Romantic reflection

The above images are taken from J.M.W. Turner and Philippe de Loutherbourg, respectively. These two portraits visualize differences in perception. The same location offers a familiar, but ultimately different set of feelings and emotions for both artists. Despite the differences in their paintings, neither is incorrect in their vision. The same idea can be applied to Romantic poetry. Each Romantic relayed memories that were relative to the individual. 

Throughout the course, we have discussed how many Romantic poets focused their work on memories and emotions. In terms of memory, many Romantics attempted characterized these memories in terms of nature, history, and the individual themselves. Romantic poets such as John Clare, Charlotte Smith, and especially William Wordsworth relied on the use of reflection to explore this topic. They suggested that enlightenment, knowledge and personal growth stem from reflection upon memories. A common trend among these writers was the exploration of this phenomenon thorough childhood. More specifically, they explored the process of reflection in relation to childhood memories. These memories hold power over the individual and have the ability to shape and define one’s self. Ultimately, as the texts will show, the same process is used to come to different results. Clare, Smith and Wordsworth all understood how reflection and childhood related to the individual. 

To understand how Romantic poets attempted to explain the importance of memories, it is important to understand how individual memories offer differentiating points-of-view. One can witness this occurrence before the Romantic period. From early on, we saw how memories affected non-Romantic writers with the Endeavor journals. For example, look at any one journal entry here and you can see the difference from person to person. “Fullmetal Marinna” points out in her post, “The entries of this voyage are nothing more than collections of memories and experiences. What each author chooses to divulge and how he chooses to communicate it is highly indicative of their positions.” This idea is important to understanding how memories operate to each respected poet. The most prolific poet that attempted to theorize this idea with poetry was Wordsworth. 

Romantic poets had an intimate relationship with memories. Beth Lau explains in her article “Wordsworth and Current Memory Research,” that “many of [Wordsworth’s] best-known poems, such as ‘Tintern Abbey’ and the ‘Intimations Ode,’ directly explore the workings of memory as the speaker in each compares his present self to an earlier self and struggles to come to terms with what has been lost and what gained with the passage of time.” Wordsworth was fascinated by memories and based a majority of his writing on this idea. He thought poetry and memories functioned as one, as he explains in the preface of the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads:

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. (Wordsworth 183)

Wordsworth hypothesizes that poetry derives from reflection of memories. Reflection is the key to understanding emotions. This theory is best reflected in Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”

From the very first few lines (lines 1-2) in “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth signals that this poem is a reflection: “Five years have passed; five summers, with the length of five long winters!” This gives the poem poignancy throughout, as Wordsworth is essentially reliving these emotions all over again. These emotions come to ahead in lines 138-142, where Wordsworth confesses that “…in after years/When these wild ecstasies shall be matured/Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind/Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms/Thy memory be as a dwelling place/For all sweet sounds and harmonies..." As “Ali Cat” explains: “I felt as if I was looking through a filter at Tintern Abbey, and it was beautiful. Everything becomes more clear when you are able to visualize it from the distance.” The filter here represents reflection, or in Wordsworth words, the point after “tranquility gradually disappears.”  Through “Tintern Abbey” we are able to visualize Wordsworth relaying Tintern Abbey through nature, history and himself and produce an emotional memory. As we will see in the next three poems, memories play a different role when reflecting upon childhood. 

In John Clare’s “Recollections after a Ramble,” Clare “rambles” through feelings while recollecting nature. However, it is only towards the end where the audience can begin to see Clare’s point. One particular sonnet (lines 225-232) bares closer examination. Clare, who grew up in a rural surrounding, uses nature to unlock his memories. This particular sonnet starts by introducing Clare in retrospection, “signed and smild/musing ‘tween a joy and pain” (Clare, lines 226-227). His simple, yet grammatically-incorrect sentences were not an editing error. By going back to a time before he was educated, Clare is inviting the audience into his mind. These feelings and experiences Clare felt were beyond words at this particular moment in time. As “Fullmetal Marina” states in her post, “There is a child-like wonder about the life (life other than humans) Nature holds in Clare's poems.” Upon looking back at how he “acted when a child” (line 228), Clare compares his falling into the brooks like falling “direct to heaven” (lines 231-232). Nature had a positive effect on Clare, despite his feelings ranging between joy and pain. Clare suggests that reflecting upon childhood and nature can be a positive experience. 

