The Four Conceptions of the Simplon Road in William Wordsworth's ...

Zahler 56The Four Conceptions of the Simplon Road in WilliamWordsworth’s The PreludeSimone ZahlerSwitzerlandOn August 17, 1790, Wordsworth traveledtogether with his friend Robert Jones over the SimplonPass on the so-called Stockalperweg, which was a muletrackmainly used by sumpters. Some of the impressionsof this hike were later immortalized in Wordsworth’s ThePrelude, Book VI. At one point, he illustrates how theywent up the wrong road. Therefore a crucial part of hisexperience was being on the road. However,Wordsworth’s depiction of the Stockalperweg includesmore than just the physical aspects of this road; the roaddescribed in The Prelude is a fusion of reality, memory,imagination and Wordsworth’s revisit in 1820.When looking at the real road, historical facts needto be taken into consideration. Between the 12 th and the15 th centuries, the Simplon Pass was one of the mostimportant routes for commerce – linking Switzerlandwith significant trading towns in northern Italy.However, there were other competing passes that linkednorthern Italy with Northern and Western Europe.The 17 th century was the second time of prosperitywhen Caspar Jodok von Stockalper, a rich and aristocraticbaron, provided for a good maintenance of the road. Heordered that the old mule track be in parts rebuilt, eventhat dangerous spots be avoided and the road partly bererouted (Arnold, Der Simplon 111). Stockalper alsosecured the monopoly for this road by signing treatieswith eleven European States. Tons of salt, wine, grain,and textiles were transported over this pass.Thanks to this attention, the Simplon Passregained its importance; merchants from Switzerland,France and Italy chose this pass over others. But as soonas Stockalper was overthrown, the Simplon became quietin terms of commerce. At that time, the guild that hadbeen responsible for road maintenance was dissolved,and the government of Sitten became responsible fororganizing the transit commerce. Because they had nodirect profit from the road, they let it decay, and by 1775,the road was said to be in a miserable state (Flückiger-Seiler 53).Fifteen years later, Wordsworth traveled onexactly this neglected road, today called theStockalperweg 1 , which was so narrow that it could onlybe crossed on foot or with a mule. Stockalper hadwidened the road from 2.5 meters to 3 meters,approximately 9 feet. Figure 1 “Stockalperweg” (below)shows how narrow and steep the Stockalperweg is.After having come along the Rhône fromMartigny, Jones and Wordsworth started in Brig (see A infig. 2), went over the pass, and arrived in Gondo (see E infig.2), where they spent the night. In his essay“Wordsworth and the Simplon Pass,” Max Wildi claimsthat the place where he and Jones had lunch was the“Old Spittel,” in German, “Alte Spittel” (see C in fig. 2):“The ‘halting place’ where they took their midday meal1 Today, this old road is rediscovered and maintained for tourism.

Wordsworth 57Zahler 58Figure 1. Stockalperweg; in Klaus Anderegg, Gondoschlucht(Simplon: Ecomuseum 2004)(6.565/566) is the old ‘hospice’ known as StockalperSpittal […] built in 1667 by Baron Stockalper as a storesdepot and shelter for muleteers and other travelers”(227).Figure 2. Wordsworth’s Hike Across the Alps; adapted from “Übersichtzum Ecomuseum Simplon […]” in Klaus Aerni, Simplon – Passwege undMuseen (Bern: Geographica Bernensia, 2003) 15.

