Transcending the Senses

Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust

Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun,

And from the rubbish gathered up a stone

And pocketed the Relic in the guise

Of an Enthusiast; yet, in honest truth,

I looked for Something that I could not find,

Affecting more emotion than I felt…

-William Wordsworth

The Prelude, Book Ninth

Reading these lines, I thought back to my recent summer experience throughout Belgium and the surrounding major cities, namely Paris and Amsterdam. Traveling to Europe, I enthusiastically awaited my encounter with the places that promised an awakening experience. I would finally see, smell, feel—ultimately experience—the places where many of history’s greatest events unfolded; as if these experiences would somehow reaffirm all the things that I had learned, to finally make complete sense of things, to reach a true understanding. However, this understanding cemented within the senses did not come.

As Wordsworth describes in these particular lines, he believes that by collecting a piece of the Bastille he would somehow become connected to the French Revolution; he would become a part of this cultural icon. Yet, upon Wordsworth’s possession of the stone, the reader is suddenly presented with a shift in the author’s psyche. This stone cannot provide that experience; the stone proves void of meaning. Wordsworth knows there has to be something else out there, something beyond empiricism.

Now presented with the realization of his limitations, Wordsworth suddenly becomes discouraged by the fact that his humanity bounds him; only so much can be fully grasped in the everyday. This particular episode marks a profound moment in Wordsworth’s road to disillusionment, for the senses provide only momentary feelings of meaning, feelings that instantly begin receding to an increasingly distant coast. Realizing that these feelings can only be renewed, Wordsworth becomes disenchanted as he ventures to discover a constant, something that cannot be taken away.