The Prelude:
Wordsworth’s Mental Conflicts and His Imperfect Solution
The Prelude, an autographical epic poem by William Wordsworth, describes not only a journey of the author’s life and experience, but also a process of how he “fixes the wavering balance of” his conflicted mind, by seeking comfort in the “spots of time,” or, in other words, his memories of childhood and nature (Book I, L622; Book XII, L258). Just as Martin Gray notices, “The poem is itself a therapeutic exercise” (Gray 62). To be specific, there are three major mental conflicts in this poem, as far as I am concerned. Wordsworth is worried about the transience of great intellectual works, about his inability to tell prophecies, and about his detachment from the nature. In …show more content…
This “recollected journey is transformed by Imagination into another and more symbolic one, a figure for talking about the mind itself” (Onorato 136). Rather than climbing a mountain, Wordsworth goes down to a chasm, which is “opposite of a mountain,” and he perceives there all nature’s unbelievable contradictions; in the same vein, rather than finding passions in city lives, Wordsworth goes in depth to investigate the dark battles in France and the clamorous political movements, discovering his inner confusions proliferating through this experience, almost like losing himself in an obscure chasm (Gray 81). Furthermore, the contradictory depictions of the objects in the chasm are, obviously, symbols of Wordsworth’s mental contradictions. “Woods” which are “never to be decayed” and “stationary blasts of waterfalls” both signify the ephemeral quality of intellectual works, as emphasized in Book V: Books. It is the poet’s wish for books to survive forever, to stay “stationary” in time, and “never to be decayed,” but he understands this to be impossible. “We cannot choose but feel,” that his intellectual works, just like those of many others, “must perish” someday, so that they eventually will be “hidden from all search among the depths of time” (Book V, L21-2, L196-7). This evokes an ironic proverb by William Blake, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” (Blake 76). To put it in another way, time is all that causes changes and causes all to change, and we are productions of time, so we are ourselves subject to changes. Thus, it is nonsensical for Blake to look for eternity among creatures of time. Yet Wordsworth, eager to escape from the cruel reality of the world’s transience, attempts to find a refuge in an imaginative scene of
Wordsworth’s Mental Conflicts and His Imperfect Solution
The Prelude, an autographical epic poem by William Wordsworth, describes not only a journey of the author’s life and experience, but also a process of how he “fixes the wavering balance of” his conflicted mind, by seeking comfort in the “spots of time,” or, in other words, his memories of childhood and nature (Book I, L622; Book XII, L258). Just as Martin Gray notices, “The poem is itself a therapeutic exercise” (Gray 62). To be specific, there are three major mental conflicts in this poem, as far as I am concerned. Wordsworth is worried about the transience of great intellectual works, about his inability to tell prophecies, and about his detachment from the nature. In …show more content…
This “recollected journey is transformed by Imagination into another and more symbolic one, a figure for talking about the mind itself” (Onorato 136). Rather than climbing a mountain, Wordsworth goes down to a chasm, which is “opposite of a mountain,” and he perceives there all nature’s unbelievable contradictions; in the same vein, rather than finding passions in city lives, Wordsworth goes in depth to investigate the dark battles in France and the clamorous political movements, discovering his inner confusions proliferating through this experience, almost like losing himself in an obscure chasm (Gray 81). Furthermore, the contradictory depictions of the objects in the chasm are, obviously, symbols of Wordsworth’s mental contradictions. “Woods” which are “never to be decayed” and “stationary blasts of waterfalls” both signify the ephemeral quality of intellectual works, as emphasized in Book V: Books. It is the poet’s wish for books to survive forever, to stay “stationary” in time, and “never to be decayed,” but he understands this to be impossible. “We cannot choose but feel,” that his intellectual works, just like those of many others, “must perish” someday, so that they eventually will be “hidden from all search among the depths of time” (Book V, L21-2, L196-7). This evokes an ironic proverb by William Blake, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” (Blake 76). To put it in another way, time is all that causes changes and causes all to change, and we are productions of time, so we are ourselves subject to changes. Thus, it is nonsensical for Blake to look for eternity among creatures of time. Yet Wordsworth, eager to escape from the cruel reality of the world’s transience, attempts to find a refuge in an imaginative scene of