Wordsworth 59In his 1805 version of The Prelude, Wordsworthdescribes the ascent towards the Spittel as follows:Upturning with a bandOf travellers, from the Valais we had clombAlong the road that leads to Italy;A length of hours, making of these our guides,Did we advance, and, having reached the innAmong the mountains, we together ate […].(6.494-499)In this passage, it becomes clear that they joined a bandof travelers, probably local merchants with mules sincethey were “making of these our guides.” It is surprisingthat Wordsworth does not give the name of the specificpass that they traveled. Rather than saying that they werecrossing the Simplon Pass, it is “the road that leads toItaly.” The fact that the purpose of the road it is to takethem across the Alps into Italy becomes central. The road,therefore, serves a specific purpose and loses its identity;it could stand for any road across the Alps.After having eaten their dinner at the Spittel, theirself-proclaimed guides roseLeaving us at the board. Erelong we followed,Descending by the beaten road that ledRight to a rivulet’s edge, and there broke off;(6.501-503)Expressions such as “beaten road” and “broke off”convey the true nature about the Simplon road, whichwas at that time in a miserable condition. At this momentit seems almost impossible that this road had just acentury ago been one of the most important commerceroutes bridging the Alps and linking Northern withSouthern Europe.Zahler 60The road and the condition of the road are at thecenter of Wordsworth’s attention once it breaks off. Sincethe road ended there:The only track now visible was oneUpon the further side, right opposite,And up a lofty mountain. (6.504-506)In the essay mentioned before, Wildi located the placewhere the two travelers apparently lost their way as apoint south of the village of Gabi (see D in fig.2), about700 m from the entrance of the Gondo Gorge, where amule track led up to the hamlet of Freeberg (228).It puzzled Wordsworth and Jones that they didnot overtake the “guides,” but not until they met apeasant, were they really aware of their mistake. Theencounter with the peasant was important because hewas the one who opened their eyes that they had alreadycrossed the Alps and had to go down now. What thatmeans is that Wordsworth had missed one of the mosthighly anticipated spiritual moments of his tour: being ontop of the Alps. In fact, they had gone down about 800 m(2400 feet) since the peak (see fig. 3, next page).

Wordsworth 61Figure 3.Mountaintop: adapted from “ViaStockalper” in PeterSalmann, Das Neue Kultur- und Wanderpackage Über den Simplon(Simplon: Ecomuseum, 2004).After having missed the climactic moment at themountaintop, Wordsworth includes a passage in ThePrelude that talks about the power of imagination andrecollecting. Here, he suddenly leaves the road that hetraveled in 1790 and starts to celebrate the creative poweras he experiences it at the present moment. In order torecognize the positive aspects of the experience when hehad missed the climax, he had to literally step out of thesetting and leave all roads behind him. Only by doing sowas he able to get over his past disappointment andmove to the apocalyptic Gondo Ravine passage.Romantic scholar Robert A. Brinkley remarks that “[a]sWordsworth recalled that incident, the poem envisionedtwo moments in time: a past (1790) and a present (whenWordsworth is telling the story)” (122).Zahler 62The act of remembering the road in the event ofwriting The Prelude implies passage of time. Since in thissection the act of remembering is central, the Simplonroad that Wordsworth describes is not only the real roadthat they traveled on in 1790, but becomes a combinationof the real road and the remembered road. Through theaction of remembering, also the passage of time becomessignificant: Wordsworth claims that in 1790 he “was lostin a cloud” (6.529), which I call the cloud of expectationand the resulting disappointment. The cloud blinded himfrom enjoying the encounter with the peasant, and theonly thing he could think of was his disappointment. Butwhen composing the poem in 1804, he declares that“now, recovering, to my soul I say / ‘I recognize thyglory’” (6.531-32). The word “recovering” suggests that inthe moment of composing the poem, he accepts hisdisappointment; through remembering he recovers fromthe sadness he felt at that spot of time in the past. Thismeans that, as Brinkley calls it, he now “finds thatGreatness dwells there, in the experience of being lost”(123), which could only happen through the passage oftime.Furthermore, while writing the poem in 1804,there was no road that embodied all the constraints andexpectations that come with traveling; and thus in 1804,Wordsworth was able to experience the spiritual momentto which he had aspired on the road. Clearly, therecollection of past experiences enables him to recognizethat “Our destiny, our nature, and our home, / Is withinfinitude – and only there” (6.539-540). This means thatWordsworth has finally accepted that the spiritualmoment, which he had desired to experience on the top

