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    Romantic Ideology - Part 2

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    14 views18 pages

    McGann pt2

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    S Robinson
    Romantic Ideology - Part 2

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    of 18
    6 The Mental Theatre of Romantic Poems Heine i an interesting. perhaps a crucial figure in the cntical history of Romanticism because he developed a method which could resume his subject without suffering at the same time ther the fie of repetition oF the ice of reiication. Though the broad cultural import of this freedom is important, my immedi ‘ae concern isto explore is significance in that narrowest and most cloistered of spheres: in the enitical work produced by the literary academy. In this world Heine has had litle direct influence, pay because he is wich a rencgade figure, and partly because his i an aris’ criticism, not a scholar’. But Hein is important for academic criticism because he was the fist 10 latempt a comprehensive critical analysis of Romantcisey along historical and ‘ideological lines. Like the De Lillemagne of Mame de Stail before him, which was the antithetical mode! for Heine's Die romanuische Schule, Heine dealt with Romanticism ‘32 cultural phenomenon, and he saw thatthe significance ofits latte works lay precaely im their power to exert a continuous cultural influence. Romantic poems were imporiant because of the fact that, and the way that, they acted as the vehicles of ideology. Heine separated himsef from Mme de Staél because he approached his subject not asa propagandist But asa citi. Heine's work helps us to understand the intimate relation hich subsists between poctical works and ideological structures, ‘whichis the topic T now wish to explore in grater depth. Read- ing him we see why we cannot fllow the lead of LJ. Swingle. who recently urged the academy 10 abandon the traditional scholars obsession with an “adequate theory of Romanticism.“ ‘The struggles epitomized inthe clash between Lovejoy and Wel- lek are beside the point since, in Swingle's view, they cannot help us to elucidate the actual works of the poets. Romantic ‘ideas and “Uoctrine” are ove thing, but Romantic poems are | quite another. Romanticism has 10 do with a fundamental state of | mind," with patterns of "ontological and normative » commitments. One ean think of it asthe state of mind ‘out of hich Romantic pocty is generated, of a8 the State of mind toward shih Romantic pocty moves, oF pethas even as both. But Romantic poetry isl, while Felated in complex ways 10 this state of mind, is aot ‘ential with i To come to terms sith Romantic poe: Wy, we have 10 deal with activites ratber than wi ‘states Our concern is. with immediate means and fends with movements the poet attempts to accomplish, and” ways_in which healers 10. manipulate. the feader Tr things are working well. the poetry is ike drama which the reader becomes caught up in. To pet into the poetry succesfully, what 1s needed 6 not 9 ‘much s theory of Romanticim but a theory of Roman. the poetry, a model of the drama the poctry creates something which exploresthe manipulabions the poet fexeress upon S36 We Fead Ris poetry. (978) ‘Singles esay has gained some currency! and I wll be con: sidering i here from several angles Fit, Tagrce with his gen- ral positon, that our concern as Scholars and ertcs must ‘li ‘mately le with the individual work rather than with Our pro= ‘cedures for dealing with those works. Aad I aso find persuasive a number of his remarks about the skeptical devices of Roman- tie poems. Finally, however, the essay interests me for a weake ness which appears symptomatic of so much recent scholarship and criticism, both the best and worst of it the inability 10 fealyze to draw out and define the distinctive features of those cultural phenomena knows as poems when problems of perio ‘Single aim isto isolate the special character of Romantic ‘poems 0 that we may read them more accurately. His angument| ‘Proper bepns with an attempy to distinguish Romantic poetry a8 ondoctrinal, as a poetry of exploration, of yearch and ques- tioning “The main product of Romaatic poctey is the question, and its main eflect'on a reader is disturbance” (976). In this, Romantic poetry i said 10 difler for other, and particularly cater, sons of poetry. Like any postr, Romantic poetry is full of doctrinal cements, But i important to think about what par These elements play ht the pocms. A’ poem canbe ‘designed to communicate doctrine, explain is meaning ‘or implications, convince the reader ofthe truth oF us: fulness of a piven doctrine—in which cases doctrine plays the leading role in the poem: its what the poem about (974-5) Pope, but especially Sidney, provide Swingle with two exam ples of what he means by “doctrinal” poetry. In the end both ene to estabih the following postion Rather than raising. questions in order to move toward a ‘resentation of doctrine, Romantic poetry tends 10 40 ‘ute the opposite» st employs docirine order 10 pen rate an atmosphere of the open question (275) ‘This pointed and economical statement is later supplemented with Swinge’s more claborated —view—dare one Say octrine?—of the typical Romantic poor: ‘Such poetry involves a restructuring of traditional con- ‘ceptions about wiht poety is supposed to offer a reader. {hus we often find the Romantic poet considering is ‘work as “experiment”) True to tradition, this. poetry fceks 10 offer a combination of insiruction and delight But the meaning of thse terms has changed. Teaching does not mean offering answers to the reader's qc ‘ons, playing Sherlock Holmes to the reader's Watson And the delight offered is not the satsfction that ‘companies a resalution of tension. Quite the opposite: Romantic poetry teaches by questioning. the reader's lanywers IU guides by pricing rather than rbesing fension. 1 does not present the result of a quest, but instead forces the reader to experience the act of quest- ing himself ‘And the delight produced is that of a quest ines: he ital ecient of ex ae ‘cerlainis, illuminating unconsigersd comple few ponies: the ey opening out Of ictal horizons that accompanies the experience of grappling sith uncertainties. 976) Swings position is not far removed from the “poetry of encounter” we saw earlier in Barth's analysis of Romanticism, land the sons of objections that were raised at that time remain eminent here? Reading this passage from Swingle one incitably recalls Surprised hy Sin and te entie project of s0- called Reader response criticism, ‘Nevertheless, what Swinge says obviously has a eeevance to the stategy of Romantic poems. Problems appear because the terms of distinction—tetween Romantic (non-doctrinal) verse fn the one hand, and “doctrinal” poetry on the other—seem to ‘me particularly gross. The idea that “doctrine plays te leading role" in Pope's or Swdney’s work, whereas in Wordswort's of Byron's it will "play a supporting roe” is a most misleading one to advanes, paniculary in an age and culture like our own ‘where “doctrinal pocty is vitally a synonym for the urpoet- fal. Such commonplace biases are in fct assumed by Swingle’s argument, which seks, among other things, o persuade us of the imporance of Romantic poetry. But one ought not to do this a such a cost as Swing has paid, forthe transaction has subtly debased the work of Pope and Sidney, among others. Besides, non-Romanie poetry is hardly well characterized when its sad to produce “whe satisfaction that comes from the ‘resolution of tensor.” Romantic poetry, on the other hand, “auides by producing rather than relieving tension." But surely the resolution of tension is a strange rubsic under which to marshall the older literary works which we most value. One is flooded with contrary instances that range fom Beowu/Uwrough the great Middle English ballads and Iyrics to Lear and the fntire compass of Renaissance and eighteenth-century works. (Ove might just as profitably read the Essay on Man in terms of the Durciad o Gulliver as through the treatises of Shaftesbury aad Archbishop King.