Page 183 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

Unit 11: Poetry: William Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality

Platonic Influences Notes
“Both Wordsworth and the Platonists emphasize recollection as a basis for believing in the dignity of
man’s soul. In Plato’s Phaedo, for example, Socrates rebuts Simmias’ epiphenomenalism by appealing
to the doctrine of ‘reminiscence’. The argument in this dialogue (a favourite of Wordsworth) is related
both to the refutation of materialism and to the hope of immortality. Likewise, in the Phaedrus, Socrates
maintains that the young soul fresh in the world has the most visionary perceptions. It seems likely
that Wordsworth, perhaps under the guidance of Coleridge, would have been attracted to the Phaedrus,
because it contains much concerning immortality and reminiscence. Similarly, Proclus, who probably
influenced the Ode, argued that the incorporeality of thought, that is, its independence of the perishable
body, is shown by the mind’s turning back upon itself in the act of memory. The very ability to
remember. Proclus maintained, is inexplicable upon the basis of a materialistic philosophy. Possibly
Wordsworth had in mind this argument when he wrote:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seening.
Wordsworth evidently felt that his conclusions were valid even if the ‘recollections’ were not
‘reminiscences’ of pre-existence—for it is the mysterious power of memory, and not merely the
reminiscence of a previous existence, that attests to the spiritual nature of man.”
Form

“The Immortality Ode is essentially a free Pindaric poem of the type established by Cowley and perfected
by Dryden, but the form created for a baroque celebration of public themes has moved into an entirely
new dimension. Wordsworth owed much to Dryden’s practice—although he sometimes in his criticism
spoke slightingly of that poet. The freedom and variety of rhythm which Dryden employed, in
Alexander’s Feast, to express the varying human passions which the lyre of Timothens could awaken
or allay now becomes the vehicle for the shifting moods of the subjective Romantic poet.”
Language
The diction of this poem is supply moulded to the poet’s purpose as his thought moves from stage to
stage. “Matthew Arnold found something declamatory in the Ode, but those phrases which might,
taken in isolation, deserve that epithet:
The cataracts blow their trumpets to the steep,—
The heavens laugh with you in their jubilee,—
My head hath its coronal,
will be found to be right in their context, where the, poet is forcing a joy which he does not feel, and
his language accordingly receives a rhetorical heightening. When he cuts himself short with
But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone,
he is once more in the vein of bare simplicity in which for him the bare truth is best told. The varied
language of the Ode, released as it is from the experimental purpose that purged that of the Lyrical
Ballads, has touches of splendour and of magic that belong to another mode altogether; yet it has
upon it the stamp of that earlier ascetic discipline. The words tell him though with a truth and simplicity
that remains the groundwork of his poetic style.”*
Imagery
The dominant image through which the poet’s sense of loss and recovery is expressed is that of light.
Indeed, the imagery of light presides over the whole ode. There are two other major images, those of
the sea and flowers. The flower-image in one shape or another keeps threading its way through the
ode till it comes to rest in the quiet beautiful lines of the close:

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 177