William Wordsworth, Immortality Ode

all right let's let's begin with our second look at mr. William Wordsworth and we last class looked at his lines written a few miles above tintern abbey which was the poem that he wrote in the lyrical ballads which i spoke about last class which is a collection of poems he wrote along with samuel taylor coleridge which launched the Romantic movement in England and I think we concluded with not the whole of the poem but the part of the poem where he the theological claims of Romanticism are asserted really it's not here it's that's the poem we're gonna look at today the immortality over but in Tintern Abbey he in lines let's see here 95 96 9 words he talks about this sense sublime of thoughts of something more far far more deeply interfused whose dwelling is the light of setting Suns in the round ocean and the living air and the blue sky and in the mind of man emotion and a spirit that impels all thinking things all objects of all thought and rolls through all things so he at that point is connecting his mind with the world around him and in fact saying that the really thought and object are not that although they might be distinct are still in some sense equal and I said that this marked pantheism I think is the claim here that there's a sort of a spiritual equivalence between the world around us and the end human nature that's part of what's being said there now the the apparently positive side of that is that he's seeing that there's a spiritual significance to all things so it's not just I the materialists of the 18th century saw it it's not a dead world like a mechanical thing it is actually life and it has spiritual significance so that is clearly an improvement on probably the way the 18th century saw it in Jonathan Swift observed it that people are doing terrible things to other human beings and not seeing them as spiritual beings so he's in a sense elevating the are esteem for the natural world but he does so and this is the effect of it however he does so by diminishing human nature that's that's the thing in CS lewis observes that whenever people tend to exalt things and lift them up the change of being we saw this actually in Paradise Lost the the the ultimate effect is that humanity gets its face pushed down into the muck you can give a chimp human rights or your dog human rights he's not going to exercise them all you've done is draw an equivalence between us and animals and thereby reduced us to animals so that's the real effect of this not only that's the intended effect the intended effect of Wordsworth's writing is to see the spiritual significance of all things and I think he's very good at that in fact and there's a there's a genuine power in Wordsworth poetry which I have always keenly felt and which made him I I might add one of CS Lewis's favorites poets if you like see us Louis he he esteemed Wordsworth very highly one of his five favorite writers I do believe and the next poem we're going to look at today which is the intimations oh it's so called it's a it's an old informations of immortality from recollections of early childhood first of all that it's written in the form of an ode let me just say a little bit about that the ode is a literary form it's an ancient literary form goes back to the Greek writers theocritus wrote in ODEs so did Pindar the offices and they tend to be written around contemplative subjects now Pindar writes through Olympia notes he's writing about Olympic Games and so forth but by the time we come to this period the ode is first of all ode means a song so just like lyrical ballads or a type of song so a note is also a type of song but the ode as a form is now more strongly associated than anything else with the sublime this word sublime again which we're gonna come to identify more strongly now last class I talked about the sublime in the ruin of tintern abbey and he writes upon the Abbey as a ruin and yet it's not the abbey itself it's his memory of the Abbey it's the imaginative filling of the gaps in the thing that he sees that is the real significance so in other words it's the spiritual significance of the physical object which is talking about something you can't see and yet he says is in some ways more real and more important than the physical thing that you can see it talks about the power of the imagination and Wordsworth is a poet of the imagination if nothing else well this ode is likewise written on a subject of the sublime because ODEs in this period are and words were it's not the only poet right ODEs in this period John Keats will write many ODEs in fact and and be famous for writing on them and will come will come to Keats in a few classes but this one is subtitles and it's from recollections of early childhood so again it's memories now he's talking about the importance of memory and the development of a person's sense of self so how do we become who we are how do we know ourselves how do we come to know ourselves Wordsworth is going to identify his sense of himself very strongly with his memories of himself which you may say how could it be otherwise but the important thing to note on this is that the memory here is something that is his own thing it's not things that other piece not relying on books he's not relying on authorities he's not relying on views of human nature or the world that have been taught to him by the church or by the schools it's a self-reliant thing and that's the key point here and so his memory is is giving him a foundation for his later sense of self and he's going to pause it great significance to his early childhood and say that in fact it is so significant that the early childhood experiences make him the man that he is as an adult not his religious convictions not his national identity not his scientific or other expertise that he derives as an adult but the childhood experiences are what form him to be the man that he is now now that may not sound odd to you but historically it's extraordinary it's it's literally revolutionary these claims were not made before this period yes no I think psychology flows out of the turn of the romantics and the emphasis on the south remember I I don't know if I mentioned this in class or not but psychology as a discipline is of course the sciences what is the psyche what exactly is this thing that the science of psychology explorers and I I asked it as a actually as a rhetorical question in part because you could give me an answer but it would be it would be one answer and there are multiple answers to it so there are various schools of psychology and they actually differ profoundly on what this thing called the psyche is some that on the one hand you get the materialist they'll say the psyche is the brain that's becoming more more common in our day so the psyche that immaterial thing is actually material thing and and from that we get brain chemistry and so forth I actually lived as a when I was over at the University of Durham with a psych psychology PhD student and she was looking at the influence of serotonin on on