Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

Or to extend this slightly, he generally sees phenomena as a veil that hides a superior reality normally imperceptible
to us. So in this sense, his descriptions of his thought processes about this “reality” could also be said to be mimetic
-but of the “unseen”.
Peter Riley
It’s good that a discussion is taking place here after so long, but it’s one we’ve had before. I remember at least twelve
years ago trying to persuade Jeff that his view of Wordsworth as the source of all that’s wrong with modern poetry
just didn’t make sense, but I got nowhere. I wouldn’t want to try it again.
Tim Allen
Oh dear, I really am having second thoughts about saying what I am going to say below. Yes, as Peter says, we’ve
been here, but . . .
Let’s forget Wordsworth a moment. What I find in Jeffrey Side’s thoughts is a genuine attempt to eek out some basics
with regard to the “split”. By doing this he gets up the noses of folk on both sides of the split, including of course
those who don’t think there really is a “split” or that if there is it is a minor thing that doesn’t really matter in the
long run. Jeffrey’s questions have relevance to my own concerns in this area-the difference being that he is a lot
more daring and forthright in his targets. He delves into things in a way that invites those entangling knots that form
in this kind of discussion about poetry, which then get pulled tighter and tighter.
I think that what he has to say about Wordsworth is important, but only if you share his view that there is a
dichotomy and that it is relevant. If you don’t share those views then don’t argue with him, because then you will
both be on a hiding to nothing (as we have seen before). Someone who actually shares his view that there is a
problem and that it is relevant can then look objectively at what he says about Wordsworth.
Jeffrey Side
Thanks, Tim, for your support. Yes, there does seem to be a denial that a split exists. Maybe this is to encourage a
sense of camaraderie and goodwill between the “opposing” camps. I can see no other reason for it.
Gerard Greenway
Jeffrey, ‘An unfathered vapour’ does not smack of empiricism to me :) I think you are pushing terms (mimesis,
empiricism) to the point of meaninglessness, or rather inversion. On your usage Blake, at war with Lockean
empiricism, seeing the sun as an army of angels might be described as empiricist and mimetic. It is the central
concern of the major theoretical statement of the time, Biographia Literaria, to oppose the empiricist theory of mind
(Hartley’s) with the philosophical idealism-saturated theory of the creative imagination. And in all theories of the
poetic imagination-Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley-the experience of poetic imagination is opposed to the
ordinary, individuated sense of self and brings into question the ordinary opposition of subject and object. But, yes,
Wordsworth is a discursive poet. He is a philosophical poet. The philosophical poet, whether it be Wordsworth or
Eliot in Four Quartets, seeks to give an account of the lyric/visionary moment. But the discursive and the visionary
are not in opposition, they are part of the same movement. In a poem like Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ the
discursive/analytic is identical with the lyric/visionary, and the kernel is the question of the relation of subject and
object-a theme impossible to miss in Wordsworth.
Tim Allen
[Addressing Jeffrey Side’s comment] Well Jeffrey there are always different ways of telling the same story, let alone
the different stories that can be told about a single occurrence. And when that occurrence is already historical and
subject to the vagaries of changing interests and fashions it is even more of a devil to smoke out. Indeed, “denial”
might be part of it, but such a denial can be conditioned by so many different life factors and motivations that it
makes it difficult sometimes to distinguish true opinion from expediency. I’ve talked here before about some of those
different shades of opinion/motivation regarding this subject so I won’t repeat myself now.
I think that part of the problem of rooting this thing down to Wordsworth is because it is impossible to actually root
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