Wordsworth\'s Discontented Senses

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Lisa Ann Robertson NASSR 2016: Romanticism and its Discontents Panel: The Body of the Author, the Body of the Text Date: 11 August 2016 Wordsworth’s Discontented Senses: Disappointment and the Embodied Imagination Introduction Today I am going to look at William Wordsworth’s representation of the imagination in The Prelude, which I contend is embodied. Typically, critics understand Wordsworth’s concept of the imagination as transcendental. That is, they view it as a faculty that has access to a realm of spiritual truth that exists beyond the material world. According to Alan Grob, the imagination’s revelations “disclose not merely an independence of the world of sense but the spirit’s knowledge of … a reality transcending sense” (264). Jerome McGann sees this as the imagination’s ideological function. He claims its effect is “a spiritual displacement” that allows the poet to escape sociohistorical realities by asserting “an immaterial plane of reality” that appears “when the light and appearances of sense fade” (87). Contrary to these interpretations, I contend that Wordsworth depicts the imagination not as transcendental, but as embodied. It is not, in my analysis, part of the noumenal, but is a product of an embodied mind. It doesn’t assuage disappointment by granting access to a transcendent reality, but by reaffirming the power of the body, in conjunction with the mind, to provide comfort in the face of discontentment. I argue that the insights afforded by the imagination speak not to a disembodied spirituality, but to the reciprocity between the mind, the body, and the natural world. Background The Prelude, I’m sure you know, exists as multiple versions. Initially written in 1799, it was frequently modified over a fifty-year period. Of the three authoritative variants, I look at the

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2-book Prelude of 1799 and the 13-book revision of 1805 because Wordsworth made the most significant changes between these two versions. I begin by establishing that The Prelude of 1799 depicts a mind that is the product of embodied cognition. Then I look at the representations of the imagination that Wordsworth added in 1805. Actually, due to time constraints, I focus on one passage in Book 6—the speaker’s apostrophe to imagination at Simplon Pass after he has crossed the Alps. I argue that insights generated by the imagination return to the concept of embodiment. To support my analysis, I turn briefly to “Tintern Abbey.” Embodied Mind I want to start by looking at the opening paragraphs of the 1799 Prelude. I argue that the language and structure of the poem set up a particular relationship between the body and the mind. Wordsworth’s pattern is to depict a series of concrete, sensory images before he discusses the effect of specific events on his mental growth. The embodied experiences precede the formation of the mind in the poem’s narrative sequence. In the first several lines, The Prelude sets up a tacit, but clear, relationship between embodiment and mental growth. The poem begins with the River Derwent, that “loved / To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song” (1799 1.2-3). It continues listing a series of sensory images: the river’s “voice” (1799 1.5), “the green plains” (1799 1.7), and “ceaseless music” (1799 1.9). These images don’t just serve as a backdrop or mis-en-scène for the speaker’s childhood. Rather, they literally create and constitute his mind. According to Wordsworth, these sounds and sights “composed my thoughts” (1799 1.11), “giving me / … / knowledge” (1799 1.12, 14). This pattern continues throughout, with references to “The frost and breath of frosty wind [that] snapped” (1799 1.29); “the blast which blew” (1799 1.62); and the “strange utterance” of “the loud dry wind” (1799 1.63). These are just a few representative sensory