people's attitudes of behaviors and so forth so she was injecting serotonin into lab Rosalyn I don't know exactly what the thing was but that's very much looking at the brain in relation to two people and using lab rats for that purpose so that's the one side of psychology you think it's the brain then there are others though that think it's the immaterial object in which case it's more like the mind it's the thinking thing within us and that thinking thing seems to be able to regard us from the outside so we can think about ourselves for instance like when you think about yourself are you really thinking about yourself or are you like what's going on there's this just a biochemical I know Sharad do you think that your thinking when you're not really I mean I don't think that anyone genuinely concludes that but if you're a real materialist you are more or less in that position in which case you think that thinking is what I said last time is called epiphenomena lagea it's the the illusion that I am thinking when really I it's just my genes or the chemical impulses making me feel like I'm thinking but Wordsworth and so we you rightly point out that that psychology to some degree is dependent on this idea of being able to get back to our own essential self namely our psyche by ourselves and they simply use scientific methods of empirical science to test Who I am by myself I wrote a book on the knot on this subject alone but on the problem of the methodology which is that the subject is trying to see himself as the object so the I'm on this side of the magnifying glass I'm looking at myself on that side and so I'm the subject and the object at one at the same time and I'm claiming objectivity as I said it's impossible it's literally an impossibility can't really claim that this has objectivity and nowadays we everyone acknowledges the importance of bias or the impossibility of avoiding bias or prejudice but when Wordsworth writes this he he is I think quite naive about this and thinks that in his early experience in the presence of nature he becomes the man who he is and now he represents in this little epigram which is right at the outside quite a famous one and he's quoting himself which is not very humble let me think of a famous way of putting this oh yes I wrote the child is father of the man and I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety it's an it's very enigmatic the child is father's man it's a little bit like the chicken egg scenario right in one sense it's true the child is the father of the man in the sense that you're a child before you become a man when I say this I mean it in a generic sense and not in the male sense Machop when I become an adult as opposed to the child the child is the father in the sense that he precedes it but he's saying a little bit more than that and and it's that aspect of which is saying more that I want to address right now it's the idea that the child is actually the teacher of the adult that is the position the very radical position that Wordsworth is advancing in this poem and he will do it through various poetic devices and through allusions and through memories but that is what he's advancing and so it's a revolution at if you think of education normally we think of teachers as adults and what are they doing they're teaching children to learn about the world and how to behave etc and they do so primarily as we've seen from the beginning of the course they do it through imitation remember back in the first semester when we looked at the Odyssey there was this figure called mentor who taught Odysseus how to behave remember it is to lemon not at all Odysseus taught ulema cos Telemachus grew up without a father his father Odysseus was over in the wars and in Troy and he hadn't come back yet had been 20 years Telemachus was in his mother's womb when his father left he's never set eyes on his father and he's grown up and he looks a lot like his father but he doesn't know how to act he's never had anyone to show him the ropes as it were he doesn't know how to behave and so he is he's sort of lost he's got all the suitors around him he's troubled he's the son of a famous man and yet he he doesn't know what to do now the Greeks would have recognizes as a terrible state for the young man Telemachus he doesn't have an adult and a father to teach him how to act and that is one of the chief outcomes of Education is to know how to act and how to live so he lacks a moral example and and so this would be I say this because he is talking really about education here as well as his view of human nature it's talking about this word mimesis which is imitation that's the means of education that the classical world will use up until this day that is Wordsworth day we will imitate one what do we mean imitate will women imitate the conduct and we will learn what previous generations learned we will learn their knowledge for our own we'll make it a part of ourselves as much as it's part of our parents it will also be part of ourselves we're gonna learn what they learned we're gonna imitate them do what they did so the Apostle Paul says imitate me he actually doesn't just say follow Jesus it says imitate my way of conduct this is how I've acted in your presence imitate me as I do this is so it's it's not just classical it's biblical that imitation is the means of Education but but now there's a complete reversal of that in this declaration and in this poem and it's not just in this poem it's throughout the Romantic movement the idea that we want to begin from ground zero from nothing the John Locke talks about the mind as a tabula rasa a blank slate we want to begin and I use this illustration for you in another class as well that we want to return and think of ourselves as being like orphans as having no parents let's let's just as a thought experiment pretend that we are parents or are our orphans and have no parents and have no one to turn to to imitate let's look for knowledge within ourselves and let's try that one out that's what Wordsworth is presenting here in his declaration that the child is the father of the man and then he's going to explore we're what that looks like and I'll get to in a sec what I'll answer question before that good yes yes he's saying that they should be like little children and come to him but he's not saying that he's going to become like a little child and go to them note and note that Jesus doesn't start his teaching ministry when he's an infant he starts it when he's thirty years of age when he's ready which is an extraordinary thing and that the ID incarnation and the whole doctrine of it is an extraordinary thing God is born in human flesh first of all as an infant and is raised by his parents and at what point does he realized that he's God I mean if he's an the human side of him must not know it the divine side like what's going on there I don't even know the human mind the divine mind that like all we know is from the from the text from Scripture he starts his teaching ministry at the age of 30 knowing who he is and