On Poetry and Science (AL)

There has been some fascinating discussion this week of the poem ‘The Tables Turned’, and several learners have been particularly drawn to the closing lines of the poem:

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up these barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

One of Wordsworth’s recent editors, Michael Mason, sees ‘Science’ and ‘Art’ in these lines as being ‘probably overlapping rather than antithetical terms, for learning generally’. Yet, in the

1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth does discuss science and art (specifically poetry) antithetically. In the Preface, he writes: ‘I here use the word “Poetry” […] as opposed to the word Prose, and synonymous with metrical composition. But much confusion has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose, instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of Fact, or Science’. Wordsworth particularly laments that ‘The Man of Science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude’; the Poet, on the other hand, ‘singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion’. At the heart of Wordsworth’s objection (does the distinction seem a little artificial to you?) seems to be that the truths being sought out, and being discovered, by an increasingly specialising, and fragmenting, late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century scientific culture cannot, being esoteric and inaccessible to those without the necessary training, be understood and celebrated by all. Coleridge expresses a similar sense of disappointment, in describing botany, in 1818, as being ‘little more than an enormous nomenclature, a huge catalogue’, as if the botanists carrying out this work were, like the figure in ‘The Tables Turned’, pressed into his books while the sun shines outside, somehow missing the point. The alternative view of the world that Wordsworth offers in ‘The Tables Turned’ is rather more positive and inclusive: in accord with the core principles of the Preface, which we have explored this week as being a type of egalitarian manifesto, all have a share in, and may benefit from, the ‘ready wealth’ offered by

Nature. Reaching after ‘Matter of Fact’, whether we consider the terms ‘Science’ and ‘Art’ antithetical or overlapping, does not lead to ‘wisdom’ and ‘truth’ in this poem; rather, all that is required, away from the ‘dull and endless strife’ of books, is ‘a heart / That watches and receives’.

On Religion (AL)

On Wordsworth’s use of religious language in ‘The Tables Turned’ (the throstle is ‘no mean preacher’; the speaker, in the language of revelation, implores the subject of the poem to ‘Come forth into the light of things’; Nature ‘bless[es]’ minds and hearts), it is useful to consider the speaker’s statement in another poem in Lyrical Ballads, ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above

Tintern Abbey’, that he has been ‘long / A worshipper of Nature’ (my italics). Some of

Wordsworth’s later poetry, such as The Excursion (1814) or his Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), contains overtly Christian sentiment; some of Wordsworth’s revisions to The Prelude, which he worked on throughout his life, but did not publish, and which we will look at in detail next week, also reveal growing religious feeling on his part. Comparatively, such Christian sentiment is notably lacking in Lyrical Ballads; Coleridge memorably described Wordsworth, in 1796, two years before the first edition was published, as being ‘at least a Semi-atheist’ at that time. Using the language of religion does not necessarily entail adherence to, or endorsement of, all of the tenets of that religion; as several learners have noted, the spiritual presence in ‘The Tables Turned’ is not ‘God’, or a ‘he’, but ‘Nature’, a ‘she’. Being brought up in the Christian tradition, the language of Christianity was certainly familiar to Wordsworth, and using devotional language in describing the ‘wisdom’ and ‘truth’ to be found in Nature speaks of the depth of Wordsworth’s feeling for it, which, again in ‘Tintern Abbey’, his speaker describes as ‘The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being’. As we will see next week, Nature also played a darker, more chastening role in the young Wordsworth’s formative years.