The Lucy poems
There have been myths about the poetry of
Wordsworth and specially about the Lucy poems. Different critics and literary scholars
have said so many things about the presence of Lucy in certain poems of
Wordsworth .Some have described him as real character and some as imaginary one
.The myths have further deepened as Wordsworth himself is silent about Lucy.1
He has left it for the readers to speculate about the character. As no one is
decided about the mundane existence of the character I found it as an interesting
subject for myself and tried to explore the character. Exploration of the
character has been my objective for writing this research paper. I too was
ambiguous on this matter for pretty long time but when I explored the matter in
recent years I found myself at ease and reconciled to the view that the
character may be or may not be real but the spontaneous feelings of the poet
are real and powerful.
The Lucy poems are, in fact, written as a series of
five poems composed by William
Wordsworth
, the English Romantic poet, between1798 and
1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration
between Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. The ‘Lucy poems’ consist of ‘Strange
fits of passion have I known’, ‘ She
dwelt among the untrodden ways’, ‘ I
travelled among unknown men’, ‘Three
years she grew in sun and shower’, and ‘ A
slumber did my spirit seal
’ In the series of poems , Wordsworth dealt with abstract
ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing and death. The poems were written
during a short period while the poet lived in Germany. Although the poems
individually deal with a variety of themes, as a series they focus on the
poet's longing for the company of his friend Coleridge, who had stayed in
England , and his increasing impatience with his sister Dorothy , who
travelled with him abroad . In such a situation of frustration Wordsworth seeks
to examine non-reciprocated love for the idealized character of Lucy, an
English girl who died young. The idea of her death weighs heavily on the poet
throughout the series which we see reflected in a melancholic, elegiac tone.
Whether Lucy was based on a real woman or was a figment of poet's
imagination has long been a matter of debate. Generally being reluctantly
silent about the poems, Wordsworth never revealed the details of her origin or
identity. Some scholars speculate that Lucy is based on his sister Dorothy,
while others see her as an entirely fictitious character. However, most of the
critics agree that she is essentially a literary device upon whom he could
project, meditate, reflect and vent his emotions and feelings conveniently to
contribute to a sublime literature. We too should believe that by creating an
idealized and fantasized character the poet expressed his poetics from the innermost
chamber of the heart and satisfied his quest for literary aesthetics to the desired
extent. Nevertheless, as Wordsworth's mind was essentially factual, it would be
rash to say that Lucy is entirely fictitious.2 It may be possible that
Wordsworth was thinking of Margaret Hutchinson, Mary Hutchinson’s sister who
had died. There is no evidence, however, that the poet loved any of the
Hutchinsons other than Mary. It is more likely that Margaret's death influenced
but this fact may not be the foundation for Lucy.
In 1980, Hunter Davies contended that the series
was written for the poet's sister Dorothy, but found the Lucy–Dorothy allusion as
extravagant or bizarre. After Wordsworth began to write the ‘Lucy poems’,
Coleridge wrote, ‘ Some months ago Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime
Epitaph / whether it had any reality, I cannot say. — Most probably, in some
gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his Sister might die.’ It
is, however, possible that Wordsworth simply feared her death and did not wish
it even subconsciously. Literary scholar Karl Kroeber argues that Lucy
possesses a double existence - her actual historical existence and her idealized
existence in the poet's mind . In
the poem, Lucy is both actual and idealized, but her actuality is relevant only
insofar as it makes manifest the significance implicit in the actual girl.
Hartman holds the same view; to
him Lucy is seen "entirely from within the poet, so that this modality may
be the poet's own", but then he argues, "she belongs to the category
of spirits who must still become human ... the poet describes her as dying
at a point at which she would have been humanized ." 3 The literary historian Kenneth Johnston summarizes that
Lucy was created as the personification of Wordsworth's muse, and the group of poems as a whole is a series of invocations to
a Muse feared dead .4 The poems are written from the viewpoint of a
lover who has long viewed the object of his affection from a distance and who
is now affected by her death. Yet Wordsworth structured the poems so that they
are not about any one person who has died, instead they appear written about a
figure representing the poet's lost inspiration. Lucy is represented in all
five poems as sexless. Thus it is unlikely that the poet ever realistically viewed
her as a possible lover.
The
series is generally considered to examine two broad themes – Nature and death. According
to critic Norman Lacey, Wordsworth built his reputation as a "poet of
nature". Early works, such as " Tintern Abbey ", can be viewed as odes
to his experience of nature. His poems can also be seen as lyrical meditations on the fundamental
character of the natural world. Wordsworth said that, as a youth, nature
stirred "an appetite, a feeling and a love", but by the time he wrote
Lyrical Ballads, it evoked "the still sad music of humanity". The
development of poetry is systematic and the thought underlining the poetry is
sublime.The five "Lucy poems" are often interpreted as representing
Wordsworth's opposing views of nature as well as meditations on the cycle of
life. They describe a variety of relationships between humanity and nature. For
example, Lucy can be seen as a connection between humanity and nature, as a
"boundary being, nature sprite and human, yet not quite either. She
reminds us of the traditional mythical person who lives, ontologically, an
intermediate life, or mediates various realms of existence."5 Although
the poems evoke a sense of loss, they also hint at the completeness of Lucy's
life—she was raised by nature and survives in the memories of others.
The
series presents nature as a force benevolent and malign. It is shown at times to be oblivious to and
uninterested in the safety of humanity. Hall argues," In all of these
poems, nature would seem to betray the heart that loves her ".The imagery
used to evoke these notions serves to separate Lucy from everyday reality. The
literary theorist Frances
Ferguson notes that
the "flower similes and metaphors become impediments rather than aids to
any imaginative visualization of a woman; the flowers do not simply locate
themselves in Lucy's cheeks, they expand to absorb the whole of her ... The act
of describing seems to have lost touch with its goal—description of Lucy."
The
poems Wordsworth wrote, focus on the dead and dying. The "Lucy poems"
follow this trend, and often fail to delineate the difference between life and
death. Each creates an ambiguity between the sublime and nothingness, as they attempt to
reconcile the question of how to convey the death of a girl intimately
connected to nature. They describe a rite of passage from innocent childhood to
corrupted maturity and, according to Hartman, "center on a death or a
radical change of consciousness which is expressed in semi-mythical form; and
they are, in fact, Wordsworth's nearest approach to a personal myth." The
narrator is affected greatly by Lucy's death and cries out in "She
dwelt" of " the difference to me !". Yet in "A
slumber" he is spared from trauma by sleep. 6
The
reader's experience of Lucy is filtered through the narrator's perception. Her death suggests that nature can
bring pain to all, even to those who loved her. According to the British
classical and literary scholar of 19th – 20th century, H. W. Garrod , "The truth is, as I believe,
that between Lucy's perfection in Nature and her death there is, for
Wordsworth, really no tragic antithesis at all." Hartman expands on this
view to extend the view of death and nature to art in general: "Lucy,
living, is clearly a guardian spirit, not of one place but of all English
places ... while Lucy, dead, has all nature for her monument. The series
is a deeply humanized version of the death of Pan, a lament on the decay of English natural feeling .7
We are supposed to understand the pure heart of the poet rather than going too
much into the contradictory views and speculations of critics and scholars
especially in a situation where the author himself is silent on the matter. .
REFERENCES
1^ Jones 1995, 4
2^ Moorman 1968, 423
3^ Hartman 1967, 158
5 ^ Hartman 1967, 158
7 ^Hartman
1987, 43
