William Wordsworth Biography
William Wordsworth He was one of the early leaders of Romanticism (a literary movement that celebrated nature and focused on human emotions) in English poetry and is one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature.
William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cookermouth, Cumberland, England, the second son of a lawyer.
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Unlike the other great English Romantic poets, he enjoyed a happy childhood under the loving care of his mother and was very close to his sister Dorothy.
As a child I happily wandered through the enchanting natural landscape of Cumberland. In primary school, Wordsworth showed a great interest in poetry. He was fascinated by the epic poet John Milton (1608-1674).
From 1787 to 1790 Wordsworth attended St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. He always returned home and to nature during his summer vacations.
Before graduating from Cambridge, he toured France, Switzerland, and Italy in 1790. The Alps made an impression on him that he did not recognize until fourteen years later.
Stay in France
The revolutionary passion in France had a great impact on Wordsworth, who returned there in November 1791. He wanted to improve his knowledge of the French language.
His experience in France just after the French Revolution (1789; the French overthrew the ruling monarchy) reinforced his sympathy for the common people and his belief in political freedom.
Wordsworth fell passionately in love with a French girl, Annette Vallon. He gave birth to her daughter in December 1792.
However, Wordsworth had used up his limited funds and was forced to return home. The separation left him with a sense of guilt that deepened his poetic inspiration and resulted in an important theme in his work on abandoned women.
Publication of first poems
Wordsworth’s first poems, Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, were printed in 1793.
He wrote several works over the next few years. The year 1797 marked the beginning of Wordsworth’s long friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Together they published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Wordsworth wanted to challenge «the gaudy phraseology and phraseology of many modern writers».
Most of her poems in this collection focused on the simple yet deeply human sentiments of ordinary people, expressed in their own language.
His views on this new type of poetry are described in more detail in the important «Preface» he wrote for the second edition (1800).
«Tintern Abbey»
Wordsworth’s most memorable contribution to this volume was «Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey», which he wrote just in time to include it.
This poem is the first major piece to illustrate his original talent at its best. He deftly combines matter-of-force in natural description with a genuinely mystical (magical) sense of infinity, marrying self-exploration to philosophical speculation (questioning).
The poem closes with a subdued but confident reaffirmation of nature’s healing power, though a mystical insight can be gained from the poet.
In its successful blend of inner and outer experience, of sense perception, feeling, and thought, «Tintern Abbey» is a poem in which the writer becomes a symbol of humanity.
The poem leads to imaginative thoughts about man and the universe. This cosmic perspective rooted in the self is a central feature of romanticism. Wordsworth’s poetry is without doubt the most impressive example of this point of view in English literature.
Wordsworth, even while writing his contributions to the lyrical ballads, had been feeling his way to more ambitious schemes.
He had embarked on a long poem in unrhymed verse, «The Ruined Cottage,» which they later called «The Peddler.» It was intended to form part of a vast philosophical poem entitled «The Recluse, or, the Views of Man, Nature, and Society.» This huge project never materialized as originally planned.
Abstract and impersonal speculation was not comfortable for Wordsworth.
He could handle experiences in a lyrical-philosophical way only if they were intimately related to himself and could arouse his creative feelings and imagination.
During the winter months he spent in Germany, he began work on his magnum opus (the greatest work), The Prelude, or The Growth of a Poet’s Mind. It was published after his death.
However, such a huge achievement was still out of Wordsworth’s reach (area of capabilities) at the time. It was to the shorter poetic forms that he returned during the most productive season of his long literary life, the spring of 1802.
The production of these fertile (creative) months came mostly from his previous inspirations: nature and ordinary people. During this time he wrote «To a Butterfly», «I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud», «To the Cuckoo», «The Rainbow» and other poems.
Changes in philosophy
The crucial event of this period was Wordsworth’s loss of the sense of mystical unity, which had sustained (lasted throughout) his highest imaginative flights. In fact, a mood of despondency (depression) descended on Wordsworth, who was then thirty-two years old.
In the summer of 1802 William Wordsworth spent a few weeks in Calais, France, with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth’s renewed contact with France only confirmed his disillusionment with the French Revolution and its aftermath.
During this period, Wordsworth had become increasingly concerned with Coleridge, who was now almost totally dependent on opium (a highly addictive drug) for the relief of his physical sufferings.
Both friends came to believe that the realities of life were in total contradiction (disagreement) with the visionary expectations of their youth.
Wordsworth characteristically sought to redefine his own identity in ways that afforded him a measure of meaning. The new turn that his life took in 1802 gave rise to an interior change that marked the new course that his poetry followed from then on.
Poems about England and Scotland began to flow from Wordsworth’s pen, while France and Napoleon (1769-1821) soon became Wordsworth’s favorite symbols of cruelty and oppression.
His nationalist inspiration (intense pride in his own country) led him to produce the two «Memorials of a Tour of Scotland» (1803, 1814) and the group entitled «Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty».
poems of 1802
The best poems of 1802, however, deal with a deeper level of inner change.
In Wordsworth’s poem «Intimacies of Immortality» (March-April), he clearly recognized that «Things I have seen I can see no more»; yet he emphasized that though the «visionary brilliance» had fled, the memory remained, and though the «heavenly light» had faded, the «common sight» of «meadows, groves, and streams» was still a potent source of delight and consolation (consolation).
Thus Wordsworth shed his earlier tendency to idealize nature and turned to a calmer doctrine (a set of beliefs) of orthodox Christianity.
Younger poets and critics soon blamed him for this «retraction» (resignation), which they equated with his change of heart about the French Revolution.
His ecclesiastical sonnets (1822) are clear evidence of the way in which the love of freedom, nature and the Church coincided (joined at the same time) in his mind.
the prelude
However, it was the direction suggested in «Intimations of Immortality» which, in the light of subsequent criticism, enabled Wordsworth to produce perhaps the most outstanding achievement of English Romanticism: The Prelude. He worked on it, from time to time, for several years, completing the first version in May 1805.
The Prelude can claim to be the only true Romantic epic (long, often heroic work) because it deals in narrative terms with the spiritual growth of the only true Romantic hero, the poet.
The inner odyssey (journey) of the poet was described not for its own sake, but as a sample and as an adequate image of man in his most sensitive state.
William Wordsworth shared the general romantic notion that personal experience is the only way to acquire living knowledge. The purpose of The Prelude was to recapture and interpret, in minute detail, the full range of experiences that had contributed to the formation of his own mind.
William Wordsworth refrained from publishing the poem in his lifetime, continually revising it. Most importantly, and perhaps most regrettable, the poet also tried to give his mystical faith in nature a more orthodox tinge.
later years
Wordsworth’s (increasing) estrangement from Coleridge in 1810 deprived him of a powerful incentive for imaginative and intellectual vigilance. Wordsworth’s appointment to a government position in 1813 freed him from financial attention.
William Wordsworth’s unconditional love of nature made him view the emerging (newborn) industrial society with undisguised reserve.
He opposed the reform bill of 1832, which he believed merely transferred political power from the landlords to the manufacturing class, but he never ceased to advocate for the victims of the factory system.
In 1843 William Wordsworth was named poet laureate (a country’s official poet). He died on April 23, 1850.
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