideas inherent in the incidents and
situations of common life to the exhibition of affection. In short, the purpose is to develop
feeling out of the ideas surviving from the sensations of daily life. The main object hence is ‘to
make the incidents of common life interesting. This is evident from his poems like ‘The Two
April Mornings’, We walked along, while bright and red / Uprose the morning sun’.

This purpose in fact can be carried out efficiently only with the use of a proper diction. The
gaudiness and inane phraseology of eighteenth century diction were rejected in favour of a
selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation. To this general intention, he
makes two qualifications- language is to be removed from every suggestion of triviality;
furthermore only a selection of that language is to be adopted. It should be purified of its
vulgarities and heightened so as to appeal to the imagination. The language of poetry must be
real, a true and not a false language. Wordsworth breaks with the orthodox convention of his day
and returns to the natural diction of normal men.

Wordsworth also asserts that the language of poetry differs in no way from that of prose, with the
single exception of meter. He says, “there neither is nor can be any essential difference between
the language of prose and that of poetry.” The Preface is, in fact, quite as much a defence of the
employment of meter in poetry as a protest against the use of poetic diction.‟ Whereas, poetic
diction‟ is lawless, meter does at least obey definite laws. Then also, a certain charm is
acknowledged to exist in metrical language. It is the function of meter to temper and restrain the
passion‟ of which poetry is an effect.

According to him, there is nothing „special‟ about poetry that requires the use of a special
language. In the same way, poetry does not require specifically „poetic subjects‟; it does not deal
with the grand or the dignified or the sensational, but with the permanent, enduring interests of
the human heart. This theory is founded on Wordsworth‟s disgust at eighteenth century poetic
artificiality. However many of Wordsworth‟s later works, as well as that of other poets proves
clearly that there is an essential difference between the language of prose and that of poetry.

Low and rustic life is to be preferred for the purpose of poetry because in that condition of life
the essential passions and elementary feelings of men existed in a state of freer association.
There are many poems which triumphantly indicate it. Lucy Gray, The Solitary Reaper, and
Michael are typical examples. About the nature and process of poetry Wordsworth says:

…Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reactions the tranquility
disappears, and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exit in the mind. In this mood successful
composition begins and in a mood similar to this it is carried on.

These famous lines of Wordsworth describe the process, which leads to the production of poetry.
First, there is the emotion set up by an experience. Then there is an interval of time, during
which the non essential elements in the experience are purged off. In the second stage, memory
plays the important role. It controls what is to be retained and shapes into beautiful forms what it
retains.
This idea of an interval between experience or observation and composition is an important part
of Wordsworth‟s theory of poetry. The third stage is recollection, when the experience thus
purged is recalled. At the fourth stage, the emotion is gradually set up in the mind again. The last
stage is composition. Thus these stages are Sensation, Recollection Contemplation and
Recreation. The poem Daffodils
is an exemplar for a poem ‘recollected in tranquility’

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Wordsworth‟s aim was to show the poet as a man appealing to the normal interests of mankind,
not as a peculiar being appealing to a specialized taste. Wordsworth considers poet a seer. He is
‘a man speaking to men’ and is different from others in the degree of certain qualities. He is
endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, more lively knowledge
of human nature, more fertile imagination than common people.

The poet‟ he says, „thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions. How then can his language
differ from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly?‟ The poet is to be the guide
and leader of his fellow men in their search for a mode of experience that would transform the
world without falsifying it. It is imagination that enables man to enter into and give life and
significance to the world. A poet must unite the two qualities of thought and feeling. He would
seem to say that the poet first resolves to use the language of real life because it is more powerful
than any other. This is evident in many of his poems like ‘To the Cuckoo’

The same whom in my schoolboy days

I listened to, that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

It was his dissatisfaction with the prevailing order of society and the concentration of his
aspirations and hopes on another order that led him to question the prevailing forms of poetry
and cast about for a form bearing some sympathetic relation to his political ideals. Those
political ideals were an affirmation of the rights of the common people- not only of their rights,
but of their representative humanity.

