In:
PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Modern Language Association (MLA), Vol. 52, No. 3 ( 1937-09), p. 835-847
Kurzfassung:
For Wordsworth imagination is the link between the visible and the invisible world. Esthetic enjoyment of things visible seems at times to bring the very life of the invisible before us. The more freely we plunge into the beauty of Nature, the more palpable becomes the Spirit of Nature. The grounds for such a belief are mystical and sheerly intuitive: we may not hope to reproduce them in argument. We can trace, however, the ways by which Wordsworth tried to describe such experience and to make it communicable. Throughout, he seems certain that in the apprehension of beauty, the human soul is never isolated, but is in contact with a spiritual urgency, which is the origin of beauty. On the other hand, the agony of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, his utter loneliness of spirit, is in diametric opposition to any love or enjoyment of Nature. Here the mind is closed to any communion or inspiration. It is also without imaginative enjoyment. The Mariner's release from such isolation depends upon the reawakening of his esthetic sensitiveness. In this essay, we shall consider the relation which seems to pertain in Wordsworth's thought between imagination and our awareness of Nature as a mind or spirit. We shall find that for Wordsworth, the boundaries of the finite soul are not final but seem to expand or almost to disappear in the perception of beauty.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
0030-8129
,
1938-1530
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Publikationsdatum:
1937
ZDB Id:
2439580-8
ZDB Id:
209526-9
ZDB Id:
2066864-8
SSG:
7,11
SSG:
7,24
SSG:
7,12
