Limina, Volume 13, 2007
Ronald Kaiser Jr.
Unity in the Valley: Transcendence and Contiguity in
Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’
Ronald Kaiser Jr.
Plymouth State University
The sublime was a favourite topic of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers and poets such as
William Wordsworth and Immanuel Kant. The sublime occurs when one’s mind reels because it either is
trying to imagine an aspect of infinity, or when it feels itself to be superior to nature. For instance, if one
sees an enormous field of dandelions, the dandelions may seem to be infinite in number. The mind, then,
may imagine that they are infinite, and thus holds an aspect of infinity in mind; nature is not infinite,
therefore the mind feels superior to nature in this regard. The sublime can also occur when one witnesses
something terrible and powerful in nature. If the person is removed enough to be out of immediate danger,
such as viewing a hurricane from a few miles away, then they may feel a sense of power and accomplishment,
since they have seen nature in all its might and lived. Critics such as Lyotard have called the sublime a
negative experience. This is because while nature is the catalyst for the sublime to occur, whether it be a
vast expanse of trees that appear to stretch away infinitely, or a roiling ocean full of might, ultimately the
sublime takes place within the imagination, and therefore nature is left out. According to Lyotard, nature
is to lead us to enlightenment. If nature is left out, then the mind turns only to itself, and cannot achieve
enlightenment. This essay attempts to disprove Lyotard by looking at Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few
Miles above Tintern Abbey’ through the lens of Kant’s ‘The Critique of Judgment’. This essay will show
that Wordsworth’s sublime is different because the mind, rather than turn on itself, becomes absorbed into
nature, and therefore cannot be negative, since nature is still present for the narrator of the poem.
The sublime overwhelms the subject, and paradoxically arouses anxiety and pleasure simultaneously.
Critics such as Lyotard have considered the sublime essentially useless because, since it ultimately
takes place only in the imagination, without nature, one cannot become enlightened because nature
leads us toward the furthering of knowledge. In Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a few Miles above
Tintern Abbey’, the narrator melts into nature, and they form one infinite, contiguous existence.
Awed at the prospect of infinitely contiguous reality, he is roused to the sublime state. I endeavour
here to show that Wordsworth’s sublime, because it relies on the connectedness of man, nature and
time, and thus inspires a state that is a cousin of the mathematical sublime as defined by Kant, is in
fact positive.
Before diving right into a subject as complex and ephemeral as the sublime, a discussion of a few
influential treatises is necessary. Postmodern theorist, Lyotard, in his work, Lessons on the Analytic
of the Sublime, remarks upon the importance of the sublime, particularly the role it has played in
modern aesthetic tastes:
Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe this contradictory feeling - pleasure
and pain, joy and anxiety, exaltation and depression - was christened or re-christened by the
name of the sublime. It is around this name that the destiny of classical poetics was hazarded and
lost; it is in this name that aesthetics asserted its critical rights over art, and that romanticism, in
other words, modernity, triumphed.1
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Thus, avant-garde art today often resembles nothing in nature; this is because according to Lyotard,
since we have lost our faith in forms, the role of art in our modern world is to bear witness to the fact
that it is unrepresentable. Like the sublime, it is commensurate only to itself.
Peter de Bolla made the observation that discourse on the sublime creates the conditions for
the creation of the discourse of the sublime. Such seems to have been the case with Wordsworth,
since the century he was born in saw multitudinous treatises on the nature of the sublime, most
importantly, those composed by Edmund Burke and Kant.
In A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, Burke asserts that pain and
terror are the chief emotions. Passions grounded in fear are more powerful than those grounded in
pleasure. It is surprising, then, that Burke believed terror and pain, two of the worst feelings one can
experience can be pleasurable:
When danger or pain press to nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply
terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are
delightful, as we every day experience.2
Pain and terror however, are not the only conditions that inspire the sublime:
Infinity … causes much of our pleasure in agreeable, as well of our delight in sublime images.
The spring is the pleasantest of the seasons; and the young of most animals, though far from
being completely fashioned, afford a more agreeable sensation than the full grown; because the
imagination is entertained with the promise of something more, and does not acquiesce in the
present object of the sense.