* Nor am T speaking here of exceptions to Swingles formulation: on the contrary, tse formulation Will ot do as a measure for distinguishing Romantic fom “Soccinal” poetry. ln fact, when Swingle says that Romantic poetry “forces the reader to experience the act of questing itself” he is not describing & special feature of Romantic poetry: he is setting forth one of our age's most hase value measures for any and all poetry. We wil recognize this to be the case when we reflect how often we have heard the same thing said of every sort of oem ranging {rom the cules! tothe most contemporary. But i Swingle’s formulation distorts our view of poetry in ‘genera, i obscures as well the importance of doctrine or weok ‘gy in Romantic verse, Do we relly wish to say that doctrine plays a supporting role in Shelley's stine thrust against the Holy Alliance, the English government, or the various ieolo- sues of those institutions? Are Byron's Don Juan or Vision of Juderment nondoetsinal? Because the doctrines in these works ‘are politically advanced we generally find it easy to sympathire With them, thence to translate them into our own (invisible) ocirines, ‘and ultimately to forget—to our cost, in my view—that these are aggressively doctrinal works, and that they are important for that very reason. Swingle either does not see these doctsinal aspects of Romantic poems, or he relegates them to supporting roles. The fist result oscus because mich Romantic verse—not Byron's of| courne—seeks 10 disguise ity doccinal material. More on this ‘rucal matter in a moment? The second result, however, is part of a conscious critical strategy. Swingle relegates Romantic doc twine 10a supporting role because he has—correcty, beieve—responded toa special feature of Romantic style which 's quite diferent from the syle of earlier verse. He refers to i in various ways traditionally it has been alled “sincerity” o Romantic “spontaneity.” These now old-fashioned terms point 10 set of syst conventions developed by the Romantics to give the illusion of “spontancous overflow” to thei vere, This ile sion creates in its tum the effect of “process” which Swingle ‘speaks about. In Romantic poems we will characierstially fle low the play or development of idcak the movement of cons ‘iousnes in ts search for what it does not kaow tha it knows. This stylistic feature of many Romantic poems persuades ‘Swingle that such poctry employs ideology only to calls nto ‘evestion. So he argues that “ihe Romantic poets [do not! seek Predominantly 10 tel us things, that they Ido not} write. a poetry of doctrine offering the Isms’ of Romanticism for reader ‘consumption” (974). In this respect they are said to contrast with “doctrinal” poems of earlier periods, and Swingle uses Sidney's fine sonnet "Leave me love" o illustrate his point. I shall have to examine Swingl’s argument here in some detail since it demonstra certain assumptions which seem to me quite lines of the sonnet Swingle says Sidney's thinking here is based upon certain assump- tions about the minds activity in the presence of mut- se and ternal tl ‘sumption, for cuample, © hat the relationship beiwgen the human mind and a ‘mutable love isa “pleasure” experience. (979) By comiras, Romantic poems offer “us tests for such assump- tions” and ‘he quotes the final four lines of Wordsworth’ "A. slumber did! my spirit seal to demonstrate the diference: We ourselves are drawn into the experience of earthy love's mutability: our minds" reaction tess the vali fan order constructed upon the dectine, "Leave me O Love: Is our reaction one of “fading pleasure” If no, something is amiss atthe Fass of Sidney's conception Tse Buran mind ale to "grow ch i What "never taketh rust” Can the mind in fact establish elation- ship with something eternal? If not, i eer objects In Kea phrase only "ease us out of thought then something wrong with a conception of onde? based Upon the’ assumption that the ound oursbes in te presence of eternity, (979) “Two fundamental problems aunt this passage, The fist invokes the travesty of Sidney's pocm, which in this presentx tion becomes a curiosity of historical wrong: headedness, This is ‘reading which bas removed the sonnet from out hands by el ling ws not only that i sa simple piece of didacticism, but that its doctrine is naive and is “wonception of order” wrong. This ‘ew patently viktes our seas of the greatness and subilty of the sonnet. Let me quote Sidne’s poem herein fll and supply it with Leave me © Love, which reachest but to dus ‘And thou my mind aspire 10 higher thin GGrow ich in tha shih never taketh rst ‘What ever fides, but foing pleasure brings. Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might, ‘To that sweet yoke, where lasting feedomes be ‘Which breakes the cloves and opens forth the light, That doth both shine and give us sight to se. © take fast hol, et that light be thy guide, ‘Im this small course which birth drawes Ut death, ‘And thinke how evil become him to sid, ‘Who seeketh heav'n, and comes of heualy breath ‘Then farewell world, thy witermost Ie, ternall Love maintaine thy Ie in me First on the matter of conventions IF 0 pose a question* is a common device in Romantic poety, particularly at moments of ‘Meological importance, Renaissance poems frequent reson 10 Fetition, prayer, ot exhorlation at similar junctures. ‘Sidney's Sonnet illustrates this tendency as it moves through a variety of exhortations to conclude in a frank prayer to "Eternal Love” ‘The whole structure of the poems syntax demonstrates person tho is speaking out of a condition of profound contradictions, Swingle says that the poem is built on “he assumption «that the relationship between the hua mind and a mutable love is ‘pleasure’ experience.” which is true only in the sense thatthe poem is also built on another, contradictory assumption: that ‘he relationship between the huoan mind—the seat of the intel lective faculties—and mortal love is one of frustration and dis tisfaction ‘What the sonnet assumes is a traditional mind-body dual fam, and it constructs its poetic appeal by dramatizing what hap> ‘pens sehen ‘my mind” has allowed the body's eyes to tempt it fom its proper objects (lines $8). The poem presents « tension ‘between the body and the mind, and it locates the area of ‘eatest struggle in the eyes—the least sensual of the bods faculties (acording to tradition) and therefore the mast intellec- ‘wally seductive. The poem reoresents the mind's self fexhortation to "sce" thatthe source of is anger liek im ot s- ‘ing the crucial difference between erotic and intelletual vison, ‘between the “light” in the miod and the beam in the eye. The poem, in shor, treats a familiar buman problem it a ros di tinctive (and distinguished) way, D. H. Lawrence altered the ermphasis und refered (0 it as "sex i the ead” (my italic) In| Sidney we would call it rather "sex i the head ‘This sonnet, then, does not simply begin with certain doctri- ‘al assumptions; it begins in the midst of an emotional drama, hic it then proceeds to elaborate and define. What is moving. about the poem, even nom, is the clarity with which it has Presented 2 