That which is the most real is also the most difficult to express. Thus it is that, throughout history, artists of every sort have asked one question over and over and over again: what is reality? Tangible things are hardly real at all, or, if they are real, it is only in a weak, helpless, whining sense of reality. Who is to say that the eyes and the hands are trustworthy? Sight and touch are but mere symbols. What the artist needs is rapture--rapture, passion, revelation--this is the true reality.
It is a shame that William Wordsworth is read as a Romantic poet. Yet the shame does not lie in his romance--only in that he is nothing more than a Romantic. A well known truth of higher knowledge is that, in order to achieve deeper learning in any field, one must first break down all barriers between oneself and the thing to be studied. Barriers, though they are often built from prejudice and cowardice and stone, are not always. They can be nothing more than unconscious assumptions. They can be good, useful tools of categorization. But, still, they are barriers. What if, for a moment, one were to forget that William Wordsworth lived and wrote and even embodied the Romantic period of nineteenth century England? For the “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” concretize more than a romantic grocery list. Yes, there is the beauty and innocence of childhood. Yes, there is the gentle, praiseworthy spirit of nature. Yes the intense individuality, and yes the glorified feeling, and yes the quest for perfect serenity; but was Wordsworth this only?
What if “Tintern Abbey” were cracked out of its Romantic box, and set against something a little colder? It would probably freeze at the edge of Realism, unless carefully, carefully a single work is
pulled out and coupled with it. The temperatures could blend and mitigate, then. If one pushes all Realism aside except for a solitary work, then he might just find a bit of purity, even Romantic purity, buried in the cold. A white Pomeranian, for example.
Then he moves further still. He stumbles back upon hitting twentieth century Modernism--surely there is no romance here. There are no eyes here.
Never, never can a string be found which weaves through them all. Never a string strong through William Wordsworth and strong through Anton Chekhov and strong through T. S. Eliot. Never while the boxes remain intact, at least. But what were these men searching for? What were they trying to express? There’s a reason the humanity of today reaches for classic literature when he needs to feel understood.
Reality. Where, what, how is reality?
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Thus says William Wordsworth in “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (Lawall 696-697).
“The greater part of one’s time and energy went on business that was no use to anyone, and on discussing the same thing over and over again, and there was nothing to show for it all but a stunted, earthbound existence and a round of trivialities, and there was nowhere to escape to, you might as well be in a madhouse or a convict settlement” (Lawall 1498). Thus says Anton Chekhov in “The Lady with the Dog.”
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
Thus says T. S. Eliot in “The Hollow Men” (Lawall 2020).
Is yet the string apparent? Perhaps not at first glance. Reality is among all things most static--most constant and reliable. But then again, reality is among all things most transient. Is the string tying together these great men the reality itself, or only the search and thirst for reality?
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns,
And round the ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things
(Lawall 697-698).
“Tintern Abbey” is not a poem simply about nature. It is about the soul of nature, which, for Wordsworth, is reality, or at least as close to reality as any human can venture. Reality is the thing which “connect[s]/The landscape with the quiet of the sky” (Lawall 696). Wordsworth clearly expresses that the truly real can, in the realm of tangibility, exist only in symbol. Nature is this symbol. Throughout the poem Wordsworth refers to the tangible world as “unintelligible,” “joyless,” and “dreary.” This is the tangible world only, though. This is not the essence, not the reality of humanity.
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth;but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue
(Lawall 697).
Humanity, at its center, is reality. Nature symbolizes the true nature of humans, for what is more real and more inexpressible than human experience? In the last stanza of his poem, Wordsworth turns from a general audience to a specific audience: his sister. An ongoing debate amongst scholars is whether Wordsworth, here, is referring to his actual sister, or to nature herself. Perhaps he speaks to both. His sister takes on the spirit of nature--unspoilt and wild. The true nature of humanity. “Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her” (Lawall 698).
