Mankind's Saving Grace or Family Romance

In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth's faith in nature is mirrored by his faith in--and hope for--future generations, emblematized by his younger sister Dorothy. Though he may speak of his own youth with a tone of slight condescension, he revels in his revisitation of it and its passions and fires as he walks through Wye with her. Furthermore, he knows that he must die and lives vicariously through his sister and the possibilities of her young life and budding love of nature and he makes a "prayer" on her behalf. This prayer--one in which he relays his hope that she will one day come to worship and understand nature with the fervor he has--is wrapped up in his own desire to inspire her and influence her. Not only does he wish that her relationship to nature imitate his own, but he wishes that her experiences with HIM will most decisively define her love of nature and serve as "healing" memories. He romanticizes his position as her older brother and idealizes its significance in her life.
Wordsworth associates a youthful perspective on nature with anguish in desire, anxiety, and unconsummated love, whereas his view of a matured and more resolved bond with nature is one of peace; a quiet and enlightened recognition. It means an appreciation for the small moments in life and simple pleasures of living, such as "life and food" and at that "for future years" to come. He claims that there is comfort in the continuum of life--in the fact that even after we "are laid to sleep," another generation will sprout up and continue to feel and enjoy the impression of nature upon them.

Form & Content in "We Are Seven"

Wordsworth‘s poem “We Are Seven” evokes a number of different feelings- we feel sad that the little maid of eight years has lost her siblings, we might also feel sad at the fact that she cannot comprehend how tragic that fact is, and from that we feel surprised at how much ease she has when she speaks of them. By the end of the poem, though, I think a large part of us is left feeling very happy for this girl, and we are ultimately left admiring her ability to treat death not as something that tears her apart from her siblings but something that merely stops her from physically being able to see them. One might ask, is it simply her very immature state as an eight year old girl that is stopping her from seeing the sadness in the situation? At that age, we are very accepting of things we are told- of “the way the world works“, so to speak. For example, when I first asked my mother if we all die and she said yes, I apparently responded by nodding my head up and down. I was not troubled, I just merely made note of it. I think that the young maiden in the poem does responds to the narrator the way she does for this very reason- and I think by looking at the form of the poem, we can see that Wordsworth’s intention was to show that circling back to what might seem like an immature or undeveloped form of looking at things is perhaps the best way to cope with tragic occurrences. Perhaps just accepting the world and all that we are offered is the only way to be sane. “We Are Seven” is written in ballad form, and has a simple abab rhyming pattern. Each of its sixteen stanzas contains four lines except for the last stanza- which contains a (literally) defiant fifth line:

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

The fairly simple language and rhyme scheme are so musical and easy to read in order to show that, much like the little maiden shows the pompous-seeming narrator (who remains unmoved by her wonderful way of treating death and insists that his trying to talk sense into her is wasted), the most fruitful, beautiful and deeply meaningful messages don’t always come in beautiful epic stanzas with gorgeous metaphors, etc. We can find so much beauty and truth in simplicity as opposed to many people’s incessant need to forever make things more complicated to find beauty in them, as well as the beauty and truth in just accepting the way the world functions instead of incessantly questioning its ways.

"Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create, And what perceive;”

The fact that Tintern Abbey provides a backdrop for Wordsworth’s poem is relevant in ways both literal and symbolic. Composing this work after a visit to the Gothic abbey afforded Wordsworth the ideal setting for a rumination on nature, the passage of time and the gains and losses of memory. The fact that the Abbey does not appear in the poem renders it more of a symbolic destination for Wordsworth, eschewing the splendor of the actual ruins for a sublime psycho-visual creation of mind and memory, as

“a lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

And what perceive;” (103-107)

An abbey is traditionally a place of contemplation, spirituality, and transcendence. Wordsworth moves away from Tintern Abbey towards unbounded nature, perhaps as a metaphor for moving away from religion as the means to attain transcendence and finding spirituality in nature. The absence of the actual Abbey in the poem and its emphasis on nature also points to this move towards nature as the conduit to transcendence. If nature and sensory perception are such conduits, the space of contemplation would then become the mind as opposed to an external site. As Wordsworth stated in the quote Professor Jones provided from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, poetry stems from an emotion evoked through tranquility (nature) which is then contemplated until “the tranquillity [the extrinsic/sensual experience] gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.”

Thus, the mind becomes a space for both contemplation and creation, and the senses serve as both perceptive and creative forces in that they take in “all that we behold” and interpret such impressions that become catalysts for reflection and artistic creation. This idea of sensory/physiological perception as opposed to cognitive/conceptual perception to me relates to the notion of the picturesque landscape. The artist sees an actual landscape, reflects on it, and then interprets it in a way that transcends reality. Thus what is presented as a landscape is a fusion of both what the “eye and ear…half create, and what [we] perceive”.

The Light of Setting Suns: Wordsworth and the Sublimity of Nature

Wordsworth’s meditation on his visit to the banks of the Wye at Tintern Abbey is an excellent example of a characteristic poem encapsulating the values of the romantic age. While his claims that the poem was conceived entirely in his head and transcribed with no changes have faced a great deal of skepticism from many literary critics, his deeply immersive language used to describe the power and beauty of nature is nevertheless an amazing of its own that has helped characterized some of the connecting themes of the Romantic Age.

Although the Tintern Abbey itself is never physically described, its presence in the title immediately suggests religious connotations to the poem, however in line with the “romantic spirit”, Wordsworth religion appears to be nature, with a pantheistic perspective present throughout all mentions of God. For example, “Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused,/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/And the round ocean, and the living air,/ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,/ A motion and a spirit, that impels/ All thinking things, all objects of all though,/And rolls through all things…” (96-103). We see hear that the motion and a spirit are entirely natural forms, suggesting that God is quite literally nature, and not some anthropomorphized removed being. These lines are also excellent examples of the way Wordsworth is able to paint the picturesque with such ease; moving from the light of setting suns to the round ocean and blue sky, and then into green meadows and woods, Wordsworth identifies nature as the “anchor of my purest thoughts” and the “guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being.” Clearly to Wordsworth, nature itself is a religious experience.