In brief the main ideas which Wordsworth lists in the Preface are the following: The subject
matter of poetry is whatever that interests the human mind. The Lyrical Ballads are written as
experiments, to try out the use of the language of conversation of real people in poetry. They are
new and unusual, and will not suit the taste of most readers. Nevertheless the readers are asked to
try them with an open mind, and not to put off at first sight without giving them fair trial.
 William Wordsworth about rustic life
In his Preface to the Lyrical Ballad, Wordsworth tells that he had chosen low and rustic life for
treatment in his poems. He chose this life because, according to him, in that condition the
essential passions of the heart find a better soul in which they can attain their maturity. In humble
and rustic life the essential passions of the persons are less under restraint and therefore express
themselves in a plainer and more emphatic language.

Elementary Feeling

Wordsworth also says that the humble and rustic life and the elementary feelings of human
beings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity and can therefore be more accurately contemplated
and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rural life germinate from those elementary
feelings, and because of the necessary character of rural occupations, those manners are more
easily comprehended. Finally in humble and rustic life, the passions of men are incorporated
with the beautiful and permanent form of nature.

Living in Countryside

Thus in Wordsworth’s opinion, person living in the country side and pursuing rural occupations
are the best fitted for portrayal in poetry because these people live in an environment which is
more favorable to the growth and development of the essential passions of the human heart and
because in this environment people do no suffer from any inhabitations and therefore speak a
plainer and more forceful language. These people lead simple lives and their feelings are of an
elementary kind. They do not have the vanity which people in the cities possess. These people
live in contract with the beautiful and permanent objects of nature (mountains, streams, trees,
flowers etc.) This contract favors the natural maturing of the feelings and passions in the hearts
of these people.

Simplicity

Wordsworth collects all the traces of vivid excitement which are to be found in the pastoral
world. Simplicity is to be the keynote of his theme as also of his style. He is to treat the things of
everyday life, to open out “the soul of little and familiar things.” In We are Seven , the poet talks
with a little girl who tells him of her brothers and sisters. In another poem, a female vagrant tells
the artless tale of her life. Another poem concerns a shepherd, “a Crael by name,” and another
pertains to a leech-gatherer. Thus Wordsworth shows that even in the poorest lives there is
matter for poetry, schemes that can stir the imagination and move the emotions. Thus
Wordsworth democratizes poetry. This democratic outlook is something new in poetry. He seeks
his subject among forsake women, old men in distress, children and crazy persons, in whom the
primary instincts are emotions showed themselves in their simplest and most recognizable form.

Corrupted World

It is to a large extent, the corruption of civilized society which makes Wordsworth choose his
subject from humble and rustic life. In choosing them from rustic rather than urban life he is
influenced, no doubt, by the fact that he himself is country bred. He is convinced that among
humble and rustic folk, the essential passions of the heart fid a better place to mature in and are
more durable. There is the closer intimacy which isolation forces on rural households; there is
the sharing of common tasks and even, in the shepherds’ life, of common dangers. There are
other virtues also like contentment, neighborliness, ad charity, which can flourish in the kindly
society of the country.

Coleridge’s View

Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria analyses Wordsworth’s theory regarding the choice of
theme. Coleridge thinks differently on this subject. He does not believe that characters should
necessarily be chosen from low and rustic life. He does not believe that a close contact with the
beautiful and permanent objects of nature produces any wholesome effect on the rustic persons.
He does not even believe that Wordsworth has followed his own theory loosely in his poems. He
does not believe that rustic life necessarily helps the formation of healthy feelings and a reflected
mind. In fact, the negation of rustic life put as many obstacles in the way of this formation as the
sophistication of city life does.

Coleridge has certainly argued his case well. But there are certain considerations which he has
not taken into account. Wordsworth’s aim is to find the best soil for the essential passions. By
avoiding artifice, he looks for simplicity. He has found poet extravagantly pre-occupied with the
affairs of nymphs and goddesses. He therefore wants to turn his attention to the emotions of
village girls and of peasants. Wordsworth is not trying to unite familiar anecdotes on nursery
tales; he is seeking the fundamentals of human life by contemplating it in its simplest forms.

Yet the fact remains that Wordsworth’s theory has a limiting effect on poetry. The
democratization of the theme of poetry is certainly to be welcomed, but to confine the poet only
to humble and rustic life is to debar him from the rest of life. Human life is very wide and
humble. Rural life is only one sphere of human life.

So, in conclusion, we can say that Wordsworth’s theory of language is not without its faults. But
at the same time its merit cannot be ignored. It has a far reaching importance. It changes the
tendency of having much flown diction for poetry.