The essential difference between Wordsworth's "Two-Part Prelude" and his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" lies in his relation to the experiences of his childhood, which continue to have great significance to him as an adult in both poems. In both, he writes of a "visionary" power throughout infancy and childhood. However, the differing experiences Wordsworth chooses to account for as influential, and the way in which these experiences continue to influence him imply that his understanding of the psychological relationship between his childhood experiences and his present adult state of mind has changed.
Prior to his many accounts of childhood experiences which follow, Wordsworth claims, in the "Two-Part Prelude," the mind of man to be "fashioned and built up/ Even as a strain of music." (i.67-68). This is the first hint of the way in which Wordsworth understands, in this poem, the function of childhood experiences as part of the development of his poetic mind. Experiences in the "Two-Part Prelude" are "impressed", or "implanted" upon his mind, not to remain stagnant, but to eventually "impregnate and to elevate the mind." (i.426). This is not to say the "Ode" does not speak of childhood experiences as either remembered or influential - it does. I am merely suggesting that this relationship, as described in the "Ode", is not one where Wordsworth's past experiences "build up" his mind to it's present mental state. Yes, the experiences are influential, but only as memories, and do not play the active role in the forming of the mind they do in the "Two-Part Prelude."
It also seems that, as many critics have noted in the past, the "Ode" does not explain how the vision of the child, which seemingly stems from an immortal soul, is lost or cast away. Yet this is irrelevant to the present purpose, which needs only to cite how Wordsworth understands his present relationship to what he has lost.
For this statement to carry any weight, it must first be shown that there was a time when Wordsworth understood this relationship of visionary experience to present experience and, more importantly, creative and poetic powers differently than in the "Ode". The "Two-Part Prelude" provides such a context. As stated earlier, Wordsworth continually refers to experiences "impressing" his mind with images and feelings. But we are not to think this is the end of these experiences' influence and power. Wordsworth admits that at the time of an experience's impression upon his mind, that is, at the time of the experience itself he may not have had, or most likely did not have, an understanding of it's significance. It is clear in several passages that these impressions not only remain in Wordsworth's memory, but continue to actively spark his creative powers and his desire to know, feel, and understand Nature. He praises the fleeting visionary experiences not for their "kinship" to a "purer mind", but for their influence on the soul, who, remembering such experiences retains also a sense of sublimity "to which/ With growing faculties still growing, feeling still/ That whatsoever point they gain they still/ Have something to pursue." (ii.361-371). The visionary experience is here an active power, almost goading the growing faculties of the soul to continue striving to reach a position not yet attained.
Speaking more directly of his "creative sensibility", Wordsworth reinforces his understanding of the still active nature of his childhood experiences. He notes how spring and autumn, the snow in winter and the shade in summer, his "dreams" and "waking thoughts" supplied the substance of experience to "nurse/ That spirit of religious love in which / I walked with Nature." (ii.403-407). Both his experiences in Nature and his dreams and thoughts "nurse" his love for Nature. But this nurtured love is only on part of the creative process Wordsworth describes. His "unsubdued" soul, active in the world, communes with the external things of nature (ii.411- 417). He describes an "auxiliar light" coming from his mind, which has been "built up" and continually influenced by experiences of childhood and Nature, that bestows "new splendour" on the setting sun.
In his treatment of the same subject in the "Ode", Wordsworth speaks not of a retained and active visionary sense, but of a vision and glory that is lost. He is feeling detached from Nature and his childhood vision in way he does not in the "Two-Part Prelude." The source of these feelings is his present understanding of how he now relates to Nature and how he is affected by the lost "visionary gleam" of childhood. Every stanza echoes the sentiment that he has lost the vision of childhood. This is the first matter of change in the understanding Wordsworth has of these events presented in the two poems. Whereas his visionary experiences of the "Two-Part Prelude" remain with him a direct influence on his thoughts and actively provoke creative power, in the "Ode" the power of such experiences are surely lost. Stanza 5 describes the "Man" perceiving the light from the soul fade into the "light of common day" ("Ode" 75-76). In stanza 8 Wordsworth wonders why a child with such a "vision splendid" would ever attempt to cast it away, and asks of the child why with such effort "dost thou provoke/ The years to bring the inevitable yoke?" ("Ode" 123-124). And in stanza 4 he asks the central question of the poem: "Whither is it fled the visionary gleam?" ("Ode" 56).