While I too have to remain skeptical of whether such a well-crafted poem could be conceived fully in his mind and then transcribed literally, Wordsworth’s reflections on nature and the power it holds over him are supreme examples of romantic literature.

Body to Mind

In Tintern Abbey, I was really interested in how Wordsworth's relationship with nature changed as he got older and, of course, in turn, changed him. He talks of when "wild ecstasies shall be matured into a sober pleasure". As a youth, the body was what was important, enjoying coarser, animal pleasures. The extremes were extreme, "aching joys" and "dizzy raptures". There was indeed nothing wrong with this, it was wonderful and pleasurable, but these things of youth, of "thoughtless youth" (I think this is an important phrase, emphasizing that youth is more concerned with matters of the body and the material), but now Wordsworth is older and his relationship with nature has changed, but it is not something that saddens him, for although he has lost certain gifts, he has gained others that (more than) make up for the ones lost. Nature lightens the mysteries and weight of this confusing and foreign world. "We are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul." Again, the body becomes less important as it is our soul that is awakened, and we gain a deeper understanding of the world, one that comes from closing our physical eyes and opening those of our minds. Wordsworth speaks of hearing the "still, sad music of humanity"...but it is not a harsh music, but simply one that sobers us. The exuberant youth is sobered, but is none the worse for it. As we age, we gain so much in our relationship with nature, gain in our peace of mind and connectedness, we are now running towards it instead of away from it. But I do not think that Wordsworth finds one stage of this relationship better than the other. They both have their time and should be enjoyed and embraced equally, it is a natural progression ("other gifts have followed, for such loss, I would believe, abundant recompense.")

Memory and Tintern Abbey

I have read Lines Composed... once before for class, and in both readings I am struck both by the melancholy of reflection that is shown as well as the strange kind of revitalization that seems to come with age.
Though Wordsworth no can no longer frolic through the woods of his youth, he seems to have resolved himself to this fact and is able to achieve a similar (though more sober) kind of joy in his current aged state of reflection and slow observation. In the experiential moment of running through the woods and participating in the rituals of youth there is not time for reflection or appreciation, yet once infirmities overcome the senses and the mind only is left to us, then there is a replenishment of the soul and mind in remembering those moments. All this is well and good, yet what if the mind itself is degenerating as well?
Our memory is an imperfect vessel for the experiences and emotions of youth, so while we may have the feeling of being able to look back and replay moments past, in actuality these moments were not actually how we remember them. However, I believe that there is comfort in this too. Wordsworth looks back on his youth and sees only good; pastoral images of his youthful self dashing through fresh wilderness and cool stream, though nowhere does he mention the heartbreak that comes with education or the pangs of experience, thus it seems that perhaps his memory is somewhat skewed. I trust in this skewing, I choose to trust in the quiet treachery of memory to cause us to remember the good and slowly forget the bad and the neutral until finally our later years become dominated by the repetition of the mantra, "things used to be better," until finally it becomes true, and in our minds things truly were better.

The Role of Tintern Abbey as Inspiration

It is interesting to me that Wordsworth's poem mentions Tintern Abbey in the title, yet the abbey does not appear in the poem itself. Wordsworth's meditations on time and memory clearly have some relation to the abbey--else, why mention it?--but they are once removed, it seems.

Wordsworth was not the only poet (or artist) for whom Tintern Abbey seems to have served as inspiration. That fact is unsurprising, given the abbey's grandeur and the romantic themes inherent in decay and ruin. These other poems and pieces of art are interesting, nonetheless, for the insight they might give about how the abbey serves as inspiration.

The artist JMW Turner apparently painted the abbey several times. One example is here:

His paintings emphasize the abbey's size and the romantic "wildness" of it, as with the plants growing along the arches in the painting above. Compare to a picture of the abbey in the present day:While the landscape has certainly changed since the 1700s (the painting was from 1794, the year after Wordsworth's visit), it seems likely that Turner still romanticized the abbey considerably in order to show it as a symbol of the past being literally overgrown in its decay.

Two other poets were famously inspired by the abbey: Tennyson and Allen Ginsberg (an interesting pair, to be sure). Tennyson wrote the short poem "Tears, Idle Tears." Similarly to Wordsworth's, Tennyson's poem discusses the past and how we view it. The two poets seem to have been driven by the abbey to write upon the same basic theme.

Ginsberg's experience at the abbey was probably somewhat different; he was reportedly on LSD at the time of his visit; given that, his poem ("Wales Visitation") is remarkably similar, discussing the influence of the past. He shows a special interest in both the pastoral landscape that enchanted Wordsworth and the idea of the "bard" (he references Wordsworth and Blake by name, as a matter of fact).

Through all of these works of art, the influence of the abbey is remarkably consistent in its evocation of the past and the idea of memory.

Tintern Tempo: Pacing and line breaks provide excitement and passion

I was very interested in the effect that the structure of Tintern Abbey had on the way I read the poem aloud. Almost all of the lines are injambed, resulting in an interesting reading tempo. I Feel that it is unnatural to pause for more than a moment at the point where the injambed thoughts connect, and I want to pause for a longer period of time at the end of each line. This long pause at the line ends interrupts a thought halfway through before releasing tension at the beginning of the next line. When reading aloud, I got the impression that I often have when trying to express ideas that are not easily put into words. I begin to say something, pause to think, then continue. My next thought follows immediately without pause, but I am then forced again to pause and recollect my thoughts. This usually happens when a topic of discussion is exciting and inspiring, but hard to describe or to relate to others. Perhaps this is what Wordsworth was struggling with as well. He says in the introduction that he wrote this poem while traveling and did not change it at all when he later wrote it down. I can imagine his excitement and passion welling, causing him to rush ahead, then slow down to reconnect with his listener. Reading aloud, I felt that the structure of the poem imparted to me the same sense of urgency and passion. How remarkable it is that a poetic structure's effects on my speaking pattern could so obviously impact my feelings.

Cycles in Tintern Abbey

I found Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey" to exhibit a similar yet somewhat more pronounced form of cyclic language than does "To Autumn" or any of the other nature-focused poems we have read. Keats and Blake tend to address nature more linearly (first you're alive, then you're dead, then other things can live), and others, such as Shelley, address it spontaneously (eg, in this moment, the wind is blowing, the stars are glittering, etc). Here, I value nature's perceived continuity.

