Transcription
[Music] Hello everybody. Welcome to this video on William Wordsworth, the greatest of the Romantic poets, one of the Lake Poets. As all of you know, the Lake District is where he was born. He was born in Cockermouth in Cumberland, in the Lake District. What is different about the Lake District? It has many lakes, beautiful, picturesque landscape, mountains, very cloudy sky, trees. I’ve been there. This is the gateway to Scotland. When you move up England, you have to pass the Lake District and then you reach Scotland. Scotland, oh my god, is so beautiful. When I was traveling through the Lake District on a road trip, I thought it is no wonder that poets living here became such powerful poets, because that nature there is really so inspiring.
As you know, the greatest feature of Wordsworth’s poetry and Romantic poetry is nature: the smell of greenery, the smell of the lakes, the thick dark clouds in the sky, the winding paths. Even now, there are villagers, small villages, uh, farmhouses, cattle—all these are still there and it’s so beautiful. Every village is beautiful anywhere in the world, isn’t it? So Wordsworth was born in such a place, Cockermouth, Lake District. He was inspired by the common life, their nature, their emotions. He was the third of five children. You know that one of his younger siblings was Dorothy. The family, the children were separated in their childhood because the father and mother died quite early—one when Wordsworth was eight years old, the other when Wordsworth was fifteen years old. For some time, the children lived with relatives, but then, and they had financial problems also, but then uh, Wordsworth and Dorothy got reunited. Wordsworth went to Hawkshead Grammar School, then to St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Even in his childhood, Wordsworth was friends with the Hutchinsons, and Mary Hutchinson later became his wife. Even as a small school-going boy, uh, Wordsworth must have written poetry. His first poem was published very early, uh, in the European Magazine. It was “On seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep a tale of distress.” Helen Maria Williams was also a poet, uh, who wrote some poetry, and this was his first poem. The rest of his writings came when he was a student at St. John’s, Cambridge. That is a very major college in Cambridge. At first, when he went to Cambridge, he felt homesick, and he enjoyed the uh, nature and summer there. He had a lot of learning; he read a lot of books, including um, Don Quixote. How do I know? You are thinking because he has already written about it in The Prelude. We will come to that later.
As a young man, another life-changing thing that Wordsworth did was he went on a walking tour. Walking tour. You will think, “Oh my god, how can you walk so much?” Because he went to France, Switzerland, Germany. Do you really walk over these countries? You will think, but you know, in those places, because of the climate, you don’t sweat so much. It is different. Walking was a really major pastime of many writers at this time. You can see walking in Jane Austen’s novels, Charlotte Brontë’s novels. Walking tours were very common. Our Thomas Gray also went on a walking tour of the Highlands of Scotland. William, do you remember? I have already told you about it. Did you watch that video on Thomas Gray, transitional poets? I hope you are watching all the videos. Don’t be lazy. Watch everything in the correct sequence, every one of them, because then you will get a very clear idea of the development of English literature, the trajectory. I’m telling you, even if we are scholars in English literature, it is good to watch these videos. You know why? I am also learning from making these videos. We have to continuously revise, continuously keep in touch of all this, not only for exams. This is the wealth. English literature is the wealth, the capital upon which our career is built, isn’t it? So we have to keep replenishing it; we have to keep developing it. It should be solid. Don’t keep forgetting things. So watch these videos several times. That is why I’m making them small, so that you won’t be overburdened.
So coming back to Wordsworth, Wordsworth went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland, Germany. France at this time was undergoing the tumultuous period of the French Revolution. At the beginning, the French Revolution was radical, liberal. Wordsworth and other poets had a very optimistic view of the revolution; they supported the revolution. But eventually, the French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror, so much bloodshed. A lot of innocents were guillotined. You are wondering what is guillotine? Some of you are wondering; some of you know. I will tell you. A contraption, a machine was discovered, like a table like this, and there is a uh, pillar here, there is a blade on top, the—and human beings are made to lie like this. Can you see this? This is the head, okay? Human beings are able to lie; they’re made to lie like this, and the blade will change, fall. Did you see the blade falling, and the head is cut off? The head falls into a basket. Oh my god! It was worse than war. So many innocent people killed like that in the Reign of Terror, and the Jacobins, led by Maximilien Robespierre, led this Reign of Terror. Maximilien Robespierre himself was the last man to be guillotined. You know, like R.K. Narayan said, rakshasas will bring upon themselves their downfall. Anyway, the people of England, largely got, the younger people especially, got disillusioned by the French Revolution. It started big, but look at what became of it. And the older people, uh, who were supporting the French Revolution at first, also got disillusioned.
