5/7/2023 0 Comments Wordsworth prelude pdf![]() One important thing to keep in mind while reading the Prelude is its autobiographical nature. Regardless, reminiscing has made him feel mentally sharper and prepared him to launch into the full story of his life. Finally, the speaker apologizes for his long-windedness, saying that he hoped to attain self-improvement by reflecting on the past. The speaker claims that he felt remarkably sensitive and connected to natural beauty as a child. At the same time, he remembers calmer, less earth-shattering moments in the natural world or in humble rural cottages, like ice-skating and playing card games. Reflecting on that sublime experience, the speaker contrasts the mundane meaninglessness of the man-made world with the inexplicable, nearly divine grandeur of nature. These formations affected him deeply, inspiring a kind of awe, horror, and curiosity long after he returned the boat. In one especially intense memory, the speaker recalls, he stole a small boat and steered it beneath some massive rock formations. Now, in retrospect, it seems as if nature gave him additional challenges and experiences in order to aid his artistic development. He remembers plundering birds' nests and once even falling off the side of a cliff, hanging on for dear life. He wandered off among the forests and hills, occasionally getting into trouble. This forms his earliest memory of nature, but, he recalls, as he grew older he became more adventurous. The speaker describes the beloved river Derwent, flowing near his home throughout his childhood. He needs to separate himself from the petty ambitions of human society, embracing immersion in nature in order to write the way he wants. He can't yet separate selfish impulses from intuitive longings, or fear from wise cautiousness. However, the speaker is still too young to really know how to do this. But what he'd really like is to write, movingly and evocatively, about universal everyday experiences. Sometimes he goes ahead and retells a famous mythical or historical narrative, and other times he writes about his own life. But he's not always able to write about what he'd like. He feels that he has a "vital soul," a good understanding of important truths, and a solid store of images and anecdotes culled from the real world. When he considers his fitness to be a poet, the speaker is pretty satisfied. At the same time, he isn't able to bring himself to sacrifice poetry for something more mundane and respectable. He wants to capture meaningful, important things in his work, but they don't always feel available to him. Indeed, the speaker deliberately sets goals that he thinks might help him grow as an artist. These explorations take place in the physical world, but they also symbolize and bring about the speaker's growth as a human being and as a poet. In search of experiences in nature-both because he enjoys them and because they sharpen his instincts as a writer-the child Wordsworth embarks on a series of explorations. The liveliness and intensity of nature seem to awaken a similar creative aliveness within the young poet, and he feels as if the streams and branches around him are both pointing him towards a certain poetic destiny, and reflecting that which is already inside of him. He is relieved and thrilled, even comparing the crowded city to a place of captivity. Since this work is autobiographical, we can guess that this area is England's idyllic Lake District, where Wordsworth grew up. This autobiographical epic poem begins with the speaker (a young Wordsworth) returning from a city to the rural area he calls home.
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