I believe Wordsworth's focus on the moment as part of a phase and neither a beginning nor an end nor instance allows the poem to transcend our ideas of time as punctuated. This then sets the stage for the remainder of the poem, where he wishes nature were his original teacher, that he might consider time on earth less futile (140-147).

A Return to Nature

While death and how we cope with it is the primary subject of Wordsworth's We Are Seven, there is an underlying theme of nature at play. It is no secret that Wordsworth is infatuated with nature and it's healing powers, and he manages to convey this idea through the little girl in the poem. While the little girl seems to be your average wide-eyed eight-year-old, her description almost gives you the sense that she is not so average after all. Considering she is "wildly clad" and possesses a "rustic, woodland air," it seems as though the girl, who is alone and only mentions her "mother" in passing, has emerged from the forest, which presumably she calls home. When we learn that the girl's brother and sister are buried beneath a church-yard tree, and that she dwells nearby in a cottage with her mother, it becomes increasingly clear that the girl is deeply connected to nature. It is possible that "mother" serves a dual function in this scenario, as the girl lives under the guidance of "mother" nature instead of an older woman. Regardless, it seems as though Wordsworth is trying to draw some sort of link between the little girl's positive rationalization of death and her supreme connection to nature. Perhaps the fact that she has developed this strong relationship with nature has allowed her to think about death in the way that she does. By sitting in the church yard "upon the ground" by her brother and sister's graves, the girl feels closer to her siblings, whose death in a sense marks a return to the Earth from which all life was created. Whether or not she is aware of it, the little girl knows much more about the universe than many. She understands that death can be as prevalent as life and that everything is cyclical - in the end we find that a deep connection to nature is ultimately the only thing that can help us get through hard times by providing a better, more holistic understanding of how the world works.

we are seven

In “We are Seven” a man comes across a young girl and begins a conversation. The girl is eight years old, which is also the age Wordsworth was when his mother died. The speaker cannot accept that the young girl still feels she is one of seven siblings even after two of her siblings have died even though she now lives at home alone with her mother. The poem begins with the question of what a child should know of death and at first it seems as if the little girl cannot quite conceptualize death. In fact she seems to be in denial about the deaths of her siblings, especially because she continues to spend time with them and sing to them. However, at the end it seems as though the little girl understands more about life and death than the speaker. She is unwilling to cast her dead siblings out of her life and instead accepts change as a part of nature and continues to live her life as positively as she can. This mirrors the conclusions drawn in “Lines Written in Early Spring” in that, the young girl and the speaker of “Lines Written in Early Spring” have come to terms with nature and the pain it brings- the fact that “man has of man.” In “Lines Written in Early Spring” nature, like the young girl, is described as “fair,” with the capacity to make decisions and experience joy. In the end, nature or the young girl is the stronger force and the speaker or humanity fails in rejecting nature or sticking to his miserable ways of thought. In “Lines Written in Early Spring” the speaker is distraught at the notion of perfecting nature and is driven to question the mistakes of humanity. In “We are Seven” the speaker is also distraught by the young girls denial of her dead siblings and instantly feels compelled to question her as to how she can still believe she has seven siblings. Wordsworth describes the girl as having a “woodland air” to liken her to nature because youth, like nature, should not be tainted or corrected.

Narrative in the Music of "Der Erlkönig"

In Franz Schubert's setting of Goethe's poem "Der Erlkönig" we can see clearly the dramatic capabilities of music itself. Schubert, in many ways, mimics and complements the drama of the text in his music. Even with no clue as to what is happening in the text, it is very possible for the listener to get a sense as to what is going on dramatically. This is particularly relevant to those of us who do not know German (and the luxury of a translation is absent) and we must solely rely on the music to narrate the drama. Schubert uses a variety of rhetorical devices that conducts its own related plot along side that of Goethe.

Schubert, at the beginning of "Erlkönig," sets the mood for the poem by visualizing the first stanza ("Who rides so late through night and wind?... a father with his child... clasps him tight..."). It begins in g minor driven by incessant triplets in the right hand of the piano, reflecting the urgency of the galloping hooves, and a sinister and eerie motif in the left hand that provides form and unity to the piece. The piano accompaniment is the foundation for the entire song and is the vehicle that takes us from character to character, key to key, and stanza to stanza.

One of the more unique things about the text itself is that it encompasses 4 different voices (narrator, father, son, & Erlkönig). To differentiate between these characters with a single voice (Singstimme) Schubert exploits the range of the singer, the piano accompaniment, and intervallic gestures. For instance, we can sense that the son is speaking when the singer wails in the high range and frequently sings agonizing melodic half-steps in phrases. Likewise, if the piano accompaniment lightens up and becomes more fluid in a brighter key (major) and the singing consists of fluid rising-falling gestures, then the listener is safe to assume that this is the voice of Erlkönig.

As a result of character changes, progression in the drama, and overall expectation for a piece of music to have contrasting/interesting material, "Der Erlkönig" experiences a number of key areas via the continuous triplets in the piano. These key areas do not linger for very long and are defined by their cadences (perfect-authentic cadences...). It was a delight to discover that the progression of keys in this song actually spell out the sinister motif that distinguishes this piece so well (i-III-IV-v-VI-v-i).

It is quite fun to find all the little tricks and subtleties that Schubert incorporates into his Lieder (German art songs) writing in order to reflect the drama of the text and/or create its own narrative. There are many more which I have not mentioned here so have a listen:

music/video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8noeFpdfWcQ

score:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Erlk%C3%B6nig,_D.328_%28Op.1%29_%28Schubert,_Franz%29

Parallels of Acceptance in "To Autumn" and "Tintern Abbey"

A frustrated futility permeates most of John Keats’s Odes, as the speaker struggles desperately to transcend his mortality and realize the eternality of the beauty around him — both in art and in nature. The hopeless questions of “Grecian Urn” and the “draughts of vintage” in “Nightingale” exemplify a refusal to accept human transience. Yet the final ode, “To Autumn,” replaces this refusal with a calm acceptance — or, more accurately, a rejection of the entire quest.