Unfinished things invoke the sublime because they promise ‘something more’. This is similar to
Kant’s notion of a mathematical sublime, in which the imagination is compelled to conceive of
infinity.3 Burke calls the passion caused by the sublime ‘astonishment’:
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most
powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions
are suspended with some degree of horror.4
The phrase ‘all motions are suspended’ is a key one for my argument, as it appears at the crux of
‘Tintern Abbey’.
In Book Two of The Critique of Judgment, Kant discusses the definition and effects of the sublime,
particularly the contrast between the beautiful and sublime:
[a]gree in this, that both please in themselves ... The Beautiful in nature is connected with the
form of the object, which consists in having [definite] boundaries. The Sublime … is to be found
in a formless object … and yet its totality is also present to thought. Thus the Beautiful seems to
be regarded as the presentation of an indefinite concept of Understanding; the Sublime as that of
a concept of Reason.5
While the estimation of what is sublime and what is beautiful is subjective, the pleasurable feelings
excited by each are universal. The beautiful is characterised by form, and the sublime by formlessness.
Thus one may find a sparkling blue wave beautiful, and the seemingly boundless ocean it is a part
of, sublime. Kant goes on to divide the sublime into the dynamical and the mathematical.
The mathematical sublime indicates the sublime state excited by observation of a thing that
appears ‘absolutely great … what is great beyond all comparison’.6 This may take the form of a thing
that by our visual estimation seems endless, like the night sky, and thus conjures to mind the idea of
boundlessness, or the absolutely great, or a seemingly infinite number of objects, such as a field of
flowers that stretches out of sight:
[T]he [joint] presentation of all these members of a progressively increasing series suggests
infinity, because ‘in the estimation of magnitude by the Understanding (Arithmetic) we only go
to a certain point whether we push the comprehension of the units up to the number 10 … or
only up to 4 … the further production of magnitude proceeds by combination … in accordance
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Ronald Kaiser Jr.
with an assumed principle of progression … the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively)
great. And what is most important is that to be able only to think it as a whole indicates a faculty
of mind which surpasses every standard of Sense.7
Thus the senses perceive a progression of objects that go beyond the limits of perception, and reason
steps in to continue the ‘logical estimation’8of objects to infinity because the mind itself cannot
represent infinity. In Kant’s sublime however, ‘the bare capability of thinking’ of this infinity without
contradiction requires in the human mind a faculty itself supersensible.9
In Kant’s dynamical sublime, the observer is not concerned with the concept of infinite numbers
or greatness, but with power. Specifically, feeling superior to something in nature, or nature itself,
and being exhilarated by the prospect of beholding what is conceived to be mighty: ‘[V]olcanoes in
all their violence of destruction … the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is’10.
The dynamical sublime is similar to the mathematical sublime because in both states the subject
feels superior to the power of nature.
As discussed earlier, Lyotard argued that the sublime is a negative emotion because it exists
outside of nature. Consequently, the sublime is not useful in teleological matters:
Sublime violence is like lightning. It short-circuits thinking with itself … The teleological machine
explodes … The ‘leading’ that nature with its vital lead was supposed to provide for thinking
in a movement toward its final illumination cannot take place. The beautiful contributed to the
Enlightenment, as Kant says. But the sublime is a sudden blazing, without future.11
In contrast to the above, Wordsworth’s notion of the sublime as demonstrated in ‘Tintern Abbey’
involves the subject actually being absorbed into nature.
The first 25 lines of ‘Tintern Abbey’ deal almost solely with the physical perception of nature
through sound and sight. Lines 26-50 then address the effects of these visions of nature upon him.
