Classics and the Western Canon discussion

I just got back from a grueling trip and am exhausted and my mind is only functioning on two cylinders, so in deciding on which option to choose for this Interim Read I took the easy path and went with my comfort food poet, Wordsworth. This isn't perhaps his most comfortable poem, but it's one I think well worth knowing and discussing.

The full title is: Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

It's online in many places, including at Bartleby from the Oxford Book of English Verse, here:

http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html

My wife just reminded that my brain was so fried it thought today was Tuesday. Oh well. So the IR got posted a day early. Probably a good thing because I might sleep straight through Tuesday and not get up until Wed morning.

Everyman wrote: "My wife just reminded that my brain was so fried it thought today was Tuesday. Oh well. So the IR got posted a day early. Probably a good thing because I might sleep straight through Tuesday and no..."

I saw this yesterday and thought, the new interim read is up, so it must be Wednesday.

I read the poem as being about Wordsworth’s attempt to reconcile himself with the loss of childhood and its concomitant associations: the loss of innocence, spontaneity, wonder, and ability to perceive the celestial light that permeates nature. The child once had a visionary gleam—a closeness to God through nature. But as the child matures, he loses that gleam:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

In the next part of the poem, Wordsworth explains that we are born with that spiritual connection, but we gradually lose it as we mature:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.

As the boy travels farther from the east, (he realizes he’s getting old and becomes conscious of his own mortality), his vision dwindles until he sees it fade into the light of common day.

Ironically, the child is assisted in losing the connection with the divine spark by his well-intentioned but misguided homely nurse who fosters his growth to maturity i.e. hurries him on the path of forgetfulness. So the movement from child to man is one of regression—the man loses the intuitive wisdom and vision that he once possessed as a child. Wordsworth laments the loss and questions the child’s eagerness to grow up.

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on they being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke.
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

He tells the child you’ll be grown soon enough and feel the burden of adulthood: Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.

There is a shift in the poem from stanza 9 onwards. Whereas in youth he had experienced joy in nature because of his innocence, he now experiences a different type of joy in nature—one that can only come with maturity, the philosophic mind. His appreciation of the beauty and mutability of nature has deepened and somehow seems to suggest a more profound connection with God and a greater understanding of the immortality of his soul:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Whereas the child intuits the immortality of the soul, the adult reaches it through the wisdom and philosophic mind that come with maturity.

Although Wordsworth tries to put a positive spin on things by suggesting he is better off now than when he had the exuberance and wonder of youth, I can’t help feeling that he is not altogether sold on the idea because of the last two lines of the poem:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

My reading hinges on the word “often”. To me it says that although the poet can be moved to tears by the sight of a flower, his connection with nature occurs only “often” and when it does occur, the connection is temporary and, therefore, unlike his connection as a child which, at the time, seemed permanent, continuous, and full of wonder. So I think the poem ends on a poignant note expressing the pain of a loss that is so deep, it can never surface:

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

For what it's worth, that's how I read the poem.

One of the beautiful qualities of a work of literature is that it can be interpreted in different ways as long as the interpretation can be supported by the words in the text. So please jump in if you have an alternative reading. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I would love to hear it.

Patrice wrote: "great analysis tamara. you are still young but i wonder how you relate to what he is describing, if you don't mind sharing. does it strike you as true?"

Patrice, thanks for the compliment. But I'm not young. I'm pretty ancient. I'm a grandmother. My eldest son is 35, is married and has 2 children. He's a physician at Emory. My youngest son is 31 and he's an attorney in St. Louis. So I'm old. In some ways, I've been old all my life.

And, yes, I can relate very easily to what Wordsworth is describing. Youth is a time of experiencing new things with fresh eyes, a time for building a life. And then you reach a point in your life where it seems as if all you're doing is experiencing loss and bit by bit you have to let go. Sometimes the loss is forced upon you--like losing a loved one. Sometimes it's voluntary and you "lose" the stuff you have because you no longer need it. In the process, you lose the freshness with which you once viewed the world.

A loss is a loss is a loss. And no amount of sugar-coating it makes it any easier.

Tamara wrote: "I read the poem as being about Wordsworth’s attempt to reconcile himself with the loss of childhood and its concomitant associations: the loss of innocence, spontaneity, wonder, and ability to perc..."