This rejection echoes the “suspension” of human blood in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.” As time elapses and the speaker leaves behind the “hour of thoughtless youth,” he is troubled by the “lofty” questions his old age poses. Yet, as Keats’s speaker did in “Autumn,” he finds “abundant recompence” for his lost innocence and forced confrontation with human temporality not in any answers to those questions but to a cessation of them.

In “Autumn” the passage of time and the agency of nature is suspended, allowing the speaker to find joy and transcendence in the swelling of the beauty around him in the present. Similarly, the elder speaker of “Tintern Abbey” feels the “burden of the mystery…of all this unintelligible world…lighten’d” as the “affectations” of the natural splendor around him “quiets” the burning questions of human mortality. He is “laid asleep/In body, and becomes a living soul,” just as Keats’s deified autumn is portrayed as lying lazily asleep, allowing him to revel in the swelling life and beauty of swallows gathering and sheep bleating.

Both poems center on speakers who are facing the twilight of their lives who are “disturbed” with the “elevated thoughts” encapsulated by the grandeur of the world around them. While Keats’s odes allow us to see the anguished process that leads to eventual acceptance, we see parallels to that acceptance in an elder Wordsworth’s reaction to nature.

I would first just like to say that I love how simply Wordsworth is able to state things and yet still say something profound. The poem that really drew my attention was "Expostulation and Reply". His friend Matthew is of the mind that simply by sitting on a stone, Wordsworth is wasting his time away. Where are the books, books that enlighten us, books that without which we would be left in a sort of darkeness...Matthew seems to see our purpose on earth to be to learn from those that came before us, and, making assumptions, to make progress, to constantly be learning and progressing as humans. To him, this is the meaning of enlightenment...

Wordsworth, on the other hand, is simply sitting on a rock, "when life was sweet I knew not why". He states that our eyes always see, we cannot stop ourselves from hearing, and that our bodies are always feeling, whether we fight against these feelings or not. Our body is always alive and aware, and such things are beyond our control and choice. Therefore (I'm not really sure this is the conclusion Wordsworth came to exactly, but it's kind of what I understood and found meaningful from what he said...), there are these other powers that are constantly impressing themselves upon our minds , but it is important that we are passive and allow them to feed us. Nothing will come of itself, and so it is pointless to seek...yet we still seek. There is nothing wrong with dreaming one's time away, one may learn more from it than from reading the words of others, having our own realizations and experiences.

Wordsworth’s Romanticization of the Elderly

Two of the poems for Tuesday’s class, “Simon Lee” and “Old Man Travelling,” are stories about a narrator who comes across on old man on his travels. Wordsworth’s poem “The Old Cumberland Beggar”, which we read earlier in the course, contains similar subject matter.

Wordsworth seems to romanticize the old men in his poems in multiple ways. First, he emphasizes their connectedness with nature. He idealizes them as good people. He acknowledges their decrepit physical states but asserts that their age has made them more respectable than younger people.

In all three of the poems, the narrator encounters an old man in nature. Simon Lee and his wife live in a moss-grown hut of clay (line 57), and both the old man travelling and the Cumberland Beggar are perpetually on the road. Because they live in nature, these men are connected to it in a way that other people are not. Simon Lee lives off the land. The old man travelling is guided by nature to perfect peace (lines 12-13). The Cumberland Beggar’s eyes “have been so long familiar with the earth [that they] no more behold the horizontal sun rising or setting,” (lines 180-182).

Although the men are pitiable because of their old age, Wordsworth portrays them as venerable as well. Simon Lee’s gratitude makes the narrator mourn for him prematurely. The old man travelling possesses many admirable qualities, including patience, peace, and thoughtfulness. Wordsworth represents the Cumberland Beggar as useful (line 67) and deserving of reverence (line 170). Some of these men’s respectability comes from their age, as it has taught them good qualities and made them stoic and persistent in their endeavors.

Wordsworth acknowledges that the men in these poems are in poor health, even near death. However, their “animal tranquility and decay” are the roots of their best qualities. Wordsworth used his writing to promote treating the elderly with kindness. I guess it’s a good thing that Wordsworth lived to be 80, so he could take advantage of the advice he gave to others throughout his writing career.

Anecdote for Fathers: The Epitome of Romanticism

This poem explores several of Romanticism's core ideals; glorification of innocence/childhood, condemnation of reason, and love for an unconfined nature. The poem follows a walk between a father and son at their house on a farm. The father wants to know whether the boy prefers the farm or their other house by the "green sea." The child responds, saying the shore house at Kilve. When he cannot/ chooses not to articulate why he prefers Kilve the father pushes and pushes for a defined answer. The boy ignores the father's incessant questions, ("my boy... hung down his head, nor made reply; and five times did I say to him, "Why? Edward, tell me why?"" 46-48). Finally, upon spotting a weather vane the child replies "At Kilve there was no weather-cock, And that's the reason why." (55-56). The vane, the weather-cock, is a logical, quantifying machine that attempts to measure the weather- reduce nature to numbers and units. This is what turns the boy off of Liswyn farm. By having the vane be the catalyst for the son's response, Wordsworth marries the unconfined nature of Kilve to the purity of childhood. This is a stark contrast to the father, who pushes and pushes for a logical explanation of the child's preference. As he is an adult, a member of society, a human tainted by experience, the father has become a weather vane himself, forcing something free (the boy in this case) into logic. At the poem's conclusion, the father recognizes the beauty in the five year old's simplistic response and sings, "oh dearest, dearest boy! my heart for better lore would seldom yearn, could I but teach the hundredth part of what from thee I learn." (57-60). This suggests that a return to innocence and purity is achievable even in adulthood. If as adults we listen to children, we can learn from them and return to the uninhibited, sublime state of innocence that they unknowingly occupy. There is no answer to every question and there is no need to question everything. To search for logic is to confine something into words and reasons and concepts. To leave it alone is to let it grow and exist in ways that we cannot touch.

