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AHS, English and Creative Writing
Discuss the representation of nature and the natural world; Refer to the work of TWO poets studied on the unit.
'There are moments in our life, when we dedicate a kind of love and touching respect to nature in its plants, minerals, animals, landscapes, just as to human nature in its children, in the morals of country folk and of the primeval world, not because it is pleasing to our senses, not even because it satisfies our understanding or taste (the opposite can often occur in respect to both), but rather merely because it is nature. Every fine man, who does not altogether lack feeling, experiences this, when he walks in the open, when he lives upon the land or tarries beside monuments of ancient times, in short, when he is surprised in artificial relations and situations with the sight of simple nature.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
As Schiller displays with this above quote, nature is the essence of our lives. We appreciate and relate to nature, perhaps without knowing it at times, but it is always a part of us no matter how complex or simple. Touching on the idea of sensibility and nature, he addresses the fact that all man appreciate and relate to the sight of nature.
How is this relevent? Wordsworth's 'The Ruined cottage' uses this connection of humanity to nature to create a beautiful poem which uses sensibility, but also changes it to have its own, unique meaning and philosophy. By using mans intrinsic connection to nature to do this, we are moved to feel and moved to experience emotion via nature in 'The Ruined Cottage'.
Her cottage in its outward look appeared
As cheerful as before, in any show
Of neatness little changed - but that I thought
the honeysuckle crowded round the door
And from the wall hung down in heavier wreaths,
And knots of worthless stonecrop started out
Along the window's edge, and grew like weeds
Against the lower panes. I turned aside
And strolled into her garden. It was changed.
The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 305-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The above quote, if we look at the surface meaning is representing nature in a negative way, there is negative language associated with the natural imagery. Such as 'unprofitable', 'dragged', 'bend', 'worthless' and 'crowded'. Underneath this meaning it is still connecting humanity with nature, the fact that Margaret; the wife who passed away is now gone but nature is living on, it still continues to grow and progress and its existence is in itself and is continual and her cottage, her life still exists. This also is an example of sensibility. The nature is representing continual life after death and the exsistence of something in itself and is appealing to the readers emotions because we empathise with Margaret who is represented via this natural imagery.
'What would even a plain flower, a spring, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of bees, etc., have in itself so charming for us? What could give it any claim upon our love? It is not these objects, it is an idea represented through them, which we love in them. We love in them the quietly working life, the calm effects from out itself, existence under its own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity with itself.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
There is an idea represented through nature in this poem - nature has eternal unity with itself and the way Wordsworth links nature with Margaret means she also gains this attribute. Especially with Wordsworth's subtle ways of linking Margaret with nature:
'She is dead,
The worm is in her cheek, and this poor hut,
Stripped of its outward garb of household flowers,
Of rose and sweetbriar, offers to the wind
A cold bare wall whose earthy top is tricked
With weeds and the rank speargrass. She is dead'
(Page 280, Lines 103-108, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The imagery behind 'the worm is in her cheek' is powerful. Conjuring imagery of death and burial in the soil and the worm; part of nature of which Margaret is now eternally part of. But it is not necessarily negative, the idea of the worm can be seen as her becoming food and livelihood for the worm, who will live because of her and making her entirely a part of nature and the circle of life thus she is absorbed within the idea of the eternal and united with nature itself.
The recurring theme of negative language combined with natural imagery is not always to be interpreted as entirely negative, although it represents the destruction of Margaret's mind and life, it also, particularly towards the end of the poem represents continuity of life and the idea of 'the circle of life' which Margaret is now a part of. The idea of the cottage as Margaret and her life being covered by overgrown weeds and nature is encompassing her previous life, covering it and creating a new one.
Something to take note of from 'The Ruined Cottage' is that the cottage has not become a wasteland, there has been a lot of growth, however it has been the wrong thing as it has mirrored Margaret's decline, her personality deteriorating and changing; subtle irony reflecting Margaret's situation using nature as the vehicle of expression. This is an example of a pathetic fallacy, the idea of nature being aware of and of mirroring life; Margaret's life.
