Mysticism In Wordsworths Poetry English Literature Essay

Mysticism In Wordsworths Poetry English Lit date of referenceture turn upWilliam Wordsworth and Coleridge ar the two pi singleers of the English amative Movement who changed the dry, sterile freethinking in English poetry in a new era by establishing the primacy and sovereignty of in stag and imaginative vision in belles-lettres and in behavior. William Wordsworth has an amazing capacity for expressing someoneal judgements and fancys.According to the Romantics, imagination is the simply way of perceiving and realizing the one in the many, the abiding coffin nail the flux, the innumerous behind the finite, the eternal behind ephemeral, and the transcendent behind the immanent. Romantic vision is on the basis of the ultimate priority and superiority of imagination over the analytical and speculative close of the serviceman mind while it does not resist or belittle the limited values and utility of the latter in human emotional give in. It appreciates the view that the realms of experience be so high that chiffoniernot be explored and comprehended by finite human reason. And it is only the imagination which can offer fleeting flashes of intelligent and penetrating insight into the soreness of the reality. desire establish on direct intuitive insight or flashes of immediate awareness is a faculty that transcends scarcely does not reject the reason and intellect of man (Barker 5). Wordsworth emphasizes the striking importance and agent of imagination when he very perceptibly advances..Imagination, which, in truth,Is exclusively an otherwise name for compulsive powerAnd clearest insight, amplitude of mind,And reason in her some exalted mood.(Prelude, obtain IV) duration reason divides, disrupts and dissociates things, imagination links, unifies and binds them together. Thus in sharp personal credit line to the Cartesian metaphysics of Descartes which maintains a dichotomy surrounded by matter and spirit, microcosm (man) and macrocosm (universe), the Romantic imagination finds in the entire universe between the sentient backing beings as whole about as inanimate objects, a bond of broad angiotensin-converting enzyme, solidarity and fellowship. Another distinctive feature of the Romantic imagination is the experience of owe, wonder, seizure or rapture and reverence aroused in the perceivers mind when it contemplates and communes with the things of the universe. such awe inspiring or rapturous supernatural (or numinous) experience is a vital factor in Romantic experience and the prime get-go of its vitality and intensity.William Wordsworth is one of the greatest imaginative Romantic poets whose style and poems are always distinguished from other Romantic poets because of his illumined sacred vision as a mysterious. Romantic imagination defecateed to its climax, its crowning revelation and consummation in the Wordsworths mysticism. Mysticism could be considered as the quintessence of Wordsworths poetry and the supreme commencement of its aspiration (Mackay 110).Mysticism, broadly defined, is a state of sublime imaginative and spiritual experience in which one has direct, immediate and intuitive perception of an extensive infinite and eternal reality the immanent-transcendent Absolute Being underlying and pervading but as well transcending the sensible material universe. It is the hotshot of God in in each(prenominal)(prenominal) and alone in God. It is this sense of one ultimate worshipful rule permeating entirely things and all(a) in all sprightliness of the universe as well as guiding, cherishing and sustaining them that inspires the mystic to conceive the vision of the ultimate divine unity of the universe, of all deportment. Mystic imagination sees a living relationship between the soul of man and the soul of the universe a vision of cosmic unity, fraternity and fellowship.The mysticism of Wordsworth is something unique in its kind, though there are some char acteristics that can be seen in all modes of mysticism. It is a compositors case of personality-mysticism. Wordsworth mystical experiences are mainly depicted in the context of his word of personality. He had neer limited his poems within the confined boundaries of the sights, sounds, odors, and movements of various elements of nature. His take away was to attain something ultra- kingdomly and divine and leaving the traces of his mystical experiences in nature and human life in his poetry. So his poetry is not simply in effect(p) talking about the lovely and tranquil aspects of nature but it also covers his mystical experiences.Though it is consist of a certain degree of comparison to Spinozistic pantheism, it is not absolutely the same thing because it does not consider temperament as the be-all and end-all of the universe or equate and identify it with the Supreme augur Spirit. Wordsworths mysticism also differs from the Neoplatonic mysticism of Plotinus or the Christian mysticism of St. tin can of the Cross and St. Augustine. provided it has something of the sublime beatific vision of Blake or the enthusiastic paradisal vision of Dante. Like all true