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images that the form “The mind of man,” which Wordsworth asserts “is fashioned and built up / Even as a strain of music” (1799 1.67). This catalogue of sensual description situates the mind in a particular relationship not only to nature, but also the body. The mind is formed through interactions with nature that are mediated by the body. Wordsworth explicitly states that sounds “Blow through my ears” (1799 1.65) and implicitly refers to the sense of touch when he says that the “woods were warm” (1799 1.53). He invokes sight when he describes the landscape’s “knots of grass / Or half-inch fissures in the slipp’ry rock” (1799 1.58-59). These images highlight the role of the body. Additionally, Wordsworth connects the body’s experiences in nature with mental development. This is evident in the language and the juxtaposition of sensory images with commentary on the growth of the mind. This structural sequencing is even more apparent in the poem’s climactic scenes, including the spots of time. For example, when he steals the skiff he paints a vivid picture of “the shepherd’s boat” (1799 1.82), the “willow-tree” (1799 1.83), “rocky cove” (1799 1.84), “The moon” and “lake [that] was shining clear” (1799 1.85), and “the hoary mountains” (1799 1.86). It’s only after he describes the sensory details that he discusses the effect on his mind. This experience inspired “grave / And serious thoughts” ” (1799 1.119-20). It was a “spectacle”— note the allusion to sight—that “for many days on my brain / Worked with a dim and undetermined sense” (1799 1.121–22). Likewise, the games he plays with his brothers and sister leave him “With weary joints and with a beating mind” (2.16). This coupling of body parts and mind, both equally affected, and the precedence of the word “joints” before “mind” indicate the dependence of mind on body. For these reasons, I contend that The Prelude as a whole assumes a mind that is embodied. It stakes a claim for embodiment. The Prelude 1805

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I started with 1799 version of The Prelude for a few reasons. First, it more economically establishes Wordsworth’s commitment to embodied cognition. Second, critics, Jonathan Wordsworth or Grob for example, often contend that The Prelude of 1805 marks the beginning of the poet’s move toward a transcendental concept of mind, especially the imagination. Finally, unlike the two-book Prelude, the thirteen-book version addresses disappointment. As he revised, Wordsworth rearranged and substantially added to the material in the original poem. Even so, he still represents the mind as embodied and mediated by the senses. The new sections of the poem—notably the representations of imagination in Books 6, 11, 12, and 13—replicate the structural pattern established in 1799. Wordsworth’s seemingly transcendental experiences are preceded by and embedded in embodied interaction with nature. As in the earlier version, he details the sensory stimuli that precipitate transcendent mental experiences. Transcendental Language Now let’s turn to the apostrophe to the imagination in Book 6. In this passage, Wordsworth famously proclaims: Imagination!—lifting up itself Before the eye and progress of my song Like an unfathered vapour, here that power, In all the might of its endowments, came Athwart me. I was lost as in a cloud, Halted without a struggle to break through, And now, recovering, to my soul I say “I recognise thy glory”…. (1805 6.525–35) I won’t read more than that, but you have the apostrophe in full on the screen. I can see why critics interpret this representation of the imagination as transcendental. The magisterial language seems to attribute it to an immaterial source, unanchored in sensory experience. The figure of “an unfathered vapour” implies that it springs fully formed,

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autonomously, like Athena from the head of Zeus. The “power, / In all the might of its endowments [that comes] / Athwart” Wordsworth appears abruptly in the narrative. Certainly it does not seem to have a material cause or to originate in an embodied mind. We must, however, remember the global and local contexts that surround this passage. It is embedded in a poem that structurally, as well as linguistically, represents cognition as embodied. The apostrophe’s immediate context is disappointment. These lines describe Wordsworth’s experience crossing the Alps. The poet assumed that he would encounter the “pleasures of the picturesque and sublime,” to quote David Miall (88). Instead, he experiences “disappointed expectation” (88). In the preceding paragraph, we learn that Wordsworth traversed Simplon Pass without knowing that the eagerly awaited moment had arrived. Asking for directions, he learns “that we1 had crossed the Alps” (1805 6.524). This news is “Hard of belief” (1805 6.520). He feels a “dull and heavy slackening … Upon those tidings” (1805 6.549-50). Instead of the much-anticipated elation, he finds himself dejected. Consequently, he feels “lost as in a cloud / Halted without a struggle” (1805 6.529). In this moment of frustration, Wordsworth consoles himself by invoking the power of the imagination. He turns to his own mind to comfort himself. According to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century materialist theories of cognition with which Wordsworth was familiar, the embodied mind has a store of experiences and memories that he can draw upon to create a transcendent experience that assuages his present disappointment. Men of science, such as David Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, and Joseph Priestly claimed that recalling an event in the mind recreated the sensory experience in the body at a literal, physiological level.