Lines 59-110 explain in greater detail the path to Wordsworth’s enlightenment through nature, and
lines 111 through to the end of the poem are committed to praise of his sister Dorothy and thoughts
on the future. Wordsworth’s progression of first loving nature for its beauty, and then recognizing
the beauty of the mind through nature, echoes of Diotima’s instructions to Socrates on how to love
mankind in Plato’s Symposium:
For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms;
and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only- out of that he should
create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the
beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be
not to recognise that the beauty in every form is one and the same!12
Plato describes a progression in which one learns to love all beauteous forms. Wordsworth describes
his own progression and enlightenment in ‘Tintern Abbey’ similarly. As I discuss below, Wordsworth
did not appreciate nature as a young man, but gradually became enlightened through experiencing
and communing with nature. The opening lines of the poem bear the evidence to Wordsworth’s
driving theme, the interconnectedness of man and nature:
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet Inland murmur.13
From the opening two lines of this poem Wordsworth unifies time (years), nature (seasons), and
man (I). For five years he had been pondering the effects of nature on himself. He compares the years
to ‘five summers, with the lengths of five long winters’: summer is the time when fruits ripen, yet are
not fully blossomed. The ‘five summers’ was the period when Wordsworth’s own nature philosophy
was ripening in his mind as he contemplated the Wye valley. This period took on the aspects of
summer’s ripening and the winter’s seeming lengthening of time, as if through contemplating
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nature, he was internalising the seasons within himself. Thus, Wordsworth is invoking a theme
of unity in this poem. This is a unity that includes all the world and time, and so it is infinite. The
narrator articulates the effects of the sublime evoked by this sense of infinite contiguity throughout.
Wordsworth likens himself in the above lines to a part of his natural surroundings. It is not the sight
of these tranquil waters that inspires Wordsworth in the fourth line, but the ‘sweet inland murmur’
that they create. It is as if this place is peopled by personified nature.
London’s noisy streets (the horror of which Wordsworth relates in ‘The Prelude’) have been
replaced by bubbling streams, which to a lover of nature are a far more pleasing ambient noise. It
is interesting to note that Wordsworth’s first observation about his secluded spot is one rooted in
sound, not sight. Rather than describe how the stream looks, he describes the sound. Perhaps this
is because Wordsworth’s eyes were closed; perhaps his remembered mental picture of that place is
sweeter than what his eye can capture. If so, then it serves to enhance the sense of connectedness
between man and nature.
Thus, Wordsworth spent his youth appreciating the ‘beautiful forms’ of mountains, rivers, forests
and plains. As he later goes on to describe in lines 68 through 76, Wordsworth revelled in the beauty
of nature as a youth, and seemed to think no more of it than that. According to the progression
of ‘Tintern Abbey’, after Wordsworth matured somewhat, and contemplated his ‘fair thoughts’ of
nature, he realised that his own mental recollections of nature were more beautiful than nature as
perceived by the eye.
From meditating on his recollections of nature, and thus learning to appreciate this connection
between his own mind and nature, Wordsworth learned to commune with and deeply love the
natural world, and thence all creatures of nature, including mankind. To learn to truly love all
things in nature is a journey of enlightenment: the first step is to learn to appreciate nature’s beauty,
and then to realise nature’s connection with the mind. This is similar to the process outlined in
Plato’s Symposium. Lines 4 through 8 delve deeper into the realm of thought, and begin to show the
connection between the mind and nature:
Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.14
The camera pans back even further, into the very mind of the narrator, as the scene impresses
thoughts of seclusion upon him. Thus, the mind of man is connected to the scene as well. The sky is
quiet; it does not contest with the murmuring waters, and thus the landscape is imbued with a sense
of balance. The valley assumes an aspect of the mathematical sublime in this passage because the
cliffs have given the narrator the impression of a deeper seclusion, increasing the sense of vastness
around him. The cliffs have seemingly connected the land and the sky to form one immense horizon;
this coincides with what Burke would have called the ‘artificial infinite’, which is an optical illusion
of infinity, such as a multitude of trees that stretch beyond sight, as in Kant’s mathematical sublime.
The imagination multiplies the trees to infinity, since they appear infinite15. Even the narrator himself,
presumably Wordsworth, is posed in a way that suggests unity with the surroundings. As we shall
see in the lines directly following, he lies under the tree, and his body follows the contour of the
ground. Thus, he seems to be a part of nature. This illusion of the narrator and the landscape being
one contiguous mass creates a sense of connectedness that also reaches out and makes the observer
feel connected as well, and this contributes to the idea of an infinite connectedness. The narrator’s
view then focuses closer in upon the scene beginning with line 9, and the reader is drawn into the
visual aspects of the secluded scene:
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
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Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.16
Thus having been so affected by the tranquillity of the scene, the narrator becomes part of the
secluded scene. He is such as man began: a creature of the wild. The speaker is ‘drawn’ into the
landscape, and his vision focuses on the minute details of the landscape. The theme of potential is
revisited here; plots of cottage ground are present, yet the narrator notices no one to populate them.
