Keri's excellent post puts me in mind of all we didn't get to in our first meeting. We'll see about getting to the positive representations of the city--literary modernism of the 20th century certainly has a more "positive" relationship with urbanism than the 19th century.
Much of these initial readings are infused with a kind of high theoretical nostalgia that we will see throughout the quarter and which if you have done much reading in contemporary theory you will recognize. At this point, we might consider responses to and representations of the city, of urbanism, of its assorted ills and purported pleasures. With that in mind, here are a few notes on what we might want to notice in the handful of Wordsworth sonnets and Blake poems.
The Wordsworth's sonnets I included in the course packet were mostly written in 1802 and 1803. Most significant about those years was the brief Peace of Amiens, a year plus pause in the 22-year-long Napoleonic War (known then as the Great War until of course we had another Great War). Some of Wordsworth's disgust at England and anger at the nation and its people was wrapped up in his own complex response to the war--an early supporter of the French Revolution, he grew disgusted at the bloodshed of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror and ultimately turned completely on France and the Revolution with the rise of Napoleon. But note how Wordsworth locates the "source" of the failure of the English character in London and all that the city represents. It is in London that he writes his great sonnet on "getting and spending" (commerce, capitalism, money exchange and the "cash nexus") and his characterization of England as a "fen / Of stagnant waters" full of "selfish men," as only "dressed for shew," as "unblest" characterized by "rapine, avarice, expence." In short, England, and London in particular, is "out of tune." To be in tune we must turn away from the city, back to the "Sea that bares her bosom to the moon," the "Winds that . . . are like sleeping flowers." We must return to the "common way" and take up again "lowliest duties." We must "run glittering like a Brook / In the open sunshine" to reclaim our "ancient English dower," our "heroic wealth," our "inward happiness, our "virtue, freedom, power." In other words, we must turn away from the city and back to Nature. And note also that even when Wordsworth represents the city as "natural" and beautiful ("Composed upon Westminster Bridge" and "It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free"), his representation is a fantasy--the city is depopulated, empty of people and activity, "smokeless" in the early morning air (when was London ever smokeless!). In short, the city is not the city but an idealized reconstruction of a city without people, activity, smoke, energy, life. It is not trivial that in describing the sunset scene in "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free" the poet is facing west and looking out over the Thames, his back to the city.
As for the Blake poems, they were taken from an early Blake collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience. The speakers are children (in one case a newborn!). The Songs of Innocence are actually the denser and more difficult poems. The speakers are naive and trusting children and so much of the "message" of the poem is under that surface in a dark and at times savage dramatic irony. The irony at times is multi-layered as in the first chimney-sweeper song. There the naive speaker interprets his friend's dream as reassuring him that his earthly suffering will ensure him a place in heaven. When the speaker's friend Tom has his head shaved, the speaker reassures him that at least the soot won't "spoil" his hair. Tom's hair is compared to lamb's wool and so the shearing of the young chimney-sweeper makes the boy figuratively part of the woolen industry, another animal raised for production and consumption. This moment in the text also reminds us of "The Lamb," where the young speaker in addressing the lamb unites himself, the lamb, and Christ: "I a child & thou a lamb, / We are called by his name." This identification between the young speaker, the lamb, and Christ is more insidious than it appears--all three of course are Christ-like in innocence, in purity, perhaps, in divinity even. But they are all Christ-like as well in being sacrificed--that is why Christ is called the Lamb (Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi)--in the giant machinery of the modern industrial world: the lamb as wool producer and food, the child as chimney-sweeper and worker. And in Blake's typically provocative way, the giant machinery of the modern city ("What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil?" from "The Tyger") is not somewhere else and someone else. The young chimney-sweeper reminds us of our complicity at the beginning of his "song": "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." It is we, with our need for cheap labor and clean chimneys, who keep the child in a kind of slavery ("my father sold me").
I have gone on too long--I'll leave the rest to you and we can always return to Blake's and/or Wordsworth's poems next time. Just one last word. Wordsworth, of course, is often characterized as a Nature poet. I won't get into the complicated argument over this designation. Regardless of what we call him, he has a clear antipathy to the city, to urban life in general, and perhaps, as one critic notes, to the presence of so many competing consciousnesses. (It is this anxiety, according to Frances Ferguson, that leads to Wordsworth's depopulated landscapes, or in the case of "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" his depopulated London.) Blake, however, was not a "nature" poet and he certainly was not an anti-urbanist. He spent most (if not all?) of his life in London, and even claimed that reading Wordsworth's poetry gave him a bowel complaint that nearly killed him. Clearly, what Blake is responding to in his representation of the faceless child labor that makes the city run, or the equally faceless orphans marched through the streets of London on Holy Thursday to make Londoners feel better about their charity, is not limited to the city. Rather the city, especially London, in its vastness and scale makes it impossible to hide these hypocrisies, and yet given the fact that Blake's poetry still has the power to shock us, it appears we continue to not see.
Much of these initial readings are infused with a kind of high theoretical nostalgia that we will see throughout the quarter and which if you have done much reading in contemporary theory you will recognize. At this point, we might consider responses to and representations of the city, of urbanism, of its assorted ills and purported pleasures. With that in mind, here are a few notes on what we might want to notice in the handful of Wordsworth sonnets and Blake poems.
The Wordsworth's sonnets I included in the course packet were mostly written in 1802 and 1803. Most significant about those years was the brief Peace of Amiens, a year plus pause in the 22-year-long Napoleonic War (known then as the Great War until of course we had another Great War). Some of Wordsworth's disgust at England and anger at the nation and its people was wrapped up in his own complex response to the war--an early supporter of the French Revolution, he grew disgusted at the bloodshed of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror and ultimately turned completely on France and the Revolution with the rise of Napoleon. But note how Wordsworth locates the "source" of the failure of the English character in London and all that the city represents. It is in London that he writes his great sonnet on "getting and spending" (commerce, capitalism, money exchange and the "cash nexus") and his characterization of England as a "fen / Of stagnant waters" full of "selfish men," as only "dressed for shew," as "unblest" characterized by "rapine, avarice, expence." In short, England, and London in particular, is "out of tune." To be in tune we must turn away from the city, back to the "Sea that bares her bosom to the moon," the "Winds that . . . are like sleeping flowers." We must return to the "common way" and take up again "lowliest duties." We must "run glittering like a Brook / In the open sunshine" to reclaim our "ancient English dower," our "heroic wealth," our "inward happiness, our "virtue, freedom, power." In other words, we must turn away from the city and back to Nature. And note also that even when Wordsworth represents the city as "natural" and beautiful ("Composed upon Westminster Bridge" and "It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free"), his representation is a fantasy--the city is depopulated, empty of people and activity, "smokeless" in the early morning air (when was London ever smokeless!). In short, the city is not the city but an idealized reconstruction of a city without people, activity, smoke, energy, life. It is not trivial that in describing the sunset scene in "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free" the poet is facing west and looking out over the Thames, his back to the city.
As for the Blake poems, they were taken from an early Blake collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience. The speakers are children (in one case a newborn!). The Songs of Innocence are actually the denser and more difficult poems. The speakers are naive and trusting children and so much of the "message" of the poem is under that surface in a dark and at times savage dramatic irony. The irony at times is multi-layered as in the first chimney-sweeper song. There the naive speaker interprets his friend's dream as reassuring him that his earthly suffering will ensure him a place in heaven. When the speaker's friend Tom has his head shaved, the speaker reassures him that at least the soot won't "spoil" his hair. Tom's hair is compared to lamb's wool and so the shearing of the young chimney-sweeper makes the boy figuratively part of the woolen industry, another animal raised for production and consumption. This moment in the text also reminds us of "The Lamb," where the young speaker in addressing the lamb unites himself, the lamb, and Christ: "I a child & thou a lamb, / We are called by his name." This identification between the young speaker, the lamb, and Christ is more insidious than it appears--all three of course are Christ-like in innocence, in purity, perhaps, in divinity even. But they are all Christ-like as well in being sacrificed--that is why Christ is called the Lamb (Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi)--in the giant machinery of the modern industrial world: the lamb as wool producer and food, the child as chimney-sweeper and worker. And in Blake's typically provocative way, the giant machinery of the modern city ("What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil?" from "The Tyger") is not somewhere else and someone else. The young chimney-sweeper reminds us of our complicity at the beginning of his "song": "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." It is we, with our need for cheap labor and clean chimneys, who keep the child in a kind of slavery ("my father sold me").
I have gone on too long--I'll leave the rest to you and we can always return to Blake's and/or Wordsworth's poems next time. Just one last word. Wordsworth, of course, is often characterized as a Nature poet. I won't get into the complicated argument over this designation. Regardless of what we call him, he has a clear antipathy to the city, to urban life in general, and perhaps, as one critic notes, to the presence of so many competing consciousnesses. (It is this anxiety, according to Frances Ferguson, that leads to Wordsworth's depopulated landscapes, or in the case of "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" his depopulated London.) Blake, however, was not a "nature" poet and he certainly was not an anti-urbanist. He spent most (if not all?) of his life in London, and even claimed that reading Wordsworth's poetry gave him a bowel complaint that nearly killed him. Clearly, what Blake is responding to in his representation of the faceless child labor that makes the city run, or the equally faceless orphans marched through the streets of London on Holy Thursday to make Londoners feel better about their charity, is not limited to the city. Rather the city, especially London, in its vastness and scale makes it impossible to hide these hypocrisies, and yet given the fact that Blake's poetry still has the power to shock us, it appears we continue to not see.
Prof. Garrett: Thanks for the Blake analysis. Now I understand why these poems are called "innocence with an AK-47."
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