Wordsworth and Nature

Deep ecology, a particularly radical environmental movement is based in a deeply spiritual view of nature. Deep ecologists believe that the earth does not exist solely for human appropriation, but rather is a moral authority by which our actions should be judged. In reading Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," I could not help but draw a parallel between Wordsworth's view of nature, and that of deep ecologists. When Wordsworth states that nature is his "guide, the guardian of (his) heart, and soul/Of all (his) moral being," it becomes clear that his view of nature closely resembles religion - the basis for all morality, and something that he worships intensely. Environmental historian William Cronon is strongly against this idea that we can appeal to nature as a source of intrinsic moral value, and believes that Romantic era poets, such as Wordsworth, have been responsible for inspiring the deep ecology movement. Before the Romantic era, for instance, the idea of the "wilderness" was largely regarded as something to be afraid of and avoid at all costs. Over time, there has been a shift in the way society views the wilderness, and it is much more consistent with the way Wordsworth saw it - as beautiful and sublime, but also as possessing this sense of spirituality. William Cronon suggests that it is the Romantic era which created this conception of nature, which is entirely a human construction applying human values to nature, something that is distinctly different from the human being. This makes us question how we can appeal to nature as the objective measure by which we draw our values, when this conception of nature was likely created by those very values. The fact that William Wordsworth is largely responsible for changing the way human beings view nature makes the influential poet seem all the more significant in the grand scheme of history.

Connections between nature and death in "We Are Seven"

The emphasis on nature and immortality in Wordsworth’s We Are Seven shows an underlying Romantic idea about our connection to nature through death. The child in this poem treats her dead brother and sister as if they are still alive, causing the narrator of the poem surprise because he sees that they are obviously dead. The girl’s description of her brother’s and sister’s death surrounded by her playing outside with them before death or around their graves after their deaths ("So in the church-yard she was laid /And all the summer dry / Together round her grave we played / My brother John and I.”) shows a connection for the girl between death and nature. She associates playing and being outdoors with being with her dead siblings. Also, her sister Jane lay inside in bed in pain, and when she died she was buried outside, where she was no longer in pain. This positive association between nature and sensation that the girl makes emphasizes the healing qualities of nature. The immortality of the girl’s dead siblings that is only apparent when she is outside with them can be seen not only as a childish faith but also as an expression of the Romantic emphasis on nature and the idea that when we die, we become a part of nature. The girl probably wouldn’t have seen it this way, but this poem might be trying to put the idea into the narrator’s head and our heads subtly.

Thomas and Beethoven: Darkness to Light

Thomas Cole’s “Lake with Dead Trees” reminds me of Beethoven’s idea of “darkness to light”. In this painting, the part closer to us is mostly about darkness or death. We see lots of dead trees. The woods look dark, although the trees in it are supposed to be live. The clouds are dark and low. As we look further, the darkness is gradually lightened up. Further from us, there are mountains covered by green forests, a bit of the blue sky, and rosy clouds. Thus, Thomas shows the process from darkness to light by changing colors and objects. How does Beethoven show this process in his music? He often starts a piece with a minor mode, which depicts darkness, and ends it with a major mode, which depicts light. For example, the 3^rd movement of his Piano Sonata 110 starts with in melancholic B minor and ends triumphantly in A major mode.

Interestingly, Beethoven often marks the moment of triumph with religious elements, such as a fugue and a holy chorale. In the 3^rd movement of his Piano Sonata 110, a fugue appears twice (each time in a different key), and the movement finally ends with it. I guess Beethoven marks the achievement of light in this way, because he believes we transcend our misery through religious thinking.

Human being needs help to conquer the darkness, (maybe because the darkness in human world is “mind-forg’d manacles.”) But as we can see in the painting, natural creatures go from darkness to light naturally—trees die and grow; the sky covered by dark clouds will appear blue. Do natural creatures have a privilege? Or are they telling us a truth, that after dark comes light?

Here is a link to Pollini's performance of the 3rd movement of Beethoven Piano Sonata 110.

To Autumn and Dovedale by Moonlight

One of the things I noticed while studying Dovedale by Moonlight was the distinctive quietness that resonates throughout the painting. To me, this was somewhat reminiscent of "To Autumn" by Keats in its soft, unbroken tone. While my group determined that this landscape was probably meant to represent a clear summer night, the quiet and unassuming nature of the landscape certainly makes it comparable to Keats's poem. For me, the muted colours and the rendering of light create this soft, quiet atmosphere, comparable to the sweet images and gentle language in Keats's poem. The landscape is composed entirely in a palette of greys, greens and browns, with the exception of the moonlight--these muted colours downplay the grandeur of the landscape. When compared with the brilliance of Cole's colouring in Lake with Dead Trees, expressing the magnificence of the American landscape, the soft, quiet tone that Joseph Wright of Derby emphasises becomes all the more apparent. Rather than expressing the sublime and the wildness of nature, or even man's tumultuous relationship with it, Wright instead chooses to express a moment of quiet, as if this is a moment in which nature is truly herself, completely untouched and unmarred by human presence--a moment which would have been rare for the English landscape at this time. This connects somewhat to "Think not of them, thou hast thy music too", as Wright chooses to highlight this specific, human-less moment in the landscape, perhaps highlighting the beauty of nature's music without the presence of man. Additionally, the notion of changing seasons and more broadly, change itself, that we see in "To Autumn" is also suggested in this painting. To me, this is best most apparent in the swelling of the clouds around the moon: it is in their forms that we find the most movement in the painting, and they seem almost to be swirling, indicating perhaps a change in weather, and evoke to me in some sense the sands of time, constantly in motion. The illuminated clouds that peak over the skyline also indicate with their colouring and their placement something peaking over the edge of the painting where we cannot see, some illumination or change that is imminent. Overall, I felt that this painting certainly expressed some of the most important ideas and themes from Keats's "To Autumn", most notably his very quiet, unassuming tone.