Similarly, Charlotte Smith uses childhood as the bases for her sonnet “The glow-worm.” Like Clare, she uses language to lure the audience into a child’s perspective. The words “balmy-breathing” in the first line turn into simpler words (“to whom the world is new”) in the second line (lines 1-2). This transition to from complex and descriptive alliteration to an arguable overly-wordy sentence marks the change of perception. Smith continues to allow readers to experience childlike emotions in the subsequent lines. Lines such as “The brilliant Glow-worm, like a meteor, shine/On the turd-bank;— amazed, and pleased he cries/ ‘Star of the dewy grass!—I make thee mine!” (6-8) direct the audience to feel the child’s excitement. However, Smith snatches away this excitement by the sonnet’s conclusion. As the aforementioned glow-worm lays dead, the child’s “lucid treasure, rayless as the dust!/—So turn the world’s bright joys to cold and blank disgust” (13-14), this sonnet takes a dark turn. Clare does not share the idea that childhood reflection is a positive experience.  One cannot ignore the fact that childhood sometimes contains grim moments. Smith lures her audience in with expectations of nostalgia, and snatches it away just as quickly. As her sonnet claims, reality is not a place of “musing ‘tween a joy and pain.” For Smith, there is no use finding happiness in earlier times.

And yet, as Wordsworth suggest, there is room for both theories to be correct. Eric Gidal in his article “Wordsworth’s Art of Memory” explains that when Wordsworth “turns to his autobiographical identity, exhibiting his very memory itself as a formal structure, guidebook and museum are joined and the dialogue between complaint and amelioration moves from a means of discursive existence to a production of the very form itself.” “The Prelude” was the introduction to Wordsworth’s never-fully-realized “Recluse.” In the 1800 edition of “The Prelude” (see page viii here), Wordsworth explains that he intended to “compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society…as having for its principal subject, the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.” So why would a poet so focused on creating a philosophical poem dedicate a good portion of the text to his own childhood?

From early on (lines 12-14), Wordsworth brings together poignancy with consequences. Wordsworth states: “To more than infant softness, giving me/Among the fretful dwelling of mankind/A knowledge, a dim earnest of the calm/Which Nature breathes among the field and groves?” “Zombie Princess” suggests on her post that Wordsworth “seems to say that children, who are full of innocence, see the good in the things that occur but even when things go bad and are ‘fretful,’ nature is a place to escape that will help. The power of memory and the effect nature can have on it remains a strong theme for Wordsworth.”  Much like Clare, Wordsworth’s reflects nature and childhood as a place of solace and growth. However, much like Smith, a child’s mind can be a place of darkness as well. Wordsworth continues on and describes how in act of doing something bad, “I heard among the solitary hills/Low breathings coming after me, and sounds/Of undistinguishable motion, steps/Almost as silent as the turf they trod” (lines 46-49). Nature, a place once revered as innocent as a child, is now given terrifying personification. The specific detail of the hills “stepping,” or in a sense, chasing Wordsworth seemed to stay in his memory. That is not to say that nature has lost all its innocence, but it’s now revered as a force of authority. These particular lines set the tone for the rest of the poem. Putting these lines at the beginning of this philosophical epic is intentional. Not only do they, set up the tone for the rest of the poem, but they set the tone for the rest of Wordsworth’s life. 

Much like Clare’s recollection of nature or the death of the glow-worm, Wordsworth understands that personal growth requires both the light and the dark. You cannot have one extreme without the other. While the results are vastly different, there is really no wrong answer to this question. The beauty of Romanticism is that all these theories are correct, depending on how one views them. An overly optimistic view is necessary for Clare; a more pessimistic perspective is needed for Smith; while a little of both is needed for Wordsworth. However, all three poets would agree that perception, reflection, and childhood are all invariably connected. We still look to the past to learn about the present and the future. If Romanticism teaches anything, it is that the power of nostalgia cannot be denied.

Works Cited:

Clare, John. Major Works. Ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Gidal, Eric. "Wordsworth's Art of Memory." Studies in Romanticism 37.3 (1998): 445-75. Print.

Lau, Beth. "Wordsworth and Current Memory Research." SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 42.4 (2002): 675-92. Print.

Smith, Charlotte. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Ed. Stuart Curran. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.

Wordsworth, William, and Jonathan Wordsworth. The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1950. [S.l.]: Norton, 1979. Print.

Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800. Ed. Dahlia Porter and Michael Gamer. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2008. Print.