Yesterday’s lecture made me both intrigued and skeptical of some of Wordsworth’s ideas.
I decided to reread a poem from the “Lyrical Ballads” in order to see if Wordsworth could pull me in a direction that he seems to believe he can lead me to. I read “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” and noticed a few key things I missed during my first reading.
First, Wordsworth did move me. I tried to notice what I was doing physically while reading the poem. An example of this was during pages 5-6. I started to feel sleepy. This was the part of the poem where the marinere had just shot the albatross and the crew is stuck at sea with no wind and no more drinking water.
Second, the rhyme scheme of the poem was very calming and I can see why Wordsworth believed that he could keep his audience from going savage torpor while reading it. There is (at least I thought) a very therapeutic element to reading something like this.
However, I still can’t understand why Wordsworth believed he could ever install in me his experiences from life just by having me read his work. I can’t even begin to understand his thought process in order to come to that conclusion. I do agree with the lecturer, Miranda Burgess, in that I find the idea interesting but highly unlikely.
In general I feel that Wordsworth is the type of person I would want to go grab a cup of coffee with just to see how his ideas form through social interaction.
