S8E27 – AH – “Jack’s Bookshelf: Wordsworth”, After Hours with Dr. Carolyn Weber

Dr. Carolyn Weber returns to the show to peruse Jack’s bookshelf, exploring the nostalgic poetry of William Wordsworth.

S8E27: “Jack’s Bookshelf: Wordsworth”, After Hours with Dr. Carolyn Weber (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-Week

O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate’er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale
Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,

William Wordsworth, Prelude

Biographical Information

Dr. Carolyn Weber is an award-winning author, popular professor and international speaker. She has served as faculty at several universities and was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.

She lives in a quirky old house out in the country with her family, along with their animal menagerie, and she is the author of “Surprised By Oxford”, “Sex and the City of God”, and “Holy is the Day”.

Chit-Chat

Q. What have you been up to since you were last on the show?

• Dr. Weber has been working on two other book projects, and enjoying her work as a professor at New College Franklin. Her eldest has also started college, while her other children are busy with baseball and homeschooling.

Toast

• David drank a West Coast IPA from Best Day Brewing.
• As she has been suffering from illness lately, Dr. Weber was sipping a tea.

• They toasted Dr. Weber’s late mother, who instilled in her a love of literature, and introduced her to Wordsworth.

Discussion

01. “The Man”

Q. Who was Wordsworth? What do we know about him and where does he fit into the scheme of English literature?

• Dr. Weber had the distinct privilege of taking lessons from Jonathan Wordsworth, a descendent of William himself, who knew everything there was to know about his works.
• Wordsworth is considered among the five canonical English romantic poets, alongside Percy Shelley, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, and John Keats. Wordsworth lived to be an old age, and so witnessed many events and cultural and political movements, including the French Revolution.

02. “The Romantics”

Q. Who were the romantics?

• The romantic genre in England was prevalent from approximately 1780 – 1830. They had a particular fixation on longing and homesickness, or, as termed by C. S. Lewis, “sehnsucht”. The Germanic word is fitting, because the English movement is believed to have stemmed from the German romantic movement. The longing is apparent in Wordsworth’s work; for example, in “Tintern Abbey”, he describes revisiting the place he spent summers at with his sister, and the nostalgia he had for his younger days.
• There are two waves of the romantic movement in England. The first romantics were utopians, heavily focused on nature in the face of the impending Industrial Revolution. The second generation, shaped by their predecessors, were also products of revolution, living through political and social upheaval around the world, including the American and Greek revolutions. They focused on democracy, the “common man”, human nature and emotion, and the personal, subjective experience of the individual. Their poetry tended to be much more accessible to readers.
• Wordsworth himself hailed from the lake district in England, a beautiful mountainous region that gave him a great appreciation for the beauty of nature. He and the other romantics saw nature as both a healing nurse, and a guide back to a transcendental reality.
• David spoke of his own experience listening to works by the romantics on his drive home from work, after discovering the genre in Lewis’ book “The Great Divorce”.

03. “Wordsworth’s Career”

Q. Tell us a bit about his career. Did he move to the city to try to win his fortune? What was his success like?

• Wordsworth never lived in the city, and remained in Western England where he was raised, as he was greatly shaped by the landscape of the countryside.
• Like Lewis, Wordsworth’s mother passed away when he was a young boy. He remained close to his sister Dorothy, whom he dictated many of his poems to until they moved away. Oddly enough, he did not enjoy writing.
• Though he attended good schools and studied with his brothers, Wordsworth remained drawn to the countryside, and wrote prolifically while he lived there, in particular at his country cottage.
• Wordsworth had an affection for France, and for a French woman named Annette Vallon, with whom he had an illegitimate daughter. He was very disenchanted by the political turmoil in France, which was likely a reason why he postponed marriage to Vallon.
• Though he received some praise in his younger years, much of Wordsworth’s fame came later in his career. Famously, he collaborated with Samuel Coleridge on “Lyrical Ballads”, which was a seminal publication. This made the poetry political in the eyes of the public.
• His writing was a radical departure from norms in England, setting up characters of low prestige against a chaotic yet beautiful nature. He once commented that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. This might make it somewhat surprising that Lewis liked reading his work, given Lewis’ known distrust of emotion.
• The title of Lewis’ memoir, “Surprised by Joy”, was taken from a poem by Wordsworth. The poem attempts to articulate how it feels to experience pleasure and enjoyment after suffering a great loss. However, for the Christian, the joy stems from the hope that we have in the Resurrection.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

William Wordsworth, Surprised by Joy

• David stepped in for Andrew and gave the obligatory “Till We Have Faces” reference, comparing the feeling of longing and loss to Orual losing Psyche.

Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice—no words—but if you made it into words it would be, “Why should your heart not dance?” It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?” …
I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died—for who knew what Glome would do then?

C. S. Lewis, Orual, Till We Have Faces

• Longing may also be reflected in Lewis’ observations in “A Grief Observed”, after losing his wife, Joy Davidman.

