THE PRELUDE

A SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION:

Spirituality,
Spirituality in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit, a
concept closely tied to religious belief and faith, a transcendent reality, or
one or more deities. Spiritual matters are thus those matters regarding
humankind's ultimate nature and meaning, not only as material biological
organisms, but as beings with a unique relationship to that which is perceived
to be beyond the bodily senses, time and the material world. Spirituality in
this sense implies the mind-body dichotomy, which indicates a separation
between the body and soul. But spirituality may also be about the
development of the individual's inner life through specific practices.

'The Prelude,' written during the years 1799-1805, though not published
until after death of William Wordsworth, is the record of the development
of its poet's mind, not an outwardly stirring poem, but an unique and
invaluable piece of spiritual autobiography. Wordsworth intended to make this
only an introduction to another work of enormous length which was to have
presented his views of Man, Nature, and Society. Of this plan he completed
two detached parts, namely the fragmentary 'Recluse' and 'The Excursion,'
which latter contains some fine passages.

At the very outset it would be wise for us to remember that ‘The Prelude’
written by Wordsworth should never be treated as an autobiography in the
usual sense of the word. It is not at all a systematic account of the poet’s
early life, though he could not but choose this autobiography form. This
great poem --- ‘the finest fruit of Wordsworth’s great creative period’ --- is to be
treated as the faithful record of the growth and development of the poet’s
mind, ‘fostered alike by beauty and fear’, enabling us to have a glimpse of the
innermost recesses of the poet’s soul. Its very sub-title, ‘The Growth of a
Poet’s Mind’, amply justifies the statement that it records the life of
Wordsworth’s poetic personality.

In the first book of The Prelude we get the autobiographical account of the
poet’s childhood and school time. But in the introduction (L1. 1 to 269) the
poet, before narrating his pleasant or painful experiences of childhood days,
first tells us how he was led to write this great poem. Wordsworth has
related events which took place after the autobiographical incidents of his
childhood days and of school time contained in the subsequent part of this
poem (L1.207-612); and the transition to autobiographical incidents and
recollections of various experiences of childhood days which contributed to
the growth and development of the poet’s mind has been done with
wonderful ease and naturalness. All his mental conflicts and contradictions
and his incapability to undertake the great task of composing an exalted
poem on a noble theme sends the poet’s mind back to those childhood days
which he passed in harmony beside River Derwent.

DISCUSSION:

“Poetry takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility: the emotion is
contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears and an
emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually
produced and does itself actually exist in the mind”.
--- William Wordsworth

Wordsworth believed that artistic composition is a combination of thought

and emotion. During the poetic process, the poet is possessed by powerful
passions but he undergoes a period of emotions recollected in tranquility.
During this process the influxes of feelings are modified and directed by
thoughts. The direction of thought adds a depth of meaning and truth to
poetry. For Wordsworth poetry is a method of interpreting reality or the
meaning of life.

Wordsworth believed that it was to Nature that he owed most in the

formation of his mind and character. The Prelude is actually his spiritual
autobiography in verse, and Book I deals with Nature as nurse, guide and
guardian to Wordsworth in his early years.

Wordsworth believed the Spirit or the Soul of lonely places had chosen him
to be a favoured being from his very infancy, seeking him either with "gentle
visitations" or "severer interventions". Nature's method, thus, were two-fold:
She kindles in him a sense of beauty, and also restrains him from wrong
doing by instilling fear.

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up

Fostered alike by Beauty and by Fear.
Nature's beauty held the child entranced as when at the age of five, he
caught sight of the mountain Skiddaw "bronzed with deepest radiance" or when
the cliffs continued wheeling past him during a pause in skating on Esthwaite
Lake. Wordsworth was now not aware of Nature's beauties: these came to
him unsought.

But sometimes Nature intervened creating fear and a sense of guilt. A

severe intervention came to him when he stole a boat and rowed it out to
Ullswater. One summer evening the boy found a boat in the lakeside and
somewhat stealthily he rowed the boat out, when suddenly from behind a
craggy steep a huge black peak up reared its head. It appeared as though
this cliff was pursuing him with huge strides. The boy Wordsworth's mind
made sensitive by conscious guilt, he tremblingly rowed back and went
homewards. And for days afterwards

"Huge and mighty forms that do not live

Like living man, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams".

Imagination, the "first creative sensibility" which even the infant

Wordsworth possessed but lost in his boyhood, is now reawakened during his
adolescence. The imagination is

An auxiliar light
Come from my mind, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendour.

The visionary power stirred both his mind and heart. And he also felt that a
Being spread over all things. On acquiring this pantheistic feeling, he walked
in "religious love" with Nature, and could consider God and Nature
synonymous.

The Prelude, thus, ultimately led him onto those philosophical religious and
spiritual conclusions which were to be the animating source of his projected
work The Recluse. With him who had dedicated himself to the art and to the
leadership of man to the highest level he can reach, it (The Prelude) became
an epic of which he was the hero. He was aware that for a poet to talk so
much about himself might lay him open to the charge of egotism.
But he knew too, that self-examination of this kind in sincerity and humility
can reveal to humanity the whole picture of its own glory and despair.