It is the middle of July; the gardens have already been planted, and it is too early yet to harvest. The
potential for the harvest is there, yet it is months away. Lines 16 and 17 tell us again that there is some
small human population in this scene; however, they are lovers of nature here, and therefore blend
in with the unripe fruits and copses. The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines ‘copse’ as ‘a thicket
of small trees or underwood periodically cut for economic purposes’. The passage is therefore an apt
example of contiguity: the cottage-dwellers cut down some of the trees, but they left some standing
too. Thus, they had their connection and dependence to nature in mind, and acted accordingly.
Similarly, the hedgerows could be indicative of sheep herding, since they were often used as
fences to contain sheep. Just as the unseen shepherds watch over the unseen flock here, so too do
they take care of the hedgerows. These are not rigid hedgerows; they are ‘little lines of sportive
wood run wild’. It is as if the cottage-dwellers are more like the parents than the planters of these
rows of trees. The trees function as hedgerows, yet they maintain their wildness. The cottages are
‘green to the very door’ - like the unripe fruits, the cottages have become part of nature, and as such
they do not disturb this scene.
Wordsworth paints a picture, not unlike a Turner watercolour, blending the landscape with
complementary hues, and lending a still greater sense of harmony to the scene. One can imagine the
narrator reposing under his sycamore, scanning the pastoral landscape, his eye focusing on the hedge
rows, and copses, and country cottages, then panning backward, to notice the mysterious wreathes
of smoke above the trees. He is effectively absorbed into the landscape, as has already happened to
the other mysterious inhabitants of the valley. Like the hedgerows indicate sheep herding, so too do
the wreathes of smoke indicate the presence of these unseen folk.
In keeping with his theme of connectedness, we see only the potential for inhabitants here; the
people have been absorbed into the landscape. Wordsworth uses the words ‘uncertain’ and ‘might’
to lend a sense of mystery to the dwellers of the woods, and also to the poem itself. These inhabitants
do not intrude upon the scene; they cannot intrude, for they are one with nature. The potential for
forest dwellers is apparent, but they remain absorbed in the forest, as the narrator is becoming.
Wordsworth identifies with his imagined hermit, though the narrator is not alone altogether, as
we will learn when he turns to address someone, possibly his sister Dorothy later in the poem. Still,
as the hermit seeks wisdom through connectedness with the wilderness, so do Wordsworth and his
sister. There is also the possibility of vagrant dwellers in the woodland. The Oxford English Dictionary
Online lists one definition for the word ‘vagrant’ as: ‘One who wanders or roams about; a person who
leads a wandering life; a rover’. Thus, the word ‘vagrant’ is not necessarily a pejorative term here.
Much of Wordsworth’s young life was dedicated to recklessly exploring nature, as he later remarks
(lines 68-86). These wood-dwellers could be explorers like the young Wordsworth, who revelled
in nature, but had yet to gain wisdom from it, as perhaps the hermit by the fire had. In the second
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stanza, ‘Tintern Abbey’ follows the progression, as Wordsworth’s path to enlightenment seems to
have done, from the world of the senses into the imagination and its relationship with infinity.
Lines 23-50 in ‘Tintern Abbey’ set forth Wordsworth’s vision of mutual intercourse, or communion,
between nature and the mind. Wordsworth himself retreats into memory, as a hermit might while
sitting alone. He creates a bridge stretching back to the din of cities, while yet remembering how
thoughts of nature gave him strength in times of trouble. Thus these lines emphasise the connectedness
between nature, time, and man:
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration: feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.17
Even when far away, Wordsworth could still see the landscape in his mind’s eye, and there,
through his communion with nature, he felt a sense of connectedness. He could gain sustenance
from the stream or the fruit, though miles away. Wordsworth makes a distinction between feeling
and thought here: his mind becomes ‘purer’, taking on the aspect of a mountain stream. Wordsworth
is in a sense personified by nature in taking on its aspects. He becomes stronger, like the ‘tall rock’.
He might be said to have gained ‘sensations sweet’ from an ‘orchard-tuft’.
