Memorable statement of an expressive theory of poetry

 

Wordsworth's Preface has been described as a memorable statement of an expressive theory of poetry" Justify.

 

Or

 

In his theory, Wordsworth minimises the importance of thought in poetry; for him poetry is essentially a voice of feeling. Examine critically.

Or

 

"The distinguishing quality of these poems is that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling" Bring out the significance of this claim by Wordsworth regarding his Lyrical Ballads.

 

It has been a habit to denigrate the value of Wordsworth's critical views as propounded in the Preface. It has been charged that his arguments are inept and conventional in expression. One cannot deny the charge completely. There are passages which admit misin-terpretation because of the ambiguous expression of thought. At times, Wordsworth seems out of his depth as a critic. Nevertheless the Preface, in spite of its shortcomings, remains the first and most memorable statement of an expressive theory of poetry in English.

 

Importance given to feeling rather than to situation or action

 

When Wordsworth wrote his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he felt that poetry had lost the "essential passions and other primary instincts and affections which are concerning man in relation to Man and man's relation to Nature". His aim was to stress on the instincts and primary feelings of man, which are common to all mankind. He turned to the rustic folk as against the higher classes of cities and towns. They, he felt, experienced the elementary emotions in the  simplest and most forceful manner. He declared that he would be giving importance to the feeling, and not to the situation or action. Indeed, poetry would be the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Poetry, for the first time, is being stated as a matter of self expression, or as release of personal emotions.

 

"Lyrical Ballads": the significance of the title

 

The title of the volume of poems was itself a challenge to existing models. The eighteenth century held the ballad to be a separate genre and the lyric as another, very different one. A lyrical ballad would be a 'hybrid'. Wordsworth's intention was apparently to stress on the fact that the poems were ballads with a difference. The essence of a ballad was the tragic story which it narrated. But in Wordsworth's ballads, the emphasis is not on the story, or the series of dramatic events, but on the emotions embodied in the story. He identified poetry with "passion". Poetry, he said, "is the history, or science of feelings". As the lyric was the poetic form traditionally consecrated to the out-pouring of feelings, it was natural to differentiate these ballads from the ordinary ballads by calling them lyrical'. The implication is that the stories they recount are not particularly interesting in themselves, until they are reduced, as Wordsworth reduces them, to their pathetic human essentials. But in Wordsworth's ballads, as Bateson remarks, emotionality is not the whole story. The heart-rending situation must be actualised. Some how or other Wordsworth hit upon themes that satisfy a "profound psychological hunger" in the human mind; they show a remarkable insight into that one human heart which 'we have all of us'. In Wordsworth's own words,

 

The distinguishing quality of these poems is that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.

 

The poems: examples of the depth of feeling lying in simple natures

 

Wordsworth wanted to show that a great depth of feeling may lie in simple natures when their primary instincts or emotions were stirred. He discovered powers which were awe-inspiring in their emotional intensity. We are shown the strength of a mother's love which madness cannot destroy in Mertha Kay; we see the devotion of Betty Foy to her idiot son ; we experience the idiot boy's nightlong  rapture before the water fall. These things seemed to him to elevate man's common nature towards that infinitude which is its heart and home. In Goody Blake and Harry Gill there is some element of grotesque. But, behind it all, there is genuine feeling. Wordsworth has identified himself to a remarkable degree with this simple old woman and her lifelong struggle to keep warm.

 

Poetry as communication

 

In Wordsworth's theory, essential passions and unelaborated expressions of humble people serve not only as the subject matter of poetry, but also as the model for the spontaneous overflow' of the poet's own feelings, in his act of composition. A poet, significantly enough, is a man speaking to men. The communicative or expressive aspect of poetry is emphasised. Indeed, it is for the first time that an English poet is stating a theory of poetry which is stressing upon the expression of the poet's emotions and thoughts and feelings.

 

The poet is different from other men in degree and not in kind. He has a higher sensibility and a more comprehensive soul than other men, as also a keener sense of observation. Hence, "where the poet speaks through the mouths of his characters", the subject "will naturally, and upon fit occasion, lead him to passions", of which the language will be that really spoken by men. On the other occasions, "where the poet speaks to us in his own person and character", he also feels, and therefore speaks, as the representative of uniform human nature:

 

But these passions and thoughts and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men..the poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions. How, then, can his language differ in any material degree from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly?

