Dorothy Wordsworth's Return to Tintern Abbey
Author(s): James Soderholm
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 309-322
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057284
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to Tin tern Abbey
Return
Dorothy Wordsworth's
James Soderholm
entided
most famous contribution
to Lyrical
William Wordsworth's
to in one
Ballads (1798), "Tintern Abbey," is direcdy alluded
of Dorothy Wordsworth's
poems, written over thirty years later,
on
sick
bed."
Most of the recent debates about
my
"Thoughts
the importance
of
Dorothy's
place in her brother's poem underestimate
the critics of "Tintern Abbey," there are those
this "sister poem." Among
in his myth of memory
and those
includes Dorothy
who feel that William
to include her. Indeed, this disagreement
who feel that he only pretends
the positions
of the
about Dorothy's
place in the poem
encapsulates
of
romantic
critics
poetry.
major
I will discuss
the last section of "Tintern Abbey,"
After analyzing
on
I
to the
it
sick
bed."
will
that
my
argue
replies direcdy
"Thoughts
in the last lines of her brother's
poem.
futurity evoked
her
echoes
brother's
earlier works, borrowing
from
poem
Dorothy's
once borrowed
them as liberally as William
from her journals.
The
us
to
of
reexamine
the
function
of
images helps
poetic
intermingling
of
address and apostrophe:
evocations
figurai
subjectivity produced
by
to another person.
I will conclude with a few
turning, and returning,
of recent critical views of both Wordsworths.
remarks about the meaning
hopes
of
I
In "Tintern Abbey," William
presents his gains and losses in a series of
affirmations
and abnegations:
the poet recompenses
himself for his lost
to
it
with
abundance
pare
away, revealing how little
youth
spiritual
only
he actually needs to sustain himself at the ripe age of twenty-eight. This
to reach a solid
for the superiority
of adulthood
argument
appears
conclusion
two-thirds of the way through the poem.
I am
Therefore
A
lover
of
the meadows
and
still
the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of
eye,
New Literary History,
and
ear,?both
1995, 26: 309-322
what
they
half
create,
310
NEW
And
what
well
perceive;
and
the
In nature
The
anchor
of my
The
guide,
the
pleased
of
language
purest
guardian
to
LITERARY
HISTORY
recognise
the
sense,
the nurse,
thoughts,
of my heart,
and
soul
Of all my moral being.1
The
William,
that his
nature,
on these
have ended
woodnotes.
But
poem might
graceful
as if committed
to further self-abnegation,
on
us
to
tell
goes
not
on
does
the
of
instruction
happiness
depend
spiritual
so long as his sister
to
is
restore
there
him.
Dorothy
Nor
If I were
not
thus
taught,
should
perchance,
I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For
thou
art with
me
here
upon
the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The
language
of my
My former pleasures
Of thy wild eyes.
former
heart,
and
in the shooting
read
lights
(11. 112-19)
intent on showing us just how litde he needs to keep his
Her
brother's
"former heart," Dorothy
spirits
becomes
his saving grace, or Beatrice, with an important difference:
in
sees
a
the shooting
her
not
of
wild
the
of
vision
but
God
eyes
poet
lights
the image of what he once was.
William
seems
from
diminishment.
Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My
dear,
Knowing
The
heart
dear
Sister!
that Nature
that
loved
and
never
her
this prayer make,
did betray
. . .
(11. 119-23)
lines unite address and apostrophe.
In the turn to
impassioned
both the lyric "I" and the addressee
To be
Dorothy,
vividly materialize.
more precise,
in the addressee.2 The traditional
the lyric "I" is reflected
"a direct and explicit address
is, M. H. Abrams
observes,
apostrophe
an
either to
absent person or to an abstract entity."8 But what is the
an apostrophe
to a present person? How
addressed
figurai nature of
to Dorothy
does the address/apostrophe
enjamb the "figured" and the
"real"? David Simpson argues that Wordsworth's
poetry metaphorically
trees into tropes, as if the poet's whole
encodes
the world, transforming
These
dorothy
311
return
Wordsworth's
But what is the force of this activity
vocation were endless figuration.
a real person,
someone
the "real" is, presumably,
both on the
when
scene and part of the event of the poem? To put it another way, what is
an
the relation between
address to a
"figuring the real" and
apostrophic
human figure? Many recent critics are not exercised
this
by
question
at the end of "Tintern
they do not take the turn to Dorothy
never gets outside
These
critics
believe
that
William
Abbey" seriously.
the orbit of his sublime meditations
and that he uses Dorothy
for his
own poetic
ends.
this
about
the
of
Indeed,
suspicion
authenticity
turn to Dorothy has given much
William's
criticism its high moral
tone,
as ifWilliam must be taken to task for not actually
turning to Dorothy
and inviting her to say something.
