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Prelude by Daryll Delgado
Prelude by Daryll Delgado
"The Prelude is the greatest long poem in our language after Paradise Lost," says one
critic. Its comparison with the great seventeenth-century epic is in some respects a
happy one since Milton was (after Coleridge) Wordsworth's greatest idol.
The Prelude may be classed somewhat loosely as an epic; it does not satisfy all the
traditional qualifications of that genre. The epic is customarily defined as a long
narrative poem which recounts heroic actions, commonly legendary or historical, and
usually of one principal hero (from whence it derives its unity). The Prelude takes its
unity from the fact that the central "hero" is its author.
The poem is written in blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter with certain
permissible substitutions of trochees and anapests to relieve the monotony of the
iambic foot and with total disregard for the stanza form. In the middle of the eighteenth
century, there was an eclipse of interest in the rhymed heroic couplet. A revival of
interest in Milton led to the establishment of Miltonic blank verse as the standard
medium for lengthy philosophical or didactic poetical works. The resulting form came to
be called the "literary" epic as opposed to heroic and folk epics. To this type,
Wordsworth, with his unconventional ideas of diction, brought a natural and
conversational tone.
The general procedure in The Prelude is to record an experience from the poet's past
and then to examine its philosophical and psychological significance and relate it to
nature and society at large. Unfortunately, this results in a certain definite unevenness
in the development of the narrative. At times, particularly in the latter half of the work,
the narrative dries up altogether, and the reader must pick his way through a welter of
disconnected disquisitions. Frequently verbose, diffuse, and bathetic, the verse is
carried by those rare moments when it flashes fire or reaches a resounding note of rich
poetic song. The unwavering strength and unity of purpose which underlie it also help it
to soar. Only a mere fraction of the whole poem may be said to be great, but it is this
fraction that has continued to secure it a place high in English literature.
Another drawback of the verse is its blatant repetition. Wordsworth will describe an
intellectual experience again and again with only minor variations. Much of this
repetition may be due to the poet's episodic efforts to show his shifting point of view in
connection with certain basic ideas.
Most of the imagery, as well as the diction, reflects the natural environment, especially
the English countryside, and manages to capture much of the wildness and beauty of
that terrain. The influence of the English character may be traced in many of the ideas
behind the poem. Just as Wordsworth never got far or was long from his native regions
physically, so they continued to color his emotional reactions throughout his life. It is
doubtful that he would have created an inimitable philosophy of nature had he been
reared in London's slums. In his lifetime, his mental outlook swung from youthful
radicalism to ultraconservatism. Politically, the fierce independence of character the
poet admired in the yeoman of the North Country came to be symbolized by the French
patriot; later he felt that conservative British institutions were the bulwark of true
freedom. Artistically and religiously, he found youthful inspiration in the hills and vales of
the Lake District; he responded to them with his simple ballads and a joyous mysticism.
In maturity, it was the high Anglican Church tradition to which he turned, for a personal
faith and as a source for many of his later poetical ideas. Of course, we do not witness
the entire spectrum in The Prelude. That poem is basically democratic in spirit. Only at
the very end do we feel the impending onset of conservatism.
The work seems deceptively free of learned allusions, but the reader is sure to find
many obscure classical references. In addition, there are quite a few local place names
which are difficult to trace. The poem employs symbols in a somewhat unsophisticated
way so that language and feeling tend to be indistinguishable. When Wordsworth puts
aside his tendency to pamphleteer, mood and form tend to merge in highest harmony;
the words perfectly evoke feeling. In the best instances, there is such mastery of the
medium that the true goal of poetry is achieved: There is so perfect a communication of
experience that the language as a vehicle is forgotten. From this harmony, a great
poetic power emerges; with the very simplest of words and images, Wordsworth creates
the impression of terrible intensity.
For many readers, the aesthetic problem may be solved by adopting the fragmentary
approach of picking favorite passages singular for their strength or beauty. But the
reputation of The Prelude does not stand or fall as measured against the canon of
uninterrupted beauty alone. Fortunately, it is the thematic framework behind the poem
that holds the greatest lasting reward for the reader. The outstanding virtue of The
Prelude is its imaginative interpretation of nature. For Wordsworth, nature forms a
cosmic order of which the material world is one manifestation and the moral world is
another. Usually, in such a view, either mind or matter must have the upper hand. From
the fanciful, mechanistic interpretation of nature in his youth, he moved in maturity to a
vitalist view in which mind transcended the physical world and in which a universal spirit
provided the ultimate motivation for all things, as exemplified in universal, natural law.
This is as close as he comes to building a philosophical system. And it is just this long
and painful transition that is related in The Prelude. What Wordsworth offers is not a
great philosophical system. He presents an emancipatory attitude toward life and
toward art. He forever examines experience. Nothing in the world is so trivial or
commonplace that it cannot be a stimulus for the mind. No thought, no matter how
pedestrian or contemptuous it may at first seem, is to be excluded from the realm of
poetry
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prelude/critical-essays/analysis-of-
the-prelude
Contributor Cool the Planet? Geoengineering Is Easier Said Than Done
By Tracy Staedter, Live Science | July 21, 2017 05:41pm ET
With the world facing increased warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, intense
weather events and other global disasters, scientists are exploring ways to re-engineer
the planet to counter the effects of global warming.
Earth's surface has warmed, on average over land and sea, 1.53 degreesFahrenheit
(0.85 degrees Celsius) since 1880, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, an international organization created by the United Nations to evaluate the state
of climate change science. [Changing Earth: 7 Ideas to Geoengineer Our Planet]
https://www.livescience.com/59901-geoengineering-methods-to-cool-planet.html
The Oroville Spillway emergency in California may have one silver or gold lining:
The debris kicked up by weeks of heavy rain and runoff is now flecked with gold, and
amateur gold panners are enjoying quite the bonanza.
The "gold rush" is occurring along the Feather and Yuba rivers, which are fed by the
Oroville Dam. Of course, would-be panners should take note: It's unlikely that panners
will hit the jackpot and retire with steamer trunks full of gold bars; the average haul from
panning the river lately is worth just $40 to $300, CBS5 reported.
The emergency spillway for the Oroville Dam in northern California was damaged by
weeks of heavy rain in late February, after high water levels forced officials to use the
relief spillway to divert some of the flow from the main dam. When the spillway was
damaged and shut down, waters threatened to overtop the dam, the officials declared a
state of emergency and evacuated 188,000 people. Ultimately, the damaged spillway
was used to prevent a more catastrophic overtopping of the main dam; the spillway held
up through the rest of the rainy season but sustained severe damage. [Photos: Dramatic
Images of the Catastrophic Damage at Oroville Spillway]
https://www.livescience.com/59887-oroville-spillway-emergency-leads-to-gold-rush.html