 

The poet's best guide to universal human feeling is his own feeling. A poet's own feelings are his stay and support.

 Does Wordsworth minimise the role of thought in the creation of poetry?

 

The poet's work is to communicate the joy which he feels in the act of creation. His goal is "joy in widest commonality spread". He is to try and change the people's heart and enlarge their sympathy for men as men. He would discover universal truths which would appeal  to the heart of the readers rather than to their intellect. It would be an instinctive apprehension of truth and not the reasoned truth arrived at by the scientist or philosopher. With all this emphasis on the heart over the head, and feeling over the intellect, does Wordsworth seem to minimise the role of thought in the process of creating poetry?

 

Even a cursory reading of the Preface shows that Wordsworth does not advocate emotionalism in the law. To the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings', he added, it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity". The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind, says Wordsworth. The process of creation here sounds like the deliberate evocation of a past emotion which re-appears only as kindred, and not identical with what it was in the past. It is not identical because the original emotion has passed through a filtration process, so to say. The poet, we have been told plainly enough, is a man who not only feels intensely; but has thought long and deeply. Mere feeling, then, is not enough if the poetry is to be genuine. There is need for reflection, contemplation, and judgement.

 

The poetic creation, however, does not take place in a mood of tranquillity. Sensation is passionate. It sinks to sleep, loses itself in a brooding fit. But some day or other, ten years hence, it may be passioning' anew in the mysteriously quickened imagination, as H.W. Garrod observes. It is this hour of passionate re-awakening which is the hour of poetry. It is the business of the poet to communicate to his reader, not that passion in which he himself began, i.e., that passion which is in the senses, but that filtrated or selected' passion which, while it is 'kindred' to the other, has been made free of accident. The original impression of sense is felt by the poet in a lively and poignant manner. But he soon re-establishes his tranquillity. After the passage of some time, he 'passions' again. The feeling which has slept, stirs anew. It may have once been deep sorrow, but now it is

 

Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight

 And miserable love that is not pain

To hear of

 

It is this purified passion that the poet conveys to the reader.

 

Wordsworth did not conceive of the great poet as a thoughtless and instinctive child of nature. Just as he required the poet to look steadily on the subject, and reminded him that he writes not for himself, but for men, so he affirmed that good poems are produced only by a man who has thought long and deeply". He says that "our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings.." The spontaneity which he recommends, is the reward of intelligent application and hard-won skills a spontaneity, as F.R. Leavis has said, "supervening upon complex developments", and a naturalness "consummating a discipline, moral and other". Wordsworth's own practice gives plenty of evidence that his poems have been revised after composition. The recognition of the importance of revision and technique was quite reconcilable in Wordsworth's mind with a reliance on the initial inspiration, or the 'inward impulse'.

 

Conclusion

 

The theory of poetry as propounded by Wordsworth, is an expressive theory. The poet expresses his feelings, which, however, are at one with the basic feelings of humanity in general. Thus, the poetry appeals to the instincts of the readers. But Wordsworth does not minimise the role of thought in the creative process. The moment of creation, it is true, involves the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, i.e., there is nothing forced or mechanical about it. But before the creation, thought has gone into the process of purifying the original emotion. After the composition, judgement helps to revise and perfect the artistic technique. It is the strength of Wordsworth's expressive theory, therefore, that he brings into its purview elements of the older concept that poetry is a deliberate art; it is its peculiarity that these elements are carefully relegated to a temporal position before or after the actual coming-into-being of the poem. For in the immediate act of composition, the best warrant of naturalness, Wordsworth insists, is that the overflow of feeling be spontaneous, and free both from the deliberate adaptation of conventional language to feeling and from the deliberate bending of linguistic means to the achievement of poetic effects.

 

 Wordsworth's theory of poetry and the poetic process gave a fresh direction to the practice of poetry in the nineteenth century. Like any other theory, it, too, has its limitations. The conception of poetry as 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings originating in emotion recollected in tranquillity could not be an all-inclusive theory of poetry. All poets could not compose in such a manner. But the theory did serve to put emphasis on the importance of feeling and powerful emotions, which are basic to human nature.