telling people to repent and to place their faith in him so he knows who he is at that point at what point does he come to that realization did he always know it I don't know but he we note that he waited till he's thirty and then when the children are to come to him they are to come to him and they're to be like him and so yes it's men as humility it's not meant you have to think like a child and act like a child and invent your own self like a child the way the Romantics are so you mustn't confuse the two but you're right it sounds similar yes that's interesting to some degree yes but I mean children and you'll know this as well they have no they don't have moral awareness a certain age they develop that as they get older when I say to moral awareness they know what bad is and what right means and wrong and good you know they know what these words mean but they don't really understand the consequences of actions because they haven't really been able to see them right so they can do things like terrible things like they can be really cruel to animals and they don't they don't even though don't even necessarily realize what that means exactly that it takes time for moral awareness to develop and it's part of the maturation process so certain things that so children can kill Dave the capacity to do but they don't have the moral awareness to do it we don't judge them as that there's cult there's an age of majority for that reason right and so they're not judged as adults they're judged as children because that for that reason we recognize that there's a difference in that so that that only contradicts the romantic view in one sense but yes yes on the other hand you can learn from children in the sense that every human beings is unique and sometimes people just look at things differently and and part of what you learn with other people particularly your family is is a relational thing because they've learned what a hypocrite you are in a certain area of your life because they've lived with you all the time so there's that type of thing and maybe you were blind to that yourself or who knows what you know but usually your kids aren't teaching you things that you've never thought about before not really anyway let's go to the poem it was written in two parts by the way so he started the poem the first four stanzas he wrote and then he left it incomplete and he picked them up later on I think you can actually see a sort of a a change between the first floor and the the last five stanzas but I'm gonna read the first four together as a whole and then I'll make a few comments on it remember the truck it's from recollections of early childhood and the child is father of the man there was a time when Meadow Grove and stream the earth and every common sight to meet it seemed apparelled in celestial light the glory and the freshness of a dream it is not now as it hath been of your turn what swear so era may by night or day the things which I have seen I now can see no more the rainbow comes and goes and lovely is the Rose the moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare waters on a starry night are beautiful and fair the sunshine is a glorious birth but yet I know where ere I go that there have passed away a glory from the earth now while the birds the sing a joyous song and while the lambs bound as to the tabor sound to me alone there came a thought of grief a timely utterance gave it relief and I that thought relief and I again I'm strong no more shall grief of mine the season wrong I hear the echoes through the mid the mountains throng the winds come to me from the fields of sleep and all the earth is gay land and sea give themselves up to jollity and with the heart of may doth every beast keep holy day thou child of joy shout round me let me hear thy shouts thou happy shepherd boy ye blessed creatures I have heard the call ye to each other make I see the heavens laugh with you in your jubilee my heart is at your festival my head half its coronal the fullness of your bliss I feel I feel it all Oh evil day if I were sullen while Earth herself is adorning this sweet May morning and the children are calling on every side and a thousand valleys far and wide fresh flowers while the Sun shines warm and the babe leaps up on his mother's arm I hear I hear with joy I hear but there's a tree of many one a single field which I have looked upon both of them speak of something that is gone the pansy at my feet of the same tale repeat wither is fled the visionary gleam where is it now the glory and the dream so these famous opening lines as I say that he leaves the poem for a while comes back to it years later to complete it set the stage for everything that follows and they really tell the tale of the growth from innocence to experience now I realized that I was forced to drop the Blake which I regret but in in Blake's Songs of Innocence and experience he talks about two sides of human human consciousness the innocence on the one hand and experience on the other and both in Blake's view are good by the way Blake or Wordsworth agrees with him on this front the goodness of innocence is that of a sense of belonging in the world and joy which you will recall yourselves the first time you saw anything it's usually a pretty exciting experience I don't remember I don't know if you recall going around on your hands and knees looking at ants in ant hills or watching bumblebees go out of flowers or seeing a rainbow for the first time or a mountain or water and listening the water or catching a fish first time experience of things tend to be quite can be quite vivid and they're also quite exciting when you're when you child the days are long so when you come to a summer holiday it seems like it goes on a very long time and as you get older it gets shorter which is the funny old thing because the time has not changed right you did the years are just as long you can chronologically measure them and there's no they're no different than when you were a child but they seem like it seems like life is getting faster the older you get and part of the reason for that is what Wordsworth's talking about there's no new things everything is repetition and with the repetition the repetition in his sense is the sense it starts to fade and become indistinct and it becomes as he says it fades into the light of the common day that's what he said I believe at the outset or as he say that later on no he says that in the fifth stanza so things start to become habitual routine and thereby they lose the sense of vividness and the joyfulness and you lose a sense of the spiritual significance of things that is what happens when you get older yes here is correct yep its 150th yep to some degree so that is an aspect of it and every year was an experience and you learned something I mean you say you learn something new every day okay but now that day was what percentage of your life so it's it's your right in terms of comparison it's less and less significant as the time goes by that doesn't mean that you can't have life-changing