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Dorothy Wordsworth's Return to Tintern Abbey Author(s): James Soderholm Source: New Literary History, Vol. 26, No.

2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 309-322 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057284 Accessed: 05/03/2009 20:13
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Dorothy Wordsworth's

Return

to Tin tern Abbey

James Soderholm
most famous contribution to Lyrical William Wordsworth's to in one Ballads (1798), "Tintern Abbey," is direcdy alluded of Dorothy Wordsworth's poems, written over thirty years later, on sick bed." Most of the recent debates about my "Thoughts

entided

the importance of Dorothy's place in her brother's poem underestimate the critics of "Tintern Abbey," there are those this "sister poem." Among in his myth of memory and those includes Dorothy who feel that William to include her. Indeed, this disagreement who feel that he only pretends the positions of the about Dorothy's place in the poem encapsulates of romantic critics poetry. major I will discuss the last section of "Tintern Abbey," After analyzing on I to the it sick bed." will that my argue replies direcdy "Thoughts in the last lines of her brother's poem. futurity evoked her echoes brother's earlier works, borrowing from poem Dorothy's once borrowed them as liberally as William from her journals. The us to of reexamine the function of images helps poetic intermingling of address and apostrophe: evocations figurai subjectivity produced by to another person. I will conclude with a few turning, and returning, of recent critical views of both Wordsworths. remarks about the meaning hopes of

I In "Tintern Abbey," William presents his gains and losses in a series of affirmations and abnegations: the poet recompenses himself for his lost to it with abundance pare away, revealing how little youth spiritual only he actually needs to sustain himself at the ripe age of twenty-eight. This to reach a solid for the superiority of adulthood argument appears conclusion two-thirds of the way through the poem.
Therefore A lover of the meadows and I am still

the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,?both what they half create,

New Literary History,

1995, 26: 309-322

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And what perceive; and the of my the pleased of language purest well to the recognise sense,

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In nature The The anchor guide,

guardian

the nurse, thoughts, of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.1 The William, that his nature, on these have ended woodnotes. But poem might graceful as if committed to further self-abnegation, on us to tell goes not on does the of instruction happiness depend spiritual so long as his sister to is restore there him. Dorothy
Nor If I were not thus taught, me here should perchance, I the more

Suffer my genial spirits to decay:


For thou art with upon the banks

Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures Of thy wild eyes.

in the shooting

lights (11. 112-19)

William

intent on showing us just how litde he needs to keep his Her brother's "former heart," Dorothy spirits becomes his saving grace, or Beatrice, with an important difference: in sees a the shooting her not of wild the of vision but God eyes poet lights the image of what he once was. seems from diminishment. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and never her Knowing The heart that Nature that loved this prayer make, did betray . . .

(11. 119-23) lines unite address and apostrophe. In the turn to impassioned both the lyric "I" and the addressee To be Dorothy, vividly materialize. more precise, in the addressee.2 The traditional the lyric "I" is reflected "a direct and explicit address is, M. H. Abrams observes, apostrophe an either to absent person or to an abstract entity."8 But what is the an apostrophe to a present person? How addressed figurai nature of to Dorothy does the address/apostrophe enjamb the "figured" and the "real"? David Simpson argues that Wordsworth's poetry metaphorically trees into tropes, as if the poet's whole encodes the world, transforming These

dorothy

Wordsworth's

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But what is the force of this activity vocation were endless figuration. a real person, someone the "real" is, presumably, both on the when scene and part of the event of the poem? To put it another way, what is an the relation between address to a "figuring the real" and apostrophic human figure? Many recent critics are not exercised this by question at the end of "Tintern they do not take the turn to Dorothy never gets outside These critics believe that William Abbey" seriously. the orbit of his sublime meditations and that he uses Dorothy for his own poetic ends. this about the of Indeed, suspicion authenticity turn to Dorothy has given much William's criticism its high moral tone, as ifWilliam must be taken to task for not actually turning to Dorothy and inviting her to say something. The apostrophic has an important precedent address to Dorothy in occurs when William the poem which doubts whether his suddenly even as he of the Wye are as spiritually profound, memories redemptive, had believed. because If this
Be but a vain belief, and In darkness yet, oh! how oft? amid the many shapes

Of joyless daylight; when


Unprofitable, Have hung How O oft, and upon the

the fretful stir


of the world,

fever

in spirit, thou sylvan Wye!

of my heart? the beatings to thee, have I turned wanderer thro' the woods,

How often has my spirit turned to thee! (11.49-57) Also a "wanderer thro' the woods," Dorothy is closely associated in her brother's mind with the sylvan Wye he apostrophizes in this passage. Just as conventional revitalizes him and shows the soundness of apostrophe his beliefs, so his later turn to Dorothy profoundly consoles him for the passing of time by taking him out of time. Having momentarily recap tured himself in Dorothy's offers a prayer for her to be not eyes, William the curator of his achievement, for all but, in herself, "amansion merely lovely forms" (1. 140). William wishes for her to have a perfect memory, to serve "as a / For all sweet sounds and harmonies" (11. dwelling-place It is as ifWilliam turns his sister into the whose 141-42). itself, Wye image she reflects and carries in her eyes, her mind an abbey reverber of Dorothy ating with the still sad music of blank verse. This conversion into naturalized a movement in initiated the first abbey completes to the river apostrophe Wye. At the end of the poem, William orchestrates perceptions, including

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Dorothy's,
present

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for he

is especially

concerned

for her

not

to forget

this

moment.

If I should

be where

Nor, perchance? can hear I no more from thou thy wild then eyes forget these gleams

nor catch voice, Thy Of past existence?wilt We stood

That on the banks of this delightful


together . . .

stream (11. 146-51)

in Dorothy what he most fears in himself: loss of youth and an So he makes and his reminder of himself, lines, memory. emphatic what she will stand to lose if she slips into forgetfulness. He finishes his with yet another plea for memory. prayer-poem He fears
thou Nor wilt then forget, after many many years wanderings, Of absence, these and steep woods lofty were And this green pastoral landscape, More both for themselves and for dear, That

cliffs, to me, thy sake!

(11. 155-59) Dorothy's the collapse "the poetry sence?and as well as his future absence presence suggests toWilliam once called of the very possibility of what Robert Langbaum of experience." The of his own future ab imagination the simultaneous creation of a "future" memory in the

of Dorothy?is William's (or rather dwelling) person way of overcoming one in Emily Dickinson's what later finds self-canceling, haunting "I could not see to see?." William wants to see to it that prolepsis: richer for her companion Dorothy will see to it that his past experience, of her lasts. His evocation also sustains him, for in his ship, apostrophic for her he becomes what his first fantasy suggests the sylvan apostrophe a stream been of for has him: steady Wye inspiration?Mnemosyne? from which the ancient poets drank their memories and their epics. What has the critical tradition made of these last fifty lines, this long and impassioned coda? Langbaum believes that in these final lines connects William "in one concrete vision himself, his sister, their love for each other future, and for nature, nature's love for them, and past, present, and Most older critics echo Langbaum and timelessness."4 's as a the end of the in faithful of poem interpretation expression seeing the poet's need for, and love of, his sister. Geoffrey Hartman calls the turn to Dorothy "a vow, a prayer, an inscription for Dorothy's heart, an can survive the speaker's death."5 And in intimation of how this moment time

dorothy

Wordsworth's

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his early work on the romantic poets, Harold Bloom writes that "The most beautiful lines in 'Tintern Abbey' invoke the possibility of per for renewal Dorothy."6 petual These are sympathetic readings in the sense that they see the turn to as Dorothy generously including her in the poet's landscape of memory. But those outside theWordsworth circle wonder what his address to her more amounts to. Are these lines than a self-inscription? Is actually an to William's alibi of most One of the pivot Dorothy sympathy? recent critics of romantic poetry, Marjorie Levinson attacks important William's routines and the complicity of his apos transcendentalizing tolic critics. The tone of Levinson's of binary oppositions deconstruction and historical amnesia in "Tintern Abbey" implies that William might have written a better poem, a poem open both to its historical moment and to the poet's sister. For Levinson, William's seals him in poetry sees William's of politics and history. Levinson against the encroachments as "a decidedly turn to Dorothy feeble gesture towards externality" by which he "cancels the social... by allowing no scope for its operation."7 In his essay on the figurai status of apostrophe, Culler invites Jonathan us to "reflect on the crucial that fact this figure though paradoxical which seems to establish relations between the self and the other can in fact be read as an act of radical interiorization and solipsism."8 Many recent critics of the poem see only the solipsistic aspect of apostrophe. They ignore, as Culler does not, the way in which an apostrophe may a lyric indeed establish a relation between speaker and the addressee. of address and apostrophe Mistrust of William's parallels suspicion women as to evoke substantial in his presences ability poetry. Gayatri concludes that "in the texts of the Great Tradition, Spivak, for example, the most occluded and transparendy is remotely mediating figure for woman."9 Allowing more in "Tintern scope Dorothy Abbey" would involve letting the poem become more dialogically presumably open to so not a is that she silent and auditor but rather her, merely appreciative a full in a more dual-voiced discourse.10 Criticizing William participant a critical for his masculinist has become interiority commonplace, a ten a in the last In recent article, Elizabeth Fay years. topos, practically
writes: "The Wordsworthian solution . . . positions the woman as

helpmate
cause

only: to see

nonseductive,
These attacks

disenchanting,
pervert William's

and

disempowered
address to Dorothy

be

non-verbal."11

it as an expression of his narcissism rather than an of an ecstatic appreciation Dorothy's attempt to evoke a self-sufficiency, former life both from and in that ecstasy, and finally a prayer offered to the redemptive of see to reluctance how William agency memory.12 Fay's is in fact seduced and enchanted by Dorothy suggests the critics feelings of exile. in order

314

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as a kind-hearted If early critics thought of the turn to Dorothy a the of of and Levinson memory, gesture poet's private myth socializing in Dorothy and others see only the phantom and, correspondingly, only inWilliam. the reactionary egomaniac They wish "Tintern Abbey" were more dialogic, with Dorothy of her own. The desire to given a discourse see all literature through from a zeal for multiple results dialogic glasses texts into documents of either transforms voices. Such enthusiasm in in that their finds them or, venture, failing wanting heteroglossia resistance. The early critics read the end of "Tintern Abbey" monologic as an honest tribute to a beloved sister. Recent critics, on the other hand, to favor a poet who turned his back on the French do not wish For these critics, its descent into despotism. Revolution, despite rapid reformation is a grand evasion of shift from social to mental William's to radical politics.13 The poet's turn to his sister his early commitment an inauthentic encounter with faith his bad repeats by representing or the social world. Because Dorothy is the reader's surrogate otherness our responses, we may take this as a in the poem, silendy programming see turn to Dorothy as a subde coercion of the thus and personal affront, a feeble gesture toward us. Our response may then take the sympathies, for not writing a certain kind of poem, either form of criticizing William a poem of social realism or a poem in which the listener enjoys a more restrictive way of reading This "subject position." or recent critics feel in alienation exile the shows William's apostrophe as to Dorothy fails not if the to "Tintern Abbey," relation apostrophe us part to as us it make fails well, because only to evoke her but to evoke one of its wanderers. of the event of the poem, part of its salutary fiction, visible and vocal with Dorothy
best evidence

relations William's critics have litde interest in understanding or 1832. For critics unhappy about William's in 1793,1798, the poem offers the to the French Revolution, response "reactionary" Exiled
of his various betrayals, occlusions, and distances. But

there are many


felt a certain

ways
closeness

to measure
to the

distance
poet and

and
his

intimacy. The
a comradery

older

critics
encour

poem,

saw depicted in "Tintern Abbey." Materialist aged by the intimacy they more critical distance and with treat "Tintern William and critics Abbey" as lacking the social dimension earlier critics see the turn to Dorothy recent of "Tintern critics to acknowledge. were happy Indeed, many to and use William the attack, both his poem against highlight, Abbey" of it. to the social and his egotistical resistance appropriations the lines reads for example, John Barrell In "The Uses of Dorothy," was once" as "no in thee what I "Oh! yet a litde while / May I behold to arrest Dorothy's or less than a prayer to nature more development, and for his benefit."14 But William says "a litde while," not from here to eternity. Barrell's lack of sympathy for the turn to Dorothy encourages

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flourish: the following metaphorical "Dorothy's growth to autonomous as it turns out, simply recapitulate Wordsworth's will not, subjectivity in him, a less comfortable than own; it will precipitate, subject-position un he now claims to occupy, in which he will be unguarded, unguided, an audible of he be without the where will nursed, guarantor fiduciary to his own language, no longer able to appeal symbols that compose as Bank of and the the value of meaning Dorothy England, underwriting In other words, William, he issues" (162-63). the coins and banknotes to Barrell, wishes to retard the growth of his sister so he can according over her. Dorothy's loss. Having gain is William's enjoy superiority worst Barrell confirms his about the poet cashiered William, suspicions are in darker left to commercial metaphors whose meanings by investing so recent our coerced critics insist, contrary many imaginations. Why do to all biographical that William evidence, secredy has it in for Dorothy her? when he writes a poem including and even celebrating not that William "has the David Bromwich argues slightest intention a own her and that he "was of making Dorothy gift of experience" could his the without wisdom. He took enjoy jealous of strength Dorothy she would need his wisdom when at his revenge by proving how much out like his.15 I do not know what justifies last her childlike powers gave see nor do I the need for words this tone, such as "slightest" and on "Tintern Abbey" and the French Revolution, "revenge." In his essay a good a mere case for not considering makes Bromwich William ends up echoing cynical interpretations reactionary, but he nevertheless in the poem, of Dorothy's which have become position interpretations in recent years, a moralistic almost de rigueur reflex. These critics do to consider not want were the possibility that Dorothy and William a gift of their own experience, a each other of the indeed, gift making If these critics paid more to of their experience. attention see was a life and this would that she writings Dorothy's they gift to recall the gift of her journals accepted, just as her brother accepted certain persons and images for his poetry. I am sympathetic to these I do not think they reveal the inequities transactions because and recent critics have heaped upon them and because anxieties I believe is more the turn to Dorothy and open-ended than these complicated very poetry
reductions suggest.

"Tintern Abbey" ends with a prolonged address to Dorothy, who is unnamed but hardly absent. Abrams has recendy written that "it is hard to imagine how Wordsworth could have made itmore patent that, in the is both a real and a crucially functional 'other.' He poem, Dorothy us awareness stardes into of the presence, devotes the last fifty lines to her, and gives her has been attacked the salient role of concluding room for not making more the poem."16 William for Dorothy, for not

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an authentic at the social world she represents. This gesture making attack disregards the important liaison between the conventional and use of apostrophe in the poem. and address It ignores, personal the important fact that Dorothy does remember her brother's moreover, to "Tintern Abbey." Neither and writes a "sister poem" exhortations nor critics have treated Dorothy's poem? sympathetic suspicious a on sick bed"?as If one insists on my "Thoughts companion piece. into multi-voicedness, then Dorothy's seeing all genres happily novelized seem to for would it shows that consider, poem answering important can be both into the future intertextually lyrics open-ended, reaching and into the past.

II In Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, Susan Levin collects Dorothy's which includes "Thoughts on my sick-bed." At poetry in an appendix, the end of this poem, Dorothy direcdy alludes to "Tintern Abbey" and, more toWilliam's final prayer to her. particularly,
And has the remnant of my life

Been pilfered
And have Touched in my

of this sunny Spring?


prelusive no heart sounds echoing string?

its own

Ah! say not so?the hidden life Couchant within this feeble frame Hath been enriched by kindred gifts,
That, undesired, unsought-for, came

With joyful heart in youthful days


When fresh each the upon season earliest the mossy in its Round Celandine ground; I welcomed Glittering

With busy eyes I pierced


and In quest of known a ?The lamp primrose

the lane
tmknown on things, its fortress rock,

The

silent butterfly

spreading

itswings,

The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath, The daffodil dancing in the breeze, The carolling thrush, on his naked perch,
Towering above the budding trees.

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Wordsworth's

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317
home, the Mute?

no cottage-hearth of Nature Companions the Still, The Stirring, Our To all we gave our

our longer were we, the Loquacious,

sympathy. careless rain

Yet When

never

in those

spring-time

days in rock,

field,

or bower

Was but a fountain of earthly hope A promise of fruits 8c the splendid flower. No! then I never felt a bliss That might with that compare
Which, Came to my couch piercing on the vernal air. of rest,

When
The Culled From

loving Friends an offering brought,


first flowers from nooks of the the precincts to Memory sad year, of our dear. home,

With

some

Unprompted To consciousness

the work thoughts and unbidden, no

was

done,

But joy it brought

to my hidden life,
longer hidden.

I felt

a Power

unfelt weakness,

before, languor, walk pain;

Controlling It bore me

to the Terrace

I trod the Hills again;?


No in this lonely prisoner I saw the green Banks of Friend room, the Wye,

Recalling
Bard, No Or ?I And

thy prophetic words,


from infancy!

Brother,

need even

of motion,

or of air:

strength, scenes;

the breathing of Nature's thought with Memory I was

loveliest there.17

Levin claims that this poem is "an ambiguous dialogue with the poems of William's the old while great decade, celebrating interdependence own to fit her the is words It Levin's (DW 135). shaping struggle" I shall argue, which creates an ambiguous criticism, dialogue with the poems of William.

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In her analysis of the poem's opening stanzas, Levin reshapes words to "The enact her own hermeneutical word 'pilfered' calls atten struggle: tion to itself, especially as placed in Dorothy's poem with 'prelusive' and but also connected words sound, by their possible relation by 'piercing,' to the language ofWilliam's and Dorothy's poetry. Her observations ship were other writers taken (pilfered) sounds, first years ago. Her by sense ofthat now 'pierce' his in the variegated to her brother's, prelusive with 'see thoroughly word: 'discern,' into,' 'puncture,' 'penetrate pain,' a sharp instrument has indeed been into'_Her being 'pilfered'" 'pass assertions? Levin's analyses contain several half-formed (DW136-37). as "possible relationship," more like innuendo than argument?such as at something hint which unseemly only to treat the unseemly phrases were observations a fact a sentence that Dorothy's later. The charge the actual relation "pilfered" by other writers completely misrepresents use her the journals and the relationship?between possible ship?not as books. them of made and her both brother commonplace Coleridge use of her journals is suggested most visibly at That Dorothy encouraged she writes that she will of the Grasmere the beginning journal, where William she "shall because pleasure by it."18The verb give keep ajournai borrow not "pilfered," suggests the tenor of his subsequent "gleaned," of edition Oxford the of editor recentiy published ings. Pamela Woof, to to recollect she "When details, stopped Dorothy's journals, writes: her to and re-read and careful description, write an extended improve for Wordsworth's she was offering this must pardy be because prose, have items of their common world. He might selected consideration see to leech the had not Dorothy's prose taught him again, forgotten, as Levin does, To conclude, on the shore of daffodils" (xvi). gatherer her stated desires that Dorothy's being has been "pilfered" ignores both the of her poem, and the remainder about her journals especially the rekindles her hopes through second stanza, where Dorothy redemp
tive power of memory.

an etymological "pierce" thrusts from Dorothy's into William's "prelusive" alleged plagiarisms dagger about I have just suggested what but this ignores reading journals, verb fact that the the and in keeping her journals Dorothy's generosity but or with the in poem, pain "pierce" is not associated with puncturing Levin cites the entry "discern," but this denotation acute discernment. or insinuation of its violendy probing can hardly match the sensation from both her the speaker's cousins. Indeed, relief from pain results of Nature and her ability to be pierced by the kind piercing perceptions friends. The word may seen an odd choice offices of her flower-bearing of the poem in this second instance, but one must repress the remainder toward William's to find in this word a deep ambiguity writing or, wors?, to her. a subde condemnation of his poetic obligations Levin's meditation on the word

DOROTHY

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the poem's ending and Levin's interpretation of "Tintern and William's cite, respectively, Abbey," best-known "Lucy poem," "A slumber did my spirit seal." The penultimate stanza unambiguously affirms William's of hope and continu prophecy at to the end of his these evokes words, Dorothy poem. By alluding ity their promise and thus completes the circuit of William's hopes for their future. But Levin writes: "It is, however, pardy the absence of health and nature that makes this nature of memory that enables the possible, of fulfillment William's In other words, because (ZW136). prophecy" is sick and out of touch with nature she turns to her brother Dorothy and his poem. The logic of this turn is not at all surprising. But Levin it sound peculiar, as if the price Dorothy must pay for makes fulfilling William's is to be stricken with illness. prophecy last stanza is the loveliest and the saddest in the poem. Here Dorothy's she interleaves her poem with slumber did my spirit seal." her brother's "Lucy poem" entided "A

Let me now consider it. The last two stanzas

A slumber did my spirit seal;


I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel


The touch of earthly years.

