I don’t post on this site as often as I once did, but I still read the posts often enough. I came across XZC’s commentary on Poetry and immeadiately thought of my own struggle to come to grips with the possible relevance of poetry.
Here is a paper I wrote when I came out the other side of a long battle with the Romantics.
I hope this contributes to the discussion.
The immortal voice of Plato can be heard throughout the works of Wordsworth and Shelley. Perhaps, it is nothing more than an echo, a relic from a time past, which continues to animate, re-animate, dissipate and re-animate again. Perhaps, it may no longer be called the voice of Plato, but rather, the voice of “Time,” which speaks the past through the voices of the present. Or, perhaps, it is, as Shelley states it, that “great poem” which writes itself through us; which tells itself to us through our lives; through the works of our poets, such that Plato is present in every poem, in every work of poetry and prose. On the face of it we are presented with two names, that of William Wordsworth and Percy Byssche Shelley, the authors of two works. In the case of Wordsworth, we are faced with an attempt to legitimize, or justify, a novel departure in the trajectory of the poetic endeavor. A departure, from the commonplace, habitual, poetic style of the past, provoked by the work of science and reason and their artificial distinctions. By contrast, Shelley offers a defence of the work of poetry and art in its entirety, one which takes for granted the departure made by Wordsworth. However, despite the divergent motivations, we are at the site of a kind of convergence upon the regulating ideal, which we might call poetry as such. In both cases we are, as it were, dealing with a kind of operant affectivity coming to expression through the works of Wordsworth and Shelley. As such, both works are responses to the present moment, that is, to the trajectory of the moment in which these authors were once present. In both cases, this response, this affect, takes on the character of a reflective exercise; a reflection upon this regulating ideal called poetry and its role in the face of science and reason. What therefore is poetry in the minds of Wordsworth and Shelley? The following examination will attempt to compare and contrast the Preface To The Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth, with A Defence Of Poetry, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.2 Poetry is, in both works, defended against the momentary, provisional, truth of science and reason. Poetry is presented as the human mediation of an infinite truth, which comes to light, although momentarily, through the works of the poet. The value of poetry resides in this movement, in this mediation, whose truth, in turn, re-animates the sedimentations of language allowing new connections to emerge and new thoughts to arise.
If the following examination is to engage in the convergences between Shelley and Wordsworth, it seems necessary to point to the common feeling which animates them. If we are indeed dealing with an affect, indeed a generalized affect, which every man feels, called forth by the progress of reason, how is the poet seemingly able to express it? Man has become alienated from nature, in the wake of the scientific revolution and the enlightenment. There is no longer any wonder in the face of objects which give themselves over to the abstract ideations, and explanations, of a science which claims total authority over the lives of men. The situation is such that men no longer think, but rather, give themselves over to ready made answers, to the aristocrats of pre-formulated thoughts.
As such, Wordsworth’s departure, his redefinition of the poem, the elimination, or challenging of the distinction between poetry and prose, is an attack against the project of reason, the articulation of clear well defined categories and the distinctions between things and concepts. Wordsworth, through the displacement of metre as the distinguishing feature of poetry, has issued an aporetic challenge to the boundaries, and distinctions of Reason. Poetry, for Wordsworth, has a purpose outside of the metrical arrangement of words. The poem is expressive in that it communicates a feeling which: “…therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.”4 There is a truth, therefore, expressed in the work of poetry, which the man of science cannot understand although he necessarily works in its wake. Wordsworth argues:
If the distinction between prose and poetry is not so determinate, if the ideal, which separates, which makes these artificial distinctions, can allow itself to be synthesized with its other, what are we to make of this project of science? Somehow the poet is in touch with the infinite, although it forever escapes his grasp, it puts him in touch with everyman, with the past the present and the future, with the common, general feelings and emotions of mankind. Perhaps it is, as Wordsworth argues that: “…these passions thoughts and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men.”6
Similarly, for Shelley, A Defence Of Poetry, is a defence against reason; a defence against the subjection of poetry, and the imagination, to the dictates of reason. Rather, as Shelley states it:
Reason, on its own, can only provide us with the raw data of facts, figures, and habitual modes of action. Without the imagination of the poet, we could not go further, there would be no progression in our thought. Time destroys the beauty of science, the beauty of scientific knowledge, because it contains nothing eternal in it, it is, rather, a momentary reflection of a particular truth, albeit a distorted one. The poem retains it truth, because it expresses that part of us which is eternal, that part of us which connects with the eternal.
Shelley, therefore, subordinates reason to the imagination, nay, further, to the poetic imagination which sees unity in difference, the imagination which is able to revel in the pleasure which Wordsworth had claimed “…derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude.”9 Poetry allows man to remain open in the face of Reason, which claims to possess authority and mastery over the destiny of man.
The convergences between Wordsworth and Shelley, seems to solidify the argument that the poet is simply better attuned the common feeling of everyman. Is there not something eternal in the feelings provoked, in the affects of man, in the face of that which he cannot truly understand? Both Wordsworth and Shelley submitted their reactions in works of prose, as an illustration of the artificiality of the distinction between poetry and prose. It is no accident that their prose reads like poetry, that the eternal, the ineffable, is somehow presented there within the spaces, in the gaps between words and their meanings. If, indeed, poetry is as Wordsworth described it: “…the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,”10 are these feeling not literally here in the seriousness of prose? This movement, this unveiling of the false distinction between poetry and prose, animates, or perhaps, re-animates the work of prose itself, demonstrates the capacity of poetry to reinvigorate the sedimentations of language
The poets, in both works, seem to have emerged from the light, perhaps they are better able to view it from outside of the cave. As such, every work of poetry becomes a work of translation, a work of mediation between the finite man and the ‘great poem,’ which writes itself through us. In both cases the passive movement of the poet is emphasized, as but a vessel for divine inspiration. Science cannot move beyond the transitory, the provisional, the temporary respite of the experts of the day, the poet is the expert of feeling, the expert of expression. The movement from Wordsworth to Shelly demonstrates the eternal movement, the eternal borrowing between men and the being which inspires them. In many ways Shelley is but a repetition of Wordsworth, albeit with something more. Shelleys’s is a synthetic, work which deals in Wordsworth’s wake, dealing with the space opened up by the departure effected by the Preface To Lyrical Ballads. What does Shelley repeat? Is it literally the work of Wordsworth? Or, does he, rather, carry forth the feeling elicited, evoked, by Wordsworth’s theoretical offering? Is this a manifestation of the eternal movement involved in the poetic exercise? What is poetry, therefore, but this movement of carrying forth the truth, as the restatement of truth, for our time and for every time?
ENDNOTES
1-Percy Bysshe Shelley The Major Works, ed. Zachary Leader and Micheal O’Neil, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. 687.
2- There is no doubt a certain injustice, or violence, involved in such an endeavor, as the work of Shelley owes a debt, which it does not explicitly acknowledge, to the departure effected by the work of Wordsworth. Just as it is true to say that Plato is present in the works of both authors, it is similarly true that the work of Wordsworth is present in the work of Shelley.
3- William Wordsworth Selected Poems and Prefaces, ed Jack Stillinger, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. p. 449.
4- Ibid., p. 448.
5- Ibid., p. 455-456.
6- Ibid., p 457.
7- Shelley, The Major Works, p. 675.
8- Ibid., p. 696.
9- Wordsworth, Selected Poems and Prefaces, p. 461
10- Ibid., p. 449.
11- Shelley, The Major Works, p. 698.