events as you're older you can have those events and they are quite extraordinary like conversion as an adult that's quite an extraordinary life-changing event and it's like a day like no other in the sense but in general you're absolutely correct and he what he's describing though is what everybody experiences and he does it quite powerfully in a sense so that that and so that's the opening gambit is that he sees that we're back to the first stanza it is not now as it hath been of your turn we're so we're so err I may by night or day the things which I have seen I now can see no more so he's not only lost vividness he's lot he's actually can't see things that he once saw so there's a growing blindness so he's he's actually making an antithesis to the normal way in which we would understand learning and becoming an adult we say it's a growth in knowledge he presents it as a loss of knowledge which is an interesting way of looking at it counterintuitive in one sense but if he's describing the importance of those events as as a young man or as a child then it's appropriate yes you know in your mind as a kid to me no or at least think you know they're bad and good is but when it comes to the growing into the world I actually think that children do not good and bad is and and I mean I'm not a psychologist but I have read psychological studies that are looking at babies and how they respond to certain situations where where injustice is done and observing the babies or actually they actually get incensed they get red-faced and angry when there's an injustice and they they're I mean they're obviously reading into it but it's quite I mean babies aren't hypocrites they haven't learned to act yet right they are manifesting their feelings quite vividly and directly and there's no attempt to conceal them so when that and they can they demonstrated psychologists I think or at least they're making the argument that that babies do have an into an awareness of right and wrong very early on and that's why they respond to stories of right and wrong like like fairy tales where there's very strong and to some degree stereotypical or caricatured you know there's a good guy and a bad guy there's a prince and there's a witch right there's the there's the fair there's the the young beautiful girl whether it's she's a Cinderella or Snow White or whatever then you know the wicked stepmother there's a witch so there's good figures and they're bad and they're quite as I say pronounced and these appeal to people why do they appeal to them because they think that that's the way things really are they're teaching what what the perennial philosophy which is the fact that there is a there's an objective moral order in the universe and everybody's in it now come this period and after this period this idea that there is an objective moral nature to nature include particularly our human nature it starts to come into dispute in part because of this shift but yes I agree but let me move on one other comment here when Wordsworth finally wrote the poem he was criticized about it because it seemed to be suggesting certain things about the soul which were heretical and he was criticized for and he said well I was just using it as a an illustration so it's Neoplatonism and now that would become apparent in the in the fifth stanza here where he talks about the birth of the soul and the doctrine of anamnesis which is recollection part of the Titus and the mises anamnesis is to remember again that was Plato's theory of knowledge everyone knows everything and they and education is recalling or remembering what we already know whereas Aristotle has a different view of Education he thinks that we learn new things and come into the world with relative ignorance and we have to be taught things but Plato holds the idea that we actually know things already and we're just the teacher is simply bringing to mind things that we are already intuitively aware of and so Wordsworth is throwing himself with the neoplatonist but note back to this our birth so this is a fifth stanza our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting the soul that rises with us our life's star hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from a farm not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home heaven lies about us in our infancy shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy but he beholds the light and whence it flows he sees it in his joy the youth who daily farther from the East must travel still his nature's priest and by the vision splendid is on his way attended at length the man perceives it died away and fade into the light of common day so there's three stages here he begins an infancy as he grows the shades of the prison house close around him and not only did they close around him he walks away from it so there's two sides to it there's a sense of it's something that happens to him and it's also something that he brings about so Wordsworth notes that people long for experience and they learn through that experience as well and they desire to imitate in fact Aristotle says that it's a feature of mankind that we deserve we love to imitate it's almost a definition human beings love to imitate and they look to models role models to imitate which anybody who has children observes for good and for ill the good things you like about things you don't like oh I've got that habit don't you do that I do you know you're not supposed to do that I want you to do this but not do that and you pick up the worst things you don't pick up the best things how is that yeah dues I said well yes do as I tell you don't do as I do and the kite kid says no no you did that and hypocrisy children are great clear-sighted about hypocrisy particularly in their own parents that's because it's harder to do and see the good than it is to see the bad it's really easy you don't have to do any work the bad comes to you the good you have to strive after but this is a process and it's a change and it goes and the light which attended his birth he presents his asleep and a forgetting and it's a process of forgetting we forget the glory from which we came and he presents that as God and he also presents at his nature and he almost doesn't distinguish the two other than he mentions the two but what is the distinction between God in nature I'm not sure and he's not sure either I would say this is part of the pen and theism the theological problem I think it's also an intellectual problem but let's indulge the poet and at least give him the credit that he's describing something which is experientially true in some way and so as we get older that light and the vividness and the sense of glory in all things which we all experience as young people starts to as you get older it's it dies it's asleep and a forgetting let me go on sixth stanza earth fills her lap with platters of her own yearnings she hath in her own natural kind and even with something of a mother's mind and no unworthy aim the homely nurse doth all she can to make her foster child her inmate man