Journal 1 - Byatt on poets and first changed mind

 

 

6/28/2000

Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time by A. S. Byatt

[Note: brought in Denmark]

 

               Wordsworth “Vaudracour and Julia”

               Looking at the picture of William and Mary Wordsworth it is not hard to see how the idea of a dysfunctional relationship.  She is looking at him but he looks off.  The poet and the helper, not the poet and wife.

               Byatt reports that both Wordsworth and Coleridge did not dress in the fashion of the day, preferring simple clothes.  Always though about Wordsworth that way but for some reason not Coleridge.  I have always associated Coleridge with the fantastic element and for some reason have always id’ed Coleridge with Byron, seeing the two of them alike for some strange reason.  Perhaps the bad marriages.  But this book shows me more of Coleridge the man.  He is becoming less of a figure and more of a real human being.  Even “Dejection an Ode” does not seem to reveal the full character of the poet.  It’s strange but for some reason he always seems distant.

               Byatt writes of the overuse of laudanum esp. in regards to children, sounds like the same thing Ritalin.

               Remarks to attributed to Robert Southey in New System of Education in comparing Lancaster’s misuse of wet sand as opposed to Dr Bell’s dry sand, “Southey said that the same necessity for minute directions was shown by the English Christmas pudding cooked in France according to a receipt that forgot to specify it should be boiled in a cloth – ‘the unhappy pudding made its appearance all aboard in a soup dish” (189)

               S.T.C uses the name Nehmiah Higgenbottom (220).

Charles Lamb

    

           Is not Charles Lamb’s tale more tragic than anyone’s?  He gave up his life in order to care for his sister who killed their mother.   How many people can be that Christian?  Yet, it is amazing to realize that Tales from Shakespeare was written after the event and not before.

               Wordsworth seems to be [more conservative] later in life.  This seems to be prevalent in his treatment of De Quincy.  Byatt points out it wasn’t just the immorality of the relationship as but the girl’s social standing [his wife’s].  Almost seems hypocritical coming from Wordsworth.  Not in regards to his relationship inf France and the illegitimate child that it produced (what happened to her?) but in regards to his poems.  Always centering on the non-rich, low classes.  It’s okay to write about the lower class but not to marry them.  Yet how different was the social class between De Quincy and his bride?

               Wordsworth, seen though Byatt’s criticism seems to remind me of friend x [holding back the name of the former friend.  No, it’s not you.  Haven’t talked to this person in 20 years].  So sensitive, so touchy, so distant.  Couldn’t have been easy being friends with him , say the wrong thing, offer constructive criticism and it is taken he wrong way.

               Byatt’s book enables you to attain a better grasp of who Wordsworth and Coleridge were in the context of the time.  They grew out of the radicalism, would Byron and Shelly have done the same had they lived?  Godwin [William Godwin, Mary Shelley’s dad, Mary Wollstonecraft’s husband]  himself seems to have been not so much as a radical as well.  But not so radical as wanting to give women the vote, yet Wordsworth had women in his household and drew upon his sister’s journal, no denying that she had a brain.

               But is nice to know that the poets who seem to have all the answers are as just as confused and full of self doubt as I am .  Yet they seemed to live.  Bud did they feel like as I do?  Coleridge, I think; Wordsworth perhaps as a youth but as an older adult?  Wordsworth seems so pompous yet, for some reason this image fits his poetry.  I’m not sure howl some of his poetry is so beautiful  but in some way, it [his pomposity] does not surprise one.  Perhaps it has to do with the idea of hermits.  Cutting yourself off from the whole world cannot be a good thing.  Poverty is romanticism but in reality it is not pleasant.  Wordsworth seems to be of two minds on the subject.  Nature can be violent, dangerous, and beautiful.  Can a person truly be one with Nature if an aspect of nature kills them?

 

7/1/2000

Fortress in the Eye of Time by C J Cherryh

               Stopped reading this, not in the mood.

[Note: this was started on the flight back from Copenhagen.  I do not fly well, so it is not a surprise that I paused this book.  I had read it already and enjoyed it.  This would have been a re-read].