[Poster (right: click on it to enlarge): includes extracts from several poets as well as Wordsworth, and landscapes by Francis Towne, Cozzens, Richard Wilson, Alexandre Calame, and others.]

When I chose 'Travel' as the rubric under which to poke at The Prelude, I did so in part as a self-defining and decidedly self-interested gesture. Beginning with the supposition that The Prelude was an effort on Wordsworth's part to locate himself as the personal pronoun "I" in the world, I drew a correlation between Wordsworth and my own writing of poetry, noting that I have been decidedly more prolific and focused on defining my position in the world during times of travel and exile--mostly in South America and Asia. "If Wordsworth can spend a lifetime scribbling about himself," I thought, "then surely I can find a little room too in all that writing to locate my own experience." It would appear that such presumption on my part was ill-informed, and for this reason: that Wordsworth and I differ in the ordering of three essential elements of poetry as outlined by Wordsworth in his 1802 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads--these being feeling, action and situation. Writing of what distinguished the poetry of the Lyrical Ballads from the "popular Poetry of the day," Wordsworth asserts that the difference lies "in this, that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling" (LB 64)[1]. For myself, I'm less certain, apparently, than Wordsworth was of just how these three elements can be separated and hierarchized in this manner, convinced as I am that the three are necessarily coeval and intimately, even incestuously, interrelated.

What has this got to do with the notion of travel? Well, perhaps little enough. What I discovered upon reading The Prelude was that travel does not appear to be an element that informs and shapes Wordsworth's experience in the way that it has shaped me and mine. I have been in the practice of conceptualizing travel as an exercise in dislocation--in much the same way that Russian Formalists, such as Victor Shklovsky, saw the use of de-automatizing language[2]--as the means to experiencing myself within new and potentially disorienting contexts. Wordsworth, in contrast, uses travel--a term that for my purposes can, I believe, be fairly unproblematically transposed into "walking"--not as a means to access the unfamiliar but, rather, just the opposite: that is, he makes use of walking as a ritual to align himself with the intimately familiar--his precious Nature. Where I tend to see "action and situation [or context]" as productive of feeling, Wordsworth transforms what I perceive as a causal relationship, converting it in such a way that "feeling" becomes that element which lends ultimate significance to action and location. The consequence of this shift, for me, is the realization that it does not appear that it mattered greatly where Wordsworth was--be it in Grasmere or the Alps--so long as his location engendered a particular feeling, thus providing him with the means to "[give] importance to the action and situation."

The question for me now becomes one of determining what that feeling, precisely, is. And while I resist imposing upon this feeling a cohesive singularity of meaning, I think it can be read in an interesting way as a kind of "sense" or "production" of authenticity and singularity: the first-person I that exists in the world and thereby "gives importance to the action and situation." Those familiar with Walter Benjamin's essay on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," will no doubt recognize these two terms, authenticity and singularity, as integral to Benjamin's definition of what he calls the "aura" of a work of art. I believe that Nature provides Wordsworth with a context in which he is able to harmonize with his own sense of singularity and authenticity, or what Wordsworth calls "the sentiment of being" (II, 420)[3]. For my purposes, I believe that what Benjamin identifies as the aura of a work of art can be translated, in human terms, as the soul: that which makes someone uniquely "unique" or, in another word, one's quiddity.

I wrote a moment ago that I thought it didn't matter significantly to Wordsworth where he was so long as his location enabled him to access a particular sort of tranquillity or communion with Nature. Such tranquillity is accessed primarily through the trope and practice of solitude. Morris Dickstein, in a 1987 article entitled "Wordsworth and Solitude,"[4] argues that "[s]olitude is the ground for Wordsworth's early imaginative links with nature, as it also marks his later experiences of time, loss, and separation. Solitude--as in "emotion recollected in tranquillity"--is the condition for Wordsworthian sincerity and self-exploration . . ." (260). Solitude is a condition pervasively, even hungrily sought out by the young Wordsworth in the early books of the 1805 Prelude, as well as a constant element identified in conjunction with his "spots of time" in Book XI. Book I of the 1799 Prelude consists almost in its entirety of tranquil and spiritually provocative encounters culled from Wordsworth's earliest years. Given that tranquillity appears a necessary condition for access to one's own transcendental signifier, the soul, the pronoun I, it is not surprising that it is the City/London, with all its distractions and diffusions, its masses of people--"The comers and goers face to face -- / Face after face" (VII, 172-3) that interferes with Wordsworth's ability to connect with tranquillity, and therefore his soul. The City/London, confounds Wordsworth's professed ability in Book III to discriminate among infinite shades of variation and thereby recognize the unique value in all things. Of this capacity Wordsworth writes:

                . . . for I had an eye
Which in my strongest workings evermore
Was looking for the shades of difference
As they lie hid in all exterior forms,
Near or remote, minute or vast--an eye
Which from a stone, a tree, a withered leaf,
To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
Could find no surface where its power might sleep,
Which spake perpetual logic to my soul
                (III, 156-66)

This loss of tranquillity is, in fact, due not only to distraction, but is a direct consequence of the mass presence of people that literally defines the city as much as anything else does. I am convinced that it is the crush of the de-individualizing (paradoxically human) mass that causes the fracture of the human soul, and its subsequent "masking," in much the same way that the mass-reproduction of the work of art atomizes and thereby dissolves its "aura."

On that note, a somewhat dense crash course in Benjamin's articulation of this process and its relation to the soul, and the very "possibility" of the existence of the individual as a unique being, is perhaps in order. Benjamin, in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"[5] writes: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at that place where it happens to be. . . . . The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of the authenticity" (220). Unlike the countryside of Hawkshead or Grasmere, say, where communities enable, in essence, the "possibility" of an individual by means of literal "recognition" of one's unique "presence in time and space," the City blurs distinctions between individuals and thus effectively reduces a polyphony of individuality to a crush of humanity. Benjamin goes on to write:

The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by the reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is affected is the authority of the object.

One might subsume the eliminated element in the term "aura" and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. (221)

Merely one element eclipsed by the forced anonymity of the City is the "testimony to the history which [the individual, as well as the art object,] has experienced," a history that in a more rural surround, such as that encountered in "The Old Cumberland Beggar" of the Lyrical Ballads, would be self-evident to those that populate that space. In the City, I would argue, the notion of "authenticity"--as a quality indicative of individuality--is challenged by a multiplicity that, to the human eye and capacity for perception, borders on the equivalent of the mass-reproduction of humanity. Thus, "authenticity" is inhibited, effaced by multitude, disallowing the kind of individuality Wordsworth cherishes not merely among individuals, but also in terms of the specificity of encounter Nature makes possible: "By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence." As the aura of the work of art "withers" when reproduced, so too does the human soul appear diminished in its originality or uniqueness when surrounded by its fellows. It should be pointed out that while Benjamin's discussion of the aura takes place, in part, on a metaphysical plane, it is true also that a great deal of what brings about the withering of which he speaks is intimately related to perception and distance from the object considered. One could argue that the human soul, should one accept the existence of such an element, becomes more difficult to discern--even if only to the extent that one is conscious of it--when present in great quantity and close proximity. If it is true that familiarity breeds contempt, then it might well also be true that a lack of familiarity leads to indifference, especially within the "abundant crush" of the city. Certainly the anonymity I've encountered in very large cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing and Sao Paulo would suggest that this is true.

Benjamin addresses the effects of the diminution of distance in the following way:

We define the aura of [natural objects, such as mountains, for example] as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it might be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you can experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. . . . To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose "sense of the universal equality of things" has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. (222-3, my emphasis)

Although Benjamin discovers a form of intentionality in the city dwellers' "bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction," the unintentional consequence of their mass habitation is, I would argue, a substantial "sense of the universal equality of things [human]," and not merely the equality of inanimate objects.

A passage culled from Book VII, in which Wordsworth documents his encounters with the City/London, provides remarkably suitable evidence of Benjamin's observation on the desire of city dwellers to draw close to themselves the various objects and panoramas of the world. Though lengthy, the excerpt warrants full inclusion, I think, for the large number of relevant examples it provides. Wordsworth serves as tour director:

    At leisure let us view from day to day,
As they present themselves, the spectacles       [245]
Within doors: troops of wild beasts, birds and beasts
Of every nature from all climes convened,
And, next to these, those mimic sights that ape
The absolute presence of reality,
Expressing as in mirror sea and land,       [250]
And what earth is, and what she hath to shew--
I do not here allude to subtlest craft,
By means refined attaining purest ends,
But imitations fondly made in plain
Confessions of man's weakness and his loves.       [255]
Whether the painter--fashioning a work
To Nature's cicumambient scenery,
And with his greedy pencil taking in
A whole horizon on all sides--with power
Like that of angels or commissioned spirits,      [260]
Plant us upon some lofty pinnacle
Or in a ship on waters, with a world
Of life and lifelike mockery to east,
To west, beneath, behind us, and before,
Or more mechanic artist represent       [265]
By scale exact, in model, wood or clay,
From shading colours also borrowing help,
Some miniature of famous spots and things,
Domestic, or the boast of foreign realms:
The Firth of Forth, and Edinburgh throned       [270]
On crags, fit empress of that mountain land;
St Peter's church: or, more aspiring aim,
In microscopic vision, Rome itself;
Or else, perhaps, some rural haunt, the Falls
Of Tivoli, and dim Frescati's bowers,      [275]
And high upon the steep that mouldering fane,
The Temple of the Sibyl--every tree
Through all the landscape, tuft, stone, scratch minute,
And every cottage, lurking in the rocks--
All that the traveller sees when he is there.      [280]
                (244-80)

Not dissimilar to the arcades of Charles Baudelaire's Paris some fifty year later, Wordsworth's London draws to itself both the beastly and the picturesque aspects of Nature, by means of the creatures of its creation as well as its imitation by "model, wood or clay." Wordsworth's commentary on the slack workmanship of attempts to duplicate both Nature and mankind's adventurous experiences (ll. 252-5) suggests the general inadequacy of the artist's ability to "ape / The absolute presence of reality." Nevertheless, the "greedy pencil" of the painter strives to "[take] in / A whole horizon on all sides--with power / Like that of angels or commissioned spirits." Here we witness the bent to duplicate and draw near. While the editors of the Norton Edition footnote "commissioned" in line 260 as meaning "With commissions, tasks, to perform" (p. 240), one cannot, in the context of the City, ignore the commercial impulse that drives the artist's endeavor, thus further removing a specifically city-constituted mode of perception and appreciation of Nature from that of Wordsworth's experience, permeated as his is by spirituality and tranquil confederation. Notably absent, yet ineluctably implicated, is the presence of the City's inhabitants, the invisible consumers upon whom this vast spectacle relies; importantly, the City's spectacle depends also on the indivisibility of the people's mass, their homogeneity.

Humanity in the city in the age of mechanical reproduction is subject, as are art and other commodities, to the impulse that asserts, as Benjamin puts it, the "sense of the universal equality of things." In this context, humanity loses its varied and individual souls. For this reason, I think, Wordsworth's account of his experience in London in Book VII is a assortment of cataloguings--of places and the dazzle of the City (121-83); animals and sideshows (190-6); nationalities and "all specimens of man" (229-43; 236); theater (281-488); government (521-43); and the church, public and private places (546-66) And yet, even amid the bustle of London's urban cornucopia, the implication one derives from this horde of experience is that there is little here (if Wordsworth's encounter with the theatre is indicative of the whole) that doesn't cause "the imaginative power [to] / Languish within" (499-500): "yet all this / Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind" (506-7).

Wordsworth's cataloguing, despite its search and observe modus operandi, is unable to readily locate or identify individuals, including himself. The all powerful I is virtually lost or abandoned from line 152 until line 252, and then again until line 285. Instead, "we" are guided on a tour as though "we" were transient tourists rather than legitimate inhabitants. Wordsworth himself is quick to identify himself as a transient in London. I "pitched my vagrant tent, / A casual dweller and at large, among / The unfenced regions of society" (60-2), he declares, following up this qualification with an assertion of his isolation and independence from the city:

                I first beheld
That mighty place, a transient visitant;
And now it pleased me my abode to fix
Single in the wide waste. To have a house
It was enough--what matter for a home?--
                (74-8)

Surely Wordsworth would be unwilling to settle for a mere "house" and not a "home" once relocated to his precious Grasmere.

Among the few faces Wordsworth is able to locate with clarity is that of the " a rosy babe" (368), who subsequently receives considerable attention from the poet. This is especially evident in contrast to the attention bestowed upon the babe's mother, whom Wordsworth economically lumps in with "chiefly dissolute men / And shameless women" (387-8). Interestingly, Wordsworth is able only to think back on "the rosy babe" as existing in a condition of stasis:

                He hath since
Appeared to me ofttimes as if embalmed
By Nature--through some special privilege
Stopped at the growth he had--destined to live,
To be, to have been, to come and go, a child
And nothing more, no partner in the years
That bear us forward to distress and guilt,
Pain and abasement; beauty in such excess
Adorned him in that miserable place.
                (399-407)

This arrested condition, set as it is upon the child's development by Wordsworth--in light of the poet's own joy in childhood and the valuation of his own process of maturation--is very odd indeed. I suggest that this imaginatively imposed stasis is a consequence of Wordsworth's inability to conceive of individuality as existing, and developing, in a specifically City space--reliant as his own development was on the tranquillity of the countryside. As a result, the child is denied a vibrant individuality that might, in turn, be transformed, for better or worse, along with the child's evolution into a soul-full human being. Such a transformation is apparently troubling for Wordsworth since its occurrence might reduce the child into just one more indistinguishable face in a crowd.

