Author: Elijah Morosky

After today’s discussion about ‘The Year Without a Summer’ — the period of darkness and cold in 1816, caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in modern-day Indonesia the year prior — I was naturally curious about the connections between this disaster and Byron’s poem “Darkness.” Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given that the poem was published in 1816 and describes crop failure and perpetual gloom, it is actually mentioned by name on the Wikipedia page for ‘The Year Without a Summer:’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer . Such a context gives the first line, which I initially considered to be a bit silly, some needed force: “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.” Byron was living through conditions vaguely reminiscent of those he describes, and these conditions would have been at peak strangeness in July when he penned the poem. It was interesting to me that the Norton did not mention this context, opting instead to note contemporary developments in geology that would have shone new light on the nature of extinction (and, by extension, humankind’s own potential for it). 

I am interested by Byron’s simultaneous avoidance of discussing what was actually occurring at the time and his extrapolation of the events to a cosmic scale. How seriously did people interpret these changes? Were they grounds for a loss of faith in religion, as could be alluded to with the burning of “holy things / for an unholy usage” atop an altar as well as the other religious references in the poem? Or simply material for poetry and speculation on mankind’s future? Please reply if you guys have any thoughts or have found any related information. 

Going to the Wellin museum and looking at their small collection of Grecian urns was a very interesting experience after reading Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and I revisited the poem afterwards. Although Keats’ poem deals largely with things which are physically present on the urn, these descriptions are centered almost entirely in the drawn depictions on the urn’s face. I had little idea of what the actual urns were going to look like, in terms of color, shape, or size, and I was immediately struck by their vivid orange colors, accentuated by the deep black background. Some of the urns were larger than others, and they had clearly been found in varying degrees of intactness: one of the larger urns had particularly noticeable cracks in it, where many fragments had ostensibly been glued back together after its discovery. I found this to be interesting food for thought. The urns displayed in front of me were done so intentionally; somebody else had discovered them and put them back together and arranged them, as if to more closely or genuinely resemble what they once were. This intention for preservation echoed Keats’ worries and speculations about preservation and endurance. If not for our active effort, these urns would not have survived in the first place, rendering preservation somewhat of a continuous effort / uphill battle. That I was able to relate the physical aspects of the urns to the thematic content of the poem was a pleasant surprise to me.

Like Peter, I found “Frost at Midnight” to be the most interesting of the required readings for Thursday’s class of this week. I particularly enjoyed the first paragraph. The final focus of the paragraph, where Coleridge discusses the piece of soot fluttering on the grate of the fireplace, felt at first a little discordant with the rest. It felt a little too ‘heady’ and philosophical in comparison to the section that introduced it, which felt spiritual in its contemplation. A better way of explaining this, perhaps, is that the first half of the paragraph felt deeply emotional and mysterious, whereas the second felt too intellectual, a meager show of mental gymnastics by comparison. After some thought, though I came to appreciate it more. I drew parallels between Coleridge’s argument in this poem — that the soot’s random movements serve as a mirror to the soul, or to intellect — and his arguments in “The Eolian Harp,” that the mind is drawn to action by a breeze of intellect. In both is a sense of movement in nature producing movement within. When I thought about the section through this lens, I began to notice what was different about it. I think it has a rather sad tone, overall: the soot provides only “dim sympathies,”  and acts only through “puny flaps and freaks,” and the Spirit is defined as lonely, “every where / Echo or mirror seeking of itself,” with no promise that it will ever find true communion. Although I did find the larger theme of this contemplation to be a little redundant/tired having read “The Eolian Harp,” the emotion present in it I think allows it to flow with the remainder of the poem better, and allows this poem to differentiate itself from Coleridge’s others. 

Another unique use of the tonally divided first paragraph is to set up the second paragraph, which explores the superstition of the fluttering soot in the context of childhood and Coleridge’s own experiences away from home. Here, childish thoughts merge with genuine loneliness and hope, as deeply felt as in any human, producing an interesting sense of unity. My impression of reading the first couple paragraphs, then, was of division, created by a shift in tone, and then unity, created by Coleridge’s effective combination of childish and worldly sentiments. 

One of the things that most intrigued me with this reading was the third “stanza” of the Prelude, from line 55 to about line 69. I found this section to be particularly interesting because I viewed it as a sort of more thorough explanation of Wordsworth’s writing process, or, if this was not his intended purpose, these lines at least seem to give us a greater degree of insight into how he actually went about producing poetry. 

Reflecting on his belief that poetry comes from “emotion recollected in tranquility,” (I would like to point out that it is a recollection, not a collection) Wordsworth explains how the creation of the first couple stanzas of the Prelude differed from his usual method. These lines had come to him, he explains, as the events they describe transpired. While this section describing how he wrote the previous stanzas could be read simply as a statement of authority in a manner similar to that of evoking a muse, I took it to have a function for Wordsworth perhaps greater than that of the reader. To me, it seemed a way for Wordsworth to mentally place himself in the mindset he had been when he wrote the earlier stanzas so that the tone would be consistent. The footnotes in the Norton state that he had written the previous stanzas in 1799, six years before the Prelude was published in its entirety. Although I am uncertain when he wrote the following lines in particular, it is likely a good couple years passed in the interim. Coming back to such a project, he would have needed some sort of method for continuing the poem in a way that would appear natural. This theory seems to be supported by the first few lines of the very next stanza:
“Whereat, being not unwilling now to give / A respite to this passion, I paced on / Gently, with careless steps . . .”

Wordsworth’s tone is slightly different in these lines and he takes care to use the word “now.” The phrase “I paced on” seems reflective not only of his physical progress in the story but of his continuing to write the poem after a break. 

Another very interesting thing to me about this stanza are the lines:

“My own voice cheared me, and far more, the mind’s / Internal echo of the imperfect sound– / To both I listened, drawing from them both.” Although I could be wrong in my interpretation, it seemed to me that Wordsworth was saying his lines aloud while he walked, and as he said them, was making mental corrections, bouncing ideas off between his verbal and internal monologues. If anybody else has some thoughts on these lines, feel free to share.