The apostrophic
has an important precedent
address to Dorothy
in
occurs when William
the poem which
doubts
whether
his
suddenly
even
as he
of the Wye are as spiritually profound,
memories
redemptive,
had believed.
because
If this
Be
but
a vain
In darkness
yet, oh! how oft?
amid
the many
shapes
belief,
and
Of joyless daylight; when
Unprofitable,
Have
hung
How
O
and
upon
in spirit,
thou
sylvan Wye!
oft,
the
the fretful stir
fever
of
the world,
of my heart?
the beatings
to thee,
have
I turned
wanderer
thro'
the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
(11.49-57)
Also a "wanderer thro' the woods," Dorothy
is closely associated
in her
brother's mind with the sylvan Wye he apostrophizes
in this passage. Just
as conventional
revitalizes him and shows the soundness
of
apostrophe
his beliefs, so his later turn to Dorothy profoundly
consoles him for the
passing of time by taking him out of time. Having momentarily
recap
tured himself
in Dorothy's
offers a prayer for her to be not
eyes, William
the curator of his achievement,
for all
but, in herself, "amansion
merely
lovely forms" (1. 140). William wishes for her to have a perfect memory,
to serve "as a
/ For all sweet sounds and harmonies"
(11.
dwelling-place
It is as ifWilliam
turns his sister into the
whose
141-42).
itself,
Wye
image she reflects and carries in her eyes, her mind an abbey reverber
of Dorothy
ating with the still sad music of blank verse. This conversion
into naturalized
a
movement
in
initiated
the first
abbey completes
to
the
river
apostrophe
Wye.
At the end of the poem, William
orchestrates
perceptions,
including
312
NEW
for he
Dorothy's,
present
is especially
concerned
for her
LITERARY
not
HISTORY
to forget
this
moment.
If I should
be where
nor catch
voice,
Thy
Of past
existence?wilt
Nor,
perchance?
can hear
I no more
from
thou
thy wild
then
That on the banks of this delightful
We
stood
together
eyes
these
gleams
forget
stream
. . .
(11. 146-51)
in Dorothy what he most fears in himself:
loss of youth and
an
So
he
makes
and
his
reminder
of
himself,
lines,
memory.
emphatic
what she will stand to lose if she slips into forgetfulness.
He finishes his
with yet another plea for memory.
prayer-poem
He
fears
thou
Nor wilt
then forget,
after many
many
years
wanderings,
Of absence,
these
and
steep woods
lofty
were
And
this green
pastoral
landscape,
More
both
for themselves
and for
dear,
That
cliffs,
to me,
thy
sake!
(11. 155-59)
Dorothy's
the collapse
"the poetry
sence?and
as well as
his future absence
presence
suggests toWilliam
once called
of the very possibility of what Robert Langbaum
of experience."
The
of his own future ab
imagination
the simultaneous
creation
of a "future" memory
in the
of Dorothy?is
William's
(or rather dwelling)
person
way of overcoming
one
in Emily Dickinson's
what
later finds
self-canceling,
haunting
"I could not see to see?." William
wants
to see to it that
prolepsis:
richer for her companion
Dorothy will see to it that his past experience,
of
her
lasts.
His
evocation
also
sustains him, for in his
ship,
apostrophic
for
her
he
becomes
what
his
first
fantasy
suggests the sylvan
apostrophe
a
stream
been
of
for
has
him:
steady
Wye
inspiration?Mnemosyne?
from which
the ancient poets drank their memories
and their epics.
What has the critical tradition made of these last fifty lines, this long
and impassioned
coda? Langbaum
believes
that in these final lines
connects
William
"in one concrete vision himself, his sister, their love for
and for nature, nature's love for them, and past, present, and
Most older critics echo Langbaum
and timelessness."4
's
as
a
the
end
of
the
in
faithful
of
poem
interpretation
expression
seeing
the poet's need for, and love of, his sister. Geoffrey Hartman
calls the
turn to Dorothy
"a vow, a prayer, an inscription
for Dorothy's
heart, an
can survive the speaker's death."5 And in
intimation
of how this moment
each other
future,
time
dorothy
313
return
Wordsworth's
his early work on the romantic poets, Harold Bloom writes that "The
most beautiful
lines in 'Tintern Abbey'
invoke the possibility
of per
for
renewal
Dorothy."6
petual
These are sympathetic
readings in the sense that they see the turn to
as
Dorothy
generously
including her in the poet's landscape of memory.
But those outside theWordsworth
circle wonder what his address to her
more
amounts
to.
Are
these
lines
than a self-inscription?
Is
actually
an
to
William's
alibi
of
most
One
of
the
pivot
Dorothy
sympathy?
recent critics of romantic poetry, Marjorie
Levinson
attacks
important
William's
routines and the complicity
of his apos
transcendentalizing
tolic critics. The tone of Levinson's
of binary oppositions
deconstruction
and historical
amnesia
in "Tintern Abbey" implies that William might
have written a better poem, a poem open both to its historical moment
and to the poet's
sister. For Levinson, William's
seals him in
poetry
sees William's
of politics and history. Levinson
against the encroachments
as "a decidedly
turn to Dorothy
feeble gesture
towards externality"
by
which he "cancels the social...
by allowing no scope for its operation."7
In his essay on the figurai status of apostrophe,
Culler invites
Jonathan
us to "reflect on the crucial
that
fact
this figure
though paradoxical
which seems to establish relations between
the self and the other can in
fact be read as an act of radical interiorization
and solipsism."8 Many
recent critics of the poem see only the solipsistic aspect of
apostrophe.
They ignore, as Culler does not, the way in which an apostrophe
may
a lyric
indeed establish a relation between
speaker and the addressee.
of address and apostrophe
Mistrust
of William's
parallels
suspicion
women
as
to
evoke
substantial
in
his
presences
ability
poetry. Gayatri
concludes
that "in the texts of the Great Tradition,
Spivak, for example,
the most
occluded
and transparendy
is
remotely
mediating
figure
for
woman."9 Allowing more
in
"Tintern
scope
Dorothy
Abbey" would
involve letting the poem become more dialogically
presumably
open to
so
not
a
is
that
she
silent
and
auditor but rather
her,
merely
appreciative
a full
in a more dual-voiced
discourse.10 Criticizing William
participant
a critical
for his masculinist
has become
interiority
commonplace,
a
ten
a
in
the
last
In
recent
article, Elizabeth Fay
years.
topos,
practically
writes:
"The
helpmate
cause
Wordsworthian
only:
non-verbal."11
to see
solution
nonseductive,
These
attacks
.
.
.
positions
disenchanting,
pervert
William's
and
the
woman
disempowered
address
to
as
be
Dorothy
it as an expression
of his narcissism
rather than an
of
an
ecstatic
appreciation
Dorothy's
attempt to evoke a
self-sufficiency,
former life both from and in that ecstasy, and finally a prayer offered
to
the redemptive
of
see
to
reluctance
how
William
agency
memory.12 Fay's
is in fact seduced and enchanted
by Dorothy
suggests the critics feelings
of exile.
in order
314
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
as a kind-hearted
If early critics thought
of the turn to Dorothy
a
the
of
of
and
Levinson
memory,
gesture
poet's private myth
socializing
in Dorothy
and others see only the phantom
and, correspondingly,
only
inWilliam.
the reactionary
egomaniac
They wish "Tintern Abbey" were
more dialogic, with Dorothy
of her own. The desire to
given a discourse
see all literature through
from a zeal for multiple
results
dialogic glasses
texts into documents
of
either
transforms
voices.
Such enthusiasm
in
in
that
their
finds
them
or,
venture,
failing
wanting
heteroglossia
resistance. The early critics read the end of "Tintern Abbey"
monologic
as an honest tribute to a beloved sister. Recent critics, on the other hand,
to favor a poet who
turned his back on the French
do not wish
For these critics,
its
descent
into despotism.
Revolution,
despite
rapid
reformation
is a grand evasion of
shift from social to mental
William's
to radical politics.13 The poet's turn to his sister
his early commitment
an inauthentic
encounter
with
faith
his
bad
repeats
by representing
or the social world. Because Dorothy
is the reader's surrogate
otherness
our responses, we may take this as a
in the poem, silendy programming
see
turn
to Dorothy as a subde coercion of
the
thus
and
personal affront,
a feeble gesture toward us. Our response may then take the
sympathies,
for not writing a certain kind of poem, either
form of criticizing William
a poem of social realism or a poem in which the listener enjoys a more
restrictive way of reading
This
"subject position."
or
recent critics feel in
alienation
exile
the
shows
William's
apostrophe
as
to Dorothy
fails not
if
the
to "Tintern Abbey,"
relation
apostrophe
us part
to
as
us
it
make
fails
well, because
only to evoke her but to evoke
one
of its wanderers.
