Above Tintern Abbey

 

I am looking forward to at least a brief discussion of this poem as an assigned reading, although I imagine that it may get short shrift since we have so much to discuss in our next class (Monday, February 5th, for the sake of reference.) It has been my intention from the beginning of the course to post some thoughts on our assigned readings before they are actually discussed in class, although up until now, all of my blurbs have been in the “post-class buzz” category. 

This week I would like to take a stab at expressing a few of my own impressions before being exposed to our always enlightening class “free-for-all.”  I find this a little risky because I am petrified of saying something that is totally out in left field, but… I think it’s time to take the plunge.  I chose to comment on Wordsworth in particular due to the response paper assigned on Candide; I don’t feel capable of tackling that in addition to posting an entirely different aspect of my thoughts on my blog.  So… to cut the waffle… here is my initial impression of the Wordsworth poem  Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.

The principal idea that strikes me after reading it is that of transition: transition as a key factor in a person’s development. When Wordsworth wrote this poem, he was 28.  Since the opening lines state that “Five years have past [sic]“ (was “past” equivalent to “passed” in those times?), then we can assume that he was 23 when he visited this spot before, probably for the first time.  His memory of that first impression is one typical of a young person on the brink of discovering life: curious, but without any pretensions beyond that of simply enjoying the pastoral setting and living in eager anticipation of whatever it might have to offer, regardless of whether the feeling was a dark one or a bright one:

The courser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,
To me was all in all. — I cannot paint
What I then was.  The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm…

At the time of writing Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth had matured sufficiently since his first experience of this place to develop a more complex perspective, to value its natural, and perhaps haunting beauty for far more than it meant to him on his initial visit as an impulsive youth.  In those critical five years, life must have dealt him enough sobering blows so that he was capable of looking back and gaining a much deeper appreciation of the landscape.  This newly gained perspective is evident even from the earliest lines of the poem:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet…

The poignancy of the solace this brings to him is most apparent in these lines:

O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

From the age of 23 to 28, Wordsworth clearly must have experienced things that caused him to seek, in his remembrance of this peaceful place, both consolation and inspiration.  Nature began to offer him a refuge for his suffering, as well as a place to continue to grow intellectually:

… For I have learned,
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused…

The ultimate state of optimism that the banks of the Wye inspire in him can be felt in these fervent lines:

Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful [sic] faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. 

That’s a lot of mellowing for a person not yet thirty years old. For Wordsworth, the environs of Tintern Abbey spoke to him in so many ways that they became an indelible part of his mental and philosophical development.  One might draw a parallel to young Hemingway’s Paris, albeit a city and not a haven of nature: it was something of a moveable feast that dazzles you during your innocent youth, but slowly comes to comfort you, to shape you, and ultimately be an ever-present mentor in your day-to-day thinking. (Slight digression: Madrid holds that power over me.  But that is probably to be expected since I spent a couple of decades living there, from the time I was the same age as Wordsworth when he first visited Tintern Abbey.)

My favorite words in this poem: The still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh, nor grating…. If I thought about it, I might be able to analyze why those words appeal to me so much.  Maybe because they seem to embody the stark serenity of Tintern Abbey that the above illustration suggests to me.  I wonder what it must have looked like from a few miles above. Inspiring, for sure.

Daughters of humanism

Dr. Ivanova brought up a critical point that I had been wondering about while reading about Petrarch and his learned colleagues: what about women in the age of humanism? Were they entirely relegated to another plane?  According to Dr. Ivanova, yes, they were. Simply put, there was no “womankind” in “mankind,” at least not in matters of “letters” and certainly not for the majority of women. 

This got me to thinking on the way home (much cogitating is done in my car!) about the women poets we discussed in class. What about their background?  How did women’s poetry from that age even survive to our times?  From the brief notes in class, these women clearly had a superior education, far superior to the average woman in those times.  Were they all really spinsters, nuns,  widows, or courtesans? I decided to read a bit more on a few of them: 

 

Vittoria Colonna, 1492-1547:   A noblewoman who indeed received a privledged education. Widowed when she was in her early thirties, the Marchioness of Pescara refused many offers of marriage and began to produce the Rime spirituali which characterize her works. Though she never re-married, she developed a solid friendship with Michelangelo who made drawings for and of her (see above) and even wrote sonnets to her.  HER POEMS: In class we discussed how women in those times could not write of true physical passion, but had to sublimate it through nature or in some spiritual form.  Though the final poem is clearly religious in nature (“… a different kind of strength makes us see Christ’s endurance on the cross”), the second is surely a reference to physical desire, to wit:

 Though I’ve dwelt upon his spirit, his body is no less welcome to me: our chaste real love would’ve been a passing shallow thing if passion had been left out

While it is hardly erotic, there is also clearly an admission to physical attraction.  It is, of course, expressed with the utmost taste and discretion, no doubt befitting a woman of breeding in those times, a woman raised with a classical humanist/Renaissance education.

Veronica Gambara, 1485-1550:  She was the daughter of the Count of Brescia, which explains the subject of the poem she writes extolling the virtues of that city.  Her humanistic education was incredibly well-rounded and included Greek as well as Latin language, literature and philosophy. And while her poetry (or at least the one included in the readings) may have clearly sublimated passionate love for the oppostite sex, this woman, who also became a widow, was hardly a hermit writing little verses for no one but herself to read: her poetry was becoming known by her late teens.  

After being widowed, Veronica took over her husband’s duties which included ruling over the state of Corregio near Parma.  During those years when Italy became a common battleground for warring factions between France and the Hapsburg rulers, Veronica tried valiantly to become a peace-maker, and even addressed many of her poems to anyone who might further her cause.  Why? According to one account, because “she knew that the Renaissance princes, like the ancient Romans they patterned themselves after, did care what poets thought of them.”  Brilliant!  Here was a woman whose writing was not only accepted in her time, but became a political bargaining tool.  Or as she purportedly told Cosimo de’ Medici: [many rulers] “live on in splendor in our memories” only because poets praised them.  I am convinced that this shrewd humanist who wrote “to those who can hear their hearts beat as they return home, long absent, longing to see beloved eyes” was quite possibly using such words as a cloak for feelings that went beyond the “family and friends” that she ascribes them to.

I am too tired to continue right now, but that was enough to make me realize that this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to read more about them, I have put links on the sidebar in the author categories. I find it fascinating, and really a necessity to understand as much as we can about the lives of some of these writers.  In the greater scheme of things, they are not going to be the highlight of this course, especially considering all the topics we are going to cover, but they are probably among the most enigmatic simply because of their status as women in an age where very few stood out, and the ones who did were from a privileged class.  I think this will provide an interesting perspective for future readings.