Sensibility plays a big part in this poem, where we see Margaret initially in a traditional female role as a maternal, domestic figure, provider for her husband and child and it is this being taken away from her which initiates her destruction. This plays on the traditional appeal to a female audience, which is what sensibility was originally based upon. Wordsworth does use the ideals from sensibility such as using emotion to express experience, to feel rather than to think and using estrangement and poverty to move the reader to feel. But what he does differently to traditional poetic sensibility is he changes this emotion into an intellectual response. If we think of the following quote from 'The Ruined Cottage':
'The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 314-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
We can gain the experience of this decaying rose and we can feel the emotion behind it of death, decay, the slowing and cease of life and the relation to Margaret's decay and end of life and in sensibility this would be its purpose, but with Wordsworth we can also use this emotion to feel our connection with nature in relation to life and this transforms into a philosophy - an intellectual response from the reader. For example we can interpret the said quote as Margaret, metaphorically speaking, as the rose, although this rose is decaying and bending down to earth, in its death it will become part of the earth again and will continue in the above mentioned circle of life; in death nature is renewed. This way of using sensibility along with nature creates a new philosophy and intellectual response to emotion and feeling, previously containing only emotion itself.
'They are what we were; they are what we ought to become once more. We were nature as they, and our culture should lead us back to nature, upon the path of reason and freedom. They are therefore at the same time a representation of our lost childhood, which remains eternally most dear to us; hence, they fill us with a certain melancholy. At the same time, they are representations of our highest perfection in the ideal, hence, they transpose us into a sublime emotion.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
This is exactly what Wordsworth does in 'The Ruined Cottage'. Even though the imagery of nature may be melancholy at times nature represents the cycle of life and existence and this creates a sublime emotion in the audience. Through the use of sensibility to move the reader to feel the emotion from Margaret's tragedy Wordsworth then allows the reader to interpret the tragedy via nature and transform it, tragedy is displaced by intellectual interpretation of events.
Moving on to the Keats, we can see the use of nature extensively in his poetry and the way he uses it gives us full, rich imagery of experiences that some have said are 'too happy by far, too full by half' (Levinson). This could be interpreted in a number of ways. It may be indicating that Keat's poetry is not from experience, as he was not well travelled and a lot of his poetry was inspired by imagination or art that he had seen. Keats' poetry is also often described as overflowingly sensuous, an attack on the senses and an overflowing of imagery and richness. For example in 'To Autumn' Keats uses nature at its fullest point:
'..fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later glowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has oe'r-brimmed their clammy cells'
(Page 1080, Lines 6-11, To Autumn, Keats )
The use of natural imagery at its ripest conveys this image of rich fullness, the use of connotative words such as 'swell', 'plump', 'budding' and the repetition of 'more' and 'oe'r brimmed' is overflowing from the poem and almost forces upon the reader this idea of fullness which can overload the senses. Maybe this was because Keats had not physically seen these things, as he was not travelled and perhaps due to this he was over compensating for this lack of experience, using nature too much to express has given the feeling of 'too happy by far, too full by half' as we can see too much yet still feel something is lacking.
It may be ironic that Keats wrote this poem as his most productive part of his life was coming to an end, this is clearly represented in nature within the poem. The above quote shows the nature at it's most ripe, at its most bountiful, then it dies. 'To Autumn' has similarities to 'The Ruined Cottage' in that there is a theme of nature and death paralelling each other. 'To Autumn' emphasises the idea that death is a natural function in life. It is honest and positive, welcoming of death because with that deaths brings a renewal and that is Spring. This may again reflect Keats' current state of mind, aware that death was imminent and using nature to express his positivity towards his own death and the naturalness of it.
We can also see that Keats may have chosen to use Autumn as it is a transitional period within nature. Life is coming to an end and the poem itself creates a still image of
'momentary suspension upon the completion of harvest' (Page 260, To Autumn as Ecosystem, Johathan Bate) and we can again mirror this with Keats life and this is called negative capability, an uncertainty, a grey area, an openness of mind and 'a heightened receptivity to reality in its full and diverse concreteness' this may also explain how Keats' poetry is sometimes described as 'too full'. Negative capability is also defined as negating the ego and Keats himself said he wanted to achieve poetry that appealed to so many senses there was no character inside of it, but it is also full of uncertainty - this may be representative of Keats' personal life at that time and the transition he was about to face from life to death, mirrored in the poems static image of Autumn's end, transitioning to Winter.