My reading hinges on the word “often”. To me it says that although the poet can be moved to tears by the sight of a flower, his connection with nature occurs only “often” and when it does occur, the connection is temporary and, therefore, unlike his connection as a child which, at the time, seemed permanent, continuous, and full of wonder. So I think the poem ends on a poignant note expressing the pain of a loss that is so deep, it can never surface:

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

This reminds me of an old movie directed by Wong Kar Wai: "Days of Being Wild". The most memorable quote in the movie was:
"I always thought one minute flies by. But sometimes it really lingers on. Once, a person pointed at his watch and said to me, that because of that minute, he'd always remember me. It was so charming listening to that. But now I look at my watch and tell myself that I have to forget this man starting this very minute."

A minute or a moment can be fleeting, but once it passes by, it becomes forever encased in the past as a beautiful memory or a lasting scar, unless you don't take notice of it and just waste it away. Recognizing the significance of a moment, or the 'relation' with time can make any moment permanent or lingering.

Another movie I'm reminded of whenever I read this poem is of course the one starring Natalie Wood who reads this poetry. :-)

https://youtu.be/lWbd8uOsbBE

Borum wrote: "This reminds me of an old movie directed by Wong Kar Wai: "Days of Being Wild". The most memorable quote in the movie was: ..."

The quote from "Days of Being Wild" is quite lovely. I also enjoyed the clip from the Natalie Wood movie. It's been years since I saw the movie and i had forgotten about it.

thanks for sharing.

Patrice wrote: "tamara, I've been thinking about why i didn't share Wordsworth view of childhood. i think you hit the nail on the head, you said you've been old all your life. i think Wordsworth is romantic and pr..."

I'm so sorry to hear about your illnesses over the past few years. But I'm so glad you seem to be fully recovered.

Like Wordsworth (and the rest of the Romantics), I idealize childhood. My family had our ups and downs like any family, but when I think of my childhood, I am flooded with beautiful memories.

I grew up in England in a home with a river at the back of our garden which flowed into the River Thames. I would get on our canoe and go down the river, find a quiet spot, and read. Or I would climb up one of the big trees in the field across our house, perch myself on a limb, and read. I was good in school so I even loved going to school. Summers would find me riding my bike or on the back of Cracker Jack, a horse belonging to my best friend.

Childhood was just a wonderful time for me. But even as a young girl, I was very conscious of the fact that I had to make the most of it because I knew it wouldn't last. (That's what I meant when I said I've been old all my life.) I was fiercely determined to take advantage of childhood by relishing every minute of it for as long as I could. I remember wishing I could freeze the moment in time--just as in Keats' Urn.

It's funny because I have three sisters who have entirely different recollections of childhood even though we all grew up in the same home with the same parents. Their memories aren't as "idealized" as mine.

Patrice wrote: "isnt it the post modern theory that we construct meaning from the text? no two people read the same book, just as no two people live the same life, even in the same family, as you say. ..."

I think you're right about postmodernism i.e. that we are predisposed to see things a certain way and to read a text a certain way. If I understand it correctly, postmodernism questions the whole notion of objectivity i.e. we can never be truly objective even when we engage in scientific inquiry because we are seeing reality through the filter of our personal and/or cultural lens.

I agree no two people read the same book. But I would also take it one step further. The same person does not read the same book the same way. By that I mean we can get something different out of the same book each time we read it because we are no longer the same person. Depending on what experiences we've had in life since our last reading, our perspective may have changed. That's why we read the great books over and over again--because we get something new each time with each shift in our lens.

Tamara wrote: "Although Wordsworth tries to put a positive spin on things by suggesting he is better off now than when he had the exuberance and wonder of youth, I can’t help feeling that he is not altogether sold on the idea because of the last two lines of the poem:"

Very helpful analysis.

I do agree with the above comment which I extracted from the analysis.

Wordsworth writes of the magic of childhood, but I wonder -- was that magic really there when were were children but we didn't recognize it, or is it only created in retrospect? Do we idealize our childhood and repress the negatives while emphasizing the magic?

I had the experience when I was about 40 to go back to my childhood home, which in memory was a beloved childhood. I wanted to revisit the mysterious deep woods we played in, the deep cleft in the earth filled with tall ferns and grasses in which we would hide from the adult world , and where the spring mysteriously bubbled out of the ground and started the broad steam on which we floated little boats (bits of stick and bark) under the road and out the other side, through the vast forest until they disappeared under a fence that marked the edge of the community lands and our boats floated off into lands into which we were forbidden to go.

But going back was a mistake. The deep cleft was a dip in the ground perhaps four feet deep. The broad stream was a trickle that even in spring was barely a foot across. The deep forest, though still untouched by development or a saw, axe, or pruner, was a narrow band of trees only a few feet from the community road. If I had stayed, I might, as Wordsworth did, have found other ways of appreciating the beauty of the homestead, which indeed has adult beauty, but the magic of my childhood was gone. I'm sorry now that I went back, though through the years the memory of the magic has gradually become restored, though in a softened hue.