04. “Encountering Wordsworth”

Q. You mentioned that your mother introduced you to Wordsworth. When was that, and how did that go?

• Dr. Weber’s mother took her to see a local bookmobile, and would read to her siblings and her. One of her favourite authors to read was Robert Louis Stevenson. However, she also loved Wordsworth, and one of the first poems that she read to her children was “My Heart Leaps Up”.

My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up

• Another favourite poem of her mother’s was “The Solitary Reaper”.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper

05. “Impact”

Q. What makes him such an important author? Is it that he played a role in the shifts in poetry at the time?

• Wordsworth was a part of a network of other authors that the time that all knew one another, similar to the Inklings. This was a rich environment for ideas.
• He was also important for his lifespan Because he lived to a ripe old age, Wordsworth lived through multiple revolutions and had seen much.
• David and Dr. Weber discussed the merits of the poet T. S. Eliot. David couldn’t stand the lack of structure, and described Wordsworth as a breath of fresh air. However, Dr. Weber loved the poems “Ash Wednesday” and “Journey of the Magi”.

06. “Formation”

Q. We’ll speak about how Wordsworth influenced the Inklings in a little bit, but do we know anything about what books shaped Wordsworth?

• John Milton and William Shakespeare had the greatest impact on the poets at the time. Wordsworth in particular had an affection for the Scottish authors like George MacDonald and James Hogg. He also consumed Plato by way of Thomas Taylor, who was a neoplatonist translator, and Greek myths through authors like Dante.
• One incongruity with the romantics is that, while attempting to uplift the human spirit, they sidestep religion and hope in a Redeemer. They attempt to glean religious feelings from nature instead. So, while the romantics can awaken the transcendental within the person, it can only take you so far. This is a notion that Lewis warns of in “The Four Loves”.

Nature cannot satisfy the desires she arouses nor answer theological questions nor sanctify us. Our real journey to God involves constantly turning our backs on her; passing from the dawn-lit fields into some poky little church, or (it might be) going to work in an East End parish. But the love of her has been a valuable and, for some people, an indispensable initiation.
I need not say “has been”. For in fact those who allow no more than this to the love of nature seem to be those who retain it. This is what one should expect. This love, when it sets up as a religion, is beginning to be a god–therefore to be a demon. And demons never keep their promises. Nature “dies on” those who try to live for a love of nature. Coleridge ended by being insensible to her; Wordsworth, by lamenting that the glory had passed away. Say your prayers in a garden early, ignoring steadfastly the dew, the birds and the flowers, and you will come away overwhelmed by its freshness and joy; go there in order to be overwhelmed and, after a certain age, nine times out of ten nothing will happen to you.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Likings and Loves for the Sub-human

07. “Corpus”

Q. What books did Wordsworth write and which of them survive through to today?

• Most of Wordsworth’s work was poetic, although he did compose a few lyrical dramas, which were similar to plays, although more read than performed.
• Dr. Weber highly recommended the “Lyrical Ballads”, due to their contextual impact, and the concluding poem, “Tinten Abbey”. Many of the poems in this collection are thought to be odes to Annette Vallon, whom he could not unite with again, due tot he relationship being illegitimate. He felt a heavy weight not being able to see his daughter Caroline at this time.
• Another interesting poem is “We Are Seven”, which is a banter between an adult and child regarding the number of siblings that she has. She includes her deceased siblings, while the adult does not. The poem is a reflection of how others view spiritual math, as it were.
• “Nutting” is another one of Wordsworth’s poems, which follows a young man who goes collecting large bounties of nuts from trees, but feels afterwards that the act was violent towards nature, in pursuit of greed.

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.—
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch—for there is a spirit in the woods.

William Wordsworth, Nutting

• Dr. Weber described “Old Man Travelling”, a poem of an elderly man walking a lonely road to collect the body of his son who was killed in war. She also mentioned “The Tables Turned”, which emphasises the need to live and experience life rather than just read about it.
• All of these poems are moving tales of the ordinary life experience, which attracted many to his works.

08. “Influencing Lewis”

Q. Do you know in what ways Wordsworth influenced C.S. Lewis?

• Jack strongly identified with Wordsworth’s love of land and nature. He too loved going on peaceful walks through the countryside to collect his thoughts, and was happiest at the Kilns. He also likely identified with the loss of their mothers at a similar age.
• However, unlike Wordsworth, the veil was lifted for Lewis when it came to religion.

09. “Understanding Wordsworth”

Q. If someone has never read any Wordsworth, how would you recommend they begin?

• Read the “Lyrical Ballads”, particularly the preface, and then work your way up to longer poems, such as “Michael”, “Tintern Abbey”, and “Intimations Ode”.

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

More Information

• Dr. Carolyn Weber’s Website
• Dr. Carolyn Webers Amazon page
• Watch Surprised by Oxford the film on AppleTV or Amazon Prime.

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