Wordsworth 63of the Alps, is not taking place on the road, but laterwhen composing his poem many years after thatmoment. The key to imagination is therefore the fusion ofthe real and the remembered road.In the Gondo Ravine passage, Wordsworth allowshimself to step away from the factuality of his memoriesand to fuse reality with imagination in order to describean apocalyptic moment. Many scholars question theaccuracy of some details in this passage since inDescriptive Sketches some of the same descriptions arelocated in other places. For example, the “torrentsshooting from the clear blue sky” (6.561) are originallyfrom the region around Lake Como (Bernhardt-Kabisch381). What that means in terms of roads is thatWordsworth introduces now a third aspect of the road:the imaginative road which he now calls “fellow-traveler.”Imagination, to which he had just written aninvocation, therefore, is at the center of his writing. Thismeans that having lost his road now allows him tobecome more creative, to let his imagination craft theGondo Ravine while at the same time remembering thesublimity of the true scenery. The contradictory characterof the Gondo Ravine, which exists in nature as well as inWordsworth’s mind, is discernible in his treatment of theroad itself.The same road that leads through the GondoGorge plays an essential role throughout the wholecrossing of the Alps, but now even more than beforebecomes part of the experience and at the same timeexists outside of it in his imagination:[…]downwards we hurried fast,And entered with the road which we had missedInto a narrow chasm. (6.551-553)Zahler 64The fact that they “entered with the road” - instead of justentering the chasm on the road - gives the path thequality of being an entity of its own, indicating that theroad had been there all the time, even though they didnot see it at first. In addition, the personification of theroad, which is given with the word “enter” and theconjunction “with,” turns the road into a hikingcompanion. Thus, the road loses its characteristic of beingan outside entity that before he had just called “the roadthat leads to Italy” (6.496).Having missed the road before, he now suddenlygives the road a face. Now it serves more than just to thepurpose of living up to its function of taking the travelerto the expected destination. The road has now a characterof its own and is different from all the roads taken before.The same can be observed in the subsequent lines:The brook and roadWere fellow-travellers in this gloomy pass,And with them did we journey several hoursAt a slow step. (6.553-556)This sentence, like the one before, implies thatWordsworth’s notion of the road has changed. The word“fellow-travellers” is ambiguous. On the one hand, itsymbolizes that the brook and the road have been fellowtravelersthrough this chasm for years. Thiscompanionship can be interpreted as being a symbiosis oftwo entities that are not very alike: the road is an artificialconstruct whereas the brook follows its natural course,and the road does not move whereas the brook flows.Therefore, by equating the brook with the road,Wordsworth achieves a more natural notion of the road

Wordsworth 65and anticipates the movement of the travelers on aseemingly flowing road.On the other hand, this sentence can also be readso that the brook and the road are both fellow-travelers ofWordsworth and Jones. Wordsworth does not use thepronoun “our” before “fellow-travellers,” but the factthat he writes “with them did we journey” indicates thatsuddenly the road is at the center of their attention,whereas while crossing the Alps it had just been themeans to an end. Thus, the road is suddenly thisambiguous entity; on the one hand it is part of the hike(almost as if it moves itself), but also an outside entitythat exists apart from travelers who pass through hischasm.The fact that Wordsworth’s notion of the road haschanged after the incident of missing it is nowexaggerated through the pace of the two hikers. After thepeasant told them that they were on the wrong path,Wordsworth claims: “downwards we hurried fast,” butthe hike through the gorge, which is supposed to take alittle more than an hour, is described as a journey of“several hours / At a slow step.” This