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Robert Jones, college friend

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This is the insight that he gains from this experience—the mind’s ability to self-soothe not by escaping to an immaterial plane, but by returning to the body. Immersing himself in imagination, “the light of sense / Goes out in flashes that have shewn to us / The invisible world” (1805 6.535-37). Miall notes that “the imaginative power [is limited] to what can be … reproduced in sensory terms” (95). This is consistent with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materialist theories of mind. Thus, “the invisible world,” I maintain, does not refer to a transcendental realm, but a domain of embodied interiority. To support my reading, I turn briefly to “Tintern Abbey,” where we find an analogue. In this earlier poem, Wordsworth describes a similar situation. Stuck “in lonely rooms … mid the din / Of towns and cities” (TA 26-27), he turns to the body. His discontentment is mitigated by “sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” (TA 28-29). In other words, felt in the body. The memory of his previous visit to Tintern Abbey restores Wordsworth’s tranquility. A few lines later, he describes a dimming of the senses that is similar to the passage in Book 6 of The Prelude. “The breath of this corporeal frame, / And even the motion of our human blood” are “Almost suspended” (TA 44-45, 46). Not that they are almost, not actually suspended. He feels as if he’s been “laid asleep / In body” (TA 46-47), but this is not a disembodied experience, but an intense embodied emotional experience. Seeing “into the life of things” (TA 50) is predicated on the previous “sensations sweet” (TA 29). Here, we see the same pattern as in The Prelude. Physical sensations precede and precipitate the feeling of transcendence. Similarly in The Prelude, when “the light of sense / Goes out in flashes” revealing a magnificent revelation—that the subject is always connected to nature because its sensory experiences are preserved in the body. Turning to the embodied mind, the poet can call up the intensity of emotion that he experienced in another time and place.

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Wordsworth’s disappointment brings about a new understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body. He realizes that “The mind beneath such militant banners” (1805 6.543) is “blest in thoughts” (1805 6.545) that can sustain him in emotionally difficult moments—just as in “Tintern Abbey” when memories of the River Wye comforted him during his lonely sojourn in London. The apostrophe to the imagination, in my view, reveals the intimate connection between the mind and the body that allows the poet, and by extension, all human beings to overcome disappointment. Conclusion To conclude, I’ll confess that, in the spirit of Romanticism, I’ve offered you a fragment today. I’m still working out the full implications of the embodied imagination in Wordsworth’s poetry. In recent article about Wordsworth and Spinoza, Marjorie Levinson argues that the Lucy poems assert a “position … of radical, not moderate Enlightenment” (390). Along similar lines, I suspect that Wordsworth’s ontology is more radical than has been acknowledged. The split between the subject and the object not so sharp as has traditionally been believed. And the human mind stands a much more intimate relationship to nature on deeply philosophical level than Wordsworth has received credit for. Thus, reading the imagination as embodied opens up new vistas for understanding Wordsworth’s poetry and their philosophical underpinnings. Thank you. Works Cited Grob, Alan. The Philosophic Mind: A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetry and Thought 1797-1805. Columbus: Ohio State University Press Print, 1973. Print. Levinson, Marjorie. “A Motion and a Spirit: Romancing Spinoza.” With appendices 46.4 (2007): 367–408. Print.

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McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Print, 1983. Print. Miall, David S. “The Alps Deferred: Wordsworth at the Simplon Pass.” European Romantic Review 9.1 (1998): 87–102. Taylor and Francis+NEJM. Web. 6 Oct. 2012. Wordsworth, William. “The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. 5 Vols.” Oxford: Clarendon. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. Press Print, 1940. Print. ---. The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams and Stephen Gill. New York: W. W. Norton Print, 1979. Print.