The Prelude is a unique work, because it combines the epic power and range
of a poem like Paradise Lost with the introspective voice of the writer
himself. The Prelude, written under pressure of his youthful years, has
something of the freshness and liveliness of youth - a loose succession of
events that the poet's mind has lit up with the rich glow of memory. What is
significant is that the things he sees walking on the solitary road or the
moon among the leaves of an ash outside his cottage window are of equal
importance with the politics and the gaudy trappings of human life.

Coleridge praising Wordsworth’s poetry said:

‘It is the union of deep feeling with profound thought, the fine balance of truth of
observation, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed; above all
the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height
of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations, of which for the common
view, customs had bedimmed all the luster, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops’

Furthermore, he tells us that our physical body is destined to die but our
soul is immortal. Just as the melody of music is composed by harmonizing
different notes, so also our immortal soul is formed by harmonizing
different and opposing elements. Nature works in a mysterious way. It is
beyond our intelligence to fathom the art or workmanship with which nature
combines various discordant or opposing elements into a harmonious whole.
The poet, in the various stages of his life, has undergone experiences of
worries, fear, vexation and weariness. But the most wonderful thing is that
all these discordant and opposing elements were fused into a harmonious
combination to foster the growth of his soul, and thus played a very useful
part to enable him to attain a calm and peaceful existence. Nature’s ministry
is sometimes mild and gentle and at some other times it causes slight and
mild fear. It is a slight as the fear that is sometimes caused by the sudden
flash of lightning that brightens up the sky. On some other occasion nature’s
discipline was much more severe, to create a more tangible effect on his
mind. The poet is very much thankful to nature for all these means, pleasant
or painful employed by her for the healthy growth of his mind and soul. He is
all praise for her for the ultimate peace and serenity attained by his soul.
The strength of consciousness wrought by recollection of Wordsworth’s
earlier education in nature is discussed in The Prelude. According to John F.
Danby,

‘the most significant thing about Wordsworth’s writing in The Prelude is the way he
integrates the past and the present.’

Wordsworth’s French experience had left him so perturbed with political

passions and private cares that for a time he lost his ecstatic love of nature
and the visionary power which that love had evoked. He wrote The Prelude
chiefly in order to rescue from decay his early visiting of imaginative power.
Wordsworth revived his flagging energies by evoking past moments of
creativeness and as all his deepest emotions have been associated with
natural objects, it is through them that he can best recapture what was so
fugitive. The Prelude is a record of ‘the growth of a poet’s mind’. In the
poem he is not only introspective and self dependent but had a memory of
astonishing power. Again and again in The Prelude he retraces his steps and
calls back those early days, anxious to save his precious memories, the
mysterious sources of his visionary power.

The Prelude has a message which is very modern - the influence of childhood
on after life. Childhood offers an explanation of the problems of one's life.
The child is the father of man. Modern psychology has this very lesson.

In The Prelude Wordsworth was looking at life not in one aspect only, but in
its truthful whole - from mountain clouds wreathing in the slow glorious
convolutions of the dawn, to the reality of the depths of both city and
country life. The road often recurs in his poetry, the road with its odd
tragic simple people he met on it, and his message of Hope and Love without
which we cannot live.

He seems akin to us in our troubles today with his rugged individualism and
last ditch defence of beauty and love. No wonder, Wordsworth

Felt, that the history of a poet's mind

Is Labour not unworthy of regard.
CONCLUSION:

Thus it can be concluded that ‘The Prelude’ is not only the record of events
which took place in the life of Wordsworth, but it is a record of his spiritual
development. For Wordsworth a good poet is not just a thinker or a
philosopher, nor is he first of all a sensitive soul pouring forth his own
passion. He must unite two qualities of thought and feelings. He is different
from other men not in kind but in degree of his qualities and it is this extra
gift, this extra sensitive intelligence that make him able to write about
things that other men dimly feel. In his view poetry is a philosophical vehicle
and meditative activity formed from emotions recollected in tranquility.

Wordsworth’s poetry moves from vivid depiction of a specific scene or

object to thoughtful meditation, resulting in profound moral or religious
insight – particularly, glimpses into the essence of nature, typically more
available to the minds of children or peasants not burdened by worldly
concerns, ambitions, love or strife. Wordsworth believed that imagination
had a visionary sort of interaction with the living external world and what it
perceived, and defined human experience. Imagination paints the external
world in shades that varied according to each individual’s power of
imagination. The mind both endows objects with qualities and receives
sensory impressions from them – the mind ‘half creates and half perceives’
and if experience is perceived correctly and thought seriously, will
automatically evoke appropriate emotion enabling the poet to write truth
about human nature which is universal.
CLASS : B.A.(HONS) PART-|||

INSTITUTE : ENGLISH.

SUBJECT : ROMANTIC POETRY.

TEACHER CONCERNED : MA’M ARIFA.

TOPIC OF THE ASSIGNMENT :

“ THE PRELUDE - A SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF

WORDSWORTH ”

DATE : 11-03-2009