Yet in losing this power Wordsworth has not conceded to losing all relation to it; he undoubtedly still remembers the experiences. This is perhaps best exhibited in the opening lines of stanza 9:
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature remembers
What was so fugitive! ("Ode" 129- 132)
Though he no longer has the visionary power, it still lives with him in that he remembers it. This sentiment of retaining a relationship to the power through memory and thought is echoed throughout the poem. In the "Two-Part Prelude", Wordsworth "had received" so much from "Nature and her overflowing soul" that all his thoughts were "steeped in feeling" (i.446-448). The "Ode", however, features scenes where Wordsworth communes with Nature only in thought. In stanza 10 he proposes to "join in thought" those that "pipe" and "play", those who in their "hearts" feel the "gladness of the May!" ("Ode" 171- 175). Rather than resent the loss of childhood vision, he writes that people should find their inspiration in what remains behind, and again mentions thoughts, here "the soothing thoughts that spring/ Out of human suffering", as an alternative to feeling what was once felt in childhood.
There seem to be two instances where the language of the poem might be contradictory to the idea that Wordsworth communes with Nature and childhood experiences only in thought or memory. In the fourth stanza, Wordsworth is speaking of the "blessed Creatures" and the joy he sees in them, and says of the experience: "I feel - I feel it all" ("Ode" 36-41). But "feel" is in the context of his realizing he no longer can feel Nature or see Nature how he once did. In the previous stanza while hearing the birds' "joyous song" and seeing the "young lambs bound", to him alone there came a "thought of grief" ("Ode" 19-22). He alone, of all the "blessed Creatures" he sees, is not sharing in the joy they feel. He is somehow distant from it all, for he has lost the visionary gleam. Furthermore, the fact that he was able to experience grief is evidence of his ability to reflect and remember that he once felt as the creatures he is watching do.
The second seeming contradiction is in stanza 9's claim of the "obstinate questionings" of youth being "truths that wake, / To perish never" ("Ode" 141, 155-156). The language here implies that these "obstinate questionings" (which will receive more attention in a moment) have been, to borrow his own language, "implanted" upon his mind and, if these experiences never perish, will continue to play an active role in the development or processes of his mind. But if we take a closer look at what the "obstinate questionings" mean to Wordsworth now, the possibility of their being active in the way childhood experiences in the "Two-Part" are active seems to disappear.
Wordsworth's present psychological relationship in the "Ode" to his childhood experiences is best revealed in the passages concerning "those obstinate questionings / Of sense and outward things, / Fallings from us, vanishings; / Blank misgivings of a Creature / Moving about in worlds not realised" ("Ode" 141-145). Wordsworth seems to be speaking of a time in his childhood when he questioned the reality of the world around him, as though he were a creature of a different origin thrown into the trappings of this world and then realizing he is of a different nature. Such instincts made his "mortal Nature / ...tremble like a guilty Thing surprised" ("Ode" 146-147). He thus makes the distinction between the part of him who questioned the world around him and his mortal Nature which felt guilt for doing so. But it is this questioning Wordsworth now values so much, which "doth breed / Perpetual benediction", for, though he no longer has the vision to question, he knows that he once did ("Ode" 133-134). It is this knowledge, this memory, that comforts him and allows him to reconcile the loss of his childhood vision. He knows he once felt, if I may introduce the term, "immortal", and, however briefly, out of place in this world. This is his present relationship to his childhood experiences: his memory of once questioning the mortality of the world and the indication of this questioning being evidence of the immortality of his soul.
The idea of knowledge of the immortality of the soul as comforting to one who has lost visionary power resurfaces in the final stanza. Wordsworth, seeming to speak for all those in a similar situation, vows to not grieve over the loss of radiant vision, but to find "Strength in what remains behind; / In the primal sympathy / Which having been must ever be" ("Ode" 179-182). This is what he seems to be doing with his remembrances of the "obstinate questionings" - his "benediction" of these experiences is homage to the vision that once questioned mortality, to the only vision able to see through his mortality to a soul that is immortal (or perhaps to see with an immortal soul, rather than with a "mortal Nature"), to the vision which, in his memory of it, now grants him serenity and a "faith that looks through death" ("Ode" 185). It is these passages Hartman calls the "intimations of immortality" (Hartman 175-176).
Noting the shift of these two poems is not a suggestion that the poet is inconsistent with his beliefs and understandings, - it does, however, bring to light a change that has taken place in his understanding. The "Two- Part Prelude" features an understanding of a special vision of the world and relationship to Nature in childhood. Furthermore it features and understanding of these experiences having a permanent and active role in the development of his mind. Wordsworth no longer understands his childhood experiences to have such a role in the "Ode". Indeed, one could argue it is his new understanding of having lost all visionary power that leads to the creation of the "Ode". Most important here is his revealing in the "Ode" a new understanding, perhaps one far more sophisticated. Wordsworth does mention in the "Two-Part Prelude" episodes similar to "obstinate questionings": "For now a trouble came into my mind / From obscure causes: I was left alone / Seeking this visible world, nor knowing why" (ii. 321-323). But he devotes these lines and nothing else to the experience, and doesn't seem to understand them in relation to the immortality of his soul. In the "Ode" Wordsworth has both recognized the loss of his childhood vision and reconciled this loss through the knowledge that he once felt "intimations of immortality".
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