'To Autumn' may also be interpreted as a celebration of harvest and a connection of humanity with its reliance on nature to survive - like an ecosystem where every part is intricately linked. It should be noted that when Keats wrote this poem there was a beautiful Autumn in 1819 whereas the previous Autumns had been terrible with failed harvests. The idea of humanities reliance on the weather is also apparent - not only for harvesting crops but also for existence. We can see Keats' link to the weather in his letters from the same period he wrote 'To Autumn':
'The delightful weather we have had for two Months is the highest gratification I could recieve - no chill'd red noses - no shivering - but fair Atmosphere to think in'
(Keats, Letters 2.148, August 1819)
If we think of Keats' personal life we know that in this year he was suffering from tuberculosis and the most important thing was to have clean air and after so many years of poor weather the fact that 1819's Autumn was good for weather literally gave Keats a new lease of life and this is reflected in 'To Autumn' as we can see the new life forming on the trees, the crops, the bees and flowers; they are ripe and fresh in static image although there is still the underlying thought that as soon as they fall or are harvested they will die - this is again representing Keats' fate and illness itself via nature.
If we think of ecosystem as living organisms that interact with every other element in their local environment we can soon start to see how this can become relevent to 'To Autumn'. The poem itself represents nature linked - starting with:
'Seasons of mist and mellow fruitness
Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless'
(Page 1080, Lines 1-3, To Autumn, Keats)
This shows the relationship between the sun, the seasons; it represents them as interacting with each other and linking together closely which is what an ecosystem is.
Johnathan Bate says:
'There are not only links within the biota - flower and bee, the food-chain that associates gnat and swallow - but also links between the discourses which the modern Constitution sought to seperate out. The poem not only yokes etneral and internal marks of biological process (the visible bending of the apple tree, the invisible swelling of the gourd), it also yokes community and chemistry (bosom-friend and sun), physics and theology (load and bless), biology and aesthetics (a link which we may express through the two halves of the word which describes the closing images of the poem:bird-song). And crucially, it refuses to sign the Cartesian constitution which splits apart thinking mind and embodied substance'
(Page 259, To Autumn as ecosystem, Johnathan Bate)
This factor - that mind and body are not seperate, that they are working as one, using the examples shown above is the exactly what an ecosystem is based upon; every single thing working together. In 'To Autumn' we have, as stated above - the biological process of nature being demonstrated: 'Summer as o'er brimmed their clammy cells', another biological process that has occurred due to the weather, another subtle linking together of all nature as ecosystem. We then have the idea of community - as stated above; the seeming interaction of natural elements eg the sun. The physics behind 'load and bless' literally mean to ripen, but using the words load and bless gives nature almost a personified element as using the word 'bless' in conjunction with the phrase 'conspiring with him' links together the idea of community within nature and again interaction between the two. Also the quote 'And still more, later flowers for the bees/Until they think warm days will never cease' - another example of nature and the food chains reaction to the weather and its affect on them; making them grow more and the flowers to be pollenated by bees which is an example of the cycle of the food chain and intricate links between all natural aspects from weather to animal.
But underneath this surface analysis we can see Keats' personal life is being represented via this. He is central to the poem (not his intention), if we look at his letters and personal life at that time he is affected by the weather and he is, ultimately, working within this ecosystem as part of a food chain and reliance on weather for health, food and harvest as well as personal pleasure, this may be linked to the air, atmopshere, ozone, water, wind, sight of trees and nature which are all in themselves part of our natural ecosystem.
'Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.'
(Page 1080, Lines 27-33, To Autumn, Keats)
In the final stanzas I feel there is the idea of all parts of nature linked, all animals with parts of nature. For example the gnats linked to the river, the lambs to the hill bourn and the swallows to the skies they are all closely linked to their habitat and they are also linked together with sound. Keats uses the sound of each species within the ecosystem, combined with their natural habitat to link them all with each other in song; the song of Autumn.
Finally if we look at what Keats says himself, that idea of negative capability; the idea of removing a central person from the poem - the idea that Keats wanted to achieve, this fact Johnathan Bate has highlighted in his essay 'To Autumn as ecosystem' we can again see how this poem can be intepreted as an ecosystem using this idea:
'There is no 'I' listening to a nightingale or looking at an urn: the self is dissolved into the ecosystem'
Typically there is no centre in an ecosystem, as Bate says it is 'a network of relations' and 'To Autumn' is just this, there is no central person or thing to the poem, it is simply nature interconnected with one another within an environment that is serving one sole purpose; existing within itself and perhaps also representing Keats' personal life.
MY Bibliography:
Schiller, F, 'On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry' Part I, The Schiller Institute, 2005, Retrieved from http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html on November 2009
Wu, D, 'Romanticism an Anthology', Second Edition, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998
Bate, J (Foreword), Coupe, L (Editor), The Ode 'To Autumn' as Ecosystem' Chapter 43, from 'The Green studies reader: From Romanticism to ecocriticism', London: Routledge; (3 Aug 2000)
COPYRIGHT SARAH LOUISE ROBINSON, LONDON
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