This Lime Tree Bower: Romanticism and Transportation

I was very happy to explore this poem concurrently with the landscapes at AMAM this week because I felt that not only was it a beautiful comment on the power of nature, but also on the power of art. Despite the fact that Coleridge is physically separated from his friends, he is able to be somewhat transported to where they are because of his love of nature ("As I myself were there!"(45). The poem itself echoes this same effect as the reader is not physically with Coleridge sitting beneath a lime tree bower in 18th century England, but because of poetry, we are able to be transported to this world. This can also be said of the paintings we looked at this week. My group studied Cole's Lake with Dead Trees. One of Cole's objectives in painting it was to instill a sense of national pride in American viewers. This was at a time of rapid industrialization. Cole's idyllic preservation of America's wilderness could, like Coleridge's poetry and the the nature depicted in Lime-Tree, transport Americans back to the wilderness and away from urban city life. The ability to transport a reader/viewer is an incredible facet explored in Romantic art and writing, as well as a core component in Romanticists obsession with nature.

For the AMAM presentations my group did Garden of the Princess by Claude Monet. This painting looked as if it was divided into three sections: a garden, the city and the sky. Aside from the sky, the painting was very rigid; it had sharp angles and was very structured and sectioned. There is also a fence separating the perfectly pruned garden from the city area, which was full of people as if to clearly separate nature and industry. At the time that Monet painted this painting city planning and industry were taking off and Paris was becoming an important metropolis. Even though Monet created a divide between humans/city and nature, he depicts such a controlled unnatural representation of nature that it serves as a production of this new growing industrialism. This notion contrasts the romantic notion of a wild and free nature. However the sky, unlike the rest of the painting is knotted in itself, wild and free. This is completely opposite to what Wordsworth writes, “So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! 
So like, so very like, was day to day!” Instead the painting has an uncontrolled sky and a seemingly controlled day-to-day life. It is almost as it the sky is coming at you when looking at the picture. The sky seems to warn against trying to control nature. Towards the end of the poem, Wordsworth writes: “Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, / Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind! / Such happiness, wherever it be known, / Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.” The word “kind” is like nature or humankind. Thus what is natural to humankind is to be in an uncontrolled true form of nature according to Wordsworth, and in my opinion according to the painting Monet feels the same way.

hea[r]t

In a footnote for Keats's 'This living hand' it describes the possibility that, due to his characteristic dropping of the letter "r" in his handwriting, he intended the word in line 5 to be 'heart' instead of 'heat'. The footnote also states that even though 'heart' best fits the context, 'heat' is also relevant. So, after reading this poetic fragment (?), I immediately became curious about this word and of Keats' original intention for the word. To get a better idea about which word he meant, we must take a look at the meaning of the poem.

I found this poem to be extremely threatening. Lines 1-2 express a newfound ('now') strength of the speaker (hand) which, after reading the entirety of the poem, sounds aggressive and forward. Lines 3-8 comprises the threat: if the speaker was 'cold' or in a malicious mood then they would 'haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights/ That thou would wish thine own hea[r]t dry of blood'. This view is solidified in line 6 with 'So in my veins red life might stream again' which is relief and satisfaction in the poet. 'Conscience-calm'd' could mean a lot of things but in this context I interpreted it as being synonymous with being lifeless/ dead (R.I.P). With '-see here it is-/ I hold it towards you-' in the last two lines, this expresses confidence and directness towards reader. This interpretation of the meaning of this poem leans more towards favoring the word 'heart' over 'heat' however, by inserting 'heat' in, it gives us a very interesting perspective. When thinking of heat, I think of it as something that is given off- output or a product. With this in mind I get the feeling that Keats was directing this poem to another writer or, quite possibly, a critic (the heat/ writings of the critic). This also supports the idea that the hand could also mean handwriting and specifically the writing/ works of Keats himself. Lastly, the vagueness of the word 'hea[r]t' was perhaps an intentional choice by Keats for this supports the rather haunting ambiguity of the poem...

The Process of Writing Poetry in "Bright Star"

I had never seriously thought about the actual process of writing a poem until watching this movie and seeing it played out on screen. I understand that different writers must have different ways of writing efficiently, but I imagined that poetry writing is a process that a writer would carry out from start to finish by him or herself. This could be a very modern or very naive way to look at it. I'm not sure. The film “Bright Star”, focuses specifically on the last years of John Keats' life and a little about the creation of some of his last works. What I found really interesting about the portrayal of Keats as a writer in this movie is how closely he works to Charles Brown- but only while he is trying to write- not actually writing. In the scene in which Fanny Brawne delivers a basket of biscuits for Keats' dying brother Tom, Keats and Brown seem to literally be laying around “waiting for inspiration” as if it was going to just waltz through the door at any moment (which, ironically, it kind of did seeing as Brawne would later be his last main source of poetic inspiration). When Keats does fall intensely in love and is suddenly full of inspiration for writing, it is portrayed in a scene that I interpreted as such:

We see Keats pulling up a chair to a cherry blossom (I'm not sure, I'm just guessing here) tree that's in full bloom (symbol for his own inspiration being in full bloom). After he has sat down the camera is fully focused on his face. His facial expression is one of clarity, even though he is squinting slightly, perhaps implying the creative process behind the beautiful poetry that is being narrated by his own voice in the background. This is followed by a montage of shots of Fanny, himself writing the poetry onto little pieces of paper, and we are then lead to a scene where Brown and Keats are moving the little pieces of ink-ridden paper all over a table.

I think the first instance where we see Keats successfully writing poetry is presented this way in order to emphasize how important it was to work with other writers during this period in time, but only to a certain degree. I think it also shows how work is pulled out of you when you are drastically affected by something in your life. This could obviously be completely dramatized, Hollywood-ized, or whatever you want to call it. I found it very interesting nonetheless and it made me think about why I had this image in my head of a writer with a head in his hands, wildly scribbling alone in a candlelit room. It's because, and maybe I'm wrong, less and less writers are known for being in fabulous collectives with other famous writers. It's almost fantasy-like to imagine that multiple people whom you consider talented or acknowledge as famous, and people who you learned about on separate occasions all knew each-other and interacted. With the exception of grouping them together as “contemporary writers”, I feel like I hear about famous modern writers doing and publishing works by themselves more than with others. If I am completely wrong (because I really would not consider myself an expert in this field) I would love to hear what's really happening in the contemporary writing scene in a comment.