mystics Wordsworth believes that human life has a divine origin and divine destiny (Wyman 517). As he said in his Ode on Intimations of ImmortalityOur birth is but a calmnessfulness and a forgettingThe soul that rises with us, our lifes starHath had elsewhere its settingAnd cometh from a distantBut trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom Gold, who is our homeMan is introduced as an essentially divine and immortal spirit in wordsworth poems as we repeatedly see such phrases like the Pilgrim of Eternity or the Child of Immortality which proves his anxious and glowing faith as the most genuine mystic poet of all ages. It is evident that he believes so deeply in infinity as he says Our destiny, our beings heart and home, I Is with infinitude, and only there and that the great thought by which we liv e is infinity and God.Wordsworths love of personality and the way constitution is glorified, worshiped and divinized is apparent in his verse. Wordswoths attitude towards personality is somehow variant from other Romantic poets of his age. For instance, although Shelley shares some common characteristics with Wordsworths viewpoint on Nature but he also attempts to intellectualize and conceptualize Nature transforming the object of Nature into some dogmatic socio-political doctrine, ideology or an abstract idea, as in Ode to the westside Wind, while Wordsworths vision of Nature is constantly and consistently spiritual.For Wordsworth, the vision of Nature always re chip ins the vision of the ecclesiastic spirit, the vision of that Cosmic Being. So Shelley on the basis of a Wordsworthian spirit describs in his illuminating and stirring linesThat Light whose smile kindles the Universe,That Beauty in which all things work and move,That approval which the eclipsing curseOf birth can quench not, that sustaining LoveWhich by dint of the network of being blindly moveBy man and beast and earth and air and sea,Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors ofThe fire for which all thirst ..(Lament for Adonais)Wordsworths worship and adoration of Nature was never inspired by passion for aesthetic beauty, elegance and splendor. All forms and objects, aspects and appearances of Nature whether graceful, lovely and magnificent or somber, awe inspiring and forbidding same stirred and stimulated his visionary imagination, for they all of them were to him equally the living emblems and images of the worshipful spirit, the hieroglyphics of divinity. How even the dreary, appalling and awesome spectacles of Nature could bring intimations of the Divine Reality and deeply impress on his mind its sublimity, majesty and vastness is vividly revealed in one of the celebrated passages of Prelude in the explanation of a scene on the AlpsBlack drizzling crags that spake by the ways ideAs if a voice were in them, the sick sightAnd giddy prospect of the raving stream,The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,Tumult and peace, the nighttime and the light-Were all like workings of one mind, the featuresOf the same face, blossoms upon one guideCharacters of the great Apocalypse,The types and symbols of Eternity,Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.(prelude, Book VI)This passage is a representative of a profoundly moving and glowing description of one of the most memorable mystic experiences of Wordsworth.The essential features of Wordsworths mystic vision is also greatly depicted in those impressive lines of his, where he saysOne interior lifeIn which all beings live with God, themselvesAre God, existing in the mighty whole,As undistinguishable as the cloudless eastIs from the cloudless West, when allThe hemisphere is one cerulean blue. From a fragment found in aMs. notebook containing Peter Bellor when he refers to..the sentiment of Being pass aroundOer all that moves and all that come alongeth stillOer all that, lost beyond the reach of thoughtAnd human knowledge, to the human eyeInvisible, yet liveth to the heartOer all that leaps and runs and shouts and sings,Or beats the gladsome air Oer all that glidesBeneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,And mighty depth of waters.(Prelude, Book II)All objects, high or low, sentient or insentient are to him mixed with the presence of the Divine and instinct with life and feeling and even with consciousness and their own will. This is interestingly expressed in the following memorable linesTo every natural form, rock, fruit or flower,Even the loose stones that cover the highway,I gave a moral life I saw them feel,Or linked them to some feeling the great massLay bedded in a quickening soul, and allThat I beheld respired with inward meaning.(Prelude, Book III)Wordsworths perception of One interior life in all leads to evoking his vision and fill him with lofty and elevated though ts which is derived from mediocre and apparently trivial things of Nature. Trances of thought and mountings of the mind kindling him to the sublimely worshipful and profoundly mystic contemplation of the Divine immanent in all creation.To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie withal deep for tears.