'Blast of harmony' : simultaneity of linguistic opposites in the poetry of William Wordsworth

Abstract

F. W. Bateson, a renowned Wordsworth critic, once wrote that Wordsworth's 'conflict between his past and his present emotional life provided ... the tension that seems to be the prerequisite of all great poetry' (Wordsworth: A Re-Interpretation, p.163). This thesis seeks to explore such moments of tension not in relation to the poet's emotional life but in terms of what I call the 'simultaneity of linguistic opposites.' By linguistic opposites I understand the two conflicting views of representation, namely the logocentric metaphysics of presence and the deconstructive poetics of absence. Whereas a poetics of presence concentrates primarily on the power of unification between man and nature, deconstruction maintains that in so far as language is a radically unstable construct there can never be poetry which embodies an external truth or which refers to a unified whole. Romantic representation does not reside in the valorisation or domination of one extreme over the other but in the co-existence of the two extremes. The surface logocentric text contains a subtext which opposes it and which questions the structuring power of language. However, the subtext does not invalidate or substitute the text, as deconstruction believes, but exists parallel to it by working counter to it. Both text and subtext, which have logocentric and deconstructive capabilities respectively, exist on the same level and none of them gains supremacy over the other. In this respect my reading of Wordsworth does not seek to adhere to one of these representational extremities but considers these opposites as operating simultaneously, the simultaneity of which creates a second presence, (or what the poet, in Book XIII of the 1805 version of The Prelude, calls an 'under-presence' 1.72), a Coleridgean 'hertium alquid' which is necessarily the result of the tension between these two opposites. This resulting presence is neither an embodiment of Truth nor a manifestation of absence but a tension which partakes of two opposing natures, a border between ontological opposition. In the 'Introduction' I develop the general concept of simultaneity of linguistic opposites with particular references to Coleridge whilst seeking to establish continuity with modem and post-modem philosophy especially with Heidegger and Derrida. This is followed (chapter one) by an implementation and a development o this concept in the light of Wordsworth's consideration of the incarnative capability of language and in his qualification of the language of epitaphs as the highest form of poetry. The language of epitaphs and Wordsworth's 'epitaphic mode' are interpreted as instances of such a tension, characterised by the presentation of a language of presence which, in being epitaphic, manages to ground its presence on death and absence. Chapter two discusses other variations that simultaneity assumes by considering Wordsworth's notion of tranquillity, tautology and linguistic stasis as moments indicative of such a linguistic tension. My readings of The Ruined Cottage and 'The Thom' in this chapter seek to develop the notion of presence in Wordsworth by locating the power of simultaneity within presence to the extent that presence is not simply a process of making present but a manifestation of a tension between absence and presence. The notion of death and the simultaneity of death and life that the epitaph depicts are further explored in chapter three which deals with the Lucy poems where, through the simultaneity of linguistic opposites, the language of these poems seems to breach the limits of metaphor and goes beyond the line of demarcation which distinguishes metaphor, the comparison of one thing to another, from metamorphosis, an actual becoming of the thing described. The language of the Lucy poems is placed in the very tension generated between these representational extremities. The last two chapters are devoted to Wordsworth's autobiographical poem The Prelude. Chapter four deals with the opposing signifying aspects of autobiography as a process of making the past occur in the present whilst, simultaneously, marking the past as already lost in the present. In order to accommodate such an opposition The Prelude employs a discourse characterised by a language of self-dividedness which locates meaning in the very impediments encountered on the way towards a full and logocentric representation of the self in writing. In this manner the final chapter (chapter five) seeks to explore moments where The Prelude simultaneously places and displaces structure and logocentrism by employing a 'both/ neither' linguistic formulation where presence is placed at the very moment that it is displaced. This (dis)placement is the manifestation of a tension within Wordsworth's language of representation, a language which manages to create a supreme form of presence which is neither confined to mimetic literal representation nor to simply figurative meaning but is a result of a tension generated by the simultaneity of its linguistic opposites.