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Memories in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey In 18 th century Western Europe, an artistic and intellectual movement arose. This movement came in the history of ideas, often referred to in a similar vein to an approach called intellectual history (Wikipedia). Indeed, as the name says, the Romantic period was characterized by strong emotions which include awe, horror, caution and many other aesthetic experiences (Wikipedia). The period greatly stressed the nature in art and language. This was the time when it singled out men and women whose achievements merited the praise of all. On the other hand, the best known poets wrote during the Romantic period.
These were the likes of Shelley, Keats, Byron and Wordsworth. There were also women poets and essayists as well as Gothic fiction authors. Indeed, the era was abundant with all the creative people around (Miall, D. and Wu, 1997). A new movement in art also came about which people also called Romantic. The Romantic period was characterized as intertwined with emphasis on the activity of the imagination accompanied by greater emphasis on the importance of intuition, instincts, and feelings.
It was characterized with a greater attention to the emotions as a necessary supplement to purely logical reason. Even poetry was described to be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" marking a turning point in literary history (Introduction to Romanticism). Romanticism has been known to be a period of a lot of trends just as the Victorian era. There were massive changes in the areas of the arts, politics and social milieu arising out of the late 18 th and 19 th centuries in Europe. Yet, a precise characterization and a specific description of Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history and literary history for all the twentieth century without any great measure of consensus emerging.
This problem was brought up Arthur Lovejoy in his article, On the Discrimination of Romanticism's. This is because people attribute Romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly to the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. So, one can just imagine the wide spectrum of issues that characterized this period of history. Tintern Abbey" is Wordsworth poem that surges with strong expressions of feelings. It depicts scenes which are revisited as familiar landscapes that trigger memories of the past. The poem uses memory as a source of salvation and compares one's past to the present as a form of self-reflection.
It speaks from the heart; first to an audience and then to his beloved sister. This poem is placed with other poems in a volume. Wordsworth's connection with nature at Tintern gives him memories of his childhood. It is poignant that his visit allows him to find himself in his sister. Wordsworth remembers his life, when as a boy, he "bounded o'er the mountains" and through the streams (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works). Moreover, he describes those days as nature made up his whole world: waterfalls, mountains and woods gave shape to his passions and his love.
It saves him from some of the bitter past he may have experienced. Yet it is said that one of the best established facts about memory is also the most intriguing. It states that newly formed memories are easily disturbed and tend to vanish, but older memories are tenacious and survive all sorts of changes in the individual and even damage to the brain. This is what Wordsworth is trying to say in Tintern Abbey. In Fact in Line 22, the poet changes his viewpoint. This is done as he remembers memories of it (Jordan, John E).
The memories have been saving grace to him as he spends time reminiscing how it felt many years ago at his place. These memories have comforted him when downtrodden. They have also generated moods of calm awareness that have mystically enlightened him. In such moods, he feels, another kind of perception comes to us, so that "we see into the life of things" (line 49). He had often returned in spirit to the Wye for escape from the busy and nervous world. The imagination characteristic of the Romanticism period then evokes are vivid as he pens, FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters!
and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. -- Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. (Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey). The idea that memories can exist in two forms an unstable short-term form and a stable long term-paper is related to the multistage models of memory. Those behavioral models are essentially elaborations of the reservation-consolidation of which Wordsworth manifests in his poem. The first twenty-one lines immediately dwell into the description of Tintern Abbey. It has not changed much. Wordsworth describes the scene as staying the same during the past five years.
He makes use of repetition here to mark his point. He emphasizes his point by saying, "again I hear, "again do I behold, " and "again I see. " (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works). The use of nature as part of the Romanticism period is depicted in the landscape which is rich and green and here the author emphasizes the greenness and lushness of the environment as it depicts even the pastoral farms as, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke sent up, in silence, from among the tree! (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works). Wordsworth had been inspired in the writing this poem. He explains that he constructed the poem in his head and did not write it until he reached Bristol in one of his travels. While in Bristol he handed the completed, hard copy of the poem to Cottle, who added it to the Lyrical Ballads in the middle of the volumes production. (Clarity in Chaos).
He does not regret the past for even if he cannot commune with nature, he has been blessed by other gifts of wisdom. He cites this saying, look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity. " Yet there is a different kind of energy that fill his spirit now as he continues, "a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts... / And rolls through all things. " Thus, his love for nature does not ebb down. They protect his thoughts and guard the heart and soul of his moral being. (Sparknotes). Touches on nature and its features pepper the poem every now and then giving in to nuances about love and adventure in the process. This he does as he describes memories of the Beauteous forms that have uplifted his spirits while alone in the crowded cities. He writes that it gives him "sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart. " He turns to these memories in fretful stir though as if catching every breath to savor its goodness (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works).
