Isn’t it Iconic?— William Blake takes on William Wordsworth

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Romantic principles, thought by most survivors of survey courses in English literature to be exemplified by the golden boy Wordsworth, are filled with retraction and contradiction. Iconic principles of romanticism beg to be smashed— they were while the “romantic” poets were writing. Conventional lumping strategies in pedagogy presuppose that the romantic poets had a consistency created through proximity in time. Actually, most of these poets had little in common. Some were at least internally consistent, others weren’t. Wordsworth could have easily been the poster boy for inconsistency and the model for Emerson’s comment. In deep contrast to the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth both expands and undercuts the iconic stricture that personal reflection is the hallmark of poetry in his Preface to Poems from 1815:

THE POWERS requisite for the production of poetry are: first, those of Observation and Description,— i.e. the ability to observe with accuracy things as they are in themselves, and with fidelity to describe them, unmodified by any passion or feeling existing in the mind of the describer; whether the things depicted be actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory. This power, though indispensable to a Poet, is one which he employs only in submission to necessity, and never for a continuance of time: as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects, much in the same way as a translator or engraver ought to be to his original. 2ndly, Sensibility,— which, the more exquisite it is, the wider will be the range of a poet’s perceptions; and the more will he be incited to observe objects, both as they exist in themselves and as re-acted upon by his own mind.

William Blake annotated a copy of Wordsworth’s Poems of 1815. Under those lines in the preface, he wrote:

One Power alone makes a Poet — Imagination The Divine Vision

Wordsworth goes on to describe five elements of poetic composition. Observation, as noted above, is the least important quality— because in Wordsworth’s scheme, it must be valueless, and thus passive. What naturally follows this line of thought is— nature, though devoid of emotion, should not be described filtered through the emotions of an observer. This is certainly contrary to Wordsworth’s practice, and the assertion that perception is a passive act surely raised William Blake’s eyebrows. Observation— for Blake— was never passive. He was much like Coleridge in feeling that imagination was active, and reached out to constitute the world in perception. Wordsworth’s trip from “spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility” to the enumeration of “requisite powers” reflects a shift from a social “man speaking to men” to philosopher endlessly reworking his poems into tortured messes. Blake blamed the problem on Wordsworth’s idolatry of nature:

I see in Wordsworth the Natural Man rising up against the Spiritual Man Continually & then he is No Poet but instead a Heathen Philosopher at Enmity against all true Poetry or Inspiration

Though puzzled by Wordsworth, Blake carefully read and noted his opinions. Underneath “My heart leaps up,” containing the lines “And I could wish my days to be / Bound each by each to natural piety” Blake wrote:

There is no such thing as Natural Piety Because the Natural Man is at Enmity with God

Blake indicted Rousseau for the same reason; he felt that the natural state of man was barbarity, and that man was only saved through religion— and that religion had no analogue in nature. You might get the impression that Blake hated Wordsworth. This isn’t the case— Blake put x’s near many poems in the volume, and commented favorably on them in his conversations with Crabbe-Robinson. Blake thought Wordsworth was misdirected— a crap theorist, though a fine poet. Underneath “To HC: Six Years Old” Blake wrote:

This is all in the highest degree Imaginative & equal to any Poet but not Superior I cannot think that Real Poets have any competition None are greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven so it is so in Poetry

This is a thought I can agree with. I never sought to pit Henry Miller against Wordsworth in a celebrity death-match, though I figure that the old drunkard could take him easily. I also found myself just nodding in agreement reading Blake’s take on the role of natural objects in poetry. The whole nature schtick seems to be a red herring, and there is a lot to value in Wordsworth that has nothing to do with gazing at the brush waiting for God to come out.

Natural Objects always did & now do Weaken deaden & obliterate Imagination in Me Wordsworth must know that what he Writes Valuable is Not to be found in Nature

The contradiction of observing dispassionately in order to recall passionately surely didn’t escape Wordsworth. It is paradoxical at best, and yet this premise is the cornerstone of disengaged documentary work. Power, I think, is as Blake asserts, in imagination alone. The strictures that all of us “foolish hobgoblins” write and then violate (myself included) are in deep contrast with the practice of passionate human beings. Wordsworth’s prefaces are studies in inconsistency, and the compilation of them in his Poems of 1815 certainly puzzled Blake.

I do not know who wrote these Prefaces they are very mischievous & direct contrary to Wordsworth’s own Practice

It is truly amazing how consistent Blake was in his own theory and practice. Perhaps, as Emerson says, it’s because that consistency attracts “philosophers and divines.” Blake managed to keep himself busy enough, up until the end— foolish consistency and all.

Blake had interesting theories about solitude, which I will go into in another post. It seems unlikely that Emerson knew anything about Blake, because his mind certainly wasn’t small. Though proximate in time, it wasn’t until after 1870 that Blake became well known to literary circles. Blake was— to his own time— a lunatic on the fringe. Blake wasn’t the sort of dispassionate, faithful engraver that Wordsworth mentions in his preface either— all his engravings were informed by observation actively infused with imagination— hardly a state of subjection. This, he would never abide.