Through his connection with nature, he is able to draw on the boundless potential of the earth. He
does not omit the virtue of humility from his philosophy as lines 33-36 reveal that Wordsworth does
not have the same idealised concept of himself that he does of nature. His use of the phrase ‘a good
man’s life’ suggests that Wordsworth is not talking about his own ‘acts of kindness and of love’. This
line is ambiguous, in that he does not hesitate to use the pronoun ‘I’ in the poem at any point other than
this. I posit that Wordsworth used this opportunity to draw the reader into the poem, and thus the
sense of connectedness becomes even more profound, and the vast moat of time is crossed in a bound.
Lines 36-50 comprise the crux of the poem, where Wordsworth describes endowment of his
prophetic vision:
Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.18
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Here, the connection to the landscape that Wordsworth invokes lends its own natural tranquillity
to the very soul of Wordsworth, and henceforth he is able to draw on nature’s potential through
self-surrender to both nature and his own mind. He is in such a state of peace that his own body
practically ceases motion, seemingly invoking a sort of trance in which his body and soul are unified.
Incredibly, he simultaneously suggests pantheism and monism here. This trance lends Wordsworth
the wisdom and insight to ‘see into the life of things.’ This ‘blessed mood’ invokes not only a mental
and emotional change, but a physical change as well. Wordsworth’s body seems to almost enter a
stasis, not unlike what appears to occur in transcendental meditation. The body slows down to a
point where it does not distract us, and indeed all corporeal things disappear. Wordsworth becomes
one with his vivid imagination, wherein lives his recollections of nature. Thomas Weiskel’s analysis
of the sublime state provides a useful parallel:
In the second phase [of the sublime moment], the habitual relation of the mind to an object suddenly
breaks down. Surprise or astonishment is the affective correlative, and there is an immediate
intuition of a disconcerting disproportion between inner and outer. Either mind or object is
suddenly in excess - and then both are, since their relation has become radically indeterminate
... a natural phenomenon catches us unprepared and unable to grasp its scale … In the third,
or reactive, phase of the sublime moment, the mind recovers the balance of outer and inner by
constituting a fresh relation between itself and the object such that the very indeterminacy which
erupted in phase two is taken as symbolizing the mind’s relation to a transcendent order.19
Wordsworth certainly experiences a disproportion between inner and outer in the above lines; he
is overwhelmed by the significance of his connection to infinity. Through dwelling on this aspect of
infinity, he is enlightened. All of this bespeaks the connection between man, nature, and time. Strictly
speaking, the dynamical sublime is usually concerned with objects that appear to be absolutely great
to our limited physical senses, and thus excite the imagination to represent the idea of infinity.
Contrarily, Wordsworth’s sublime is one concerned not with the infinity suggested by a specific
massive or multitudinous thing or group of things, but is instead inspired by the sense that all man,
nature and time are one unified whole.
Wordsworth’s language in the following passage is infused with the potential of the valley:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.20
The mood invoked here, and in much of the poem, is the subjunctive, as is the subject, inasmuch
as it is concerned with potential. He is less concerned with the landscape itself than he is with the
recollections he will have of it. Indeed, the subjunctive, the language of potentiality, runs through
this poem like a river of potentiality.
R.A. Foakes posited that the subjunctive voice in ‘Tintern Abbey’ is a sign of weakness:
[T]he shift in the poem from seeing to meaning, from description to explanation, involves
considerable effort. Wordsworth has owed to the Wye landscape recollections of ‘sensations
sweet’ (28) and feelings of pleasure. To move further he resorts to qualifiers and subjunctives;
these ‘feelings’ are ‘such, perhaps’ (32) as may have had a moral influence derived from ‘little,
nameless unremembered acts/Of kindness and of love’ (35-6). He goes on ‘Nor less, I trust/ to
them I may have owed another gift,’ (36-7) namely the blessed mood in which he sees into the life
of things. The connections are, at best, tenuous, and the associations are consciously put together
in the poet’s mind, with a kind of scrupulous knowledge that the evidence isn’t overwhelming.