forget the glories he hath known and that imperial palace whence he came comment on this again so earth present is presented in various ways a mother a nurse a foster mother and a jailer for things and note there's a progression and progressively distant progressively more hostile and the hostility comes though in the very act of departing from his essential self that sense of alienation is one that comes about as a result of growing older so once again Earth it presents it with something of her own natural kind and even even with something of a mother's mind and no one worthy the homely nurse now the nurse the nurse is somebody that will nurse you will will suckle so a mother will nurse her child so don't think of a nurse in the sense of the lady that's wearing a white outfit in the hospital think of a nurse in the sense of giving you nurse and nurturer and so she's she's giving something of herself something of her essence her subs her sustenance that she passes on and she's doing all that she can now as he as he continues to describe her note that she becomes increasingly distant and alien and hostile towards him because it that moves then to be her foster child at first it was her child and then becomes her foster child so she's adopted the child it's not hers then it moves on to her inmate or at least finally it comes to her inmate so now what he describes earlier the shades of the prison house I begin to close actually is it later than this I think it might be what am I thinking of light here but he talks about the shades of the prison house which begin to close around a person as he as he or she gets older and and does so of his own accord it doesn't just happen it that child intentionally walks into experience and away from in a sense to use blake's terminology was presented in a different way the seventh stanza behold the child among his newborn Bliss's a six years darling of a pygmy sighs see we're mid work of his own hand he lies fretted by sally's of his mother's kisses rubbing them all with light upon him from his father's eyes see at his feet some little plan or chart some fragment from his dream of human life shaped by himself with newly learn at art a wedding or a festival a morning or a funeral and this had now his heart and unto this he frames his song then will he fit his tongue to dialogues of business love or strife but it will not be long ere this be thrown aside and with new joy in Pride the little actor cons another part to con is to learn another role filling from time to time his humorous stage with all the persons down to palsy age that life brings with her in her equip egde as if his whole vocation were endless imitation now know this in conjunction with I said here earlier the child acts as if imitation were his whole vocation if as if that were his nature to be like an adult he doesn't deny that that's what children want to do they want to be like adults everyone wants to be big they want to be treated like adults they want to do what adults do they want to do this he sees that there's something perverse in this the perversity is they're walking away from that goodness in their nature that they want to took joy in to the to the degree that they actually lose it they lose sight of it entirely yes the inner child it's it's slightly complicated but the narrative that we're getting here is the is a non-christian rendering of Christian experience so it's replacing that the idea of of creation fall and redemption how do we account for what Christians call sin how do we account for that romantics we'll talk about sin they'll talk about a sense of loss a sense of ruin a sense of desolation a sense of rarely of corruption because that's a moral category but a sense you know they want to avoid that to some degree but a sense of a loss of primal innocence and goodness then and we walk away from that so that is what and what he's giving describing here is growing old is more or less the account of the fall so it's not actually doing anything wrong it's simply growing older is a sort of a fall fall from who you were originally so a fall from innocence is simply getting older without doing anything wrong or unless the wrong is by getting older but there's going to be a recompense for that getting older and we're gonna come to that in a second here but note that he describes this in the quite important terms of as if his whole vocation were endless imitation and he must have in mind the tradition of mimesis and education and his opposition to that in he's presenting an alternative to it remember the child is the father of man this is a new way of looking at the world here's a way to be truly educated needs now he's describing the problem what is the solution to the problem he's coming to this right now yes you can't avoid the experience if you live you will experience that's it's not so again Blake also talks about these two antithesis that you know the Songs of Innocence songs of experience innocence becomes a child it attends when you're a child you're innocent you can't harm anything it's there if you grow at all you're going to experience things and with that comes a change there's a loss of innocence these are unavoidable things what is the recompense for what you've lost you can imagine the things in the past and the imagination is better than the real thing that's consistent throughout the romantics so the imagination is the redemptive Faculty it's the means of recovering what's lost and better than in its original state because now you've learned from your own experience so it's like it's it's a it's a secular equivalent to Milton's message and Paradise Lost that the paradise within happy or far so yes you've been you've transgressed you've learned you've t eaten of the knowledge tree of the knowledge of good and evil you have fallen from grace and from the sight of God you as a rebel but you have repented and you've turned back to God and you've prayed and you've received forgiveness and God has given you new life and now you will walk in obedience and that's the paradise within you happier far so that's the Milton's present presentation by the way all the romantics were profoundly influenced by Milton to the extent they alright ethics as well and I have a course on that which I offer here the romantic epic but the point here is they offer a an attempted equivalent of that or an analogy for that so that Wordsworth uses the word God here God's not particularly importantly Wordsworth thinking it's the imagination which is a divine faculty and basically takes the place of God so to be truly educated is to be an imaginative being remember he described that in tintern abbey he talked about being suspended in body and becoming a living soul and that with that you could see into the life of things that's what we talked about last time so that's that that the same process is being described loss of innocence which just comes from experience but then an imaginative recovery of what was lost and what you imagine is in some ways superior to its original experience because