Happiness and Hemlock

In the first stanza of Ode to a Nightingale, the narrator speaks of feeling a "drowsy numbness" like that experienced when one drinks hemlock. As the note says, hemlock is a sedative that is deadly in large doses. It also states that Lethe is a mythic river in the underworld which produces forgetfulness of a previous life. This is certainly fitting with the sedative effects of hemlock, but to take it further, by saying he "Lethe wards had sunk", the narrator could mean that he was not only sinking towards this forgetfulness, but also possibly the underworld and death itself. Keats seems to imply that happiness is much like hemlock.

We see this happiness in the nightingale, who is "being too happy in thine happiness". Use of the word "too" implies that it is excessive, and it gives the phrase a negative connotation. In stanza two, the narrator speaks of drinking (although it mentions wine, not hemlock), then in stanza three expresses a desire to "fade", "dissolve" and "forget", which can be linked to the first stanza in which hemlock and the river of Lethe are spoken of. He is hoping to escape that which "thou amongst the leaves hast never known", which is quite obviously referring to the nightingale, which again, is the representation of excessive happiness. The nightingale is quite naive, knowing nothing of the pains and struggles that our narrator so wants to forget. He will follow the nightingale, but his "dull brain perplexes and retards"...this is possibly referring to the dulling of the senses by a sedative, as I like to think, happiness. But where he is there is no light. He is in darkness and cannot see or truly sense what surrounds him, but can only guess.

As I believe Kelsey(?) said, the word "forlorn" brings the narrator back to himself. "The fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do". Perhaps the fancy that is being referred to is that of numbing the senses, believing happiness, in order to escape pain. But this sedate and numb state is not pure ecstasy . This fancy cannot cheat him into believing this the ideal state.

Finally, (I'm assuming) the nightingale is referred to as "deceiving elf". Perhaps because in his extreme happiness, he has tricked us into believe that we can be as happy and carefree. But the nightingale was "not born for death". We forget that it has not experienced that same pains of life that we as humans have, "where but to think is to be full of sorrow". In the end, I feel Keats is giving a sort of warning against believing we can achieve the pure happiness and freedom from pain/ease of living that we think we see in nature, and that we in fact shouldn't attempt it. For in dulling ourselves to pain, we are dulling ourselves to our senses and the world.

Human Limitation in "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

“Ode to a Nightingale” begins with an exasperated expression of human limitation: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/my sense…” The speaker wishes he could “dissolve” and become as pure as the innocent and beautiful nightingale, yet is repeatedly restricted by the transience of life and the particularly cruel tragedy of old age (“where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”.) The fact that numbness, a lack of feeling, “pains” the speaker evokes a yearning for lasting connection that came to define the Romantic period. A lack of feeling, it appears, is more painful than any physical anguish.

As in the artwork of “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker speaks in envy of the eternity of beauty of the nightingale’s song, saying “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! … The voice I hear this passing night was heard/In ancient days by emperor and clown.” The invocations of both death and the “passing night” place the nightingale and its song in direct contrast with humanity and its fleeting mortality.

The human mind is limited by a lack of “light,/Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown/through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.”

However, whereas the concerns expressed in the questions “Grecian Urn” merely go unanswered, in “Nightingale” the speaker actually embraces this humanity. He rejects “Bacchus and his pards,” instead choosing to transcend his mortality through the “viewless wings of Posey.” And although the word “forlorn” is a cold reminder of man’s limitations, the song of the nightingale — representation of eternity and beauty and “truth” — remains just in the “next valley-glades” seemingly attainable upon an inevitable but “easeful” death.

A Bright Star held in This Living Hand: Two Poems, Two Sides of Love

In both "This living hand" and "Bright star", Keats struggles with the isolation that accompanies death and expresses how strongly he wishes to remain among the living. His motivation for doing so is two-fold. "This living hand" compares the warmness of human contact to the cold silence of death. He fears what effect his death would have on the person he speaks to in the poem. "That thou would wish thine own hea[r]t dry of blood / So in my veins red life might stream again," (lines 5,6) The extention of Keats' hand to the listener will placate her worry and, for her sake, he still lives. This focus on the listener's wishes as motivation for Keats to live on stands in stark contrast to his views presented in "Bright Star", where he compells himself to live eternally so that he never feels the pain of separation from his love. If he should fail to be steadfast and cease to feel his head on the chest of his lover, "Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, / And so live ever - or else swoon to death." (lines 12-14) Here, Keats' motivation for living is his own attachment to his lover. It is not her pain, but his, that he fears should they be separated. In these two short poems, I believe that Keats captures the interesting and complex dual-nature of love. On one hand, lovers selflessly care for the happiness and well-being of each other; on the other hand, a certain amount of selfishness drives a person to preserve his or her own interests. I feel that Keats would have well understood these competing forces because of his situation with Fanny Brawne. He loved her dearly and wanted to be with her, but his financial situation prevented him from marrying. He was selfishly pursuing her, but could not openly express his feelings as this would be inappropriate for the time period. How one so passionate must have struggled with his position...

Keats' "Hand"

In eight lines of Keats’ “This Living Hand” he evokes a condition similar to that of Frankenstein’s creation, who exists in a purgatory-like space between life and the vast, unknowable state beyond human existence. The hand Keats describes is clearly living, as the title states, yet it seems to be on the precipice of death or at least mortal extinguishment. This juxtaposition is illustrated through the contrast of temperature imagery in the first five lines of the poem. The living hand is at first “warm and capable of earnest grasping,” but quickly shifts to a statement in the conditional: “would, if it were cold and in the icy silence of the tomb…chill thy dreaming nights…” In the fifth line the conflation of heat and heart, whether purposeful on Keats’ part or not, fits with poem’s overall association of warmth and life. This emphasis on sensation/sensory perception exemplifies a motif the can be traced throughout many of the work’s we have examined, including works of both Shelleys, Blake, and Hemans. I believe this poem can be read as a Romantic rumination on the precipice between this life and the next, but reading footnote 1 on page 949 also suggested another interpretation related to the senses as the means to explore the fluid boundaries between inner and outer life, as well as life and death. This footnote suggests that the “hand” in Keats’ title might refer to handwriting, or the creation of the hand, as opposed to describing an actual hand. “This living hand, now warm and capable” is perhaps a personification of a poem or the act of writing verse that can reach out to the reader with vivacity but could also turn cold and dreary. If one sucked the sanguine nature from a poem and wrote on the terrific or sublime the poem could impart the effect of “the icy silence of the tomb” and might “haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights…” In this way, Keats could be referring to a poem traversing the boundary between the expression of vitality and finality.