of the event of the poem, part of its salutary fiction,
visible
and
vocal
relations
William's
critics have litde interest in understanding
or 1832. For critics unhappy about William's
in 1793,1798,
the poem offers the
to the French Revolution,
response
"reactionary"
Exiled
with Dorothy
best
evidence
there are many
felt
a certain
of
his
ways
closeness
various
to
the
distance
poet
and
occlusions,
betrayals,
to measure
and
and
his
distances.
intimacy. The
poem,
a
comradery
older
But
critics
encour
saw depicted
in "Tintern Abbey." Materialist
aged by the intimacy they
more critical distance and
with
treat
"Tintern
William
and
critics
Abbey"
as lacking the social dimension
earlier critics
see the turn to Dorothy
recent
of "Tintern
critics
to acknowledge.
were happy
Indeed, many
to
and
use
William
the
attack, both his
poem against
highlight,
Abbey"
of it.
to the social and his egotistical
resistance
appropriations
the lines
reads
for example, John Barrell
In "The Uses of Dorothy,"
was
once" as "no
in thee what I
"Oh! yet a litde while / May I behold
to arrest Dorothy's
or less than a prayer to nature
more
development,
and for his benefit."14 But William
says "a litde while," not from here to
eternity.
Barrell's
lack of sympathy
for the turn to Dorothy
encourages
DOROTHY
WORDSWORTH'S
RETURN
315
flourish:
the following metaphorical
"Dorothy's growth to autonomous
as it turns out, simply recapitulate Wordsworth's
will
not,
subjectivity
in him, a less comfortable
than
own; it will precipitate,
subject-position
un
he now claims to occupy, in which he will be unguarded,
unguided,
an
audible
of
he
be
without
the
where
will
nursed,
guarantor
fiduciary
to
his own language, no longer able to appeal
symbols that compose
as
Bank
of
and
the
the
value
of
meaning
Dorothy
England, underwriting
In other words, William,
he issues" (162-63).
the coins and banknotes
to Barrell, wishes to retard the growth of his sister so he can
according
over her. Dorothy's
loss. Having
gain is William's
enjoy superiority
worst
Barrell
confirms
his
about
the poet
cashiered William,
suspicions
are
in
darker
left to
commercial metaphors
whose
meanings
by investing
so
recent
our coerced
critics insist, contrary
many
imaginations. Why do
to all biographical
that William
evidence,
secredy has it in for Dorothy
her?
when he writes a poem including and even celebrating
not
that
William
"has
the
David Bromwich
argues
slightest intention
a
own
her
and that he "was
of making
Dorothy
gift of
experience"
could
his
the
without
wisdom. He took
enjoy
jealous of
strength Dorothy
she would need his wisdom when at
his revenge by proving how much
out
like his.15 I do not know what justifies
last her childlike powers gave
see
nor
do
I
the need for words
this tone,
such as "slightest" and
on
"Tintern Abbey" and the French Revolution,
"revenge." In his essay
a good
a mere
case for not considering
makes
Bromwich
William
ends up echoing cynical interpretations
reactionary, but he nevertheless
in the poem,
of Dorothy's
which have become
position
interpretations
in recent years, a moralistic
almost de rigueur
reflex. These
critics do
to consider
not want
were
the possibility
that Dorothy
and William
a gift of their own experience,
a
each
other
of
the
indeed,
gift
making
If these critics paid more
to
of their experience.
attention
see
was
a
life
and
this
would
that
she
writings
Dorothy's
they
gift
to recall
the gift of her journals
accepted, just as her brother accepted
certain persons
and images for his poetry. I am sympathetic
to these
I do not think they reveal the inequities
transactions
because
and
recent critics have heaped upon them and because
anxieties
I believe
is more
the turn to Dorothy
and open-ended
than these
complicated
very poetry
reductions
suggest.
"Tintern Abbey" ends with a prolonged
address to Dorothy, who is
unnamed
but hardly absent. Abrams has recendy written
that "it is hard
to imagine how Wordsworth
could have made itmore patent that, in the
is both a real and a crucially functional
'other.' He
poem, Dorothy
us
awareness
stardes
into
of the presence,
devotes
the last fifty lines to
her, and gives her
has been attacked
the salient role of concluding
room
for not making more
the poem."16 William
for Dorothy,
for not
316
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
an authentic
at the social world she represents.
