Same problems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes in “The Nightingale” that man has forced his own sorrow on the song of the nightingale. In reality, according to the poem, the bird is quite cheerful, blissfully warbling away, content with its avian existence. In other words, Coleridge has rejected one projection of human emotion on the nightingale in favor of his own projection of emotion. This returns to Wordworth’s idea of “half perception half creation” of nature, but I’m still struggling with this. I understand the idea that on some level we must project ourselves onto the things around us in order to be able to effectively forge a connection with those things, but where is the line between putting an element of yourself into things in order to experience them and just being self-centered? If I have a hand in partially creating everything, doesn’t that mean to some extent that everything revolves around me? That seems incredibly self-absorbed. If I have partially created everything around me, then the world exists to serve me. Therefore, I am entitled to the things I desire and need. Where do other people exist in this picture? What about the fulfillment of their wants and needs? If the fulfillment of their wants/needs leaves less resources for me, should I begrudge them that fulfillment, or worse, even try to stop it? It seems to me that this type of thinking leads directly to the Madoff and AIG bonuses mess. I want it, and if I don’t have it, I’ll just take it from other people.

Phish in Nature

I did a lot of traveling over my break. I flew into Charlotte, and got a lovely view of the melting snow from the freak storm they had the day before. I drove to Charleston and watched Spanish moss, hanging from the giant trees growing over graves, swaying in the light breeze. My break ended in Richmond, where I was surprised by the vestiges of fall that still clung, as multi-colored leaves, to the deciduous trees as we rolled on towards spring. All of my experiences of observing nature and the world around me culminated, as did my break, with the Phish reunion at Hampton Coliseum on Saturday.
I love Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us” because it is the acknowledgement of the things I abhor about modern humanity. People are so focused on consuming and making sure they get their fair share that they miss everything else around them. They are only aware of themselves and their needs. This is also why I love Phish concerts. It is impossible to be “out of tune”. In the explosion of sound and people, there is a unity that sneaks up on you in the middle of a huge jam, when you catch the lights and the rhythm in just the right way. The commonality between you and the hundreds of people surrounding you gently dawns on you in a break in the crowd when you can see straight to the band on stage. You didn't come from the same place and are going different places, but for the moment you are all sharing one experience, and fundamentally the same. It’s not quite the same as experiencing the joy of nature contained in a miniature rosebud or the power revealed in a raging storm, but it is a glimpse into the nature of humanity.

"Tintern Abbey" and Time

I find it interesting that “Lyrical Ballads” beings with "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" and ends with "Lines written a few miles about Tintern Abbey". Both are incredibly long poems. "Rime" is fantastical and supernatural, while "Tintern Abbey" seems to be based on an experience of Wordsworth. They are distinctly works of their respective writers. Despite the collaborative bond, and the fact that Wordsworth contributed to the premise, I don’t think Wordsworth could have written “Rime”. His mind seemed too rooted in the natural world to delve that far into the supernatural. These poems are the opposite poles of Romantic poetry; but, I get the same feeling from both poems. I don't think Wordsworth necessarily intended this, yet at the end of the poem I am struck by melancholy. The speaker has accepted the changes in his life and the landscape over the years, and is even glad for some of them. However, even embracing change does not lighten the realization that youth has gone and only death and separation lie ahead. Long after the speaker is gone and eventually forgotten, change will still come to his landscape. His memories have been left hanging in the air, but below them the river will turn and the green recede. Sometimes I find myself wanting my memories to hang in the space where I created them, so I can return to the place/person/time unchanged and unaffected by the future events that have transpired between then and now and then. I think this is related to a universal rumination of choices made and the never-ending desire to be able to undo mistakes. Perhaps with the Singularity and other technological progress (like that time machine someone must be building) this will be realized. If we did have the ability to leave everything as we remembered, waiting for our return, would it be worth it? Is stagnation really more comforting than change?

Perception

My English professor for Brit Lit II gave us a list of Romantic Elements. As I was reading the Wordsworth assignments for this week, I ran across the line “In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts/Bring sad thoughts to the mind”. It reminded me a lot of a line from one of my favorite bands, Counting Crows: “The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings” from “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby”. After pondering it for awhile, it seems to me that the Counting Crows body of work fits Dr. Akers 7 elements of Romanticism. I will have to dig her list out and fully compare.
The other thing that struck me while reading Wordsworth was an area where he and Blake seemed to diverge. I have serious issues with Blake’s “where man is not, nature is barren” as I don’t believe that nature is devoid of inherent value removed from humanity. Wordsworth doesn’t seem to believe that, either, as in lines like “their thoughts I cannot measure” concerning birds. The line points to the birds having some experience outside of humanity. This contradicts Blake’s notion of man essentially creating nature through his imagining of it. If nature is man’s imagination, it cannot exist outside of humanity. Wordsworth, however, puts nature in the position of having something to teach man, a wisdom beyond man’s knowledge aquired through books and manmade things. Despite this difference, Blake and Wordsworth seem to agree on the way the human mind can warp man’s perception of nature. The speaker in “The Tables Turned” expresses that thoughts turn the beauty of nature to hideousness and one’s heart must be open in order to learn from nature. This line of thinking is similar to Blake’s idea that most people’s perception of nature is corrupted and dark, which taints nature, and if their imagination was purged of this corruption, their entire relation to nature and life around them would change for the better. It is interesting that they can share this point, but differ on their fundamental ideas of the purpose of nature.