Ode to a Nightingale: Exploring the Transcendent Powers of Sound and Music

Ode to a Nightingale seemed to me like the sad, tragic cousin to Shelley's To Jane. Both depict the transcendent power of music; how auditory experiences can become vehicles to another realm. However, the world the Nightingale transports Keats to is much darker than the rose-colored paradise Shelley finds within Jane and her guitar. He employs several references to sound and music within the poem to convey the sense of this songbird.

• "Singest of summer in full-throated ease." This line literally feels like the summer of the poem; the true spark and light amongst so much darkness and gloom. The alliteration of singest of summer makes this line even sweeter.
• "Here, where men sit and hear each other groan." It feels like he is reducing the world he is stuck in to a melody of men's groans of despair. He has created a dark song for the life of men. 
• "Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme." This fixation with death is communicated through "listening" and "calling." Keats has forged a sonic relationship with death. 
• "To take into the air my quiet breath."This line echoes the previous ones and actualizes this relationship between death and noise. There is a physical exchange between the "quiet" breath of Keats and the air of death.  
• "While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy!" Here Keats is referencing the wild ecstasy of the songbird's ability to transcend life and death through the creation of song.

Duration of Soul in "Ode to a Nightingale"

To me, Keats seems here to be comparing his soul to the nightingale. When he leaves the world for where the nightingale lives, he leaves the place that causes his happiness as well as his sadness. This feels to me like he has closed his eyes and let go of material things in search of some deeper meaning. In fact, the way that the soul is treated in this poem reminds me of Descartes ("I think, therefore I am"). This is especially evident when Keats writes that the nightingale is immortal. It is easy for humans to feel that, since we have a consciousness that seems to be separable from some of the functions of our body, our soul/consciousness will live forever somehow and is more powerful than the material world, or is at least made of different stuff. What's interesting is that in this poem, Keats writes that the nightingale was present long before the writer's body, which is not how we usually think of the duration of the soul-stretching into the future, not up from the past. Perhaps what he is trying to get at here is not the duration of one soul through history but the duration of an aspect of human nature- the one that drives us to introspection and to question the nature of humanity- and the dangerous nature of heeding its call.

"Ode to a Nightingale"

John Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”: Eternity
“Ode to a Nightingale” ventures
between the realms of life and death, ultimately showing glimpses of the
author’s perception of eternity inspired from the sight and song of the
nightingale. The author opens the poem by describing his current state: “My
heart aches and drowsy numbness pains,” (1). While he appears to be mentioning
dizziness or the results of a sublime experience upon seeing the nightingale, with
the mention of “hemlock” (the poison ingested by Socrates) within the next line
one can’t help but wonder if the author is not actually departing from the world
of the living to the world of the dead, or the seemingly eternal nightingale.
“The weariness, the fever, the
fret.” (23), Keats characterizes the world of the living, the world he is leaving
or wishes to leave, as something undesirable compared to the beauty of the
nightingale. He then uses phrases such as “flowers are at my feet”, and
“embalmed in darkness” (41-43) to further underline the notion of his death in
this moment. From this emphasis on passing from life to death, the author
paints the vision of the nightingale, an “immortal Bird”.
The author illustrates the song of
the nightingale as something heard throughout the ages, during “ancient days by
emperor and clown”. By connecting his subject to the era of antiquity, he further
glorifies its power and eternity. Yet the reference towards eternity in this
poem is carried on with an underlying tone of sadness. “Where youth grows pale,”
(25), Keats allows his personal observations as to the pains of life to lend
contrast with the beautifully powerful nightingale. In doing so, the eternity
he comprehends is only a dream, perhaps not even achievable in death, and certainly
not obtainable in life.
Essentially, the author ventures
between life and death, exalting the nightingale as something of eternity,
personifying nature as a whole. The eternal beauty of this bird cannot be seen
without a certain sadness however, as the author is wholly aware of the shortcomings
of the mortal world he lives in.

-james kriz

The Forlorn Nightingale

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Keats takes a deeply emotional and ambivalent stance on matters such as the interconnection or mixture of pain and joy, the intensity of feeling and numbness, life and death, mortality and immortality, the actual and the idealized, and finally separation and connection from reality. He begins with an aching heart which he promptly numbs, or at least attempts to do so for he describes a paradoxical ‘numbness pains.” He then rejects his own idea of jealousy when he hears the purely joyous song of the nightingale and fills himself with the nightingales joy to become “too happy.” He falls into a brief fancy of wine until he remembers wine’s tendency to make him “fade away into the forest dim.” He again falls into another fancy, a dark one, of poesy where he follows the bird’s song. This vision is also brief for “like a bell” the word “Forlorn!” drags him out of his imaginary state to face reality. It is interesting that this word has such power; it has more influence than the nightingale itself, for it is in fact the word “forlorn” that the poem centers around. Forlorn is the “shadows numberless” the “never known” feeling of being forlorn lingers like the vibrations of a ringing bell, mustering sensations of “weariness, fever and fret.” Keats is of course very aware of his eventual death, however the bird is immortal because “Thou wast not born for death.” Bells are often rung to alarm a certain time and the word forlorn struck him like a bell as a constant reminder of death. In order to cope he pretends to be numb and he pretends to have visions. He is unable to have a sustained vision, instead he has brief daydreams to escape for as long as he can. However he cannot create a world of painlessness because his imagination is limited to what he knows from the actual world. Thus he cannot successfully escape in either of his reveries, they are both forlorn. He tries to make the experience of the nightingale’s song itself transcendent but he cannot because he must face the fact that each individual experience is limited by reality. His first daydream cannot unfold the way he would like because alcohol (or “vintage”) has a dark side and cannot match the joy of the bird’s song. He also cannot follow the bird’s song in poesy because his mind is unable to create such joy and in trying so hard to be “too happy” and to dance around his forlorn truth he accomplished nothing.