complex moment of intense emotional. struggle ‘What is imporant for criticism, however, is t0 see the place which doctrine and ideology occupy in the sonnet. The poem's transhistoneal character docs not reside in its ideas oF themes. ‘onthe contrary, the sonnet continues to speak 10 us by virtue of its emotional syntax. Certain of the poems ideas seem dated or even, pethaps, wrong: the human drama it presents is complete land true, however, and mast surely seer as fresh today a it was {or Sidney a the end ofthe sntoenth century ‘But although we nced to recognize this emotional truth the poem, and to see as well that the place of vene is 10 ‘represent the human face that i part of every trath (and every ror), equally important to understand is the place of ideology fand doctnine in transmitting such material. Ideology—what literary eiticism traditionally sees as the thematic and doctrinal aspects of verse—gives to poetry is local habitation and a name. Without such dated (and datable) matters poems would have rothing by which to define and embody their tras-istrica ‘qualities. The locus of what is unique in poem. so far as enti ‘Sam is concerned, is to be found and studied init ideological structure, that i, im all those elements of the work which seem ‘most historically particular and least transcendent. Part of the power of Sidney's soanet depends upon our recognizing the ated character of its beliefs and ideas: its speaker seems all the ‘more our contemporary because we recognize how far he is removed from us in the set of his rind. Recognizing this, we can, to a degre, observe as well our own ways of thinking and feeling fom an alicn point of view. That alienated vantage, which is poetry's critical git to every future age, permits us a brief objective glimpse at our world and ourselves. Understanding ths should help us to sce one of the funda- ‘menial ideological sirctures of Romantic poems. Swingle is correct, I believe, when he says that Romantic poetry often puts received and traditional ideas and doctrines "Yo the test” He ants us fo believe that inthis respect Romantic poems do not offer any ideology for reader consumption. But his conclusion {docs not follow. On the contrary, one basic doctrine which Romantic poems continually present for reader consumption is that they are innocent of moral or doctrinal commitments. The idea that “artis not among the ideologies" or—in its conserva- tive formulation —that art speaks universal truths” has a basis in traditional theory where concepts like "Natural Law” and ‘he Soul” were commonplace. Under such conditions poetry could | | ‘We METAL HEATIN OF ROMANTIC POEMS ‘maintain its polemical and doctrinal functions because (a) the octtines it spelled out were taken to be "aaturally” or "univers sally" true, or (b) the polemics it engaged in, as we see ‘throughout the controversial poetry of the seventeenth century, involved coniicting univerabisic interpretations of transient ise torical phenomena. ‘In the Romantic Period, however, the ground universals of a Natural Law philosophy had becn undermined, largely through the development of historical studies and the emergence of a modern historical sense. No longer did human nature seem always and everywhere the same, and the celebrated “epistemo- logical cris” was the chic register of this new ideological fact. In Cantos Fl of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Byron expressed ‘oth his cynicism over the vagueries of modem national charac- ter and his wonder at the diverse and shifting behavior of “diferent peoples His focus of observation, iitly, was the Pen insular War, but Wordsworth—studsing the cultural drama being played out in Revolutionary France—observed an analo- ‘gous stuation. During the latter events Wordsworth believed for 4 time that “human nature’ was “being born again.” A new world seemed about to replace the conflicted and historically fractured cultures which were coming to pieces in Europe in the 1790s. Instead Wordsworth (like Blak) discovered a revolution Which seemed to repeat all the ancient evils. “The doctrinal structures which writers like Blake, Words- worth, and Coleridge developed to meet these crises are well Known and need not be heared again. What I want 10 note is the emergence of the concepts of Romantic Nature and Imag ‘ation a touchstones of stability and order. The literature of the period is replete with examples demonstrating what Byron shows the following passage from Canto Il of Childe Harold, where the is reacting to his own extended meditation upon the ruinous state of Napoleonic Europe." ‘Avy with thse! true wisdom's work will Within is own creation, of i thine ‘Maternal Nature! for who tems like thee. (5. 46) In moments of crisis the Romantic will urn to Nature or the creative Imagination as his places of lst resort Amidst the towering structures of early nincteenthcentury Europe. poetry o asserted the integrity of the biosphere and the inner, spiritual sel both of which were believed to tranacend the ages troubling Soctsinalconficts and kolopal sift. "No poem ilustates these maters better, even in its minia- ture compas, than "A slumber did my spin sal.* which Swin- te offers as a non-doctrinal Romantic work. A slumber did my spirit sea: ‘had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel “The touch of ently yeas. [No motion has she now, no force: ‘She neither hears nor sees: Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, ‘With rocks and stones, and tres. The suggestive force of the lines depends in large part upon the wity play with words ike “earthly” and “earth's In stanza one “carhly” is associated with “human fears” with culture, cons- ousoes, and the "earth" upon which men do their getting and Spending. In stanza two, ‘carh's" refers wa very diferent place, fone which is marked noc by human fears but by the most fancient and dependable repulartes, which are here associated with “rocks, and stones, and tres" The poem offers a pathetic message for an experience of the loss of someone beloved, comfort which yet Woubles our own snevitale “human fears Soluce which cannot—which would not—remave the sense of Pity and los. These area set of human thoughts which lie 10 cep for ears ‘What i most important for us to sce, however, is thatthe poem would los all its free and eharacter did it not operate at fan ideological level. Unlike the Sidney poem, where the confit involves intelectual and cultural problems that are directly ‘elated to action and behavior, Wordsworth’s poem is altogether ‘more nuanced, suggestive, and intenioried. The death ofa loved ‘one has focused the speaker's lack of awareness not merely of the act that this loved one might dic, but of his own general thoughilessoess about the ultimate significance of such an event Wordsmorth's poem raises the experience of personal los 10 such a level of abstraction that we oo are forced to consider it i in the most conceptual and apocalyptic terms. This is a death sibich asks the post to formalate both the problem of the death fand the solution to the problem in ultimate terms. So, in the second stanza Wordsworth manipulates the initial "problem of unconsciousnes into an avenue of resolution. The ancient, dumb geosphere is instinct with (God's) sista life tnd order. It is am obscure but certain realm of seret. meaning fal signs, and to decipher them is to be possessed of the ground of al contingent truths. Its the visionary's task and privilege (0 decipher these signs—in particular, the visionary poet's task. ‘When Romantic poems deal wth Nature and Imaginatoa, then, they are invoking a specie network of doctrinal materia. Eco