The art of rhythmical composition: A Study of Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads”

The art of rhythmical composition: A Study of Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads”

Dr. Ram Sharma

Associate Prof. & Head, Dept. of English, J.V.College, Baraut, Baghpat

Sukanya Goswami

Faculty,Dept.of English, MNC Girls' College, Nalbari, Assam.

“ Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” (1800)  is one of the heralding ‘Prefaces’ to initiate a good deal of novelty in English Criticism. Written by William Wordsworth, the ‘Preface’ aptly brings out Wordsworth’s critical creed, his conceptions of poetry, of a poet, of poetic diction and of the nature and the process of poetic creation. Herein, Wordsworth takes on the mantle of a critic and tries to usher in an entirely new kind of poetry which directly manifested a revolt against the poetry of the neo-classical and against the pseudo-classical theory of poetry.

           The ‘Preface’ forms the core of Wordsworth’s critical venture and it sustains many good qualities about it. It is here that the poet-critic, for the first time, advocates for naturalness in poetry, away from the obnoxious artificiality which characterized the poetry of the neo-classicists. It is, indeed, Wordsworth, the true Romantic who emphatically declares for the first time that “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge…….Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge – it is as immortal as the heart of man.” Such a higher estimation is to be found never before, neither in Aristotle, nor even in Sydney.

        In his ‘Preface’ (1800), Wordsworth mentions that poetry “takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility” and that it is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Poetry has more to do with the human heart than with his intellect, its subject matter being “a natural delineation of human passion, human characters and human incidents.” For Wordsworth, poetry has a noble purpose to give emotional delight, along with enlightening the reader, purifying him emotionally. Poetry cannot be composed, according to Wordsworth, by following an unnatural, mechanical process. It is possible for a poet to compose a poem only when he lets loose his long training in deep reflection upon a specified subject.

             Criticizing the over-standardization of the norms regarding poetic composition, which had been urban-oriented under the influence of the neo-classicists, Wordsworth advocates for naturalness and simplicity to be adopted in composing poetry. According to him, poetry is not poetry which used the artificial, stereotyped language of the people living in towns and cities, concerning with an artificial subject-matter like the ones we find in the poetry of the neo-classicists. Condemning the pseudo-classical concept of poetry, tinged with artificiality, Wordsworth opines that poetry must not be separated from men in real life; and according to him, ‘real’ men are those who live not in towns and cities, but in the heart of nature. Poetry originates from the natural human emotions and passions which can only be had in the rustics, in their crudest forms.

            The poet, Wordsworth believes, is a man of greater imagination and greater power of communication, so that he can comprehend truth which the commons remain blind to. Through his long training in deep reflection, the poet acquires the very essence of some phenomenon or incident. This process in the making of poetry begins in a state of calm in which the recollection of some past emotional experience can take place. Subsequently, emotional excitement in him gradually increases until the poet is almost relieving from this experience with a difference. The difference is that emotion has now modified by the thought. Thought and emotion, conscious and unconscious elements continue their intimate interaction until the spontaneous overflow begins and until these elements are ready to combine in a poet. Thus, poetry is emotion-centric and it comes into being only after the poet’s meditation in silence in the form of an overflow of his thoughts and emotions.

        Wordsworth seems to be more a poet than being a critic in defining poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and as being emotions recollected in tranquility. His staunch as a critic reflects his standing as a poet. He can rightfully be termed as a true Romantic critic when he seems to propound his theory of poetry, when he ventures to bring out the true nature of poetic creation. But it was his contemporary and fellow poet-critic S.T. Coleridge, who is the first to raise objection against Wordsworth’s theory of poetry. Coleridge criticizes Wordsworth in terms of the technical apparatus used in poetry namely, diction, meter and treatment. T.S. Eliot criticizes Wordsworth for not applying his own theory in all his poems. According to Eliot, Wordsworth’s poems such as ‘Immortality Ode’, ‘Tintern Abbey’, ‘Ode to Duty’ etc do not follow Wordsworth’s prescription about the language. The diction used in these poems is richer and more sophisticated than those of the rustic people. They are not written in a selection of language really used by men. The fact that he had a Romantic conception of poetry is affirmed when we take into account the prevailing view of poetry steered in by the neo-classicists, who urbanized poetry and made it explicitly mechanical. It was because of this that Wordsworth tried to redefine poetry and the nature of the poetic process. But even then a minute observation of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry will reveal that emotions recollected in tranquility is a conscious mechanical process which Wordsworth himself tried to escape from, the very thing which is embodied in the first part of his definition of poetry to be a “spontaneous overflow.”     

Works Cited:

Abrams, M.H. ed., Wordsworth : A Collection of Critical Essays,1999.Print.

Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Penguin Books, 2000, ISBN -0-140-51363-9.Print.

Hill, John Spencer, The Romantic Imagination, A selection of Critical Essays,2000, The Macmillan Press Limited, ISBN-033321234(hc), 033212355(pbk), Print. 

Perkins, David, “ William Wordsworth”, English Romantic Writers, 2^nd edition (Harcourt:1995),261.

Wordsworth, William: Lyrical Ballads, Macmillan Publication.1984, Print.