Learning Path » 5B Interacting
IBignolin - The Ode
by 2010-11-12)
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Intimation of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood, the text from Wordsworth, is an ode: it is a form of poetry often used by Romantic poets.
From the analysis of the title the reader can understand by the words "Recollection" and "Childhood" that the poet it's writing about Platonists' view of children's first senses. According to Plato, everyone comes from God and has to return to God, so a just born baby brings with him the memory of the situations he lived in close contact with God, of his kingdom and of his presence. But it is mainly an emotional memory, so it mainly involves the heart because a child's mind is too young to work on cognition and philosophy.
The younger the baby is, the more this memory that he keeps from the birth is higher. As he grows up the memory decreases: the further we go away from God the less we remember of him; the more we are distant from God, the more we are distracted by material things.
The connection with God is very important for Platonists and for Wordsworth: they think it is the same kind of connection human beings have to maintain with Nature, that is a God's creature. In Wordsworth's opinion the poet is like a child because he is able to perceive the link with Nature, as he has kept the emotional experience of the kingdom of God. When the poet lose this memory he gives up being a poet, because he can't write no more: he is unable to perceive the influence of God.
The layout of an ode is different from the sonnet's one and from the ballad's one, it looks more complex. In this specific ode the speaking voice is remembering a past moment in his life when being on a meadow, in a grove or near a stream or wherever on Earth it makes him feel his relationship with Nature and with Heaven.
There are mostly abstract words because in an ode the poet poses philosophical questions, he wants the reader to reflect on the way his distance from the time he still could hold the memory of God has changed his response to life. The tone is elegiac and nostalgic.
From the analysis of the title the reader can understand by the words "Recollection" and "Childhood" that the poet it's writing about Platonists' view of children's first senses. According to Plato, everyone comes from God and has to return to God, so a just born baby brings with him the memory of the situations he lived in close contact with God, of his kingdom and of his presence. But it is mainly an emotional memory, so it mainly involves the heart because a child's mind is too young to work on cognition and philosophy.
The younger the baby is, the more this memory that he keeps from the birth is higher. As he grows up the memory decreases: the further we go away from God the less we remember of him; the more we are distant from God, the more we are distracted by material things.
The connection with God is very important for Platonists and for Wordsworth: they think it is the same kind of connection human beings have to maintain with Nature, that is a God's creature. In Wordsworth's opinion the poet is like a child because he is able to perceive the link with Nature, as he has kept the emotional experience of the kingdom of God. When the poet lose this memory he gives up being a poet, because he can't write no more: he is unable to perceive the influence of God.
The layout of an ode is different from the sonnet's one and from the ballad's one, it looks more complex. In this specific ode the speaking voice is remembering a past moment in his life when being on a meadow, in a grove or near a stream or wherever on Earth it makes him feel his relationship with Nature and with Heaven.
There are mostly abstract words because in an ode the poet poses philosophical questions, he wants the reader to reflect on the way his distance from the time he still could hold the memory of God has changed his response to life. The tone is elegiac and nostalgic.