the original experience is unreflecting like when you look at a little ant or a butterfly or a flower or whatever you take delight in it but you don't think much about it as an adult you can take delight in it and you can think about and reflect upon it and imagine and the imagination is better than the real thing so the education system that follows that flows out of the Romantic movement the imagination and new things are more important than the old things so there's a strong opposition to bookish knowledge and inherited knowledge and authoritative knowledge in favor of the child's own knowledge and the child's own imagination and the child's own experience that takes its place and I think we're still living with the consequences of that but we've inherited the romantics view of the world more or less because it's such a strong in some sense has such strong correlation to two Christian views of this but let me let me come to the nine or no eight sorry we finished off at seven as if his whole vocation were endless imitation now he addresses the child directly and he does so through an apostrophe not the punctuation mark but through a literary device called a posse he speaks to the child as if the child were a God or an angel or some sort of superior being he says now whose exterior semblance doth Balai thy Souls immensity thou best philosopher who yet does keep thy heritage thou I among the blind that deaf and silent reads to the eternal deep haunted forever by the eternal mind mighty prophet seer blessed on whom those truths do rest which we are toiling all our lives to find in darkness lost the darkness of the grave thou over whom thy immortality broods like the day a master or a slave a presence which is not to be put by to whom the grave is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight of day or the warm night a place of thought where we in waiting lie thou little child yet glorious in the might of heaven born freedom on thy beings height why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke the years to bring the inevitable yoke thus blindly with I blessedness at strife ful soone thy soul shall have her earthly Freight and custom lie upon thee with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life so lots of questions here there's an apostrophe it speaks the child directly in intimate terms uses the term thou and that thou is probably himself thinking of himself as a child they're imagining himself as a child why why did you do this why exactly did you do this why does every child do this when you had freedom so by the way so the imagination the purpose of the imagination is to recover that sense of unity between ourselves in the natural world that's the purpose of it so the so the origins are with our birth and our early childhood experiences the fall is in growing older the means of redemption is the imagination and the reality of the redemption the kingdom of God if you will is a recovery of our sense of unity that lies between ourselves in all things the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and the water and the air and other people and animals and there is a unity there a lack of differentiation it's the pen an theism I talked about there the spiritual goodness in all things which we see through the eyes of the imagination note there's no sin there's no cross there's no God there's no hell although he what the hell to some degree is living a life without the imagination that's the hell and furthermore that those that oppose the kingdom of God are those that oppose his view of the imagination they are the spiritually dead those that act in accordance with the world as it was historically underdone so there's a strong antithesis between Wordsworth and the romantics and the not just the Enlightenment but Christianity which they see is indifferent from the Enlightenment see them indistinctly they see it as the same thing when I say when I say the Veii there are romantics among them had come to disagree with them my favorite Coleridge disagrees strongly but he grows to his disagreement he starts off on the same page or at least apparently so but no it's so full so why do you bring provoke the years to bring the inevitable yoke the yoke of bondage why do you go into the land of slavery note the all these images are heavily biblical images as well he talks about Jubilee talks about yokes he talks about right these are biblical terms without biblical sense and soul even what does it mean by the soul this is also very interesting so 130 falls soon thy soul shall have her earthly Freight what does he mean by the soul he said he references Neoplatonism here he's talking about a thing in an in a material thing inside a body well that's a that's a heretical notion that's not what the Bible means by soul the Plata NIST's and the Greeks in general believe that the the body is a prison house for the Soul that's the term that they use actually that's Plato's term the bodies of prison hosts the souls inside of it the aim of life is to release the the soul from its oddly bondage and there are various ways of doing that but all the philosophers regard the soul as the essential self and it's a non-physical self and and Wordsworth uses it in that same way and early psychology sees it in the same way it's an immaterial thing as I say nowadays psychology has changed as a discipline quite markedly and moved towards the idea that the psyche or the soul is the brain which makes us just material where our contemporaries who act and operate that way is nothing other than materialists yes it could be it's really hard to know what he means by it and I think you're probably close to the truth here the soul is the imagination and it can't be killed off and to some extent it's the thing that brings about a recovery yes perhaps so yeah and and then when you come to the early psychologist the early schools of psychology like like Freud he'll talk about the importance of the subconscious in the formation of the conscious self so the ego and the ID and the super-ego the stuff you do you do the Freudian psychology anymore even no okay I mean I don't there aren't many Freudian psychologists anymore it's not it's become a little unpopular but the origins of it are that and they're accounting for how do we explain how people behalf act in a way that is contrary to their best interests the super-ego being society the it being I guess your desires your sin but they don't call it that with your desires and then your ego yourself which is formed by this interplay between those two but there but that there's and there's something beneath your your desires which you don't want to be expressed and yet they keep popping up that again trying to find rationales rationale to explain human behavior I I don't think the brain solution is any better I think it's ten times worse actually I just think it's irrational and totally unhelpful why do they write papers to demonstrate it if we are just material things why would you it why would you do that why would I read it am i trying to persuade