logical Nature isthe locus of what i stable and orderly, and iti related to Imagination as a sc of vital hieroglyphs is related 10 an interpretive key. ‘Out of these assumptions emerges that familar argument of Romantic and Romanticinfuenced works: that poetry, and art in general, has no essential elation to partisan, didactic, or doc- teinal mamters. Poetry transcends these things. The fed of his- tory, politics, and socal relations is everywhere marked in the Romantic Period by complex divisions and conics previously ‘unprecedented in Europe. Romantic poetry develops an argu ‘ment that such dislocations can only be resolved beyond the realm of immediate experience, at the level ofthe mind's idea or the hean’s desire. The Romantic psition—it is an historically limited and determinate one—is that the poet operates at such levels of reality, and hence that poetry by i nature can trae scend the confits and transience ofthis time and that place. "This conviction leads Shelley to his famous declaration Poetry is indeed ‘divine. Wis at once the cen- ‘Knowledge its that which ‘comprehends al science, and that 10 which all science wat were ut comatose of te Ban ‘ot ascend to bring Tight and fire ffom those eternal 3 2 \ = u {eas roe 1HOLOGMS tk equally lies behind Wordswort’s distinction, set fort in the “Preface” to Lyrical Bells, beeen the tthe of oct) and the Hnowedpe of sence, Cole's entre” Kantian based theory of por, ais well known, depends upon analogous tions of ti sulonomy of the pote event (nt the poetic ject, which post Romantic conception). For Cokie, | (sponds eaoeonce ivcned ex sosoumer oth “am One LIK? | sit the essential ad noe-conigent “dea” of hua. sau |The potemie of Romantic poetry, therefore. hat til mot Be Drtemical te dotie, that he wont and ts Wetony, that t tamcends ideology ‘In Blake's poetry this message is conveyed via what Swingle and ethers have recognized at i work's daecticl procedures, But Blake crea devices are not inpocent of ideology. When tis poms po tional Wea o cial tet of varus oe, they do so (nthe conviction atthe poetic vision revel fanda: trea rth faa way wich st the poet apart fom oer men ‘Ava result the tng ctigue which Romani poems dist toward recived eas saa} aio a-a polemic bea! {be spec priviee of porry and art The Romantic ste Sites (© poy 2 gical might and ower over the Irth The Rstonclly determined character of ths dea Recomes Qt clear if we simply compare Homer’ tine toward the Poet ‘ith Wordswor's or Calender Chango cveumstancer=ve Sil ake thew mater up below-—pusod the ater Remand, in particular Byron and’ Sheliy, into a mare seriously job. Aematc relation tothe Romani ideas ofthe post-anate and the aqnal prlvdege of ot them the eocalal Marea Confer wea mnich decor than anything experienced y the carer Romantic and ths later problematic eventual’ coat ited othe breakup of Romantic atx coetent movement have spent a peat del of ime hee dcusing the eas and concept and atts of Romane writer Such 4 rhea Sa of what are tmiaritelectalabaracions might wel ke the reader as tedious {have ted 1 retu o held of ft Ie story notin order to recuperate or Fines sach coo cepts, bt to ay them under a reviuonay efique Contrary 1a SM Swine suggests erry ceca must take account of {hse "ieslocal mates thee ever-present “Tams of Romanicren=precacyfreaune Romane works cogs: ith the wor, sck to engage th Me word a the level of eo gy The poetic reponse tothe ag’ severe poltial and social? ‘Gslocaons was to reach for solos i the fealm of ideas. The ‘maneuver follows upon a congruent Romantic procedure. wich ist deine human problems in ideal and spit terms. To Characterie the Romane Period ax one” marked by ‘eistemologal iss" is flow Romantcsm’s own Slniion of fs htorical problems. (OF course, a rie mast gran io Romantic works their spe- ‘al isoral cara A hisory of eas approach to Roman. te Pocty and the Romantic Periods tational (and neces sary) for this ery reason: it represents the orgnary terms in which Romantic works sought to cast their hstoral relations. Such an approach will only recaptulate the Romantic of Hegelian analysis, however, i docs sot eubsh cial and Iter penpectve upon the Tom of Romanticism ‘Swingle attempts to gain this distance by denying that the | iteolopes of Romantic works ave an) erucal evane 10 the analysis ofthe poet. But this approach has merely agreed 19 ‘ehitorcize Romantic Poetry by refusing to accept is speci sei'decrmined limits Swingl’s account of Romantic works {arms them info 4 standard of pocte excellence that i based ‘pon our curen, ae Romanicieas about whut poety is and ‘ugh to do. But nither poetry nor literary eis operate ttae-istorcal realms; both ae cultural phenomena which take bart in the special, historically determinate. characteristics of ther time aod place. The tea that potty deals with univer and. warsendent human themes and subjects ba cltrally fpecc cnc, and Ht aeumes civ! forme of expen a itrem epost, depending upon the diferent historical o- ‘cumstances hat preva. The Romantic form ofthat ea One Fis many gies, but fom our cultural postion ts a form of {tought wich mas assume a peculiar and insistent importance; for our own seat tothe idea is charactersaly made on when we hive fist pase through those Romantic forms of thought. 4 7 Romantic and Non-Romantic Works: Comparisons and Contrasts Before turning to investigate some specific Romantic poets, let me set forth a few brief comparisons between non-Romantic find “Romantic: works. This move seems necessary before proceeding any further, since the generalizations 1 have been advancing are lable 10 serious misiotepeetation, It would, of course, be simple enough t0 set cerain types of poems against typical Romantic works and thereby urge the distinctiveness of the Romantic: we could tur to Crabbe in the Romantic Period: (oF to Pope, Chaucer, or any number of Medieval secular lyrics ‘oF (in post-Romantic contexts) 10 Cough, Pound, Marianne Moore, or many others Bu if such examples would sec Roman- tie poetry apart, they would not argue the case of my representa- tion of Romantic work “To argue the latter position requires that we look at some poems which deal in a non-Romantic way with “universal and rscendent human themes and subjects,” which seck to "etine human problems in ideal and spiritual terms" that ae not, at the same time, Romantic terms, ‘The most characteristic diference betwoen the idea- ‘dominated Romantic poem and its idealized but noo-Romantic predecesor lies in the perceived stats ofthe idealization. In a Romantic poem the realm of the ideal i always observed as precarious—liable 10 vanish or move beyond one's reach at any 1 Central Romantic poems lke "Ode 10 a Nightingale” “La Bele Dame Sans Mere” typify this situation inthe Rom tic poem, which charactersically haunts, as Geofley Hartman has observed, ordelands and timinal'terries. These are Romantic places because they locate areas of contradiction, 2 conflict, and problematic alternatives In short, Romantic poems {ake up transcendent and ideal subjects because these subjects ‘occupy areas of critical uncertainty. The aim of the Romantic ‘Poem—especially in its early or “High Romantic” phascs—is to fedscover the ground of stability in thew situations Later Romantic poems will often adopt a diferent procedure and attack the early Romantic terms of solution with the merciless ‘tical razors of their despair. All this contrasts sharply with Sidney's sonnet “Leave me © Love. whichis a poem very much committed 1o transcenden- tals, and to defining a solution to its represented problems in ‘eal terms. The difference lis in the poem's unquestioning Accepiance ofa stable conceptual frame of reference in which its problems can be taken up and explored. In Romantic poems ‘that frame of reference is precisely what stands at issue. 