WORDSWORTH'S VIEWS OF POETRY AND THE POET

From William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

The extract is taken from the Preface which is generally considered the Manifesto of the Romanticism.

It is a text of literary criticism where William Wordsworth explains what the new form of poetry should be like.

In the text he says that the object, the aim of poetry should be to make the incidents of common life interesting.

Poetry should deal with situations from single rustic life and this should be transfigured by imagination.

The reason for his preference for humble life follows from the assumption that men are better when closer to nature because they are far from the artificialities of civilization because the feeling of country people develop naturally and without restraint are uncomplicated, lasting and influenced by nature.

Poetry should use familiar, simple language: "the language really used by men", because humble, country people live in communion with the object from which language originates and voices their feelings in a more immediate, forceful way.

Wordsworth explains in his Preface that Coleridge and he were trying to leave behind the specialized, formal language of the 18^th century poetry.

He maintains that his poems are experimental attempts to get to metrical arrangement, a selection of the real language of men in a sense of vivid sensations.

Together with the other romantic writers he wanted to draw upon the expressive power of ordinary speech instead of relying automatically upon an artificial, "uniquely" poetic way of using language. But Wordsworth did not naively believe that the language of poetry could ever be a direct invitation of the language of the men in the street or worker in the field. He says that the real language of men must be selected by the poet that must be fitted to metrical arrangements and that it must be taken by men in a vivid sensation.

Real language on the one hand and its selection or transformation by the poet's mind and craft on the other.

What really interests Wordsworth and other romantic writers is not nature for its own sake but nature as it affects the human mind and personality.

In the romantic writers it is the relations between mind and a natural world that are the central forces.

Wordsworth definition of poetry confirms the emphasis on subjective emotions and personal experiences "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings".