Notes on Wordsworth’s Preface
Paragraphs
1. & 2. The first volume of these poems have been published with the intent of
experimenting w/ a different meter than neoclassical poetry employs, the taste of
the age. He expected that those who might be predisposed to like them would like
them(?), but he was surprised that so many people have liked them.
3. His friends had wanted him to preface the first edition, b/c they thought a preface
might help usher in a new kind of poetry modeled after his. He declined b/c he felt it
would require too much explaining, a whole history of ideas. But now, w/ this
second edition, he’s decided to write a preface to prepare readers for the newness of
these poems.
4. Certain tastes in poetry, in its form and content, accompany each age, and to
prepare a reader for this shift in expectations his poems require he will defend his
poetic choices, so as not to be accused of indolence.
5. A defense here of the subject matter, involving “incidents and situations from
common life,” and of the language “really used by men.” And a defense of “throwing
over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect… and tracing in them … the primary
laws of our nature; chiefly as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas
in a state of excitement.”
He defends the choice of rural settings and people, arguing that it is in those settings
that passion is more authentic, and that the language used by rural people is more
authentic (my word) b/c “such men hourly communicate w/ the best objects from
which the best part of language is originally derived,” and b/c those people are less
susceptible to social vanity they “convey their feelings and notions in simple and
unelaborated expressions.” Such that that language is “more permanent, and a far
more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by
poets,” who mistakenly adopt a false ornamented language simply b/c it fits current
“fickle tastes.”
6. He understands, though, that some current poets have railed against these trends,
but his work is distinguished from them in that his poems have a worthy purpose
(his italics). He understands that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings,” but it is also the product of “a man, who being possessed of more
than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.” As a result of this
long and deep thought, the worthy poet will impart this enlightened sensibility in
his poems in such a way that a reader can’t help but be edified by the poems and “in
some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.” He’s
describing here the psychological process by which important ideas manifest in
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feelings, which is why poetry must allow itself, if it’s to be important, to be created
primarily by feelings.
7. Another feature of his poems that distinguishes them from most of the day is that
“feeling gives importance to the action and situation,” not vice-versa. [This turns
Aristotle’s argument that action is character on its head. For W., character is
determined by feeling, not action.]
8. We are not drawn to his poems per se, but to the subject in them, which promotes
the cultivation of noble, non-sensationalistic sensibilities. Good taste is being
currently destroyed by sensationalism, which is being promoted by the events of the
day (the French Revolution and ensuing war w/ France) and the literature that’s
accompanying them. But he has faith that sensationalism is being countered by
more permanent “powers,” in man and nature, “certain inherent and indestructible
qualities of the human mind and of certain powers in the great and permanent
objects that act upon it.”
9. Enough about the subject and purpose of his poems. On w/ the matter of style.
Since his purpose is to adopt the language of men, he has avoided “personifications
of abstract ideas,” since men don’t naturally personify abstract ideas—he wishes to
keep the reader “in the company of flesh and blood.” He won’t argue w/ those who
wish to interest the reader in their own way; he just wants to make his own claim.
He has also avoided traditional elevated diction, following “good sense,” and he’s
dispensed w/ stock poetic phrases that have come to be (properly) despised.
10. A defense of prosy poetry. He argues that much of the best of English poetry is
prosy. And he quotes a passage of poetry from Gray, who, he says, did his fair share
of widening “the space betwixt prose and metrical composition,” and used very
elaborate structures.
11. He claims here that the best parts of the passage of Gray’s he quotes in the
previous paragraph are prosy.
12. Thus good poetry is indistinguishable from good prose. In fact, there is no
“essential” difference btwn the language of prose and metrical compositions. “Poetry
sheds no tears ‘such as angels weep,’ but natural and human tears; she can boast of
no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose;….”
13. If the language in a poem is made of ‘natural speech’ and the meter is added and
made w/ ‘true taste and feeling,’ then it will be poetry; the subject, when chosen
‘truly and judiciously’ will be alive w/ all the apt figurative language necessary for it
to be good poetry. Figures of speech will follow naturally from the passion being
expressed.
14. If the reader thinks he’s going on too long and is being too defensive, let him
remind the reader that he’s doing no less than calling for a realignment of critical
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criteria, by which to judge all the poetry of the past. This is an important argument,
he argues.
15. “Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by
the word poet. … He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed w/ more
lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of
human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common
among mankind; a man pleased w/ his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices
more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate
similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and
habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”
16. & 17. As sensitive and thoughtful and skilled as a good poet is, he will still fall
short in presenting the language ‘uttered by men in real life.’ As exalted a role as we
may think the poet has, he must remain humble (?) in light of his recognition that his
language will always fall short of the authenticity of the language of real life. His
skills lie in his abilities to select out the “painful and disgusting” aspects of life,
certain details the omission of which will manifest the essential nature of the
experience. And the more he does this, the more he will know that he is at the
service of reality (i.e., the more he’ll know he’s describing reality, b/c (presumably)
reality is not essentially painful and disgusting (?). (This argument continues in next
paragraph):
18. Some argue that in response to this condition (described in previous paragraph),
the poet must embellish the language to make up for its inadequacies. But this
would be wrongheaded. Those who argue for embellishment think of poetry merely
as “a matter of amusement.” He cites for support Aristotle’s statement that poetry is
the most philosophic of all writing, and agrees. “Its object is truth, not individual and
local, but general, and operative….” The biographer and historian encounter greater
obstacles; the poet has only one restriction: to give immediate “pleasure to a human
being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a
lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a
man.”
19. This goal of giving pleasure is not a degradation of the poet’s project. He here
expounds on what we could call The Pleasure Principle, the philosophy that no
knowledge or understanding, even when accompanied by pain, is not produced by
way of pleasure. No matter what the discipline—scientific or otherwise—the
knowledge to be had by it is by way of pleasure; “and where he has no pleasure he
has no knowledge.” The poet, then, considers man as he is engaged in this “complex
scene” (in which he experiences life and makes his pursuits) w/ this one object in
mind: “everywhere objects … are accompanied by an overabundance of enjoyment.”
[Presumably the poet’s job is to describe these scenes—this I take to be a form of
mimeticism, involving a specific definition of reality that is to be copied: nature is
that which confers upon us all its wisdom by way of pleasure, so to mimic reality is
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to give pleasure. The mimicking, though, follows naturally from the poet’s strong
emotion—we have here a clear version of what we could call Romantic mimeticism.]
20. Nature in general confers pleasure upon “all men” and the poet’s job is merely to
convey this exchange. “He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each
other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most
interesting properties of nature.” [sounds a little Platonic.] In this the poet is like the
scientist, who indulges in the pleasure of discovering laws of nature, b/c it’s
pleasurable to do so; the poet in turn humanizes those laws (makes them less
alienating, which they are when they’re not expressed in “everyday language,” but,
rather, in the language of math or clinical science (?)). The poet in fact humanizes all
knowledge [shades of Sydney here], and universalizes them too: “Poetry is the
breath and spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the
countenance of all science.” If scientists in the future ever revolutionize knowledge,
the poet will be there to humanize that knowledge, “carrying sensation into the
midst of the objects of the science itself.” [has this happened, as science has taught
us philosophical materialism? Has poetry ‘humanized,’ say, genetic discoveries?
well, we do have quite a number of very good interpreters of science, numerous
volumes, esp. recently, of very sophisticated science explained by scientists
themselves who write for the lay audience]. Paragraph’s last sentence: This exalted
role of poetry is unlikely to cause anyone to go back to writing poetry like before, w/
excessive ornamentation, b/c it’s the attention to ‘mean’ details that’s important. (?)
21. This exalted project that he says poetry will take necessitates that when
characters are speaking in poetry they should speak naturally, not ‘colored by a
diction of the poet’s own,’ or that which ‘is expected [they] will employ [as poets].’
22. Referring back to his definition of the poet as being distinguished from the
common man only in degree, not kind, the poet should use, in the dramatic sections
of his poetry, only that language used by ‘real men.’ It’s the meter that makes
language poetic, not diction, b/c meter isn’t subject to the whims of the poet in his
or her choices; diction makes readers feel at the mercy of the poet, but meter keeps
the reader w/in the bounds of expectations.
23. He poses the question, Why should I write in meter if I argue that there is little
difference btwn prose & poetry? Is it simply for the charm that meter adds to the
language? Then he asks: couldn’t one argue [against him] that charm per se is small
compared to the disruption of expectations he has introduced by dispensing w/
neoclassical elaborate poetic tropes. He parries this argument by claiming that
simpler poems than his have yielded a great deal of pleasure, by virtue of their
simple meter (?).
24. He expounds here on the psychology of the benefits of meter: the poet’s job is to
convey excitement, but if pain is also conveyed it could have a deleterious effect if
not for meter (“the co-presence of something regular”), which can impose a
temperance and restraint on the passion “by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and
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of feeling not strictly and necessarily connected w/ the passion.” This effect can
appear paradoxical, b/c meter typically “divests language of its reality.” (the gist
here may be that while we may think that meter misrepresents reality by imposing
its own qualities onto that which cannot be articulated, it in fact represents that
essential quality of reality, which is to give pleasure(?))
He presents as evidence for his claim the fact that we do not shrink from certain
passages of Shakespeare that present a high degree of painful excitement. He (W.)
offers a reason for this: that we have pre-established pleasurable associations w/
metered poetry such that when painful sentiments are perceived in verse the pain is
lessened.
25. If he were to flesh out his theory, he would refer to poetry’s ability to note, or
create, similarities among things—to show how one thing is like another (Wallace
Stevens will make this argument, that this is poetry’s essential nature, over 100
years later.)
26. An explanation of the process by which good poetry gets written: one feels an
emotion in response to some event; the emotion percolates (my metaphor) for a
long time and the poet ‘contemplates’ on it until ‘by a species of reaction’ the poet
feels the emotion again, but this time it is ‘recollected in tranquility.’ Nature will
have accompanied this contemplation w/ pleasure, such that when it manifests in
the poet’s language the language will naturally give pleasure—the language will
naturally impart the pleasure that has been an essential quality of the
contemplation. These emotions will be deep so far as they are also accompanied by
pain, but the contemplation will distill it (again, my metaphor) into verse. And
poetry written by this process will be read more often than if it is written in prose
precisely because it is in verse.
27. Apparently a kind of apology for the sentimentalism of the poems, but he argues
that it’s dangerous to start altering them at this pt, that it could result in a loss of
self-confidence on his part, and besides, every critic has his own biases, and, too, b/c
a critic is less invested in the poems some of his judgments may have been made
“lightly and carelessly.”
28., 29., 30. He’s answering here a critique of the kind of poetry he’s extolling, which
he refers to as “poetry, in which the language closely resembles that of life and
nature.” He cites a parody of it written by Dr. Johnson and then in contradistinction
a quatrain from Babes in the Woods. He argues essentially that the parody fails, b/c
the pt. one takes away from it is not that this kind of poetry is bad, but that this
poetry “wants sense.” “Why trouble yrself about the species till you have previously
decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when
it is self-evident that he is not a man?”
31. A request that the reader not be too influenced by others in the decision to
accept his poems or not.
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32. An argument that if we give the good poet the benefit of the doubt we could
enhance our poetry tastes. He cites Sir Joshua Reynolds’s argument that “accurate
taste in poetry is an acquired taste”; he makes this argument in the hope of
tempering “the rashness of decision,” for poetry is a subject that requires much
time, to avoid erroneous judgment.
33. & 34. He hopes he has shown that the underlying reasons for why we love poetry
can be invoked to let ourselves be pleased by his poetry (and by extension that kind
of poetry he’s espousing), such that if we like his poetry we don’t have to reject the
poetry we have liked in the past. That is, we can like them both, for the same
reasons—the reasons he is arguing here that give poetry its important and
pleasurable qualities. He’s imploring us not to let our tastes for neoclassical poetry
impede our appreciation of these poems, b/c they have something meaningful and
long-lasting to offer, mainly [perhaps] by virtue of their moral content.
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