William Wordsworth is aptly admonished; Seamus Heaney approves; William Hazlitt does not; Dorothy Wordsworth quietly observes

Seamus Heaney’s recent article in The Hudson Review (“’Apt Admonishment’: Wordsworth As an Example”) is about the moment a poet encounters a muse. I do not believe I have ever met such a creature. He wanders through examples from Hesiod to Wordsworth to T. S. Eliot, ending with himself, and the moment he saw a photo of the Danish bog man and was inspired to write his best-known poem, “The Tollund Man.”

The Wordsworth example supplies the title of the piece – “Apt Admonishment.” The poet of “Resolution and Independence” (see yesterday’s post) has met an elderly leech gatherer, a garrulous fellow. Here’s the key moment of the poem:

The old man still stood talking at my side,
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard, nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream,
Or like a man from some far region sent
To give me human strength by apt admonishment.

This is strange stuff. The moment becomes dream-like; the old man’s words blend together and are “scarce heard”. Not a good listener, this Wordsworth. Then there’s the final simile: “like a man from some far region sent \ To give me human strength by apt admonishment”.

Oh, now I see, that’s what he’s like. No, I don’t see it. What is that sort of man like, from a far region sent? Sent by whom? Why? Yes, to aptly admonish Wordsworth, but why would anyone send a man to do such a thing? Why wouldn’t a local man do? In fact, a local man seems to have done the job all right. As Heaney says, the muse has appeared to Wordsworth.

William Hazlitt took every opportunity he had, and invented others, to make his single insightful point about William Wordsworth (an ex-friend), that Wordsworth was a poet of pure ego. The descriptions of nature, the peasants, were all a screen. “Resolution and Independence” shows what Hazlitt meant. The leech gatherer may exist in the actual world, but to the poet he’s not quite real. He’s an instrument for Wordsworth to explore himself.

Hazlitt thought he was making a devastating criticism. Today, we are more likely to say that the turn inward is the whole point of Wordsworth’s project, his great innovation. Still, compare William’s poem to my favorite line about this encounter from his sister Dorothy’s journal: “He said leeches were very scarce partly owing to this dry season, but many years they have been scarce.” And then add in the “godly books”, and the sailor son. A world opens up there, a world outside of Dorothy Wordsworth.

Maybe this is a hint as to why I mostly like Dorothy’s writing over her brother’s, excepting “Michael” and a few other poems. And I haven’t even brought up the daffodils – see Dorothy’s Wikipedia entry for the appalling results of that comparison.

Seamus Heaney’s piece is in the Spring 2008 Hudson Review (PDF).

D & W Wordsworth and the leech gatherer - compare and contrast

"We met an old man almost double. He had on a coat thrown over his shoulders. . . . Under this he carried a bundle and had an apron on and a night cap. His face was interesting. He had dark eyes and a long nose . . . He was of Scotch parents but had been born in the army. He had had a wife, 'a good woman, and it pleased God to bless us with ten children.' All these were dead but one, [a sailor] of whom he had not heard for many years. . . . His trade was to gather leeches, but now leeches are scarce and he had not the strength for it. He lived by begging and was making his way to Carlisle, where he would buy a few godly books to sell. He said leeches were very scarce partly owing to this dry season, but many years they have been scarce . . . Leeches were formerly 2/6 [per] 100; they are now 30/. He had been hurt in driving a cart, his leg broke his body driven over, his skull fractured.”

Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal, October 3, 1800


Himself he propped, his body, limbs and face,
Upon a long grey shaft of shaven wood,
And still as I drew near with gentle pace
Beside the little pond or moorish flood,
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth altogether, if it move at all.

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned
As if he had been reading in a book;
And now such freedom as I could I took,
And drawing to his side, to him did say,
“This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.”

A gentle answer did the old man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew,
And him with further words I thus bespake,
“What kind of work is that which you pursue?
This is a lonely place for one like you.”
He answered me with pleasure and surprise,
And there was while he spake a fire about his eyes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He told me that he to this pond had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor—
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure;
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor,
Housing, with God’s good help, by choice or chance,
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

The old man still stood talking at my side,
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard, nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream,
Or like a man from some far region sent
To give me human strength by apt admonishment.

William Wordsworth, from "Resolution and Independence", aka "The Leech Gatherer" (1807)

The ellipses are those of Seamus Heaney, from whom I have borrowed the comparison (link is a PDF). He's really going after that last stanza. More on that later.

This is one of W. Wordsworth's best poems, one of the greatest in the language, perhaps, yet I prefer his sister's version. A failure of taste? Or intelligence?