So Wordsworth, in the beginning, at this time when he took a walking tour, he supports the French Revolution. At this time, he wrote poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. These are two early collections that he wrote. In these two early collections, he doesn’t show his Romantic spirit yet. He is following the eighteenth-century descriptive conventions. Remember Augustan poetry? Augustan poetry had pastoral, descriptive conventions, topographical poems like Windsor Forest, remember, huh? So Wordsworth’s first two collections came at this time, and at this time in France, Wordsworth fell in love with a woman called Annette Vallon, with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. But before the daughter was born, he had to leave France because of the Reign of Terror, because of English government’s uh, antagonism towards the French revolutionary government, because of financial problems. He had to leave Annette, and he did not come back and meet her again until the baby Caroline was nine years old. At that time, he was going to marry Mary Hutchinson. Mary Hutchinson wanted him to go and meet them and eventually give some money to Caroline when she was going to be married. And when he met Caroline for the first time, a nine-year-old girl, Wordsworth took her on a seaside walk, and about that he wrote a poem. It is “A beauteous evening, calm and free.” That’s a very famous sonnet by Wordsworth. And about his affair with Annette Vallon, Wordsworth wrote “Vaudracour and Julia,” a famous poem. So that is an early collection that he wrote, uh, not a collection, it’s an early poem that he wrote.
Uh, after this, he came and settled down in the Lake District once again. There are two or three places in the Lake District where he stayed, where he lived. At first, he lived in Dove Cottage in Grasmere. It is a place full of peasants and nature, farms, country life, absolutely beautiful place. There was a little hill called Rydal Mount where he would go. I have been to Grasmere, to that house, uh, you know, it is the Wordsworth Museum now, God, and that hill, everything is still maintained there. If possible, you should uh, also visit England and all these places. It changes your career; it changes your perspective on literature. It doesn’t cost that much. You’re all going to pass NET; you will all be Asst. 1 professors every month from your salary. Set aside some money for my England tour, and then you should visit England and all these places. You should do a tour of the English countryside as I did. It is, I’m telling you, it will change your life as a teacher. So this Rydal Mount, which is thickly wooded, full of plants and greenery and mystic beauty, Wordsworth would stand there and look down on the countryside. He met the local farmers, people like the Solitary Reaper, people like the Leech Gatherer, and he would just—his heart will go out to them, and he would think about them and write about them. I am overwhelmed with emotion thinking of how Wordsworth must have written. And you know, when you teach Romantic poetry, you should teach with passion. You should not teach like this, you know, “Absalom and Achitophel is an Old Testament poem,” or “Absalom is uh, Monmouth; Achitophel is David—not David, uh, Shaftesbury,” like this. You shouldn’t teach Romantic poetry, isn’t it? Though those very serious Augustan poetry, Romantic poetry should be taught like this, with emotion, with tears, with joy, with delight, imagination. So that’s why I’m teaching you like that. I’m sharing my stories with you like that, and I’m digressing a little bit. It was not like points, points, points all the time like I do in some videos. Today I am just like a river flowing, you know, wherever I want, telling you stories. Did you like that style? This is, I think, the best style for Romantic poetry.