These memories evoke one of the most pleasant memories for him as he composed it upon leaving Tintern after crossing the Wye. It takes him just a few hours and he finishes it as he enters Bristol that evening. He remembers most lovingly his Sister whom he addresses fondly even after a ramble for several days. Yet he doubts his own faith in memory in several instances in the poem when he tells the "steep and lofty cliffs" impress upon him "thoughts of more deep seclusion." The writer seems to be breathless in catching all those memories in case it disappears before his own memory.
The feeling is also one of calm and tranquility as he states even further that The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose. Seemingly implied in these lines is the sense of adventure that is also characteristic of the Romanticism period. The reader gets the feeling that there the person had been on a long days exploration of different places evoking longings to rest and repose and notice the quietness of the sky. He notices everything and notes them even if he had just come from a long adventure for he cites that it is Here, under this dark sycamore, and view. These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts Those deep thoughts come to him on moments when he is quiet and absorbed in the company of his own thoughts. (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works).
He sees the "wreaths of smoke" rising up from cottage chimneys between the trees, and imagines that they might rise from "vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, " or from the cave of a hermit in the deep forest (Sparknotes). His poem expresses his doubts, even fears and anxieties and his faith in memory as he worries about how it would end up for his sister. He asks the wind to blow against her so that in later years, when she is sad, the memory of the experience will heal her. Moreover, he concerns himself with the thought that when he himself is dead, her sister can remember his love for nature and instill in her the same love for nature in return. In that case, too, she will remember what the woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so many years of absence, they became dearer to him -- both for themselves and for the fact that she is in them. (Sparknotes).
Some critics say, though, that the poem is a contradiction of sorts and simultaneously a celebration of express grief over the speaker's maturing, a depiction of both the harmony and the disharmony of humans and nature. (The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Romantic Period). In a way this seems so and one feels the polarities of the author. Yet it is also true that things that oppose each other also complement each other, In each side of the polarity, there is some values and some drawback. As one thinks about the aspect of Wordsworth in this particular work, one carefully considers the drawbacks in the side of polarity which he rejects and the drawbacks as well as the advantages in the side he accepts. Yet he moves out in the stuck place where he is and clings to the one end of the polarity and negates the other end.
And what seems to be a contradiction takes on a whole new meaning. Out of his contradiction, he finds his creativity. Tintern Abbey is replete with hints about memories. It is specifically about childhood memories of communion with the natural beauty of the environment. Wordsworth's point is well-taken: that the memory of pure communion with nature, and specifically in childhood can work upon the mind even in adulthood.
In fact, even adulthood, that can be a tool for one to look back and find solace and comfort. He wants his readers to see nature and hear human music and to see nature according to its relationship to life in general. Even if Tintern Abbey is a monologue, it succeeds in its simplicity and poignancy of its theme and the way it is written to solicit beautiful memories of a past, connected with nature that one can access and relieve on and on. He knows that he and his sister abound in these memories that will grant consolation to them in the future.
Important to point out here is the use of metaphors in the poem as the author gives references to the nautical such as the memory of the anchor of the poets purest thought and to the architectural concepts such as when he points out that the mind is a mansion of memory. In fact, referring it to the mansion already implies a huge storehouse of memories of which the poem is all about. These images drift across all the lines of the poem and give one a unified synthesis of the value that memory gives individuals (William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works). Indeed, Wordsworth set the path for all other poets to remember that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory and that the lines must flow according to how the human spirit expresses his thoughts. He argues that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is "the naked and native dignity of man. " (Sparknotes). Wordsworth had developed a great sense of sensitivity by developing his awareness as can be gleaned from this poem - an awareness that occurs in the present.
One gets insights on this piece as we realize that sometimes are blind to so much in our lives that could be rich and beautiful. Many people use their eyes to look at appearances, and their ears to hear only words and phrases. They dont see the forgotten language of body talk, and dont hear the music and rhythm that underlie the words. The environment they grew up in blunted their natural sensitivities and did not teach them those sensitivities that can be learned. Awareness and acceptance go hand in hand. Full awareness is seeing what is.
Judging people and things bad or wrong or even as right or good usually gets in the way of awareness. What ones judgment sees and what is may not be the same. Indeed, awareness by and of itself can be curative, bringing constructive change. We can rely on the wisdom of our organism. With awareness, one need not figure out why something is happening. Wordsworth knew that staying with immediate awareness shortcuts ones reasoning and computing mind that uses ones fixed beliefs to blind him.
Awareness works even in his confusion. He is able to sort things out because he goes back to nature and to the beautiful things around him. He is then able to accept things. That accounts for the seeming paradox, that being willing to have himself okay as he is right that moment makes change easier. For Wordsworth, we see him revel in those beautiful moments with nature and store them all in his memory for further reference in the future. WORKS CITED Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web Introduction to Romanticism.
Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web Miall, D. and Wu, D. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Blackwell Publishers. (Oct. 23, 1997). Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web The Romantic Period. The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web Wordsworth Poetry Sparknotes. Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web William Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works. Everypoetcom. Accessed 24 April 2006 web Romanticism, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Accessed 24 April 2006 at: web
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Research essay sample on Memories In Tintern Abbey