Speaking of childhood, I have to relay this anecdote from two days ago.

I was talking with my seven year old grandchild about his getting better at his chess game (which is really quite good for his age), and he commented "when I was a kid..."

I have to admit I had to stifle my amusement; he was so serious, and it is a mistake not to take a child's seriousness seriously. But afterwards I had a wonderful laugh at the idea of a seven year old thinking that being a kid is in his past.

Everyman wrote: "I had the experience when I was about 40 to go back to my childhood home, which in memory was a beloved childhood. I wanted to revisit the mysterious deep woods we played in..."

Your post encapsulates in lyrical prose why we can never go back.
Thank you for sharing it.

Everyman wrote: "Speaking of childhood, I have to relay this anecdote from two days ago.

I was talking with my seven year old grandchild about his getting better at his chess game (which is really quite good for ..."


Oh wow I heard my four year old kid say the same thing whenever she talks about anything in the relatively distant past (which, in her sense of time, can be about 2 months ago) "I remember going to a really large pool when I was little.."

Snippets. Poem just reread for probably the first time in fifty years. Main reaction? Feeling put off with fusty poetic diction, and feeling impatient with murky theologizing. Prepended to the text are Wordsworth's outside-the-poem comment – read after the rereading – his unbecoming defensive fence against being taken as heterodox. Most salient line for me: "The little Actor cons another part." WW subjects the presented natural world to killing abstraction throughout. The rose has no smell. Foregoing said with recognition of poetic tradition, and echoes of Pindar and Virgil. The main intimation of a social world? "Prison-house" in line 68 echoed by "Inmate" in line 84. Though even that bit could be Plato-vaporized. Most pleasing phrase: "neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor." Line most resonant with recollection: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." Any movie titles buried in here other than Splendor in the Grass (1961)? (A never-seen film, at the time not allowable.) Editor note: Coleridge wrote Dejection: an Ode in response to first four stanzas.

Patrice wrote: "in re reading i notice the line, our birth is but a sleep. we forget another existence when we are born. it sounds like platos reincarnation. anyone else think of that? that our souls live in an id..."

Another line says "Not in entire forgetfulness"
and
"See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; "

I was also reminded of Plato's anamnesis. Some verses also seemed like allusions to Plato's Cave and the philosopher who sees among the blind.

"Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;"

Although I am fascinated by children's perspectives, I also think that we often underappreciate the differenct perspective that is gained by our age and experience. Although we 'lose' some sparkle in our souls, could it be that what we're left with may be something of a more fundamental value that is culled out from years of winnowing experience?
I sometimes look back on my teens and 20s and though they were more energetic, I also remember those years were full of unnecessary anxiety and anger, arrogance and ignorance. I seem to be more tolerant or forgiving now, towards myself and others. I seem to accept myself and others as who they are rather than how I want them to be.
That's why I love these lines that remind us that although the briliance of childhood may be lost forever, all is not lost.


Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

The last stanza also reminds us that not only the children's discovering eyes, but the eyes that have witnessed mortality and the finite and weak nature of humanity may behold nature as even more precious than before.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Patrice wrote: "in re reading i notice the line, our birth is but a sleep. we forget another existence when we are born. it sounds like platos reincarnation. anyone else think of that?"

It struck me the same way, but I wonder whether he is really talking about human reincarnation, or whether he is suggesting that we live with God before we are born, but then come to earth as humans:

" trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"

That sounds to me more as though our previous life isn't a life on earth, but is a life with God.

Patrice wrote: "my son, who is knee deep in children, says what they are missing is perspective.
when his three year old dissolves in tears he is truly bereft over the trivial. it takes years to gain perspective, to realize that tomorrow will be a better day.."

But at the same time, their joy is totally unalloyed, unrestricted by perspective. When my seven year old grandson catches a butterfly, which he is quite good at (he lets them go, of course, after he puts them in a butterfly cage for a few hours to enjoy them up close) his joy in them is absolute, total, completely absorbing in a way that very few, if any, adults can match.

But is Wordsworth quite so unequivocally positive about childhood and melancholy about maturity? 'I love the Brooks which down their channels fret | Even more than when I tripped lightly as they' (193-4). So it seems to me that this sublimity of feeling comes precisely from the sense of mortality that makes the adult aware of the fleeting nature of life.