1 sup- ‘ose itis unnecessary to recall here that the sonnets unselfeons- ious acceptance of traditional ideology Joos not prevent the ‘work from developing its own special tensions, or from revealing ‘those complex iresolutions which recur in human experience “These sorts of diferentil ure everywhere apparent in the corpus of literary works which we inherit. The great Medieval religious lyric “Lalla, ullay lite childs hardly less pitiful or forthright in its understanding of the word's crusty and funda- ‘meatal injustice than similar poems we know from Blake's ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience. But the Medieval Itc is ‘ot at all troubled. ar ihe level of ideology by such eruety and injustice, Blake observes in the world’s "Marks of weakness, marks of woe" a set of ideological contradictions which beings into question the entire stracture of ideas which underpin his culture. This is why Blake takes up his subjects in a spinit of citcal’ inquiry. Not so the Medieval Iyric, however, whieh attempts 0 deal with the untrustworthiness‘of the world and human life at a more functional and existential level. This pro ‘cedure is epitomized in the Iyrc’s simple generic character ‘ral song to comfort crying infant—which is based upon an accepted and traditional set of Chistian virtues, concepts, and ‘mythologies. The procedure is what makes the poem’ at ance a lullaby and a parabolic representation of human life as & ‘Christian trial and pilgrimage which extends from the cradle to the gave a a Toes FoR eoLoGRS| These sorts of distinction can and must be made even with ‘problematic earlier writes like Donne, whose probing and skep ‘cal ineligence is not, however, Romantic in character. When be declares that “new Philosophy cals all in doubt” ("The First, “Anniversary,” 208) his atitude is at least as close 10. the anonymous author of “Lay, Willy, Wiel ei” as itis 10 ron And new Philosophy call all in doubt ‘The Element of tre And freely men confess that this work's spent, ‘When in the Planets, and the Firmament ‘They seeke 0 many new; they se that this Js crumbled out again to his Atoms. "Ts all in peees all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation: Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot, For every man alone thinkes he hath got ‘Tobe a Phoenis, and that then can bee | [None of that kinde, of which he i, but hee ‘This isthe worlds condition now, and now ‘She that should all parts to reunion bow, ‘She that had all Magnetique force alone, ‘To draw, and fasten sundred parts i one; ‘She whom wie nature had invented then When doe bers that ery wot af men Di in their voyage in tis words Sa sray, ‘And needed a new compaste for their way. ‘Shee, shee is dead; shee's dead: when thou Knowst "this, ‘Thou knowst how lame a cripple this word is ‘And lear'st thus much by our Anatomy, ‘That this words general sickenesse doth mot lie {In any humour, or one certaine pat: ‘But as thou savest it rotten atthe heat. (205-42) ‘Though the satire here is based upon a Medieval comremprs ‘mundi it has clearly advanced to a self-conscious sense of the immediate sources of corruption. Donne's poem throughout shows his awareness of the special marks of his own personal \Wickedness and the analogous spiritual corruptions of his period. ‘This avareaes is historical, true, but in a Plutarchian rather than an Enlightenment, Higher Critical, or Heeelian mode. lizbeth Drury’s death therefore recapitulates the ancient curse and ‘general scknese” of ‘man,” but Donne's verse ‘Ana- tome" goes on 10 show his sense thatthe particular death is asi were an epitome for Donne and his age Her death hath taught us deaely, that thow at Corrupt and moral in thy purest part. (61-2) Even the world’s purest creature is suject to death and decay, Donne's rather mordant wit tells us. This is of course an ancien lesson and Donne knows it very well, nor has he ever doubted it But be has been liable 10 forget it ike most people, and so Elizabeth Drury’s death reminds him of it just as Donne’ pom oes on to remind the reader, The poem develops its special per- sonal force ot from a Romantic seliconsciousnes about the rounds of human knowledge but from Donne's self-critical irony that he has needed so extreme a lesson to reteach him Wwhat he knew very well ll along. Donne’ enticism, as well as his related “Anatomic.” i directed at himself for his wordliness, indeed atthe very nature of worldliness as he observes it anew in himself and his culture, But Donne does not question his culture's inherited grounds of judgment for the very reson that he does not see those grounds as culturally determined. To Donne, the world’s corruption (inclding hit own) ad the blessedness of heaven (the communion of the saints) are not matters of ideology, they are maters of fact and truth ‘All this is quite diferent from anything we shall find in any Romantic poem which hs developed 2 comparable level of ‘ritcal (as opposed vo imaginative) intensity. The sheer free of the following lines at’ no point shatters the ideology which has ‘made their expression posible. ‘She, shee is dead; shee's dead; when thou knowst this, "Thou knowst how dre a Cinder this world i ‘And learns thus much by our Anatomy, ‘That's in vane to dew, o¢ mole 1K with thy teres, or sweat, or blood: nothing 1s worth our travail, pif, or pershing, But those rch joyes, which did possese her heart, ‘Of which she's now partaker, and a pat. ‘Compare this with the following stanzas from Canto IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, where the expressive intensity ‘matches Donne's lines, but where the force of that expression takes is origin frorn a implacable mils, m (Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art— ‘An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, {A faith whose martyrs are the broken beat, But ever yet hath Seen, nor ee shall see ‘The naked eye, thy form, as it should be, “The mind hath made thee. as it peopled heaven, Even with its own desing phanta, ‘And to a thought such shape and image given, ‘As aunts the unquenct’'d soul—parch’d— Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, “The uneaeh’d Paradise of our despair. ‘Which o'erinforms the pencil and the pen, ‘And overpowers the page where it would bloom agin? Fy Who loves caves" is youth’ frenzy; but the cure 1s biter stil: as charm by charm unwinds ‘Which robed our idols, and we se 10 sure [Nor worth nor beauty dwells fom out the mind's deal shape of such: et sill it ands “The fatal spell, and sil it draws us on, ‘Reaping the whiwind from the of sown winds, % ‘The stubborn hear, its alchemy begun, ‘Seems ever near the prize,—wealthiest when most undone “This ferocity of statement winds on through several more san+ 22s, only to be interrupted by a brief pause to assert a commit | ment not t0 give over such a. mode of thought. and speech (Geanza 127). Indeed, the whole of Childe Harold» Pilgrimage is | determined to repeat this sort of verse, and therein lies its great- ‘es The level of Byron's hostility and frustration is such that it is only arbitrarily comtainable, even by himself. “The unreach'd Paradise of our despair’ that complex oxymoron fies the char~ PETE fi i i il i EE i i i : a i f i | ® z this is a literary ballad (with all does not remember that iis ‘written ata very specific period in England; and ‘elects 10 take account of the fact that it was nowhere to go. The fict that the poem makes an anistic pretense 40 anonymity—that