They permit him to claim that he has ‘learned/to look on nature’ not for pleasure, but ‘chastened
and subdued’ by the ‘still, sad music of humanity’ (89-90, 92). The shift from an apparently
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unconscious absorption of the scene through the eye to conscious explanation is not simple, and
is hedged with hesitations. No wonder Wordsworth ends in ‘somewhat of a sad perplexity.21
One may view the subjunctive in ‘Tintern Abbey’ as ‘hesitations’, but I argue that the subjunctive
voice itself reflects the potential of nature in the valley. The subjunctive mood suggests not concrete
declaration, but a future uncertain. This is the essence of potential: if the potential of nature in the
valley was realised, then Wordsworth would have had for his visual nourishment ripe fruits, rather
than orchard tufts. Furthermore, the subjunctive voice is conducive to sublimity. The subjunctive
presents us with a signifier for things yet to manifest, thus we may only imagine the outcome.
The imagination is the seat of the sublime, and Wordsworth attests that nothing in nature can be
commensurate to images conjured by the sublime imagination.
Wordsworth’s sublime may in fact by positive, as Weiskel pointed out;22 although his mind is
caught up in infinity, he is one with the infinity that he is attempting to represent in his awe-struck
imagination. John Keats’ view that Wordsworth’s is an ‘Egotistical Sublime’, says it best. Wordsworth
seems to have founded his idea of the sublime on Kant’s assertion that in the state of the sublime,
the subject is exalted because he comprehends an idea of infinity, which is not apprehensible in the
world of he senses. Wordsworth builds on this exaltation and extends it to mean that the imagination
is ‘A thousand times more beautiful than the earth/ On which he dwells.’23 The egotistical sublime,
as Weiskel asserts in The Romantic Sublime, ‘is not a version of the sublime at all, if we are to speak
strictly and with historical reference.’24 He then states that it becomes worthwhile to analyse the
egotistical sublime if ‘we accept that it is not worthwhile or even possible to assign the poets to one
structure or another. In so central a case as Wordsworth, for example, one structure or the other will
predominate according to the critic’s emphasis or momentary interest.’25 For my own momentary
interest, the egotistical sublime is as valid as the sublime of which Kant and Burke treated.
Thus, the sublime here is not a negative state because nature is still a part of it. This differs from
the more traditional understanding of the sublime outlined by Burke and Kant above. By realizing
the initial connection between beauty and nature, and subsequently beauty and the mind, we are
able to emulate nature’s tranquillity and regenerative qualities and thus ‘see into the life of things’.
If there is a moral to be drawn from ‘Tintern Abbey,’ perhaps it is that when the mind is combined
with the power of nature, we may gain wisdom such as Wordsworth had. His message still holds
true today: any medical doctor or psychologist will tell you that balance is the key to a long life. ‘If
this/ Be but a vain belief’26, then for studying Wordsworth’s poetry our minds will nonetheless be
‘mansion[s] for all lovely forms’.27
Notes
J.-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. E. Rottenburg, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1994, pp.198199.
2
Adam Phillips (ed.), Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990, pp.36-37.
3
ibid., p.43.
4
ibid., p.53.
5
J. H. Bernard (ed.), Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, Prometheus Books, New York, 2000, pp.101-102.
6
ibid., p.106.
7
ibid., pp.114-115.
8
ibid., p.115.
9
ibid. ‘Reason consequently desires comprehension in one intuition, and so the [joint] presentation of all these members
of a progressively increasing series. It does not even exempt the infinite (space and past time) from this requirement; it
rather renders it unavoidable to think the infinite (in the judgment of common Reason) as entirely given (according to its
totality).’
10
ibid., p.125.
11
Lyotard, pp.54-55.
12
‘…And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing,
and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more
honourable than the beauty of the outward form’. Huntington Cairns, Edith Hamilton (eds), Plato: The Collected Dialogues,
1
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Limina, Volume 13, 2007
Ronald Kaiser Jr.
Random House, New York, 1966, p.106. 13
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, in David Damrosch (ed.), The Longman
Anthology, Longman, New York, 2003, p.352.
14
Wordsworth, p.352.
15
Burke, p.43.
16
Wordsworth, pp.352-353.
17
ibid., p.353.
18
Wordsworth, p.353.
19
Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976, pp.23-32.
20
Wordsworth, p.354.
21
R.A. Foakes, ‘Beyond The Visible World: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads’, Romanticism, vol. 5, no. 1, 1999,
p.58.
22
Weiskel, p.353.
23
Wordsworth, p.353.
24
Weiskel, p.136.
25
ibid., p.137.
26
Wordsworth, p.353.
27
ibid.
53
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http://limina.arts.uwa.edu.au