I'm also not quite sure what 'immortality' means in this poem - WW certainly uses a Platonic idea of a pre-existence of the soul but he's not talking about an unchristian sense of reincarnation, I think? Does he mean life after death, a return to the 'celestial light' (4) that the child carried imperfectly with him? Even that involves, presumably, a loss of the world of nature that he's celebrating here.

In some ways, if all literature is about dealing with the fact of human mortality (Achilles in the Iliad, 'I'd rather be a goatherd and alive than king of the dead' (paraphrasing, too lazy to look it up!)), isn't that what WW, too, is tackling here? He takes a kind of aching pleasure from beauty knowing that it is ephemeral:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give | Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Is this a different, more profound, arguably, appreciation of the natural world than that of the unknowing child who takes it for granted?

Roman Clodia wrote: "But is Wordsworth quite so unequivocally positive about childhood and melancholy about maturity?."

No; he's too wise and subtle for that. I think the point is that there is a change, that there is a shift from the unalloyed joy (and, as Patrice points out, despair) of childhood experiences to the more reasoned, more muted appreciation of both pleasure and pain which comes with adulthood. There is a nostalgic desire for a return to that unalloyed joy, but we can never recover it.

How, I wonder (if at all) does this relate to what Jesus was talking about when he said “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm also not quite sure what 'immortality' means in this poem."

That question has bothered me, too. I'm not sure exactly what Wordsworth meant by his title. There's the sense of immortality in coming from and returning to God, but is there more to it than that? The title is often shortened, but I think the full title is important: "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." Is it that these recollections of early childhood which he writes of in the early sections of the poem are what suggest to him the existence of immortality? And why?

I think the poem is pretty specific about immortality:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

"trailing clouds of glory" is another phrase which has become proverbial.

I always thought Wordsworth's intimations of immortality were not "all that," because all he intimates is the *pre-existence* of the soul.

Never mind that the one thing doesn't follow from the other.. the blissful state of a child by no means implies that it is 'trailing clouds of glory.' Even subjectively-- Wordsworth thinks, "Gee, I was so happy as a little kid. I must have come from heaven to have felt so content..." Say what?

Lest this post seem too cranky, let me say that I like a happy child as much as anyone. The Germans call it "Helmut," and indeed, sometimes name a baby "Helmut."

The first word in the title is "Intimations," i.e. hints, suggestions.

Perhaps what Wordsworth is getting at is that we can get a hint or indication about the nature of immortality by recollecting the wonder and unadulterated joy we experienced in early childhood--a type of joy we lose as we age.

'The child is father of the man'

Is this poem one of the foundations of a cultural interest in children as independent beings? Before the nineteenth century (with a few exceptions) children don't really appear in literature, I think, or not with any sense of subjectivity and inner life. The Romantics perhaps trigger something that leads to all those bildungsroman novels of the C19th. Before that, not so much. Even Plutarch only has a few anecdotes about Alexander as a child in his Lives, not the other 'great' men.

Interesting to compare WW's ideal of children 'trailing clouds of glory' with Dickens' more socially-aware portraits of Oliver or Pip as children.

William Blake does a lot with children in his poetry, especially in The Songs of Innocence and Experience. He depicts children losing their innocence as a result of being abandoned/neglected by their parents and victimized by industrialism and the institutions of society--especially the church. See, for example, his poem, The Chimney Sweeper. Notice how the child is fully cognizant of his victimization but maintains the deception of his continued innocence.
By the time we get to Dickens, children are street smart, pint-sized adults.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

Interesting, Tamara. Do you think WW and Blake are writing of 'real' children or using the idea of the child to represent a different, more innocent state of being in political/economic/cultural terms? Or both?

Roman Clodia wrote: "Interesting, Tamara. Do you think WW and Blake are writing of 'real' children or using the idea of the child to represent a different, more innocent state of being in political/economic/cultural te..."

I think it's probably both--real children and what they represent.

Blake uses almost child-like, simplistic language to express complex thoughts. He argues the child is born in a state of innocence. By that he means the child believes there is meaning and order and wonder and beauty in the world. The child then becomes exposed to human cruelty, stupidity, feelings of alienation--what Blake terms the world of experience. However, the child's sense of innocence is not lost. It is simply buried deep in his subconscious as a suppressed, smoldering desire yearning for release. Blake believed through poetry, the poet could facilitate the re-emergence of innocence by acting as a sort of mentor. But if and when that suppressed energy bursts forth without the proper guidance, it manifests itself in wars, revolutions, and other instances of man's inhumanity to man.

Interestingly enough, Blake met both Wordsworth and Coleridge. Coleridge threw in a few kind comments about Blake's poetry; Wordsworth, on the other hand, dismissed him as being completely mad.