It is quite appropriate, then, for Wordsworth, in Book VIII, to attempt to reestablish a connection with humanity as a whole that has been, I think, quite traumatized by his encounter with the anonymity and crush of London. He does this in part by making an effort to re-connect individuality/singularity with the characters to whom he draws attention: the "sweet lass of the valley" (36), for example, who attempts to sell fruit at the small country fair, a country scene suitably juxtaposed with the larger fair of St Bartholomew encountered at the close of Book VII (262). The young woman's simultaneous sense of pride and shamefulness over her efforts to sell fruit among the people of her community contrasts markedly with the shrieking and swearing women of London that rock Wordsworth's world (VII, 413-29).

In Book VIII we also encounter the rather long passage about shepherds (284-88), which provides a form of counter-cataloguing that is, I think, exceedingly romantic and verges, by way of contrast with the relative distopia of London, on the Edenic. Unlike London's crowded city-dwellers, the shepherds are surrounded by space free of both undifferentiated humanity and spectacle, such a space as is identified by Benjamin as fundamental to the maintenance of authenticity and individuality. The shepherd's very form becomes the object of Wordsworth's discourse, solitary as it is and distinguishable from--through equally a part of--its surroundings:

                At other times,
When round some shady promontory turning,
His form hath flashed upon me glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun;
Or him have I descried in distant sky,
A solitary object and sublime,
Above all height, like an aerial cross,
As it is stationed on some spiry rock
Of the Chartreuse, for worship.
                (402-10)

Wordsworth hastens to qualify his enthusiastic homage by means of identifying the archetypal shepherd of his boyhood, mentioned in lines 391 through 428, as decidedly human,

. . . not a Corin of the groves, who lives
For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour
In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst,
But, for the purposes of kind, a man
With the most common--husband, father--learned,
Could teach, admonish, suffered with the rest
From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear.
                (420-26)

Nevertheless, this very qualification is swiftly reigned in by Wordsworth's assertion that of these more mundane human attributes he was scarcely aware: "Of this I little saw, cared less for it, / But something must have felt" (427-8).

Following this passage, Wordsworth comes off sounding rather defensive, as though he were aware, I suggest, of the problematic nature of the shepherds he has assembled as transcendental signifiers of ideal humanity:

                Call ye these appearances
Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,
This sanctity of Nature given to man,
A shadow, a delusion?--ye who are fed
By the dead letter, not the spirit of things,
Whose truth is not a motion or a shape
Instinct with vital functions, but a block
Or waxen image which yourself have made
And ye adore. But blessed be the God
Of Nature and of man that this was so,
That men did at the first present themselves
Before my untaught eyes thus purified,
Removed, and at a distance that was fit.
                (429-40)

Benjamin argues that "The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition" (223), and the "traditional" Wordsworth I want to invoke here is that of the individual, alone and wandering in Nature, connecting with that "feeling [that] . . . gives importance to the action and situation." Ultimately, because Wordsworth asserts the dominance of feeling as the determining element with respect to "action and situation," he is able to abstract the individual "aura" and presume its existence in all people, thus providing the mechanism by which he can claim to have a love of all mankind which he has learned through Nature--Nature being the condition of tranquillity that enables access to the aura.

Notes

1. Excerpts from the Lyrical Ballads are drawn from the edition edited by Michael Mason. London: Longman, 1992.

2. For a fairly concise discussion of the notion of "de-automization" in language, see the excerpt from Victor Shklovsky's "Art as Technique" in Debating Texts: Readings in Twentieth-Century Literary Theory and Method. Rick Rylance, ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1987. 48-56.

3. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from The Prelude are drawn from the thirteen book 1805 version in the Norton Critical Edition of The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill, eds. New York: Norton, 1979.

4. "Wordsworth and Solitude" by Morris Dickstein, can be found in The Sewanee Review 95.2 (Spring 1987) : 253-75.

5. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" can be found in Benjamin's collection of essays Illuminations. Hannah Arendt, ed. Harry Zohn, trans. New York: Shocken, 1967. 217-52.

Document created April 17, 1997