somebody why would I why would you need to persuade them if they were just brains if that was what that you were talking to is another brain and brain talking the brain and the brains purposes are irrational their sub rational at any rate just doesn't make any sense anyway but he they moved that they move along this and note that the the their blessedness of the soul is that is going into strife or conflict by learning imitation okay now let's come to the ninth stanza which is the key stands at yes are they where did you learn that I'm not saying you're wrong by the way in your church okay uh there's um there's a dispute in Christian circles on that actually is is the human person bipartite or tripartite is it body swollen spirit in other words because some have said that and that's a position yeah in the early church even one of the church fathers and I can't remember who it was exactly holds to that position the Bible is a little bit unclear exactly on it and there's no I don't think there's a standard Christian position on that particular thing I mean it speaks of swoll it seeks of spirit and it speaks of them distinctly so it lends to the view that there is that but I don't think there's a full-blown anthropology on that per se it's used differently by different biblical writers they were well know Wordsworth's using a soul here I don't think romantics in general will talk with the soul necessarily but if they if and when they do it probably has something of the character of the imagination or at any rate of something disembodied and that is good because the imagination is the vehicle of goodness because it's the thing that imagines things it creates new things in their body by their way their view of creativity is absolute they're creating things out of nothing literally they are acting like gods the the poet's believe that they are in the great prophetic tradition of of English poetry except far greater than that because they are literally imagining new things remember they appeal to originality which nobody before them would ever even consider doing not just because it's blasphemous because it doesn't really seem to make much sense even back in times of Ecclesiastes there's nothing new Under the Sun anyway quick to the ninth chapter oh joy says worthless so having ended on this dark note that the soul is rushing into a dark and cold and deathly state it's not totally gone oh joy he writes that in our embers the embers of the fire that's gone out is something that doth live that nature yet remembers what was so fugitive that thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction not indeed for that which is most worthy to be blessed delight and Liberty the simple Creed of childhood whether busy or at rest with new fledged hope still fluttering in his breast not for these I raise the song of thanks and praise but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things fallings from us vanishings blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized high instincts before which our mortal nature did tremble like a guilty thing surprised but for those first affections those shadowy recollections which be they what they may are yet the master are the fountain light of all our day are yet a master light of all our seeing uphold us cherish and have power to make our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal silence truths that wake to perish never which neither listlessness nor maddened ever nor man nor boy nor all that is at enmity with joy can utterly abolish or destroy hence in a season of calm weather though inland far we be our souls have of that immortal sea which brought us hither can in a moment travel there and see the children's sport upon the shore and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore so here's the recovery of the innocence it's through the imagination there's something that lives in us in the midst of the now if you think about the embers of a fire when they the fire's gone low it you can't even see that there are embers there unless you blow on it in which case they light up right but there's a darkness and it's so dark that it seems the fire has gone out and yet the heat remains there and something in it is there to be revived and how has it revived through thinking of the past recollecting remembering who we are which we've forgotten by our actions our conduct or life of imitation of growing old and the thought of our past years Amidala preed perpetual benediction Oh a benediction is word for blessing to say good to say well it's what happens at the end of a church service there's a benediction a blessing on the congregation as they go here it's the thought of his past years when he was a child that brings to him two benediction not for that which has work most worthy to be blessed but for the loss those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things fallings from us vanishings that's what he gives thanks for the sense of law of having lost something the senses and gained and this is elliptical the imaginative the imagination that takes it place so I know I remember in the past things that I lost but the fact that they are things that are lost have made me aware that there's something that I haven't lost and what is that my imagination so yes I've lost that but now I've recovered it how have I recovered it by thinking about it and imagining remembering it yeah yes but that's it and to live in the light of that imagined sense of oneself as a child connected to all things allows you as an adult to imagine what it's like to be another person putting yourselves in their place wrecking recognizing the primal unity between all human beings and not only all human beings but all all things so it's the kingdom of God which is within you is it that is that what Jesus means because it sounds a bit like it oh yeah sure yeah so the kingdom is God of God is within you also it's an imaginary world that I live in you might think so I'm not saying based on what you read in Scripture I'm saying based on how Wordsworth is rendering you could think that he's talking about the same thing and he says that he is actually because there that this is what Jesus really met this is the Holy Spirit Jesus talked with the Holy Spirit with an age we can do better than that we can talk about the Holy Spirit it's entirely spirit we can see spiritually we think spiritually it's called spirituality very common in our day applies to everything includes everything of course it includes everything this is inclusivity this is the doctrine of inclusivity right here in its early origins it's not just saying that things are one it's saying that it's right that we see them as one and it's wrong if we see differentiation if we see distinctions this is the beginning of our whole contemporary way of looking at things and it is at odds with the Christian faith I would say and with the kingdom of God that Jesus announces and with I think a true view of human nature in the human condition yes I think he's the best writer one of the best writers in the English