This
gesture
making
attack disregards
the important
liaison between
the conventional
and
use of apostrophe
in the poem.
and address
It ignores,
personal
the important fact that Dorothy does remember her brother's
moreover,
to "Tintern Abbey." Neither
and writes a "sister poem"
exhortations
nor
critics
have
treated Dorothy's
poem?
sympathetic
suspicious
a
on
sick
bed"?as
If one insists on
my
"Thoughts
companion
piece.
into multi-voicedness,
then Dorothy's
seeing all genres happily novelized
seem
to
for
would
it shows that
consider,
poem
answering
important
can
be
both
into
the future
intertextually
lyrics
open-ended,
reaching
and into the past.
II
In Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, Susan Levin collects Dorothy's
which
includes "Thoughts on my sick-bed." At
poetry in an appendix,
the end of this poem, Dorothy direcdy alludes to "Tintern Abbey" and,
more
toWilliam's
final prayer to her.
particularly,
And
has
remnant
the
And
have
its own
in my
Touched
of my
life
of this sunny Spring?
Been pilfered
prelusive
no
heart
sounds
echoing
string?
Ah! say not so?the hidden life
Couchant within this feeble frame
Hath been enriched by kindred gifts,
undesired,
That,
came
unsought-for,
With joyful heart in youthful days
fresh
When
I welcomed
Glittering
each
the
upon
season
earliest
the mossy
With busy eyes I pierced
and
In quest
of known
a
?The
lamp
primrose
The
in its Round
Celandine
silent butterfly
ground;
the lane
tmknown
on
things,
its fortress
rock,
spreading
itswings,
The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath,
The daffodil dancing in the breeze,
The carolling thrush, on his naked perch,
Towering
above
the budding
trees.
dorothy
no
cottage-hearth
of Nature
Companions
the Still,
The
Stirring,
our
longer
were we,
Our
To
all we
Yet
never
When
317
return
Wordsworth's
our
gave
home,
the Mute?
the Loquacious,
sympathy.
in those
careless
days
in rock,
rain
spring-time
field,
or bower
Was but a fountain of earthly hope
A promise of fruits 8c the splendid flower.
No! then I never felt a bliss
That might with that compare
to my
couch
piercing
on the vernal
air.
Which,
Came
Culled
some
sad
Unprompted
a Power
unfelt
longer
done,
hidden.
before,
weakness,
Controlling
It bore me
was
to my hidden life,
no
consciousness
I felt
home,
dear.
the work
thoughts
and unbidden,
But joy it brought
To
year,
of our
the precincts
to
Memory
from
nooks
With
the
of
first flowers
From
rest,
loving Friends an offering brought,
When
The
of
to the Terrace
languor,
walk
pain;
I trod the Hills again;?
in this lonely
prisoner
I saw the green
Banks
of
No
Recalling
Bard,
need
Or
even
?I
And
thy prophetic words,
Brother,
No
from
Friend
or of
of motion,
the breathing
of Nature's
thought
with
room,
the Wye,
Memory
I was
infancy!
strength,
air:
loveliest
scenes;
there.17
Levin claims that this poem is "an ambiguous
dialogue with the poems
of William's
the
old
while
great decade,
celebrating
interdependence
own
to
fit
her
the
is
words
It
Levin's
(DW 135).
shaping
struggle"
I shall argue, which creates an ambiguous
criticism,
dialogue with the
poems
of William.
318
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
In her analysis of the poem's opening
stanzas, Levin reshapes words to
"The
enact her own hermeneutical
word
'pilfered' calls atten
struggle:
tion to itself, especially as placed in Dorothy's
poem with 'prelusive' and
but
also
connected
words
sound,
by their possible relation
by
'piercing,'
to the language ofWilliam's
and
Dorothy's poetry. Her observations
ship
were
other
writers
taken (pilfered)
sounds, first
years ago. Her
by
sense ofthat
now 'pierce' his in the variegated
to
her
brother's,
prelusive
with
'see thoroughly
word:
'discern,'
into,' 'puncture,'
'penetrate
pain,'
a sharp instrument
has
indeed
been
into'_Her
being
'pilfered'"
'pass
assertions?