this explicit fiction is part of its poetic tims—cannot begin to be understood ou'side the bio faphical context it pretends to have eliminated, The elect of the poem's “anonymity.” that is, depends upon our eealizing that ‘twas infact tien by Keats, IK the personal dimension of Keats's poem is reinforced by ts fictional pretense 10 anonymity, the more broadly historical context emphasizes, in a reciprocal way, the special quality of the subject Keats has chosen to write shout. For a reader in| 1819, this material will ncessrily be received within the frame- ‘work of primitive anthropological perspective, ‘The poem enters the world a8 a socal set mediated by the previous history ofthe ballad revival, along with the complex and widespread ‘rtcal discussion which surrounded that event. This specifically literary set of phenomena it should be pointed out, is itself only 1 special instance of a general historical pattern obsewvable ‘throughout the ideological environment of Romantic culture ‘The poem's materials, then, are necessarily taken 10 be Active: though they come dow tous via history, such materials reflect events which Keats and his readers do not really believe ‘ever occurred in "objective" oF outer history. Elfin ladies are ‘mythological, her cave and its contents are drawn from magical traditions, the knight himself is part of a. quasbmythological fomance tradition. The vision of the dead “pale kings and Drnees” is aso drawa from what Keats had ear ridculed as “Vulgar Superstition. though in tis case Keats does not write about such materi "tn Disgust* Te short. the poem is plainly written by a person once described by a fiend of his a8 a: member "ofthe skeptical and republican school" and the work presupposes like-minded audience. Ite very appearance in Hunt's Pndicafor emphasizes thse aspects ofthe poem and its audience. That it repreenis “serious” diseusion of superstitious and mythological material ‘equally plain, but the special quality of that seriousness cannot ‘even bepn to be defined if we do not see how selfconscious the oem expects its audience to be about its “fanciful” subject ‘matter We read the poem always aware that itis a fiction, and that it i piven to us as a fiction (in contrast, for example, 10 Beowulf, oF 10 the Gospels, or to any number of Medieval stories and ballads which are not presented as fictions, even | though we now know that they are infact using fictional materi= fly), Keats requests his readers—as Coleridge did in “The Rime ‘of the Ancient Mariner'—willingly 10 suspend thei cisbeli in ‘sch materials and enter, for atime, a fanciful space. ‘The important theoretical point to keep in mind here is that this entire situation only comes about because Keats's poetic materials are self-consciously recognized to be socially and his- {orically defined. Romantic imapination emerges with the birth ff an historical sense, which places the poet, and then the | reader, at a critical distance from the poem's) materials. The ballad's powerfully evoked mood of melancholia is the emo- tional sign of its central there: thatthe emergence of an histon- cal sense is marked by signs of division, by a whole dialectic of Separations which operate between the poles of sympathy and iii, |g, Ine reales and ries relation to 4 poem tke “Thomas | the Rhymer* (commonly so called)” is naturally quite differen, | for although we must read it across a selconscious historical tap, we do not ascribe a similar selconsciousness to the orig | nal work. The traditional ballad’ force, so far asa ater reader is | concerned, derives from is lack of seif-consciousness. It seems | tang 10 us case it oes not wem sane 10 sel 8 we se in the eay relations which prevail between the mortal Thomas and the Queen of Eiftand, ‘Syme they came on toa garden green, ‘And she pu'd an apple frac a tee— "Take this for thy wages, true Thomas: wil give thee the tongue that can neve i.” "My tongue is mine an,” truc Thomas said; “A gudely pif ye wad gic wo me! I nether doueht to buy nor sel, As fie or tryst where I may be. "I dought neither speak to prince or pet, [Nor ask of grace ftom fir ladye." *Now hold thy peace!” the lay sad, "For as I say, 80 must it be | By contrast, the tulladeer and the knight-atarms in Keats's ‘oem are equally estranged persons: the knight by virtue of his ‘experience withthe elfn lady, and the blladeer by virtue of bis rarration of that eapenence The lattraiay balla’s Romantic agony focuses on the irevocable loss of am entire arca of significant human experince, as well as on the equally imevoca- ‘le loss of the meaning ofthat experience. The traditional ballad ‘is marked by neither a fact which, recognized by Keats, only Incightens his poem's sense of estrangement. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” owes a partial but direct debt to the old ballad of “Thomas the Rhiymer.” Keats's poem draws upon Scot's presentation of the oniginal ballad in his Minstrelsy (ofthe Scoush Border, where the old text appears along with two ‘other ballads: one ie a redaction “rom the ancient prophecies.” fod the other is Scots frank imitation, a literary ballad which “eontinues" the story of Thomas to his departure from this world. These three poems together represent the process of his oneal displacement which Keats's ballad will later incorporate and push to an even greater extreme of sel-consciousness. ‘Scott's presentation lacks altogether the agonized intensity of Keats's ballad because Scot interposes between himself and his materials the objective eye of the editor and the philologis ‘These foles, assumed by Scott, permit him to experience and understand his materials without an extreme sense of displace- tment and estrangement. His view is sdeologically Enlightened, Keats's poom, on the other hand, will not est satisfied with ‘Scott's histoicism. Every part of Keats's ballad exhibits the rest Iesaneu and prong interrogations which Suingie hat abeeror in typical Romantic poems. We shall later explore the critical ‘ipmificance of sich Romantic works. For now we have merely to note, on the one hand, the extremity of the poem's Romanticism—in contrast, for example, toa Iiterary ballad lke “The Rime of the Ancient Mariners and, on the other, the gulf which separates Keals’s ballad from its precedent models and analogues. 8 Wordsworth £ the Ideology of Romantic Poems z & t wwe can return to consider in greater detail the Romantic poems. In my reconsideration I i z i ows, POEMS, ADLOLOGHES consider wo of the most important of these features. The pate terns I shall be marking out are widespread in the Works ofthe peviod. 