indicates that theysuddenly changed the speed in order to start enjoyingtheir hike, and they were perhaps hoping that this slowerpace would keep them from missing another importantmoment.The act of remembering the road and blending itwith imagination contributes to his recognition of the realglory of that moment. Finding sublimity in nature,therefore, also has to do with passage of time. We will seethat there is even a fourth aspect in Wordsworth’sconception of the Simplon road; the revisited road.However, before discussing Wordsworth’s return andZahler 66revision, we have to look at what happened in this regionbetween 1790 and 1820 (when he revisited the SimplonPass): Napoleon’s armies had occupied Switzerland, andhe gave orders to build a “Kunststrasse” 2 over theSimplon that changed the face and the perception of thepass forever.When Napoleon assumed power, he immediatelysaw the strategic importance of the Simplon Pass as theshortest connection between Paris and Milan; The key tothe South was the Simplon Pass. In 1798, he overthrewthe Swiss confederation and turned it into a vassal statecalled Helvetic Republic. In 1798 and 1799, his troopsinvaded the Canton Wallis (the French word is Vallais)and robbed, plundered, and devastated the whole areaby burning many villages: many Swiss were murdered.Certain parts of this region were occupied for over 14years. Henceforth, enormous suffering, hunger andmisery overcame the villages along the Simplon Pass(Arnold, Der Simplon 156).On May 6, 1800, Napoleon sent a thousandFrenchmen over the Simplon to inspect the road. OnceNapoleon had conquered Milan, on September 7, 1800, heordered that the Simplon Pass be enlarged. In the third2 Road construction in the mountains has always been very difficult. It was not until1805 that in Switzerland the Alps could be crossed in carriages on so called “Kunststrassen”(artistic roads). There was a need for such roads because at that time the main roads had to beenlarged for coaches, and they also had to avoid sharp curves and steep inclines. The word“Kunst” has some interesting connotations. The etymology of this word comes from “können”(to be able), which comes from Old German “kunnan” (intellectually being able to, to know, tounderstand). It therefore connotes knowledge, wisdom and science. On the other hand, theword “Kunst,” and especially its adjective “künstlich/ artifiziell” (artificial) is also used todescribe things that are artificially made. The root of “artifiziell” comes from the Latin word“artificium” (ars=art, ficium from facere = making). This means that there is a strong contrastbetween nature and science in the word “Kunst.” Consequently, a “Kunststrasse” reminds thetraveler that the artificial constructs on which he finds himself are contrary to nature.

Wordsworth 67article of this decree, he wrote: “Le chemin depuis Brigueà Domo d’Ossola sera rendu practicable pour les canons”[the road between Brig and Domo d’Ossola shall be madeaccessible for cannons] (qtd. in Campana et al. 9). Clearly,the idea behind the reconstruction of this road was that itwould foremost serve military purposes rather thanbeing used for commercial traffic. Napoleon decided thatthe Cisalpine Republic had to build the section fromDomodossola to Gaby (28 kilometers) and to support theroad construction monthly with 50,000 Francs. France, onthe other hand, built the road from Brig to Gabi (34kilometers) and used the same amount of money(Flückiger-Seiler 54). The Wallis had to supply them witha certain number corvée labor (peasants who did unpaidwork as a form of tax), which added to the misery of thefamilies who lived near the Simplon Pass.The Gondo Gorge (see fig.4), where Wordsworthhad experienced an apocalyptic moment, was changedthe most by the construction. To build a gallery throughthe Gondo Ravine posed enormous difficulties for all theengineers and workers. The rock was extremely hard,and they calculated that it was going to take two years tobuild it, which was unacceptable to Napoleon. Therefore,in order to speed the construction up, they decided tohave two cuts. The exterior wall, however, was so steepthat no worker could put a foot into the ledges of therock. They stabilized the workers with ropes so that theywere hanging freely from the walls where they thendrilled holes into the hard granite stone. The workerstoiled day and night for 15 months until the 222 m longgallery was completed. (Arnold, Die Vier Strassen 35-36).Zahler 68Figure 7. The Gondo Gallery, watercolor by Gabriel Lory Père,“Vue de l’Intérieur de la Grande Galerie” (Simplon Pass, around1810); in Cesare Campana et al., Voyage Pittoresque […] ( Bern: PTTMuseum, 1994) 55.