So Wordsworth and Dorothy, at this time living in uh, Grasmere, that is 1795, very momentous here, because that is the year in which Wordsworth and Coleridge met. Coleridge was two years elder to Wordsworth, and Coleridge would walk fifty miles every day to come and meet Wordsworth. They would sit together, talk about poetry and landscape and countryside and revolution, and Wordsworth would talk about his vision of poetry, and Coleridge thought, “This young man is going to change the history of English poetry.” Coleridge encouraged Wordsworth to write more. Together they wrote poems; that is what eventually led to the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. In 1795, uh, Wordsworth had already written some poems, including the play Borderers. It was written at that time. From Grasmere, to which place Coleridge had to travel fifty miles, because Coleridge lived in the nearby Somerset. From Grasmere, Wordsworth and Dorothy moved to Alfoxden House in Somerset, so that Coleridge did not have to walk so much anymore. There, Dorothy also started writing. Dorothy wrote the Alfoxden Journal and Grasmere Journal later; they were published. So these works were written at this time, and then Wordsworth and Coleridge together decided to publish a collection of poems that would change English history, as I told you. They had a new vision of poetry. The aim of Lyrical Ballads was to ascertain how far the language of conversation of the lower and middle classes would suffice to provide poetic pleasure. How far the ordinary language of the conversation of the lower and middle classes, how lower-class peoples and middle-class people’s conversational language would serve for purposes of poetic pleasure. That is the aim of Lyrical Ballads, according to Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads; he says this. So there was one century of influence of Alexander Pope and Neoclassical poetry at this time. That one century of influence is what Wordsworth and Coleridge are overturning with their poems in Lyrical Ballads. Lyrical Ballads, with a few other poems, that is a full title. Lyrical Ballads. Look at the Romantic genre; it is lyrical and ballads both, with a few other poems. The first four poems were by Coleridge, starting from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The next nineteen poems were by Wordsworth, starting from “The Female Vagrant” and ending with “Tintern Abbey.” So there are twenty-three poems in all. This was the first edition, published in 1798, along with an advertisement. In 1800, the second edition was brought in, which, which included new poems like Michael, and in the 1800 edition, he’s published a rudimentary preface. Rudimentary means just a small preface, not the big preface that we know. The big preface that we know came in 1802. I suppose you know these facts. Remember these days and exams. It is not just facts that they are asking; they are asking analytical questions. They want you to connect and study and interpret and study like that. If you study, you will be able to answer those questions. We have to study deeply. Along with listening to my videos, you should also read on your own. That’s very important. These videos are setting the ground for your self-learning, okay?
So I was talking about the Lyrical Ballads. In the Lyrical Ballads, a very important poem of Wordsworth is “Tintern Abbey,” “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.” In that poem, Wordsworth is talking about um, having revisited the ruins of Tintern Abbey. It is a historical place. He is revisiting the ruins of Tintern Abbey five years after he visited the place once. Five years ago he had visited this place. “Five years” is the opening of the poem also. Those five years were very big years. Wordsworth remembers that so much has changed in his life since he visited uh, Tintern Abbey the first time. And in the poem, he is looking at the development of his own attitudes to nature and life. He’s saying that first, when he went to nature, he was like a small, small kid, a small child running about like a roe—roe is a female deer—a roe deer. He was running about nature, just enjoying uh, nature with animal pleasures. You know, when we visited tourist places with our parents in the past, in our childhood, we were also like that. In childhood, when we went to a beautiful scenic place, we would not stand and enjoy the beauty of nature; we would not stand and think about humanity; we will just run about and enjoy, you know, sensory pleasures, visceral pleasures. And as a young man, when Wordsworth visited the Wye and Tintern Abbey, as a young man when he visited, he was more like a man running away from something bad. He was more in love with nature at this time. And then, now that was the stage in which he visited Tintern Abbey the first time, and now when the second time he’s coming to Tintern Abbey, he’s in his third stage; that is the stage of maturity; that is the stage when he is hearing the still, sad music of humanity in nature. In nature, when he looks at nature and sees the beauty of nature, he is seeing the still sad—he is hearing the still, sad music of humanity. And now, the second time when he visits Tintern Abbey, his sister Dorothy is with him, and when he sees Dorothy, he knows that Dorothy is in her second stage; he is in his third stage, and he can experience what is called two consciousnesses. That means he knows, he is aware of two souls at the same time, two consciousnesses at the same time, his own and Dorothy’s, his present self as well as his former self. That is called two consciousnesses in Wordsworth. And uh, Tintern Abbey is a greater Romantic lyric. A.M. Abrams has talked about it. Tintern Abbey, Dejection: An Ode by Coleridge, are all greater Romantic lyrics, which combine experiences of nature with poets’ problems and solutions to those problems. So that is the very major poem, uh, Tintern Abbey.
