Lines Written in Early Spring
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Lines Written in the French Quarter
I often make this walk--inside the elderly bones of the
Vieux Carré, the “Quarter,” a place, a foreign place both
Mediterranean and Creole--when I’m uncomfortably
Embracing a strange philosophy.
My heavy eyes are downcast for long periods of time.
Though, momentarily, I give a quick glance at Spanish moss
Draped over oak branches like tunics on Roman Senators.
I, the taciturn and melancholic man in normal dress,
Walk slowly and impassively.
I hear pianos speaking in rare tongues and
Forceful human breath moving through brass skeletons of trumpets,
Wishing I could describe jazz the way in which those
Geniuses from the Harlem Renaissance could.
I briefly view Creole townhouses with beautiful front landscapes:
Light from gas lanterns projecting shadows onto auburn, tangerine
Façade brick, and stucco exteriors.
Headless roses, wildly growing ferns, and elegant, dictatorial Venetian windows overlooking
Elaborate gardens from second floor iron balconies.
In the center of one of the gardens,
A grey-stoned angel poises as a meticulous ballerina.
I calmly run my fingers down the statue to feel its skin, meticulously
Viewing the bone structure of my hand.
I smell Creole cuisine, exquisite fruits from Italian
Fresh produce dealers, and jasmine blossoms.
They come and go from walled courtyards and single chimneys.
I pass by glass boxes with smiling faces, elbows and half-finished coffee
Cups resting on white marble tables, fashionable clothing,
Intellectuals having stale conversation, and
Beautiful women with nuanced postures:
Crossed-legs, elegant gestures, thin figures with assumptive slouches,
Intelligent eyes listlessly moving around.
The peace of mind of these people.
Passing streets with French names, I consciously
Remember their proper pronunciations, saying them
Silently in my head, almost as silently as I tread these
Broken, brown historic streets.
Chartres, Dumaine, Prieur, Conti.
I continue to Royal Street, passing
Antique shops and boutiques,
Jewelry stores with crystal chandeliers grinning,
Ornate hand-carved furniture that belong in
Queen-Anne Style estates.
I peer into a well-lit gallery.
Inside, a beautiful woman intently analyzes an abstract painting.
She finds it creative as she, invented as she, beautiful as she,
philosophical as she;
She stands in awe of it as she does the architecture, the music, the history surrounding her—and
The mind and existence itself.
Why does she find the mind and existence special?
One day, you and I, will sit in silence
And mimic the graceful indifference of the
Vulgar velvet, silk-skinned iris flower as it gently meditates.
An apology is needed here. As is apparent, neither my modeled poem’s writing style nor its structure resemble the form of an 18th century English Romantic poem; rather, it more so resembles a post-modern’s. Despite this slight deviation from the assignment, I religiously stay on course the rest of the way. Using Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring,” I have reconstructed the poem in my own words and voiced my take on the Romantic idea and meaning behind this poignant piece. Being generous, my apology will take the form of a not-too-lengthy interpretation of the modeled and Wordsworth’s poem.
ReplyDeleteI generally tend to scoff at the standard interpretation of “Lines Written in Early Spring”—that is, another poor anti-industrial, Romantic laments on humanity’s detachment from nature. When the line “what man has made of man” is uttered, the mind, in Pavlovian fashion, automatically thinks pollution, deforestation, chemical spills, and ceaseless technological change. This interpretation is suffocatingly simplistic. First and foremost, humanity is intricately a part of nature, whether we like it or not, and any petty attempt at escapism is woefully ignorant. Recent biology strengthens my point. At the microcosmic level, we are composed of mitochondria, which have their own DNA and RNA quite different from our own. Without them, we would not move a muscle or think a thought. Rarely mentioned, our centrioles and basal bodies, along with other similar tiny creatures work in our cells each equipped with their own genomes. Even further, our cells are ecosystems more complex than the Greater Antilles. As moderns, we must acknowledge that we can never detach ourselves from nature materially, no matter the polymer, glass, and steel we enclose ourselves in; however, spiritual detachment is possible.