Wordsworth 69Finally, on September 16, 1805 the following lineswere sent to Paris: “…vous pouvez enfin annoncer à saMajesté impériale qu’il n’y a plus d’Alpes” [you canfinally announce to the imperial Majesty that there are noAlps anymore] (qtd. in Campana et al. 21). This metaphoris really interesting when compared with Wordsworth,who had aspired to the mountaintop moment. It impliesthat with the new road such a mountaintop moment isneither possible nor even desirable anymore.Once the new road was open, the Republic of theWallis started drafting 500 men to maintain the roadwayso that the artilleries could pass. There actually weretroop maneuvers over the Simplon in 1806 and later in1813 (when the Austrians forced the French back andliberated the Wallis). The French artillery, however, nevercrossed this pass.Having lost its strategic importance, after 1815, thepass was mainly used by traders and travelers. The new“Kunststrasse” also stimulated an enormous interestsince it was considered to be a marvel in terms of modernengineering. People admired the construction of the road,were fascinated by the picturesque landscape, andpraised the comfortable way of crossing the Alps. Thischanged the whole experience of the Simplon Pass butthere must have been those – most probably Wordsworthhimself – who felt resentment and sadness since thisartistic road was an example of turning one’s back tonature.Therefore, when he revisited the Simplon, insteadof crossing it in a carriage, like most tourists did,Wordsworth, his wife Mary and his sister Dorothy werehiking. Comparing his revision with the earlier version, itseems that in the 1850 text he deliberately tried to praiseZahler 70the old road, the Stockalperweg, in order to emphasizehow much his experience had depended on thisparticular mule track and would not have been possibleon the Napoleonic road. Maybe he had even heard ofNapoleon’s goal to rebuild the Simplon road for militarypurposes before writing the 1805 Prelude through traveljournals or newspapers. If so, this might have triggeredhim to put such weight on the road and the experience ofmissing it.In 1820, he, Dorothy, and Mary were travelling inthe opposite direction, making their way up the Simplonon the foot of the Italian side. Dorothy kept an account ofthis visit in her journal, which is helpful in finding outwhere thirty years earlier her brother and Jones hadtaken the wrong road as well as in telling us how Williammust have felt when revisiting:Our eyes often turned towards the bridge and theupright path, little thinking that it was the samewe had so often heard of, which misled myBrother and Robert Jones in their way fromSwitzerland to Italy[…]. It was impossible for meto say how much it had moved him when hediscovered it was the very same which hadtempted him in his youth. The feelings of that timecame back with the freshness of yesterday,accompanied with a dim vision of thirty years oflife between. (260-261)Dorothy’s description implies that the Simplon Passbecame in Wordsworth’s eyes the symbol of passage oftime. Her words, “[t]he dim vision of thirty years of lifebetween,” implies that not only Wordsworth but also theroad had changed its face. Nonetheless, we don’t knowfor sure what he felt while travelling on the Napoleonic

Wordsworth 71road that for its time was a scientific wonder. GivenWordsworth’s ideology, he must have felt grief andresentment since the new road meant that the naturalexperience was forever lost (even though unlike most ofthe other travellers, Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Marytravelled on foot even in 1820). Realizing that the naturalexperience in the Simplon Pass would never again be thesame is a marker of passage of time.Dorothy shows very well that at this moment herbrother must have realized that his youth was foreverlost: She says that the path upwards “tempted him in hisyouth,” which implies that back then, he had beenphysically fit enough to climb it, but it also suggests thatback then he was eager to experience the climacticmountaintop moment, whereas thirty years later histemper seems much calmer. This specific road, therefore,is in two ways a symbol of the passage of time:technonolgy can change the face of the mountains andrepel nature. Second, it demonstrates that after thirtyyears, Wordsworth’s physical condition has changed.Realizing that not only he but also the world is changingmight have encouraged him to remember and cherish theold road.For all these reasons, revisiting the Simplon roadmust have influenced Worthworth’s revision in the 1850text. It seems that in his revision he was trying to give theStockalperweg a more wild and rural touch in order topreserve – at least in his memory - the old road that is notin use anymore. This can be discovered when he writes:When from the Vallais we had turned, and clombAlong the Simplon’s steep and rugged road,Following a band of muleteers, we reachedA halting place […]. (6.562-565)Zahler 