(Ode on Intimations of Immortality)And he says that even the tiniest things of Nature seemed provoked and illumine with a heavenly splendor and sublimity.The earth, and every common sightTo me did seemApparelld in celestial light.(Ibid)Since Nature brought a profound vision of the idol or the Wisdom and Spirit of the universe in Wordsworths mind as he calls it in his Prelude, he regarded it as the source of his poetic inspiration and of moral and spiritual enlightenment and vision. He appreciates Nature as he saysWell pleased to recognizeIn nature and the language of the senseThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.(Tintern Abbey Re-visited)All objects and units of Nature had for him some sublime and enigmatic moral and spiritual message to evinceOne impulse from a vernal woodMay see you more of man,Of moral evil and of good.Than all the sages can.(The Tables Turned)It is the crucial faith of a mystic that the heart of light is the silence. In the true spirit of a mystic, Wordsworth arranged a supreme value on silence and thoughtful stillness or, as he called it, wise passiveness and meditative peace and was aware of its deep and huge spiritual potentialities for bringing him divine revelation and for enabling him to penetrate into the ultimate cosmic mysteries. Among his visions of Nature, there came moments of such profound and hallowed stillness of transcendent peace and silence as Wordsworth called it that through his imagination Wordsworth attained the highest peak of his mystic vision gaining insight into the heart of reality (Jarvis 4). It was in moments of that peace which passeth understanding that Wordsworth saysGently did my soul throw off off her veil, and self-transmuted, stoodNaked, as in the presence of her Got(Prelude, Book IV)In moments of such saintly tranquil and peace, his mind was transported to a state of sublime ecstasy, a trance-like consciousness.Oft in these moments such a holy calmWould overspread my soul, that bodily eyesWere utterly forgotten, and what I sawAppeared like something in myself, a dreamA prospect in the mind(Prelude, Book V)Emphasizing those moments of sublime stillness and serenity and their immeasurable value and significance, Wordsworth in an illuminating passage in Tintern Abbey Re-visited saysthat serene and sunny mood,In which the affections gently lead us on,Until, the breath of this corporeal mouldAnd even the motion of our human bloodAlmost suspended, we are fixed asleepIn body, and become a living soulWhile with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things.and also in Ode on Intimations of Immortality he statesHence, in a season of calm weatherThough inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal seaWhich brought us hither.Wordsworths mysticism is different and remarkable for its contemplative mood and pantheistic conception of nature. It is structured based on the belief that nature is a living being and the house place of god. Nature is the means through which a man comes into border with god. Wordsworth claims that a divine spirit can be seen through all the objects of nature. As a true pantheist he also says that all is God and God is all. This notion is particularly depicted in Tintern Abbey.He also finds the existence of god in the mind of man. Wordsworth claims that there is a pre-arranged harmony between the mind of man and the spirit of nature, which enables man to affect or communice with nature. The relationship is materialized when the mind of man forms a kinship with the thoughts of nature. And it is this kind and intellectual junction between man and nature that helped to shape his belief that nature has the power to teach and educate human beings. Man reaches idol and practical knowledge through the education he obtains from nature. He believes that the person who doesnt receive education from nature is worthless and his life is not successful. The poet believes that nature is the nurse and the protector of the mankind (Gill 163).In Wordsworths viewpoint, nature has the ability to extenuate the damaged mind of man. The beautiful and frolicsome aspects of nature are an infinite source for healing power. The material life sometimes becomes so torturous that human beings loose the aspiration for living. When life becomes such unbearable so the sweet and affectionate contact with nature can easily grind away the cloud of cynicism from the mind of the viewer of nature. The noise and disturbance of the township or city life may make human life intolerable bu t even the recollections of nature in some lonesome(a) room can eliminate the burden of desolation, anxiety and suffocation.Wordsworth honors even the simplest and the most ordinary objects of nature and human life. For him nothing is mean or low, since everything that is present in the universe is touched by divine life. To conclude we ought to say that Wordsworth never looked at nature like the way we do. With great loyalty and enthusiasm, he sought to read the profoundest meaning of human life in nature. In the way of doing so he forged himself as a great poet of nature with a true mystical vision.