English Literature

Wordsworth and Coleridges Lyrical Ballads left a mark on the world of poetry that has never entirely healed.  The reasons for this are beyond aesthetic, although the individual poems are hauntingly beautiful.  One of the chief reasons the works endure is that there was a method behind the madness, elaborated upon by Wordsworth in his famous preface.  In Wordsworths Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he posits that the language he is going to put forth is the real language of men.  Such an endeavor is not as straightforward as it may initially sound, as it is not Wordsworths intent to dumb down his language to a base level in opposition to the overly flowery prose of his peers.  Rather, he seems to think of the language of men as one of independence and connection to the natural world.  This is illustrated particularly well in Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.  In this poem about the necessity of man reconnecting with nature, Wordsworth illustrates his notion of men, masculinity, and their language with the discussion regarding the planets as cottages intruding on the serenity of the forest.

Echoing the concept of the noble savage that Rousseau had popularized, Wordsworth seems very intent on illustrating that it is the natural world that is the true civilizing force on mankind, and that which is popularly thought of as civilization (structures and organizations) actually serves to sever an individual from what is most important.  Specifically, Wordsworth centers nature as the nexus of kindness and love, a force separate from the unintelligible world that is modern civilization.  After all, the hedgerows that form a simulacrum of pastoral farms are likened to vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods.  This is because the very notion of building a cottage in the woods in order to become closer to nature is a fundamentally flawed idea, according to Wordsworth.  What that action is truly doing is imposing modern civilization onto the natural world, and illustrating the individuals inability to truly set him apart from the world.  This is the key component to the real language of menthe idea of men and masculinity, then and now, rotates around the idea of a rugged individual who is beholden to nothing and no one.  Being a man in Wordsworths eyes is similar to later theories, such as Emersons elevated Man, Thoreaus transcendent man, and Jungs self-individuated man one must be in accord with nature, and only by balancing ones self with the external world can ones internal world find equal balance.

This establishment with nature is posited as necessary from the very beginning of the poem, as the speaker seeks to become one with the steep and lofty cliffs which, in turn, connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky.  In this view, man is seen as a kind of conduit between heaven and eartha bridge between the serenity of the sky and the revelry of the world below.  In this sense, Wordsworths poem (and, indeed, his notion of what a man is) is similar to the theories espoused in Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedychiefly, the notion that the best tragedy (and, in turn, the best individual) is one that mixes the brilliant-but-aloof Apollonian nature with the jubilant, wild abandon of Dionysian nature.  The real answer is moderation between thought and feeling for Nietzsche for Wordsworth, man serves as this intermediary moderating force, as something that is partially divine and partially forged in the mud of the earth.  The more civilized society gets, the further man gets from these organic, fertile roots therefore, Wordsworth encourages a return to the primitive in order to better access the divine, a notion that Thoreau would later return to with much vigor in Walden.

The final important aspect that distinguishes masculinity and its language is the notion of living in the eternal present.  Wordsworth laments the fact that he cannot revive the past, nor can he anticipate the future.  For example, he certainly hopes the natural world remembers his connection to it, but thinks this is far from a certain thing.  To live as a true man in Wordsworths world is to effectively live outside of history, with no obsession over the past or obsession over the future.  It is this notion that keeps man from seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak.  Only by living externally from the world of civilization can one be more attuned to the solitary beauty of the natural world.

Wordsworths notion of masculinity is at once familiar and alien to modern readers.  A modern reader, for instance, would certainly recognize the idea that a manly man must be rugged and independent.  Yet it is the need for a connection to the earth that sets Wordsworths notion of masculinity aparthis idea that men are connected to primal energies that are distinct from savage urges, and that only by embracing the primal can man forsake the savage.  In this way, Wordsworth takes modern man by the hand to lead him into divinity and grace.