No

motion She neither round

has

she hears

now, nor

no sees;

force;

Rolled With

in earth's and stones,

diurnal and

course, trees.

rocks,

that in these final lines "Memory serves continuity here, a of William's in 'Tintern Abbey'" (DW 136). But hope then she immediately the of this "In a qualifies meaning continuity: revision by subtracting from William's irreducible 'No motion seemingly has she now, no force,' the line 'No need of motion, or of strength, / Or even the breathing air' asserts both her independence from and the of her brother's words'" I cannot (ZW136). possible reality 'prophetic see how or why to assert would wish her from Dorothy independence lines she clearly enjoyed remembering, as William just enjoyed recalling the images she recorded on their walking tours when he later read her out of the reality her journals. Here, Levin's "possible" backs Dorothy embraces. Levin, not Dorothy, wants independence poem generously from William's poem. In an otherwise sensible treatment and fairminded of Dorothy's also makes an argument for what she consid poems, Margaret Homans ers the unfortunate erosion of poetic identity in "Thoughts on my sick on the final allusion bed." Commenting to the "Lucy poem," Homans Levin admits reinforcement

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that the "I of this poem becomes the 'she' of another, and though a denotes of any quotation suspension identity, this one causes the T to abdicate altogether."19 Like Levin, Homans misses the existential point of Dorothy's herself into and instead on the fact fastens translating Lucy, seems to setde for the that Dorothy of a persona not of inauthenticity her own invention. Thus, Homans that: argues "Writing out of love for nature she with and her nature, self; writing out of love merges forgets for William she takes on the persona he designs for her and adopts a 'hidden life' that is his, not hers, and therefore one that is as mystifying to her as it is to us" (78). Eager to see William as a magisterial presence in the lives of all those around him, Homans will not allow Dorothy's to emerge unless she sounds like a trumpet, prophetic poetic identity as and visionary her brother. Her "hidden life" is not at all mystifying if one pays attention to the way in which she is trying, with a fluted voice, to merge with both nature and death. Because they wish to show how must her "abdicate" in the of her brother (or presence Dorothy identity in the presence of his poems), both Levin and Homans how her ignore allusions condition. simultaneously depict and allay her mortal to the "Lucy poem" may seem an ambiguous allusion echo Dorothy's of William's and Homans, I do not hear but, unlike Levin poem an anxiety of influence here, and it seems anything remotely resembling to of indepen read her final lines as either a declaration wrongheaded to it. In work or an infirm capitulation to did my "A slumber "Tintern and Dorothy's Abbey" a seal" she arrested becomes by the spirit living memory, momentarily of Her reunite her with recollections her memory poetry past. powerful brother and his poem and thus allow her to manipulate and presence absence just as he did throughout "Tintern Abbey." In both poems the lyric address of dimension opens up another as a Culler of which describes this kind follows: "In apostrophe lyrics once or is has been lost present temporal problem posed: something this loss can be narrated but the temporal is attenuated; sequence dence from her brother's allusion double like time irreversible, ture by removing the time and empirical movement from A to struc itself. Apostrophes this irreversible displace absence from and between presence opposition a it in time. discursive The locating temporal a revers becomes B, internalized by apostrophe, ible alternation between A' and B': a play of presence and absence not by time but by poetic power."20 For Culler, the use of governed a the elusive ideal toward of works apostrophe atemporal immediacy, an of into Both "Tintern the eternal way present. converting temporal on my sick bed" show the struggle involved in Abbey" and "Thoughts for both poems present a play of presence and absence this conversion,

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most

in their apostrophic that moment addresses, intensely imagined is both eroded and accented, both attenuated where one's experience of the apostrophe and vitalized by the figurai prominence itself, what and emotionalism. This is a Culler identifies as its embarrassing visibility to case where figurative both itself calls attention and calls language into being. something "Under the aegis of desire," a progression to a real which

observes David Simpson, "all figurings are never is but is always about to be."21 One to is that figure progressing say that the personalized might apostrophe a real which most its is: this is fiction and its (or who) actually supreme serve the need for ardent desire. Such apostrophes self-preservation by not trapped in empirical time, but forth subjective presences figuring rather endued unto the timeless element sustained only through the also claims that "[f]or the Romantics, the power of poetry. Simpson an alternative to the possibility of passive process of figuring constitutes The essentially creative nature of the mind means that, perception. there would be mere vacancy" without it, moreover, (167). Dorothy's is a figurai oscillation between poem speech and silence, activity and on her sickbed, Dorothy and vacancy. Couchant passivity, presence and poetic absent-minded, magnificentiy breathing memories are a to a past reality allusions instead of air. Her figurings progression which was and ever shall be a source of consolation, her poem both a a still life, her memories a and she self-portrait bouquet lays on her living and breathless soul. Far from creating an ambiguous dialogue with the to "Tintern poems of William, Dorothy's poem responds apostrophically to in the of it 1798, memory poem Abbey." By returning Dorothy makes
and its author her addressees.