language and I think it's almost pure heresy there is such a thing as biblical spirituality right so I don't want I don't want to avoid the idea of spirituality in one sense but on the other hand I'm wary of it just because spirituality means almost invariably a sense of the unity and connection and love of all things without distinction without and no in this what goes with it is there's no real sense of evil in the world evil is simply growing old well that's not evil I don't regard that as evil but he does it's a it's an evil it's a it's a loss of something fundamental well that isn't evil well how about genuinely appalling actions then are you he's not talking about murder he's just talking about growing old but it's as if something got killed off the most important thing well his sensitive himself it is a theological claim really I don't think it bears weight doesn't account for the world as I have experienced it the misery in the world I think it's it's entirely too sanguine about human nature it promotes by the way Apple agent view of human nature I should also say June isn't you can look that up the légion view or Pelagian ism if you want after than the British month Pelagius it opposes the doctrine of original sin and thinks sin is something that happens to is not something that we bear by virtue of the fact that we are the heirs of Adam and Eve so sin according to play just is something that we do but it doesn't mark who we are and Wordsworth agrees with that not intentionally or at least I don't know his intentions but on the bait on the face of it here now again he's a poet so you know it's you don't want to take him too seriously I've taken perhaps more seriously and you just he deserve just because I want you to see where this goes I mean I think it's a beautiful poem it's certainly powerful I remember when I first read it as an undergraduate being moved by it something is right about this but also the more I thought about being disturbed by it if this is true then what does this mean for evil and if inclusion is wonderful which it seems like it is how do we have any justice that right if everyone's included and everything is included irrespective of its particular nature then that seems problematic to me so evil something that happens and it's not how we begin though we begin we're and where's what says we are essentially good which is to some degree Christian view except the essential goodness was lost in Eden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God that's when that original goodness was lost but it's still true human nature that we bear the image of God that is true so and that image has not been lost it's simply been marred so I talked about this when I did Paradise Lost the theology of this is it's important we cannot lose the image of God even in the fall we remain sinners but a sinner is simply a rebel against God that bears God's image and therefore in Genesis 9 verse 3 or 4 I believe it is God says that you may not murder and if anyone takes the life of wander bears image of God be alive for a life right because that and the explicit reason is because he bears the image of God and these are sinners they still so we still bear the image of God but the image of God has been marred by our sin it's corrupted but if we didn't bear the image of God we wouldn't be human beings at all so there's something there that bears the image of God but it needs to be redeemed but what Wordsworth says that there was a goodness and we walk away towards evil now here's the question if we were essentially good then why do we invariably do this because he says that we do this it's not just that it happens it invariably happens they desire it well why would a good thing want to do an evil thing it makes no sense to me it never made any sense to me and it has to make sense like the Christian doctor whatever you make of it it makes sense at least this makes no sense something that is essentially good will not gravitate towards what he calls evil doesn't make any sense he's not serious of what he means by evil then which is one of the other effects of this view so the effective age and theology is to diminish what evil is and to be unrealistic and they're going to be cruel and unjust yes it would have to be that's definitely not his position so there is no real evil and furthermore the solution to this problem of evil will be a social sociological problem you'd have to encourage everybody be imaginative that would be the solution to the problem you just have to think the right way so we can coerce you you just have to hold the right theological views you don't have to really be born-again thinking the right things and feeling the right things that's how you will demonstrate well you can coerce people to doing that well what happens to freedom then it also goes so does God by the way God he's referred to here it's not it's not I don't think he can take him seriously in fact people who are not Christians who are romantics who read this are offended by Wordsworth reference to God and I think rightly so yes his intended audience was contemporaries but I will say that Wordsworth and Coleridge limit because we're coming to an end here Wordsworth and Coleridge were so Wordsworth in particular was so profoundly influential particularly amongst the young they thought there's something spiritually correct here about what he's saying that he it was like a it was a phenomenon and particularly the young were aware that he was so if you think about context this is an age when science is describing people as walking machines there's a mechanistic view of human nature and Wordsworth saying no there's a spiritual aspect to us which transcends that and the young said yes that's right and I think he is right in that sense the question is what's the nature of the spiritual nature in us and on that I think he's wrong but he was really influential in his day and and within the church he was he was received very well precisely because he awakened a sense of our spiritual nature in a next generation and the dangers in his position I think well he had his critics right away but the dangers were not clearly evident and they never did become clearly evident to this day I think Romanticism remains the default theological position of the liberal non-christian world romanticism is it I didn't even get to 10 and 11 but then he just the end of its just a nature singing and bird singing and everyone you know because of this wonderful news and so more so I'll let leave that to you so let me take off with that

Channel: Dr Scott Masson

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Keywords: william wordsworth, classic poems, ode intimations of immortality by william wordsworth, immortality ode by william wordsworth, intimations of immortality wordsworth, ode on intimations of immortality, ode on intimations of immortality by william wordsworth, william wordsworth poems, ode to immortality by wordsworth

Id: Pu7NgJjXvIY

Length: 73min 50sec (4430 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2019