Experience and Patriotism

Experience and Patriotism

Over the course of this semester we have studied a variety of the Romantic poets as collectors. This theme of collecting was evident in all of the authors, from Darwin’s collection of plants to Clare’s collection of experience and Wordsworth’s collection of memories. One thing that I think we failed to discuss adequately was the motivations of these poet’s as collectors. Why did all of these artists seemingly need to collect? To be fair, we did discuss motivation for a number of the poets. However, most of the time we were only capable of uncovering merely personal or political motivations, motivations ruled by social class systems (such as Clare’s desire to authentically collect the peasant experience) or personal goals. And although I do agree that some – if not all – of the Romantic poets collected for personal and political reasons, I think the overwhelming plague of artistic collection in the Romantic era speaks to something greater about mankind and the role of art in human existence. Specifically, I think this tendency to collect highlights a spiritual urge that all humans share. 

This spiritual urge is a type of secret patriotism, a metaphysical loyalty to something which is both indistinct and unavoidable. It isn’t patriotism in the traditional sense, but it is something like it. The Romantic poets were not waving the flags of their own countries; they were responding to an instinctual call to some far-off country. They were aware, at least subconsciously, of the distance between themselves and this far-off country. They felt, alongside all mankind, the pain and longing caused by this distance, and, in a desperate attempt to satisfy or satiate this pain, they attempted to collect artifacts which intensified their longing and drew their hearts nearer to that far-off country. Medievalist and theologian C. S. Lewis attempts to define this urge in an essay entitled “The Weight of Glory”:

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.  

Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all that is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Here Lewis articulates what I think is the common strand among the Romantics: the desire to capture this longing and to satisfy this desire. 

The first poet who caught my attention for doing this was John Clare. His poems focus on events, circumstances, and experiences. His desire to capture his experience felt a lot like Wordsworth’s desire to recapture memories. They both placed overwhelming importance on these elements of their existence. By focusing their art entirely on these elements of their existence, they articulate the significance they ascribe to these elements. For Clare, the raw energy of authentic experience sparked an imaginative rekindling of this longing. Clare’s obsessive return to authentic experience in art is, in many was, similar to our desire to hear our favorite songs loudly, to bask in them and find release in them; it brought him the same type of indescribable joy. 

Works Cited

Clare, John, John Clare, Eric Robinson, and David Powell. Major Works. Oxford: New York, 2004. Print.

Lewis, C. S., and Walter Hooper. Readings for Meditation and Reflection. N.p.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Print.

Wordsworth, William, Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and Reception, Recent Critical Essays. New York: Norton, 1979. Print.

Getting Back to Childhood

Writing the poem looking back on his childhood and the things he often did as a child bring back some sort of nostalgia for all of us, but it is not in that point of view at all. It is still grown up Wordsworth reflecting on and telling of his childhood entwined with nature. He always has this aspect of heavy reflection on himself and others in his poetry, but sometimes I think we can reflect best by reading the actions directly.I think it would have been interesting if Wordsworth had done something from his point of view as a child and tried to capture how he actually talked and acted when he was a child. When you hear a child saying something interesting or asking questions you've never thought of, I think it can really get people thinking about it more deeply. I know this has nothing to do with his intention for the poem, and I'm not sure if I'm making any sense at this point. I guess I can say I'm okay with Wordworth, but he's a bit too lofty for me, at least at times. I don't know what I'm typing anymore. Sorry.

Infantine Desire

First off, I have to say that I'm really glad The Prelude was the last poem on the list for this class. Wordsworth really captured the road of nostalgia that we all face from time to time, and I found it even more interesting how we got to see a little more into his life through his own depiction of it rather than reading it from a biographical book. My favorite lines are the following from part two of the poem:

"And is there one, the wisest and the best
Of all mankind, who does not sometimes wish
For things which cannot be, who would not give,
If so he might, to duty and to truth
The eagerness of infantine desire?"

I'm sure we've all thought about going back in time to our childhood, but I don't think I've ever read this emotion in such a way. All I can say is this: Damn... Wordsworth is good.