1 shall concentrate here on Wordsworth, honeve, because his works—like his position in the | Roman Moverent—are normative and, in every sense, exemplar ‘We begin by forcing the critical act to attend 10 the specific referential patterns which appear i specie poems. These refer- fences may be factual or cognitive, but in all cases they will be historically and socaly specific. In the case of Romantic poems, ‘ve shall find that the works tend 10 develop diferent sors of Aristic means with which to occlude and disguise their own wolvement in a certain nexus of historical relations. This act of ‘evasion, a it were, operates most powerfully whenever the poem 1 most deeply immersed in its cognii¥e (Ce, its ideological) imaterials-and commitments For this reason the crite of Romantic poetry must make a determined effort elucidate the subject matter of sich poems hisiorcaly: to define the specific ‘ways in which ceran stylistic forms intersect and join with cer tain factual and cognitive point of reference. Rather than speak of the method in such general terms any longer, however, lt me commence with “The Ruined Cottage,” partly because it i a great poem, and partly because its sruc- ‘ral methods for dealing with substantive issues are so clear, In his Fenwick note Wordsworth says that the work was based ‘upon ineidens and conditions which he iad himself observed in 1793 in the southwest of England, The information is to an extent supererogatoy since no-one reading the sry wien it was fret publihed in 114, ail les i H had been read carer in a ‘manuscript version, would have been unaware of the context in Which the tragic events are embed. ‘Margaret's husband Robert is a weaver and the poem focuses upon the precanous stale in which this cotlage industry found ise in the late eightcenth and carly nineteenth century. Two bad harvesis coupled with "hat wore alliction .. the plague of wat” (136) Being Robert's family tothe point of ruin, ‘ashe becomes one among those “shoals of artizans" who Were from thei daily labor turned avay To hang for bread on parish chatty, They and their wives and children, (184-7) Eventually Robert joins the army in a pathetically imcompetent and misplaced effort 10 free his family from their economic plight. Robert disappears in the gulf of war while his wife and ‘child are left to the beautiful slow-motion narrative of their painfully sow-motion demise have myself re-narrated these well-known details because the strategy of Wordsworth's poem is to elide their distinctive- ness from our memories, to drive the particulars of this tragedy 40 a region that is t00 deep either for tears or for what Words- ‘worth here calls ‘restless thoughts” (198). Margaret's cottage is gradually overgrown and “ruined” when “Nature” invades its Aeplected precincts. This—the poem's dominant and most ‘memorable process—finally comes to stand as an emblem of the ‘endurance of Nature's care and ceaseless governance, just as it lances obliquely at the pathetic incompetence of individual, ‘cultural, and institutional efforts to give stability to human allsirs, Not England, not Rober's social and economic institu tions, not even Robert by himself can afford protection against "A time of trouble.” Margaret's cottage will collapse under their “neglect,” which Wordsworth sees as inevitable, indeed, as a function ofthe social renin natura. ‘This gradual collapse of the cottage into what Wordsworth ‘alls, in his characteristic form of Romantic wit, Nature's “silent ‘overgrowings” (306), has yet another analogue, however, in the ‘poem's narrative method itself: To read Wordsworth's re-telling ‘of this pitiful story isto be led further and further from a clear sense of the historical origins and circumstantial causes of Margaret's trgedy. The place of such thoughts and such con- ‘cems is usurped, overgrown, Armytage, poet, and reader all ix | their attention on a gathering mass of sensory, and chiefly vewet- ‘able, details. Hypnotized at this sensational surface, the light of | sense goes out and "The secret spirit of humanity” emerges. 1 stood, and leaning oer the garden gate ‘Reviewed that Woman's sufrings: and it seemed ‘To comfort me while with a brother's love [blessed her inthe impotence of grief. ‘At length towards the coage I returned Fondly, and traced with milder interest, ‘That secret spirit of humanity ‘Which, “mid the calm oblivious tendencies o IDEAS, PONS, EOL ‘OF nature, ‘id her plants, her weeds and flowers, And silent overgrowings sil survived The old man scing this resummed, and sti, “My Friend, enough to sorrow have you given, The purposes of wisdom ask no more: Be wise and cheafal and no longer read ‘The forms of things with an unworthy eye ‘She sleeps in the cal earth, and peace is here 97.512), ‘Margarets devotion, love, and Sdelity to her howse speak 10 Wordsworth's “esless” narrator from beyond the grave and transfer his allegiance from “The Paryy of Humanity” t0 it secret spiritual replacement. “The Ruined Cottage" aims to effect 8 similar translation of attention and commitments inthe reader {well remember that those very plumes, ‘Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, By mist and silent raindrops sivered ie, ‘AS once | pased, did © my mind convey So sll a image of tranquility, So calm and sil, and looked so beautiful ‘Amid the uneasy thoughts which filed my mind, ‘That what we fel of soerow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the grief ‘The passing shews of being leave behind, Appeared an idle dream that could not live ‘Where meditation was. Turned away, ‘And walked along my road in happiness.” (513-24) “The Ruined Cottage” isan exemplary case of what com rmentators mean when they speak of the “displacement” that cccurs in a Romantic poem. An Enlightenment mind like Dideror's of Godwin's of Crabée's would study this poem's ‘events in social and economic terms, but Wordsworth is pre- Cisely interested in preventing—in actively countering—such a focus of concentration. ‘The displacement is reproduced in the poem's subtle transformation of Wordsworth's | 1703-4 wwork!—including the social and politcal discomtents which dominated his ie at that time—ioto the changed world of 17978, when he beyan to write the poem in the exuberant atmosphere of Racedown and Alfosden. Wordsworth himself ‘becomes a poetic narrator, and the focus of his orginal feelings of dislocation are displaced from France and the Bishop of [Llandaff to the more homely and immediate discomforts of the waking tours (lines 18-26). In such circumstances, the story of Margaret produces in the narrator a sense of shame and hui lity before a great suffering and an overflow of sympathy and love forthe suflerer rather than, as in 1793-4, a sense of outrage, social circumstances with which those works are concerned. [Nevertheless James Butler is right to say that“ work of social protes,"* a fact about the poem a rt the process of attenuation which | have been [remarking upon. Yet the character and extent of the displace- | ment in "The Ruined Cottage’ is quite different—is far less _ extreme—from what we may observe in “Tintern Abbey." Scholars and interpreters—tave passed them by almost without notice. Recently Marjorie Levinson, in 2 brilianty researched ‘and highly controversial polemic, has redrawn our attention to the importance of the date in the subtitle, and to the special significance which Tintem Abbey and its environs had for an informed English audience of the period!” Her argument is complex and detailed and neither can nor need be rehearsed here. Suffice i 0 say—and to see—that Wordsworth situates his [poem (and his original experience) on the eve of Bastille Day, Secondly, the force of lines 15-23 depends upon our knowing that the ruined abbey had been in the 1790s a favorite haunt of transients and displaced persons—of beygars and vagrants of ‘various sors inching (presumably) “emale vagrants” Words ‘worth observes the tranguil ordeiness of the nearby ‘pastoral farms" and draws these views into a elation with the “grant dwellers in the houseess woods” ofthe abbey, This relation con- ‘ins a startling, even a shocking, contrast of socal conditions Even more, it suggests an ominovs social and economic fact of the period: that in 1793 no great distance separated the house. less vagrant from the happy cottager. as “The Ruined Cottage’ made 50 painfully clear. Much of Wordsworth's poem resis on the initial establishment ofthis bold image of contradiction, 00 the analogous one hinted at in the subse’ date, and on the ‘elation between them which the poem subuly encourages us to make. It was, of course, 4 elation which Wordsworth himself ‘made explicit in his Leer