becomes

In affirming this bond between brother and sister, some critics attend to the figurai magic of poetic language and to the existential predica ment of William and Dorothy, both of whom feel their death in every recent critics enter these poems limb. Most and these lives only to confirm their worst suspicions to ply before leaving unceremoniously their trade. If they were to suspend their own hermeneutics of suspicion for a moment, of a brother and they might gain a deeper understanding sister who, with wandering steps and slow, left Tintern Abbey only to to make it one of their main haunts. return, in memory, University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee

322 NOTES

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Selected Poems and Prefaces, ed. Jack Stillinger Wordsworth, 1965), p. 108, (Boston, cited in text by line number. hereafter 2 The word "does not bite." But perhaps an James "dog," William soberly observed, an does one, does create especially erotically charged apostrophe, something palpable, make in multiplying their pet names for present. Why else do lovers so delight something as a way of each other, except the loved one? up, in various costumes, conjuring 11. 102-11; 3 4 5 6 7 8 M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (New York, 1985), The Poetry of Experience Robert (New York, 1957), p. 45. Langbaum, Wordsworth's Poetry (New Haven, Hartman, 1964), p. 28. Geoffrey Harold Marjorie Bloom, Culler, Levinson, The Visionary Company (Ithaca, 1971), p. 138. Wordsworth's Great Period Poems (Cambridge, The Pursuit p. 182.

William

1986), p. 38. 1981), p. 146. of Signs (Ithaca, 9 Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York, 1988), p. 76. I am obviously 10 of Bakhtin's work here. Wordsworth's thinking lyrics have come under I think, for not being that is, for being too monologically fire, sufficiendy dialogic, endorsed "authorial (Levinson's term). by the poet's ideology" Jonathan 11 Elizabeth Women, Fay, "Wordsworth, European Romantic Review, 3 (Winter 1992), Place in Wordsworth's Gender: Woman's (1986), 391-410. 12 Freud's essay of attraction, form narcissistic 13 Jerome am 53 "On Narcissism" where one and Romantic 133-46. Also Love: see Marlon Landscape," some A Question B. Ross's English of Nation," "Naturalizing Literary History, about for this her

Ideological contains finds

(1914) person

important compelling

insights precisely

another

much of what I 1983) anticipates Ideology (Chicago, more criticism. McGann is in his dialectical and even-handed "suspicious" calling treatment of poets and poems than are many deconstructive materialists. My differences as follows. When he writes that "Between with McGann 1793 and 1798 may be distilled Wordsworth the word 14 text. "The French Revolution and Tintern 10 (Winter David Bromwich, Raritan, Abbey,'" 1991), 23. in Romantic Revolutions, "On Political of Lyrical Ballads," 16 M. H. Abrams, ed. Readings R. Johnston Kenneth etal. 342. Ind., 1990), p. (Bloomington, 15 17 Cited in Appendix One of Susan M. Levin's Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism (New cited in text as DW. hereafter Brunswick, 1987), pp. 219-20 N.J., (emphases Dorothy's); 18 Dorothy The Grasmere Journals ed. Pamela Woof Wordsworth, 1800-1803, (Oxford, cited in text 1991), p. 1; hereafter 19 cited 20 21 Margaret in text. Culler, David Homans, Women Writers and Poetic Identity (Princeton, 1980), p. 77; hereafter John lost the world merely to gain his own immortal soul" (p. 88), I want to erase cited in

self-engagement. The Romantic J. McGann's

"merely." Barrell, Poetry, Language

and Politics

(New York,

1988),

p. 162; hereafter

hereafter

The Pursuit of Signs, p. 150. Wordsworth and the Figurings Simpson, cited in text

of the Real

(London,

1982),

p.

xxv;

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