Levin's analyses contain several half-formed
(DW136-37).
as "possible relationship,"
more
like innuendo
than argument?such
as
at something
hint
which
unseemly
only to treat the unseemly
phrases
were
observations
a fact a sentence
that Dorothy's
later. The charge
the actual relation
"pilfered" by other writers completely misrepresents
use
her
the
journals and the
relationship?between
possible
ship?not
as
books.
them
of
made
and
her
both
brother
commonplace
Coleridge
use of her journals
is suggested most visibly at
That Dorothy
encouraged
she writes that she will
of the Grasmere
the beginning
journal, where
William
she
"shall
because
pleasure by it."18The verb
give
keep ajournai
borrow
not "pilfered," suggests the tenor of his subsequent
"gleaned,"
of
edition
Oxford
the
of
editor
recentiy published
ings. Pamela Woof,
to
to
recollect
she
"When
details,
stopped
Dorothy's
journals, writes:
her
to
and
re-read
and careful description,
write an extended
improve
for Wordsworth's
she was offering
this must pardy be because
prose,
have
items of their common world. He might
selected
consideration
see
to
leech
the
had not Dorothy's
prose taught him
again,
forgotten,
as Levin does,
To conclude,
on the shore of daffodils"
(xvi).
gatherer
her stated desires
that Dorothy's
being has been "pilfered" ignores both
the
of her poem,
and the remainder
about her journals
especially
the
rekindles her hopes through
second stanza, where Dorothy
redemp
tive
power
of memory.
an etymological
"pierce" thrusts
from Dorothy's
into William's
"prelusive"
alleged plagiarisms
dagger
about
I have just suggested
what
but
this
ignores
reading
journals,
verb
fact
that
the
the
and
in keeping her journals
Dorothy's
generosity
but
or
with
the
in
poem,
pain
"pierce" is not associated with puncturing
Levin cites the entry "discern," but this denotation
acute discernment.
or insinuation
of its violendy probing
can hardly match
the sensation
from both her
the speaker's
cousins.
Indeed,
relief from pain results
of Nature and her ability to be pierced by the kind
piercing perceptions
friends. The word may seen an odd choice
offices of her flower-bearing
of the poem
in this second instance, but one must repress the remainder
toward William's
to find in this word a deep ambiguity
writing or, wors?,
to her.
a subde condemnation
of his poetic obligations
Levin's
meditation
on
the word
DOROTHY
319
RETURN
WORDSWORTH'S
Let me now consider
it. The last two stanzas
the poem's ending and Levin's interpretation
of
"Tintern
and
William's
cite, respectively,
Abbey,"
best-known
"Lucy poem," "A slumber did my spirit seal." The penultimate
stanza unambiguously
affirms William's
of hope and continu
prophecy
at
to
the
end
of
his
these
evokes
words, Dorothy
poem. By alluding
ity
their promise and thus completes
the circuit of William's
hopes for their
future. But Levin writes: "It is, however, pardy the absence of health and
nature
that makes
this nature of memory
that enables
the
possible,
of
fulfillment
William's
In other words, because
(ZW136).
prophecy"
is sick and out of touch with nature she turns to her brother
Dorothy
and his poem. The logic of this turn is not at all surprising. But Levin
it sound peculiar, as if the price Dorothy must pay for
makes
fulfilling
William's
is to be stricken with illness.
prophecy
last stanza is the loveliest and the saddest in the poem. Here
Dorothy's
she interleaves her poem with
slumber did my spirit seal."
her brother's
"Lucy poem"
entided
"A
A slumber did my spirit seal;
no
I had
human
fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The
No
has
motion
She
Rolled
With
of earthly
touch
neither
round
rocks,
she
now,
hears
nor
in earth's
and
stones,
years.
no
force;
sees;
diurnal
and
course,
trees.
that in these final lines "Memory serves continuity here, a
of William's
in 'Tintern Abbey'"
(DW 136). But
hope
then she immediately
the
of
this
"In a
qualifies
meaning
continuity:
revision by subtracting from William's
irreducible
'No
motion
seemingly
has she now, no force,' the line 'No need of motion,
or of strength, / Or
even the breathing
air' asserts both her independence
from and the
of
her
brother's
words'"
I cannot
(ZW136).
possible
reality
'prophetic
see how or why
to
assert
would
wish
her
from
Dorothy
independence
lines she clearly enjoyed remembering,
as
William
just
enjoyed recalling
the images she recorded on their walking
tours when he later read her
out of the reality her
journals. Here, Levin's "possible" backs Dorothy
embraces.
Levin, not Dorothy, wants independence
poem generously
from William's
poem.