Poetry as escape

I genuinely enjoyed reading Smith's poems. Her poems are packed with interesting facts and at the same time she is able to describe nature in a sensible manner. It seems as though she used poetry as an escape from surpressed feelings of sadness. In Sonnet XLIV she states, "While I am doom'd--by life's long storm opprest, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest." it indicates to me that she envied the dead because they were freed of the saddness that haunts her. Despite her deppressed tone this might very well be the reason why her work evokes emotion so preceisly and makes her work all the more interesting to read.

Presentation on John Clare and "The Rural Muse"

Who was John Clare?

•  “The son of Parker and Ann Stimson Clare, both impoverished farm laborers, Clare was born on July 13, 1793, in the rural village of Helpston, Northamptonshire, England, approximately eighty miles north of London.
 

Seriously! I <3 thatched roof cottages!!!

 

•  Because he had to work on the farm to help support his family, Clare attended school only three months a year, he attended school in Glinton church until he was twelve.

•  Pot-boy in the Blue Bell public house
•  Gardner at Burghley house 
• Enlisted in the militia
•  Tried camp life with Gypsies 
• Worked in Pickworth as a lime burner
•  Before writing he was forced to accept parish relief

This is the asylum Clare was a  patient at

Later Life and Death

•  In July 1837 Clare admitted himself to Dr. Matthew Allen’s private asylum High Beach
•  During his first few years Clare re-wrote famous poems and sonnets by Lord Byron. He also took credit for Shakespeare’s plays. He told a newspaper editor “I’m John Clare now. I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.” 
•  Released in 1841 but sometime between Christmas and New Year was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now St. Andrew’s Hospital)
•  On the intake paperwork when asked “Was the insanity preceded by any severe or long-continued mental emotion or exertion? The doctor entered: “After years of poetical prosing.”
•  He died on May 20, 1864 at the age of 70

Clare and Captain Jean Luc!

Poetry

•   After purchasing a copy of Thomson’s Seasons Clare began to write sonnets which he offered for sale to a local bookseller named Edward Drury
•  Drury sent this to his cousin, John Taylor of the publishing firm Taylor & Hessey
•  First book of poetry Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820
•  This book was highly praised and Village Minstrel and other Poems was published the next year.
• Clare was known as “the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet”
•  Many poems use local dialect ex. ‘pooty’ (snail), ‘ladycow’ (ladybug), ‘crizzle’ (to crisp), and ‘throstle’ (song thrush)
•  Early work deals mostly with nature and the cycle of the year.
•  He often used sonnets and rhyming couplets
•  “His knowledge of the natural world went far beyond that of the major Romantic poets. [Some of his] poems… show a metaphysical depth on a par with his contemporary poets.”

The Rural Muse (1835)

• Clare’s last work
•  While noticed favorably by Christopher North and other reviewer it was still not enough to support his wife and seven children

Context

•  The early 19th Century was a period of rough economic times for publishers and authors alike because of “the great panic of 1825.”
• The cost of books rose to the highest it had ever been.
•  Competition in the market forced many authors to provide their own funding for their works or to publish on commission.
•   The publication of poetry dwindled after the turn of the century due to the increasing popularity of novels.
•  The market for “new verse” was virtually nonexistent Few poets published second editions during this time.

Publication and Reception

•   Published in 1835 by Whittaker and Company (London)
•  Published with punctuation despite Clare's wishes.
• The Rural Muse sold poorly like much of Clare's other work. 
•  “The season has been a very bad one for new books, and I am afraid the time has passed away in which poetry will answer...”

The largest collection of original manuscripts are located at the Peterborough Museum

Websites used for information
 http://johnclaresociety.blogspot.com/
 http://www.poemhunter.com/john-clare/

A Young Peasant

I truly enjoyed John Clare's poems. Although I agree with some of the others of how it was a little irritating that Clare does not use punctuation and uses odd spelling, it is my opinion that this also adds to Clare's country charm. He was born into a poor family in Northhamptonshire in a small village. Luckily he received an education, partially only because he showed a strong appetite for learning .His lack of punctuation and strange words show that Clare was apart of the country he described. Also the "strange" words he uses in his poetry are actually part of the dialect of the region in which he grew up. Clare incorporates his cultural background to enrich his poetry. By reading Clare's poetry I felt like I was able to see nature through the eyes of someone who actually lived in it, not someone who simply went on excursions and was inspired by it. This is perhaps what was the most enjoyable aspect of Clare's poetry. Furthermore, Clare's use of rich imagery was also amazing to read. When reading his poetry my mind was filled with images of woods, birds, streams, dirt, insects, and the "locals".

