William Wordsworth and Lucyby Trivikrama Kumari Jamwal |
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Thy mornings showed, thy nights
concealed [I Travelled Among Unknown Men] |
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It is strange why the first thing that springs up from some dark forgotten recess of the mind on reading William Wordsworth's (1770-1850) 'Lucy' poems is this observation made by Theseus in his palace in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer-Night's Dream. These lines were written in 1595 or 1596, almost two centuries before the 'Lucy' lyrics composed in or after the winter of 1798-99, or even Wordsworth's Preface to the second (1800) edition of Lyrical Ballads. Yet, it is not difficult to see why Wordsworth rued:
The two writers, separated by a couple of hundred years, are on a similar, even if not identical, track. The comparison occurred unbidden when I read 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known'. As a "fond and wayward thought" that his beloved may be dead enters the mind of a lover, he works himself up into a frenzy. The poem is born from the shift from an ordinary ride to her cottage into an extraordinary fit of passion that only another lover can sympathize with, in the same tempo as the "quickening pace" of the horse. The origin of the poem is reflective of Wordsworth's own ideas on the composition of poetry outlined in his 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads:
Wordsworth's poetry contained elements of Shakespeare's lunatic, lover and poet, even as Wordsworth the poet arrived at the thought that he outlined in his Preface. All five of his 'Lucy' poems - 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known', 'She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways', 'I Travelled Among Unknown Men', 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower' and 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal' - confirm his poetic perspectives. And nothing is more obvious than Wordsworth's reliance on feeling and emotion both as inspiration and subject of poetry. 'Passion' may have been un-decorous in society then but a poet's fundamental character lay in his ability
Not that the emotion was mawkish. The love for Lucy is intimate and intense. In revealing it, the poet is baring his soul. Lucy is "The joy of (his) desire;" She is "cherished", present everywhere. He seems to see her, feel her at every point in place and time. The sentiment is all-consuming. So much so, that even his love for his country can be traced to his devotion to her. True, nationalism was a part of the Romantic character; but Wordsworth's was blatantly driven by his all-pervasive passion for Lucy. This blatancy is underscored by the blunt admission in 'I Travelled Among Unknown Men' on the heels of waxing eloquent about ardor for country, that the determination not to "quit thy shore" is because it is "an English fire" beside which Lucy "turned her wheel" and
Grief at her loss, of which the cold fear "If Lucy should be dead!" in 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known' seemed a premonition, is equally impassioned. Sorrow is stark, sharp and poignant - drenching everything in it. Mourning transforms the "happy dell" of 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower' into a barren heath. The lament in 'She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways' reverberates:
The realization and confession come suddenly after description of other matters, and the seeming control is deceptive. The reflection in 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal'
is less matter-of-fact than it appears. The sadness is deep and stays long after the poem has finished. The finality, in 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower', of
is - well - final.
However, Lucy's allure lies in her being the embodiment of Wordsworth's preferred character: solitary, simple, innocent. For William Wordsworth believed that for poetry to continue to please mankind permanently, it had to do with "essential passions" and these were to be found in "humble and rustic life" where
Lucy is also proof of the transforming power of imagination, voiced through Theseus by Shakespeare as well, that Wordsworth was convinced about. This is the power that exalts Lucy into a luminary. In her Wordsworth puts into practice his own advice: "to throw [...] a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect;" [7] Lucy is simple but not crude. She is superlative. In 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower', Nature says
She is matchless in her exquisiteness -
And in 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal' she is almost ethereal -
Another facet of
Wordsworth the poet emerges in these 'Lucy' lyrics: that
of a lover and bard of nature. If "humble and rustic
life" allowed the play of elemental emotions, it is
also a state in which "passions of men are
incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of
nature." [8] Inevitably, for a man close to nature
who spent hours amidst scenic landscapes, frequently
alone, the eye and ear of a lover of nature for detail is
evident. Lucy belongs to a world abounding in references
to manifestations of nature: Lucy's "cot" under
"the sinking moon", the bowers as places of
play, the "wayward" rivulet and its murmurings,
the "floating clouds" and the turbulent "motions
of the Storm". The images of Lucy as a half-hidden
shy "violet by a mossy stone", as "Fresh
as a rose in June", "sportive as the fawn /
That wild with glee across the lawn" are crystal-clear,
precise.
as Lucy becomes in 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal'
For all Nature's
beauty and beneficence, there is an underlying threat, a
note of impending doom. In 'Strange Fits of Passion Have
I Known' the "evening moon" seems to reflect
the lover's foreboding. The ride to Lucy's cottage is
accompanied more by a sense of anxiety than excited
expectancy at meeting a beloved. There is a sense of
tragedy throughout that one cannot shake off as one reads
the poems. It casts its shadow on happier allusions to
Nature and the super-naturalness and sublimity of Nature
becomes a double-edged sword with its life-sustaining
lighter side and a darker side of death. Invariably, the
sense of the latter is strongest in moments more removed
from the conscious state - in sleep or in dreams. The
presentiment of death as a "fond" thought comes
to the lover in an eerie moment of near insanity, and the
fact that Lucy has "no motion ... no force"
hits home while his spirits are 'sealed' by "slumber".
There may be the heavy,
dark side, yet there is euphony. It has to do with the
stress and rhyme (abab) patterns as well as with the
choice of language. The language and versification today,
read in the wake of twentieth and twenty first century
poetic practice may still seem archaic or conventional;
but in view of the writing contemporaneous to it the
content and its expression are smooth, facilitated by an
overall result that is easy, pleasing, truly lyrical.
Wordsworth made a concerted effort to avoid figures of
speech such as personifications merely to elevate his
style, wishing to "keep the Reader in the company of
flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall
interest him" [10]. The predominant figure of speech
remains the simile and all comparisons are to various
elements of Nature. |
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