Wordsworth's view of life

I really enjoy the writings of Wordsworth because of his perception of life and society. "Lines left upon a seat in a Yew-tree" demonstrates the folly of pride and the importance of humility, while Harry Gill gets exactly what he deserves. "Simon Lee" illustrates the importance of good deeds and their effect on others, and "We are Seven" demonstrates perfectly the innocent understanding of a child compared to the jaded ideas of an adult. "Seven" and "Yew-tree" both seem to share Blake's idea that the perception of the young is the most pure. "Seven" shows a young girl's keen insistence that her two dead siblings still count as part of her family, while an adult tries to tell her otherwise. She refuses to acquiesce, because she still plays on their graves and interacts with them. The man in "Yew-tree" begins his journey innocent and idealistic, but as he becomes experienced his idealism turns to the cement of pride and contempt for his fellow man. He is so convinced that his notions are better that he becomes isolated. In his isolation, he cannot carry out his ideas at all, and sits idly by as his life slips into oblivion.
This man reminds me of an ongoing discussion with my father about the splintering of the Left. I am a die-hard lefty, especially concerning the environment. However, I was recently struck by what I feel is the proliferation of elitist, bourgeois terms in the movement. A simple word no longer will suffice to describe an action; a five-word phrase with 3 syllable words, ending in "Justice" is absolutely necessary. I'm not talking about the eloquence of our newly elected president, I'm talking about the mission statements of the myriad of lefty groups. I feel this is alienating people and also making an anti-elitist movement elitist. The other problem is the sheer number of Leftist groups. Like the man who isolates himself and therefore can't accomplish anything, the Left becomes so splintered that it starts to lose the ability to do anything. Eco-feminism is an example of both of these problems. I'm an environmentalist; I'm a feminist. I don't feel like I need a whole new label to identify myself and to splinter off from both of these movements; although, what an awesome, insider, elite label it is! It may seem like a combination of ideas, but combinations have to be made from beginning wholes, which end up fractured in the process. Something about eggs and omelets, I think....

Exploitation

The two "Chimney Sweeper" poems by Blake are both powerful. The first one, told by a child young enough to still have a lisp, equates the innocent children with the innocence of the lambs previously found in Blake's poems. It also ends with the societal lie that injustice, hardship, and exploitation should merely be endured, because rewards lie in the eternal life beyond all misery. The second one, which emphasizes the "THE" at the beginning, as if to imply this the true, real chimney sweeper, exposes the deplorable conditions of the young chimney sweepers. In the child's mind, because he was happy and full of life, society had to break him and fill him with sorrow and death. The illustration does not even look like a child, but a beast. There is also the juxtaposition between white and black occurring in both poems. In the first, the soot turns the child's white hair black, and in the second, the blackened child is surrounded by the white snow. The soot blackening the child's hair is symbolic of outside society stealing the child's innocence, while the soot-covered child illustrates that the purity is no longer within the child, but only existing outside of it in nature. The snow is untouched by the societal demands and perceptions that have chained the child, and which could be symbolically washed away by the snow, as water washes away soot.
I like these poems because aside from Blake's perceptions of reality and society and the chains humans intertwine around these things, I always saw these two specifically as speaking against the horrors of industrial society. The exploitation of the innocent is one of the worst aspects of an industrial, capitalistic society. Even though we have mainly have stamped out child labor in the United States, it still persists in other countries. We also still have to deal with labor issues and class exploitation of adults in this country. However, I am hopeful that our new President will continue to "bolster labor" and examine the evils of capitalism and unnecessary consumption that have led us down this dark rabbit hole of recession and depression.

Creation and Religion

I am going to expound on "The Garden of Love", but first I feel the need to backtrack a little to "The Lamb". When our professor, Dr. Jones, was discussing this poem, he pointed out that Blake unifies the Creator aspect of the Trinity with Christ the Lamb. Dr. Jones felt this did not fully fit with Trinitarian doctrine; however, I disagree. I didn't realize this until I was looking at this icon I got for Christmas. It clearly shows Christ in the Creator aspect. In Orthodox Christianity, which happens to be my particular brand, Christ is the Creator, the Lamb, everything. The Trinity is fully united from before the beginning of time.
Now, "The Garden of Love" symbolizes the movement from innocence to experience. Blake not only continues with the Eden theme, but also the movement from childhood to adulthood, and the confinement that society forces upon adults. He uses religion to illustrate this. The area where the children played has now been replaced by a chapel, with "Thou shalt not" written on the lintel. The innocent carefree play of childhood has been replaced by the demands to conformity within societal bounds. Attempting to turn away from these demands, and return to innocence, symbolized by the simplistic beauty of nature, the speaker looks for the flowers that used to grow in the garden. Instead, he finds death, which is the ultimate end to all those who allow their innocence of perception to be distorted by the experienced perception of others. The priests in the poem serve this role of imposing their perception of the world on the speaker, by denying him his happiness with their regulations. The briars, along with the image below the line, can also refer to Christ's crown of thorns. This is where I get slightly confused on Blake's perception of Christianity. It may be because he is coming out of some sort of dissenting Protestantism, which generally has Calvinistic veins of happiness equating with sin. In my understanding of Christianity, it does not exist to damn you for your joy, but instead seeks to magnify your joy through the love of God and joyfulness in all of creation. The canons of the religion confine human desire, but only those desires that ulitmately lead to unhappiness. Even though Blake is focused on the individuality of perception and reality, he cannot be advocating pure hedonism, because the Dionysisian demands of humanity would take precedence over the stewardship of nature. Without some sort of agreed upon societal perception of right and wrong, each individual would merely be chasing their own desires, regardless of the harm to fellow man or nature, and all innocence would be lost.