“Gurov told himself that, when you came to think of it, everything in the world is beautiful really, everything but our own thoughts and actions, when we lose sight of the higher aims of life, and of our dignity as human beings” (Lawall 1495). The innate dignity of humanity: strange, how something of Realism, when presented outside of its box, sounds so Romantic. The title of Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Lady with the Dog,” conveys the key theme of the story: depth concealed by complacency. Reality concealed by perceived reality. Chekhov tells the story as if not a word of it is of any importance. A sizable paragraph near the beginning of the story illustrates what Gurov and ‘the lady with the dog’ learn about each other throughout their first evening together. Chekhov tells where each character is from, their personal and business relations, what each thought of the weather that day, and that they really did not care about what they talked about. Not until the end of the paragraph does the
reader learn what should be a most vital piece of information: “Further, Gurov learned that her name was Anna Sergeyevna” (Lawall 1492).
How is humanity important, if the name of the title character is presented only as an afterthought? Humanity, in “The Lady with the Dog,” is dead. Reality is swallowed up by superficial reality. “The sea had roared like this long before there was any Yalta or Oreanda, it was roaring now, and it would go on roaring, just as indifferently and hollowly when we had passed away” (Lawall 1495). For Chekhov, humanity truly exists in those uncontrollable, undeniable emotions and longings. It exists in that which necessitates separation from superficial, perceived reality. Throughout the story, Anna expresses a fear that Gurov considers her “just an ordinary woman” (Lawall 1496). Gurov tries to convince himself that Anna is ordinary. He asks, “Had there been anything exquisite, poetic, anything instructive or even amusing about his relations with Anna Sergeyevna?” (Lawall 1497). The answer to his question, of course, is a yes within a no. He also asks “What on earth are all these people, this orchestra for?” (Lawall 1500). What is it all for? The question of reality. Wordsworth asked the same question, but came more easily to the answer. Chekhov’s answer comes more slowly but is, at the bottom, identical to Wordsworth’s. Reality is that beneath the surface--that which “rolls through all things” (Lawall 698).
T. S. Eliot begins with half the answer.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry glass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
(Lawall 2019).
“The Hollow Men,” by T. S. Eliot. At first Eliot’s work appears the most abstract when set beside the writings of Wordsworth and Chekhov. But, far from being the most abstracted, it is the most clear. Eliot writes to ensure no mistake. Humanity is hollow. Man is not even real. “Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion;” (Lawall 2019). Reality is discovered through that which does not exists--through “death’s other Kingdom” (Lawall 2019). Near the end of the poem, Eliot begins referring to “the Shadow.” Shadow is often perceived as false reality; one thinks of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” But, in Eliot, the Shadow is the thing of importance. It is reality. “Between the idea and the reality...the motion and the act...the conception and the creation...the emotion and the response...the desire and the spasm...the potency and the existence...the essence and the descent/Falls the Shadow” (Lawall 2021).
Eliot’s nightmarish Shadow falls starkly against Wordsworth’s motherly spirit. It falls starkly
against Chekhov’s separation. There is no separation for Eliot, just empty space. The string, though, is clear. It has not even frayed throughout its journey.
For a closer association, one need only look to nature. She is obvious in “Tintern Abbey.”
Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
(Lawall 696).
But she is still there, in “The Lady with the Dog.” “Not a leaf stirred, the grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow roar of the sea came up to them, speaking of peace, of the eternal sleep lying in wait for us all” (Lawall 1495).
Even in Eliot is nature apparent.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
(Lawall 2020).
Throughout history the question of reality has been asked, and throughout history humans have looked to nature for an answer. Is nature the embodiment of reality? Is nature the space between the perceived world and reality? Is nature a symbol of the reality which does not even exist as humans understand existence? All for the same question really. When the boxes are broken, the string remains and grows stronger. Strong, steel string. Maybe that is the answer. What is reality? Reality is a bit of string.
Bibliography
Lawall, Sarah. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature: Volume 2. New York, NY: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.
