MB UNIUD

PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS(WORDSWORTH'S VIEWS OF POETRY AND THE POET)

The text starts with the declaration of intention (like a short essay). The poet  tells us the reason why he wrote the preface: he wants to tell us what poetry should be about that is "common life"  incidents and situations, and how to relate or describe them.  The poet tells us what kind of language the poet should use: he should use the language used by common people, the language spoken by every man. So the language should be the one really used by man with an additional amount of imagination. Imagination adds colour to ordinary things, and allows the situation to be presented in an unusual way. The aim is to make incidents and situation interesting. The poet apparently addresses to anybody  but he is a more sensitive person, and he has a great knowledge of human nature in comparison to common men. Also his soul is more comprehensive , which means that he is able to make everybody's experience  his. He is able to be affected more than any other man by absent things as if they were present. Also he can conjure up passion feelings and sensation different from the one's of really events. In addition he has acquired a greater readiness and powers in expressing what he thinks  or feels. According to the romantic manifesto poetry is the spontaneous overflows of powerful feelings. Poetry originates after an experience has already been lived and the emotion connected to the experience is recollected  in tranquillity. After that  the emotion is contemplated , gradually the tranquillity disappears. A new emotion is born of the same kind/ similar to the emotion before the contemplation. The emotion really exists in the mind. The effect of poetry is to make the mind in a state of enjoyment. The creative process starts from an emotion which  is recollected  in tranquillity, recreated and enjoyed and shared by the reader. The emotion is subjective, rooted in personal experience, not divorced from thinking or meditation. The poet is a man speaking to other man, who has acute awareness of physical-sensation and a marked capacity for re-enjoying  life. He has a profound understanding  of human nature, a more powerful imagination and a capacity to articulate  sensation and thoughts. Poetry should deal with incidents and situation from simple, rustic life, transfigured by imagination and reflecting the way people think in a state of excitement .The presence for humble, rustic life follows from the assumption  that man are better  when  close to nature far from the artificiality of civilization. Poetry should use simple language: the language of man in the middle  and in the lower class.