William Wordsworth
Memory & Inspiration
“And as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”
[The Solitary Reaper]
“Lyrical Ballads”
“Preface”
It is considered the manifesto of the Romantic poetry
because defines a new type of poetry:
• “language really used by men” to be appreciated by a
wider audience
• Poet as a prophet: “endued with more lively
sensibility […]and a more comprehensible soul, than
are supposed to be common among mankind”
• Imagination of the poet can “colour” the objects
observed, that is presents them in an unusual aspect
• Task of the memory  “emotion recollected in
tranquillity”. It is not the original emotion, but past
feelings contemplated and reorganized.
Memory: Wordsworth Vs. Leopardi
“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its
origin from
emotion recollected in tranquillity: the
emotion is contemplated till by
a species of reaction the tranquillity
gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which was before the
subject of contemplation, is gradually
produced, and does itself actually exist
in the mind. In this mood successful
composition generally begins...”
(From Preface to Lyrical Ballads,
W. Wordsworth, 1802.)
“La sensazione presente non deriva
immediatamente dalle cose, non è
un'immagine degli oggetti, ma della
immagine fanciullesca; una
ricordanza, una ripetizione, una
ripercussione o riflesso della immagine
antica [...] Un oggetto qualunque, per
esempio un luogo, un sito, una
campagna, per bella che sia, se non
desta alcuna rimembranza) non è
poetica punto a vederla. La medesima,
ed anche un sito, un oggetto
qualunque, affatto impoetico in se,
sarà, poeticissimo a rimembrarlo.
La rimembranza è essenziale e principale
nel sentimento poetico, non per altro se
non perché il presente, qual ch'egli sia,
non può essere poetico.'
(From Zibaldone di Pensieri,
G. Leopardi, 1817.)
“We are seven”
• "We Are Seven" was written in 1798, when Wordsworth was only
18 years old.
• The poem is composed of sixteen four-line stanzas, and ends
with one five-line stanza. Each stanza has an abab rhyming
pattern.
• The poem is an interesting conversation between a man and a
young girl.
• The speaker begins the poem with the question of what a child
should know of death.
• She seems almost to be in denial about the deaths of her
siblings, especially because she continues to spend time with
them and sing to them.
• She refuses to become incapacitated by grief, or to cast the
deceased out of her life.
“My heart leaps up”
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
“Daffodils”
• This poem was inspired by a walk with
his sister, and by what she wrote
about this walk.
• Composition and contents
• Importance of memory and
imagination in this writing