72In this later version, he names the road whereas in hisearlier version, as we have seen, it was just “the road thatleads to Italy” (6.496). Consequently, it suddenly becameimportant which road he took.The name of the pass was already part of themanuscript that Wordsworth used when he maderevisions that are now called MS. D 3 and thus addedprior to it. This means that it was added to The Prelude inMS. C 4 . Therefore, it is likely that Wordsworth insertedthe name of the pass before his revisit. However, thespelling of the word is corrected from “Semplon” to“Simplon” in MS. D, which could be due to the fact thaton his revisit he learned how to spell it correctly.Wordsworth, therefore, was still concerned aboutrevising the image of the Simplon road long after he cameback from his second tour on the continent.The corrections in MS. D in this passage areextensive. In MS. E 5 we find that the road is now alsodescribed as being “steep” and “rugged.” All theconnotations of the latter word (rough, full of stones,uneven) convey the true condition of the Stockalperweg.Also the word “steep” might refer to the fact that theNapoleonic road is less steep now since the engineers ofthe new road got rid of some of the steep sections of theold road (the grade of the new road is almost everywhereless than 13%). The 1805 version did not use any of these3 W.J.B. Owen argues that the “date of MS. D is not precisely determinable.Some sheets are watermarked 1824, others 1827, and other 1828; threerevision slips and the coversheets round Book IV are watermarked 1834,1835, and 1836” (6).4 Mark L. Reed claims that MS. C was the outcome of revisions between1817 and 1820 (65).5 1850 version of The Prelude

Wordsworth 73adjectives, which points towards the fact thatWordsworth might intentionally have tried to bring theStockalperweg back to life, even if it was only on paper.The word “steep” was definitely added after 1820,the word “rugged” was added in MS. C, and thusprobably before 1820. However, MS. D, in Owen’s editionof The Fourteen-Book Prelude, makes clear thatWordsworth had crossed out the three lines starting withUpturning with a BandOf Muleteers, we from the Valley clombGlad of these Guides, the rugged way […] (6.544-547)Owen claims that “they were later covered by a pasteover,now surviving in illegible fragments” (709).Wordsworth, therefore, was revising these lines againand again long after his return to the Simplon Pass,suggesting that this particular road was still on his mind.Interestingly, he now calls the band of people ofwhom he and Jones made their guides “a band ofmuleteers,” whereas in the old version he just called them“a band / Of travellers” (6.494-5). By doing so, heemphasizes the fact the Simplon Pass was just a muletrack in 1790, and furthermore accentuates the fact thatwhen he crossed the Alps no carriage had ever crossedthe Simplon Pass; thus, the Napoleonic road is implicitlyreflected upon. The word “muleteers” had also beenadded to The Prelude in MS. C, and therefore maybebefore his revisit.Similarly, in his 1850 version, he calls the road thatleads into the chasm of the gorge a “half-shaped road”(6.620) instead of just “road,” which, however, was alsoalready part of The Prelude before the MS. D revisions. InZahler 74MS. D, Wordsworth changes “gloomy pass” to “gloomystrait” (6.601). The word “strait” is again a much moreprecise image to describe the tight and narrow conditionof the chasm which was partly eliminated through theconstruction of the gallery through the Gondo Gorge.Since a lot of this tenseness and narrowness was reducedthrough the new Napoleonic road, we get again thefeeling that Wordsworth tries to depict the true conditionof the Stockalperweg to distinguish it from theNapoleonic road.Later in the text, it becomes even clearer that hisrevision was influenced by his revisit in 1820. He musthave had the Napoleonic road on his mind whilerewriting the passage, and deliberately wove the absenceof the new road into it. Dorothy told in her journal thatWordsworth’s “eyes often turned towards the bridge andthe upright path” (260) which she identified as the spotwhere they took the wrong path 30 years previously. Inthe 1850 version, Wordsworth writes shortly after hementions that the road broke off: “After a brief delay /Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took”(6.574-575). The word “unbridged,” which is not in his1805 version and was actually added to The Prelude inMS. D, emphasizes on the absence of a bridge. The factthat Dorothy finds a bridge in 1820 at the point where themistaken road starts, which was actually one of the manynew bridges built under Napoleon, implies that in hisrevision, Wordsworth tries to think away the Napoleonicroad. These revisions on the Simplon road make it clearthat in his mind and his poetry Wordsworth tried topreserve the natural state of things. He sees roads as ameans of passage and as conduits of experience ratherthan a means of luxury.

