William Wordsworth: vita, opere e commento

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Categoria:	Letteratura Inglese
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Data:	02.02.2006
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William Wordsworth
Life (1770-1850)
He is considered the greatest poet of nature. He was born in the English lake district, the beautiful region near the Scottish border where he spent his childhood and most of his adult life and which became his main source of inspiration. He was educated in Cambridge. After graduating, he went to France where he embraced the cause of the French Revolution with its democratic ideals which, he hoped, could bring to a new social order, but, a few years later, he was disillusioned by the destructive developments of the Revolution, by the excesses of the terror and by the imperialistic power under Napoleon. Also the war between England and France brought him to the despair and disillusionment so that he went to live with his sister, his best faithful friend, in contact with nature. Together with Coleridge he published “The Lyrical Ballads” which were the manifesto of English romanticism and a revolution in English poetry. They marked the end of the formal poetic diction, an artificial and elevated language of the eighteenth century poetry and the beginning of a more passionate and imaginative kind of poetry. This poetry should deal with everyday situations and with ordinary people, especially humble, rural people. Also the language should be simple, the objects called by their ordinary names. The reason for this choice is that in rustic life man is more direct, near to his own passions. Therefore the poet is not a man in an ivory tower but a man among men.
Man and the natural world
Wordsworth is interested in the relationship between man and the natural world, the contact between man and nature seen not as an objective and precise observation of natural phenomena but as emotions and sensations which arise from this contact. In fact he thinks that man and nature are inseparable: man exists not outside the natural world but as an active participant in it. Nature comforts man in sorrow, it’s a source of pleasure and joy, it teaches men to love, it’s the spirit of the universe.
The importance of the senses
Nature means also the world of sense perceptions. Wordsworth, for example, speaks about the sensibility of the eyes and the ear through which he could perceive both the beauty of nature and the sounds of the winds or the water or the silence. Wordsworth, together with Coleridge, went to Germany where he began working at “the prelude”. It is a long autobiographical poem in 14 books, almost a kind of diary in verse which was published only after his death. In this poem he spoke so much about himself, his own mind, his childhood, his school days, his years in Cambridge, his first impressions of London, his visits to France and the Alps and so on. This poem is one of the major romantic achievement in the field of narrative poetry. This poem shows his idea about childhood and memory; he regarded childhood as the most important stage in man’s life: “the child is father to the man”, he wrote in his poem. What the child sees is more imaginative and more vivid than what the adult sees; the child’s experiences, placed in the memory, provide food for the future years of thought. Memory, therefore, is a major force in the process of growth of the poet’s mind. Wordsworth also wrote a number of odes, sonnets and lyrics which are collected in “poems in two volumes” in which we can find his poetic mission. He says: “every great poet is a teacher”. In fact the poet has a great sensibility and ability to penetrate to the heart of things, thanks to the power of imagination, so that he becomes a teacher and a prophet who shows men how to understand their feelings. The poet’s task is to communicate his knowledge and to draw attention to the ordinary things of life, to the humble people, where the poet can find the deepest emotions and truths. Also in his style he almost always used sonnets, odes, ballads and lyrics with short lines and simple rhymes. He was a great philosophical poet, a moralist and a teacher. The last years of his life were marked by the growing conservatism of his political views. He continued to write poems until his death, in 1850, at the age of eighty.

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Daffodils
Vagavo solitario come una nuvola
Che fluttua in alto sopra valli e colline,
Quando tutto ad un tratto vidi una folla,
Una moltitudine di giunchiglie dorate:
Accanto al lago, sotto gli alberi,
Ondeggianti e danzanti nella brezza.
Continue come le stelle che splendono
E scintillano sulla via lattea,
si estendono senza fine
Lungo il margine della baia:
ne vidi cento ad un’occhiata,
che scuotevano le loro teste in un’allegra danza.
Le onde accanto a loro danzavano, ma loro
Superavano le onde spumeggianti con gioia;
Un poeta non può mai essere lieto,
In una specie di gioconda compagnia;
Guardavo –e fissavo- ma una piccola riflessione
Quali ricchezze mi ha portato questa vista.
Spesso, quando giaccio sul mio divano
In un ozioso e pensoso stato d’animo,
Essi appaiono a quegli occhi interiori
Che è la beatitudine della solitudine;
E poi il mio cuore si riempie di piacere,
E danza con le giunchiglie.