In an otherwise
sensible
treatment
and fairminded
of Dorothy's
also makes an argument
for what she consid
poems, Margaret Homans
ers the unfortunate
erosion of poetic identity in "Thoughts on my sick
on the final allusion
bed." Commenting
to the "Lucy poem," Homans
Levin admits
reinforcement
320
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
claims
that the "I of this poem becomes
the 'she' of another, and though
a
denotes
of
any quotation
suspension
identity, this one causes the T to
abdicate altogether."19 Like Levin, Homans misses
the existential
point
of Dorothy's
herself
into
and
instead on the fact
fastens
translating
Lucy,
seems to setde for the
that Dorothy
of a persona not of
inauthenticity
her own invention. Thus, Homans
that:
argues
"Writing out of love for
nature
she
with
and
her
nature,
self; writing out of love
merges
forgets
for William
she takes on the persona
he designs for her and adopts a
'hidden life' that is his, not hers, and therefore one that is as mystifying
to her as it is to us" (78). Eager to see William
as a magisterial
presence
in the lives of all those around him, Homans
will not allow Dorothy's
to
emerge unless she sounds like a trumpet, prophetic
poetic
identity
as
and visionary
her brother. Her "hidden life" is not at all mystifying
if
one pays attention
to the way in which she is trying, with a fluted voice,
to merge with both nature and death. Because
they wish to show how
must
her
"abdicate"
in
the
of her brother
(or
presence
Dorothy
identity
in the presence
of his poems), both Levin and Homans
how
her
ignore
allusions
condition.
simultaneously
depict and allay her mortal
to the "Lucy poem" may seem an ambiguous
allusion
echo
Dorothy's
of William's
and Homans,
I do not hear
but, unlike Levin
poem
an anxiety of influence here, and it seems
anything remotely resembling
to
of indepen
read
her
final
lines as either a declaration
wrongheaded
to it. In
work or an infirm capitulation
to
did my
"A
slumber
"Tintern
and
Dorothy's
Abbey"
a
seal"
she
arrested
becomes
by the
spirit
living memory, momentarily
of
Her
reunite
her
with
recollections
her
memory
poetry past.
powerful
brother and his poem and thus allow her to manipulate
and
presence
absence just as he did throughout
"Tintern Abbey."
In both poems
the lyric address
of
dimension
opens up another
as
a
Culler
of
which
describes
this
kind
follows:
"In
apostrophe
lyrics
once
or
is
has
been
lost
present
temporal problem
posed: something
this loss can be narrated
but the temporal
is
attenuated;
sequence
dence
from
her
double
brother's
allusion
like time
irreversible,
ture by removing
the
time
and
empirical
movement
from A to
struc
itself. Apostrophes
this irreversible
displace
absence
from
and
between
presence
opposition
a
it
in
time.
discursive
The
locating
temporal
a revers
becomes
B, internalized
by apostrophe,
ible alternation
between A' and B': a play of presence
and absence
not by time but by poetic power."20 For Culler,
the use of
governed
a
the
elusive
ideal
toward
of
works
apostrophe
atemporal
immediacy,
an
of
into
Both
"Tintern
the
eternal
way
present.
converting
temporal
on my sick bed" show the struggle
involved in
Abbey" and "Thoughts
for both poems present a play of presence
and absence
this conversion,
DOROTHY
WORDSWORTH'S
321
RETURN
in their apostrophic
that moment
addresses,
intensely
imagined
is both eroded and accented,
both attenuated
where one's experience
of the apostrophe
and vitalized by the figurai prominence
itself, what
and
emotionalism.
This is a
Culler identifies as its embarrassing
visibility
to
case where figurative
both
itself
calls
attention
and
calls
language
most
into being.
something
"Under the aegis of desire,"
a progression
to a real which
observes David Simpson,
"all figurings are
never is but is always about to be."21 One
to
is that figure progressing
say that the personalized
might
apostrophe
a real which
most
its
is:
this
is
fiction
and
its
(or who) actually
supreme
serve the need for
ardent desire. Such apostrophes
self-preservation
by
not trapped in empirical time, but
forth subjective presences
figuring
rather endued unto the timeless
element
sustained only through
the
also claims that "[f]or the Romantics,
the
power of poetry. Simpson
an alternative
to the possibility of passive
process of figuring constitutes
The essentially
creative nature of the mind means
that,
perception.
there would be mere vacancy"
without
it, moreover,
(167). Dorothy's
is a figurai oscillation
between
poem
speech and silence, activity and
on her sickbed, Dorothy
and vacancy. Couchant
passivity, presence
becomes
and poetic
absent-minded,
magnificentiy
breathing memories
are a
to a past reality
allusions
instead of air. Her figurings
progression
which was and ever shall be a source of consolation,
her poem both a
a still life, her memories
a
and
she
self-portrait
bouquet
lays on her living
and breathless
soul. Far from creating an ambiguous
dialogue with the
to "Tintern
poems of William, Dorothy's poem responds apostrophically
to
in
the
of
it
1798,
memory
poem
Abbey." By returning
Dorothy makes
and
its author
her addressees.