Nature's and humanity’s existence vastly differ in “Lines Written in Early.” To begin with, nature merely exists. It’s unemotional, non-judgmental, and unthinking. It just is. To the human eye, nature is organically beautiful and content in this ontological state. In typical Thel fashion, nature is content because it has a purpose. In the poem, inside a grove, the speaker observes what nature has to offer from “primrose tufts” and “periwinkles” to “budding twigs.” Imposing an aesthetic, he finds these natural elements beautiful and pleasant. However, a crucial turn surfaces when “in that sweet mood” “pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.” In other words, the act of thinking elicits depression and psychological discomfort within the speaker, for human thought is corrupt, which is a point Blake would emphatically make. Throughout the poem, the speaker arduously anthropomorphizes nature as blissful and highly pleasured. This isn’t surprising since humans have an unwavering talent for anthropomorphizing and an insatiable appetite for pathetic fallacy. Arguably, I don’t think Wordsworth advocates this talent: humans shouldn’t anthropomorphize nature; nature should anthropomorphize us. Pathetic fallacy is malicious ivy. It permeates our ontological philosophy. Throughout the centuries, humanity has asked their ontological environment about the nature of existence, being, and reality, always beginning with that petulant, relentless interrogative word “why.” We attempt to give our environment the human characteristic of thinking and speaking, so it can answer us. Wordsworth wants us to discover a way other than cognition to link to nature.
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ReplyDeleteIn this poem, pathetic fallacy is the poetic fulcrum. In lines 19-20, the speaker is doing all he can to convince himself that nature is sanguine in its state—it’s a yearning so strong and so insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted. As a Romantic, he envies this ontological state, for nature doesn’t delve into horrid grief when someone dies, and nature doesn’t suffer from existential anxiety when it contemplates the strangeness and irrationally of reality. Assuming this is so, we shouldn’t be a part of nature—we should be nature. With human hearts beating to this idealistic idea, we must escape our imperfect, besmirched, seedy, and spurious mammalian nature. It’s important to note that nature isn’t this cold, robotic entity. The Swiss Alps, the ornate lion fish, or very tightly furled buds beginning to burgeon and unfold do not convey this image. More to the point, it seems as though the natural world does not react to destruction with human hysteria. Rather, it embraces destruction and flawlessly realizes that it is a part of creation without even thinking, similar to life and death. Since we are at the mercy of our limited senses, humans have trouble viewing life and death as existence itself. Ultimately, “Lines Written in Early Spring” is a grab at transcendence, transcending this feeble state of mind--so we can just be.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker in my modeled poem is no different from Wordsworth’s speaker. He, too, is reflecting on nature, although his thoughts extend to human architecture, cuisine, music, and art. And his thoughts on these particular things elicit depression and melancholy. Unfortunate as though this may seem, the depression opens the door for transcendence. In the end, it’s self-explanatory why he wishes to mimic an “iris flower” since, like nature as a whole, it doesn’t show irrational emotion towards frivolous actions in the natural world, and it doesn’t possess the speaker’s restless mind--the “iris flower” seems to be content, at peace, just existing.
As an 'outsider' to New Orleans, I have to admit that I often feel the separation you lay out above (acc. to Wordsworth) b/w man and nature, only here it is b/w me and New Orleans: it is hard for me to see how the two are contingent, even intrinsically linked. Nonetheless, the loose remodel you did of Wordsworth's poem finally gave me a sense of how this city can turn one's blood purple, gold, and green. The poem is an excellent rumination on the city, particularly with regard to the familiar images it recollects (and attempts to transcend). What I found most intriguing were the two additional comments you wrote with your modeled poem--as if a kind of Kubla Khan in reverse! The careful reading of Wordsworth's poem, nicely executed, proved an illuminating backdrop to the succinct statement about your own. Though I am left to wonder: what is 'being' if it demands a prior an analogy b/w itself and its world to find definition? How can be "just exist," if such existence is contingent on mediation (and meditation)? Seems to me this could be developed into one of the myriad paradoxes abound in this era.
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