Immediately after the publication of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dorothy, all of them went to Germany. Wordsworth and Dorothy lived in the town of Goslar there, while Coleridge traveled in university towns and went to the University of Göttingen. Wordsworth at this time wrote the Lucy poems. Lucy poems are five poems: “Strange fits of passion have I known,” “She dwelt among untrodden ways,” “I travelled among unknown men,” “Three years she grew in sun and shower,” “A slumber did my spirit seal.” These are the five Lucy poems. There’s another poem, Lucy Gray, but that is not usually included in this poem. These poems called Lucy poems are mysterious, mystical poems about some girl who seems to have died at the age of three, and reflecting on that child, he talks about nature, he talks about life, he talks about his emotions. That is the Lucy poems. Then there is another major poem called Michael, subtitled “A Pastoral Poem.” It focuses on a Grasmere farmer, Michael. He has a sheep farm; he wants to build a sheepfold. He and his wife are old people; they cannot build the sheepfold on their own. He is thinking about his son Luke, but Luke has gone to the city and got corrupted there; he has not returned. And Wordsworth is talking about that Michael, how eventually Michael dies and his sheep farm lies in ruins. While in Germany, Wordsworth was also writing The Prelude. As all of you know, The Prelude is the most important poem by Wordsworth. It is a spiritual autobiography. Did you know that The Prelude was written as a response to Paradise Lost? Guys, Milton wrote Paradise Lost to talk about man, to talk about it in general, humanity; that is to talk about the cosmos. It is an epic poem about the cosmos and humanity. Wordsworth wanted to write an epic poem with a difference; he wanted to write an epic poem about his own development, about himself, a Romantic epic. It came to be called The Recluse, but he did not complete it. The first part of The Recluse was addressed to Coleridge; it was called “Poem to Coleridge” in thirteen parts. “Poem to Coleridge” was published first in 1805, and in 1850, after Wordsworth’s death, Mary Hutchinson published it as The Prelude. So The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind, is a poem originally intended to be the first part of The Recluse, which is a Romantic epic. It was first published in thirteen parts in 1805, and then it was published posthumously in 1850 in fourteen parts. There is some remaining part of The Recluse that is called The Excursion. In The Excursion, he is exploring man’s relation to nature, and he is also talking about industrialization, mechanization that is destroying nature. The Prelude is an amazing autobiography of the poet. He talks about his birth; he talks about how he spent his childhood in the lap of nature; he’s talk about the beauty of the Lake District; he’s talking about how he went to Cambridge. After the death of his mother, at first he felt homesick; he remembered all that he had left behind. You know, life in uh, the Lake District was so beautiful. He, he would wander about in nature, and one day he stole a boat—he must have heard of that—and he talks about how emotionally he developed an attachment to nature. Eventually, he would realize that nature is his guide, guardian, and philosopher, nurse. He would develop a pantheistic philosophy. And in The Prelude, he is talking about how he spent his childhood in the Lake District and then went to Cambridge. He did a lot of learning there. He describes the joyous summer he spent there, the experience of solitude. All this is the making of a poet. Eventually, he will develop into a poet from all these experiences. Then he talks about his walking tour, which also brought him in close contact with nature, but also with revolution. He talks about the French Revolution and how uh, eventually he got disillusioned by it. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven,” remember, very famous lines uh, that he speaks at this time. And then he got disillusioned with the French Revolution; he came back to London and then came back to the Lake District. So he develops a story of how his experiences developed his imagination, grew, and eventually this is the, you know, corpus of his poetry. All this he has written about in his poetry. And Wordsworth also talks about spots of time, visitings of imaginative power, you know, like an epiphany. Spots of time are sudden visitations of imaginative power that enriched his perceptions and writing. That is the famous poem, The Prelude. If possible, you should take some time to read it and read about it. And now I will tell you about Wordsworth’s other important poems. You…