Intimacy in Wordsworth's, to M.H.

This was my favorite poem out of Wordsworth's, On the Naming of Places because it seemed that he was sharing an exclusive, intimate memory between him and his then-wife, Mary. This poem also made it somewhat easier to try to understand the dynamics of how we decide on naming places because naming something after a loved one is one of the most common ways people name things. The fact that he wants others who pass by this secret, unknown place named Mary, to enjoy the secret-beauty and solitude that most people don't get to witness, is very romantic and beautiful.

The Sublime affect of Nature

I have always had a soft spot for Wordsworth and Tintern Abbey. They way he personifies nature and creates not only a picturesque but a sublime image of the abbey in my mind. However, I was very interested in Bowels Sonnet's which served as inspiration for Wordsworth and Coleridge. Bowels style of sonnet was revolutionary at the time because it broke away from the 18th century principles. His sonnets use nature as a way for him to cope with his own emotions and life (he was grieving over the death of a loved one). These sonnets are a method of catharsis of, which he attempts to find peace and solitude from the sublime of nature. His sonnets both personify nature and use nature as a meditative force. Wordsworth, similarly writes of Tintern Abbey as a place of absolute serenity. He too, personifies that spot on the hill. He speaks to it as if it is his friend or deity. His poem I feel, moves away from the picturesque and towards the sublime of nature. The natural world seems to bring him peace and solitude. A peace that writes of keeping, or attempting to keep, in the city. In class we were asked to think about what happens when you write picturesque poetry and it seems that for Wordsworth and Bowels this form of writing creates a sort of utopia. The find serenity within nature and peace. This may perhaps have to do with class consciousness and the middle classes attempt to identify themselves within the social context of Great Britain. This form of poetry thus, creates an ideal solitude where one can cope and subsequently appreciate life for all its imperfections.

The Beauty of Nostalgia

I think that the most resounding element of this poem is the reality of nostalgia. Personally, I feel as if every time I look back at something through the filter of time, even if it was bad, I can see it with a somewhat positive mindset. In "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" we are reminded of the beauty of the romantic period through the reminiscence of Wordsworth. The imagery in this poem paints a picture that completely immerses the reader into the setting of the poem, and just like someone looking back on a memory, I felt as if I was looking through a filter at Tintern Abbey, and it was beautiful. Everything because more clear when you are able to visualize it from the distance. 

Bittersweet Memory

The theme of nature as beneficial influence seems to be very present in Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". It seems as if Wordsworth uses nature in his poems to evoke emotions, desires, memories, etc. from human kind. This being said, the speaker in "Tintern Abbey" alleviates his pain and loneliness through his memories of nature. Wordsworth writes:
   "Thy memory be as a dwelling place
    For all sweet sounds and harmonies."

The speaker is first in agreement with nature and its purity as a child. Adulthood brings forth a different kind of communion, however. Nature is looked upon in relation to mankind and human life-its almost bittersweet. Nature and the memory of nature throughout the speaker's childhood is still dear to the him because it holds his purest thoughts and the basis of his morality. 

I must confess that I greatly enjoyed my reading of Wordsworth's poem “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey.” While reading the poem, it seemed as though this poem was about so much more than just nature. It seemed to be revival or re-birthing of a spirit or passion that Wordsworth had lost along the way and once he revisited Tintern Abbey that all those feelings and emotions were remembered and it helped fill a void that had been missing. It was also nice to read that he shared such a special place with his sister, especially seeing as though that was like a sort of sanctuary for him. I also found it quite interesting that he never mentioned the actual building itself. I guess I should not be surprised by that seeing as though we've been studying nature and the picturesque.