to the Bishop of Landa. Bat like "The Ruined Cottage, "Tintern Abbey"s method is to replace an image and landscape of contradiction with one Sominated by “he power/ OF harmony” (483), So in 1798 he ‘observes the ruined abbey and its environs “with an eye made {Quiet” by sich power. He sees not "the landscape fof] a blind man's eye" (25)—not the place of conflict and contradiction ‘which he now associates with his own "Hind" jacobinism of | 1793—but an earlier, more primal landscape which he explicitly associates with his childhood. This last is the landscape which ‘does ot fil the eye of the mind with external and soulless fimages, but with “forms of beauty" (24) through which we ea "see into the life of things” (30), to penetrate the surface of @ landscape to reach its indestructible heart and meaning: |RORDSWORTH AND THE IDEOLOGY OF ROMANTIC ORNS 4 sense sublime (OF something far more deeply interfused, ‘Whose dwelling is the light of setting su ‘And the round ocean, ad the living at, ‘And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 'A motion and a spirit, that impels ‘Al thinking things, al objects of all thought, ‘And rols through all things. (96-103) ‘This famous passage defines Wordworth’s sense of "the life of things" which lies beneath the external "Yorms of beauty.” The lines have transcended ordinary description altopether, however, ‘and replaced what might have been a picture dm the mind (of & in abbey) with a picture ofthe pind a picture, cha is—as the pun on the preposition makes clear—o the “mind” in its act ‘of generating itell within an external landscape, Wordsworth narrates that act of replacement in four magnificent lines of ‘And now, with gleams of halfestingish'd thought, ‘With many recognitions dim and faint ‘And somewhat ofa sad perplenity, ‘The picture of the mind revives apa, (59-62) “The abbey asociatd with 1793 fades, asin a palimpsest ad in its disappearing outlines we begin to discern not a material real lay but a process, or power, exercising elf in an act of sym- pathy which is its most characteristic feature. No passage in Wordeworth better conveys the actual moment wens spistal displacement occurs—when the light and appearances of sense fade into an immaterial plane of reality, the landscape of ‘Wordsworth’ emotional needs. “That Wordsworth was himself well aware of what his poem was doing is clear from the conclusion, where he declares him- self t0 be a “worshipper of Nature" (153) rater than a comuni- ‘cant in some visible church. Whereas these fade and fll to rain, the abbey of the mind suffers no decay, but passes ftom sym- pathetic soul to sympathetic soul—here, through all the phases ‘of Wordsworth’s own changing life, and hence from him to Dorothy as wel, whose mind: Shall be @ mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be asa dvelingplace For all sweet souncs and harmonics; oh! then solitude, o fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what Healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, ‘And these my exhortations! (140.46) Dorothy fs, of course, the reader's surrogate just as Tintern Abbey's ruins appear, on the one hand, aa visible emblem of everything that is transitory, and on the other as an emotional {ocus of al that is permanent. ‘AL the poses end We ate Left omy with the initial scene's siompest natural forms: "hese step woods and lofty clifk/ And this green pastoral landscape" (158-9). Everything else has een srased—the abbey, the beygars and displaced vagrants all that civilized culture creates and destroys, gets and spends. We are not permitted to remember 1793 and the turmoil of the French Revolution, neither is 1793 hopes nor—whal is more 10 the point for Wordsworth—the subsequent ruin of those hopes. Wordsworth displices all that into. spicitual economy where isaser is self-consciously transformed into the threat of disaster (CH thi Be but vain elit" $0-81; my italics and where dl threat, fading into a further range of self-conscious anticipation, suddenly becomes focus not of fear but of hope. For the mind has triumphed over it times. ‘Thus the poem concludes in what appears to be an immense fin, but what isin reality the deepest and most piteous less Bevwoon 1793 and 1798 Wordsworth lot the world merely 10 fain his own immortal soul. The greatness of this great poem lies im the clarity and candor with which it dramatizes not ‘merely this event, but the structure ofthis event. This part of my argument can be briefly concluded. The processes of cision which T have been describing reach their ‘notorious and brilliant apogee in the “Inimations Ode," a work Which has driven the phitologicaly inclined crite to despair. In this poem all contextual points of reference are absorbed back {no the poem's intertetual structure, The farious “pansy at my fet" the one tee of many, the timely utterance: readers have soupht long and in vain to specify the references of these pas- fags. Perhaps we glimpse 2 metaphoric aflerimage of the Bas- tile in "Shades of the priomhouse’—but pertaps not, The ‘poem generalizes—wwe now like 10 say mythologizes—all is Conflits, oF rather resituaes those conflicts out of a s0ci- historical context and into an ideological one. "We in thought ‘will oin your throng.” This i the famous process of interalia- tion which is at once the ode's central problem and its final stion as well ‘The problem is clearly presented in stanza IV when Words worth acknowledges his belief that “all the earth is gay” (29) (Oh evi day! if were sullen ‘While Earth berse's adoming, ‘This sweet May-norning ‘And the Children are culling ‘On every side, In. thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh Dower; while the su shines warm, ‘And the Babe leaps up om his Mother's arm hear, U hear, with oy I hear! (42-50) ‘The patie in the fist four stanzas is to set a contrast berween al that Wordsworth can “hear” which the poem associates with his belief im and felings of universal jos, and all that Words: worth can and cannot see. These later things, which Words: Worth asscelats initially with loss, induce in him a sense of fear and anxiety. The contrast establishes a distinction between a would of the indefinite and the unseen on the one hand, and & world of visible particulars on the other. “The things which 1 have seen T now can see no more the citalonve in stanza This fief nota record of immediacies, but a recitation of generalities ‘recalled from particular past experiences, as the very heteropene- fous character ofthe items shows. And the unadorned presente tion of these memory:mediated particulars explains that the fight ofthe visionary gleam is a function ofthe loss of immedi- ~ short, the poem's problem emerges when Wordsworth recognizes that his tense of «universal joy—his insight into the life of things—has resulted in his los of the concrete and partice wa: —But there's a Tree, of many, one, [A single Field which Ihave looked upon, ‘Both of them speak of something tha is gone: “The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat (51-8) Scholars who have labored to idemtfy that ee and the ‘singe field” and to locate the spot where Wordsworth observed the pansy, have followed the poet's own futile quest. These things {re pone, and Wordsworth fears—despte is own reiterated ‘convitions—thattheit departure wil signal the passage of "he ‘ory and the dream* as well ‘As “The Ruined Cottage” and “Tintern Adbey" have already shown, the disappearance of such particulars occurred part of 4 staiegy of displacement. But where these ari poems involved dramatizations and enactments of the state's

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