In affirming
this bond between brother and sister, some critics attend
to the figurai magic of poetic
language and to the existential
predica
ment of William
and Dorothy,
both of whom feel their death in every
recent critics enter these poems
limb. Most
and these lives only to
confirm
their worst suspicions
to ply
before
leaving unceremoniously
their trade. If they were to suspend their own hermeneutics
of suspicion
for a moment,
of a brother and
they might gain a deeper understanding
sister who, with wandering
steps and slow, left Tintern Abbey only to
to make
it one of their main haunts.
return, in memory,
University
of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
322
NOTES
1
William
Selected Poems and Prefaces, ed. Jack Stillinger
Wordsworth,
1965), p. 108,
(Boston,
cited in text by line number.
hereafter
2 The word
"does not bite." But perhaps
an
James
"dog," William
soberly observed,
an
does
one, does create
especially
erotically
charged
apostrophe,
something
palpable,
make
in multiplying
their pet names for
present. Why else do lovers so delight
something
as a way of
each other, except
the loved one?
up, in various costumes,
conjuring
11. 102-11;
3
4
5
M. H. Abrams,
A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (New York, 1985),
The Poetry of Experience
Robert
(New York,
1957), p. 45.
Langbaum,
Wordsworth's Poetry (New Haven,
Hartman,
1964), p. 28.
Geoffrey
6
Harold
7
Marjorie
Levinson,
8
Jonathan
Culler,
Bloom,
p.
182.
The Visionary Company
(Ithaca,
1971), p. 138.
Wordsworth's
Great Period Poems (Cambridge,
1986), p. 38.
1981), p. 146.
of Signs (Ithaca,
9 Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
(New York,
1988), p. 76.
I am obviously
10
of Bakhtin's
work here. Wordsworth's
thinking
lyrics have come under
I think, for not being
that is, for being
too monologically
fire,
sufficiendy
dialogic,
endorsed
"authorial
(Levinson's
term).
by the poet's
ideology"
The Pursuit
11 Elizabeth
Women,
Fay, "Wordsworth,
European Romantic Review, 3 (Winter 1992),
Place
in Wordsworth's
Gender: Woman's
(1986), 391-410.
12 Freud's
essay
of attraction,
form
and Romantic
133-46.
Ideological
Love:
see Marlon
Also
A Question
B. Ross's
"Naturalizing
English
Literary History,
Landscape,"
of Nation,"
53
narcissistic
13
"On Narcissism"
where
one
some
contains
(1914)
person
finds
important
another
insights
compelling
about
this
for
her
precisely
self-engagement.
The Romantic
J. McGann's
much
of what I
1983) anticipates
Ideology (Chicago,
more
criticism.
McGann
is
in his
dialectical
and
even-handed
"suspicious"
calling
treatment
of poets and poems
than are many deconstructive
materialists.
My differences
as follows. When
he writes
that "Between
with McGann
1793 and 1798
may be distilled
Jerome
am
lost the world
Wordsworth
the word
14
John
merely
"merely."
Barrell, Poetry, Language
to
gain
his own
and Politics
immortal
(New York,
soul"
1988),
(p. 88),
I want
p. 162; hereafter
to erase
cited
in
text.
"The French Revolution
and Tintern
10 (Winter
David Bromwich,
Raritan,
Abbey,'"
1991), 23.
in Romantic Revolutions,
"On Political
of Lyrical Ballads,"
16 M. H. Abrams,
ed.
Readings
R. Johnston
Kenneth
etal.
342.
Ind.,
1990),
p.
(Bloomington,
15
17 Cited
in Appendix
One of Susan M. Levin's Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism
(New
cited in text as DW.
hereafter
Brunswick,
1987), pp. 219-20
N.J.,
(emphases
Dorothy's);
18 Dorothy
The Grasmere Journals
ed. Pamela Woof
Wordsworth,
1800-1803,
(Oxford,
cited in text
1991), p. 1; hereafter
19
cited
20
21
Margaret
in text.
Culler,
David
hereafter
Homans,
Women Writers
and Poetic
Identity
The Pursuit
of Signs, p. 150.
Wordsworth
and the Figurings
Simpson,
cited in text
(Princeton,
of the Real
1980),
(London,
p. 77; hereafter
1982),
p.
xxv;