Wordsworth 75In conclusion, The Prelude describes the SimplonPass as a mixture of the real road, the remembered road(imagination passage), the imaginative road (mixing inmemories from different parts of his trip or imaginativedescriptions) and the revisited road. All these aspects addto the whole picture of his experience, which is not justthe experience of 1790 but the experience of the passageof time. The passage of time becomes even more obviouswhen comparing Wordsworth’s way of crossing the Alpswith modern times. A hundred years later, in 1906, theNapoleonic Simplon road was almost completelyreplaced by a 20-kilometer-long railway tunnel, anothergreat historical moment. It was the longest tunnel in theworld until the seventies. But still today, the SimplonPass can be crossed in a comfortable bus, or else byhiking; in recent years the villages have restored parts ofthe old Stockalperweg and turned it into a popular hikingpath.Works CitedZahler 76Aerni, Klaus. Simplon – Passwege und Museen. Bern,Geographica Bernensia, 2003.Anderegg, Klaus. Gondoschlucht. Simplon: Ecomuseum,2004.Arnold, Peter. Der Simplon: Zur Geschichte des Passes unddes Dorfes. Brig: Rotten-Verlag, 1984.---. Simplon. Die Vier Strassen. Brig: Rotten-Verlag, 1975.Bernhardt-Kabisch, Ernest. “Wordsworth and theSimplon Revisited.” The Wordsworth Circle 10.4(1979): 381-384.Brinkley, Robert A. “The Incident in the Simplon Pass: ANote on Wordsworth’s Revisions.” The WordsworthCircle 12.2 (1981): 122-125.Campana, Cesare et al. Voyage Pittoresque de Genève àMilan par le Simplon 1800-1820. Bern: PTT Museum,1994.

Wordworth 77Flückiger-Seiler, Roland. Nicolas Céard. Die Entstehung derErsten Kunststrasse über die Hochalpen. Simplon:Ecomuseum Simplon, 1997.Owen, W.J.B, ed. The Fourteen-Book Prelude by WilliamWordsworth. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Reed, Mark L, ed. The Fourteen-Book Prelude by WilliamWordsworth. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.Salmann, Peter. Das Neue Kultur- und Wanderpackage Überden Simplon. Simplon: Ecomuseum, 2004.Wildi, Max. “Wordsworth and the Simplon Pass.” EnglishStudies. A Journal of English Letters and Philology 40(1959): 224-232.Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.Vol. 2. Ed. E. De Selincourt. London: Macmillan &Co., 1959.Wordsworth, William. The Prelude. 1799, 1805, 1850. ANorton Critical Edition. Ed. Jonathan Wordsworth,M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. New York: W. W.Norton, 1979.---. The Fourteen-Book Prelude by William Wordsworth. Ed.W.J.B. Owen. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.---. The Fourteen-Book Prelude by William Wordsworth. Ed.Mark L Reed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.