During the first weeks of August 1902, Samuel Taylor Coleridge traveled on foot through the hills of England near Scafell. are unintentionally poured out" in a "Hymn" did not end up describing Coleridge's ascent to Scafell, but rather a hypothetical scene in the Chamouni Valley. The work, entitled "Hymn Before Sun-Rise, In the Vale. of Chamouni”, appeared in the Morning Post in September of the same year, in “Hymne”, the poet faces Mont Blanc on a gloomy day and allows himself to be overwhelmed by the “secret joy” of nature, asking for it. his natural environment to join him in a heavenly song to praise God (20) Wordsworth decried the poem: Keith Thomas, a critic of the Romantics, indicates that "Wordsworth categorically disliked the poem", going so far as to say. qualify “Hymn” as an exercise in “Mock Sublime” (Thomas, 100). Thomas argues that "Hymn" embittered Wordsworth to the point that he "might have feared that Coleridge had published a poem which dealt with a subject with which he knew intimately much better than he had hitherto treated it" (Thomas, 102). Not only did Coleridge's work seem analogous to a sublime work like Wordsworth's in terms of genre, but according to Thomas, Wordsworth found Coleridge's "overconfident voice...unearned and inauthentic", not only because Coleridge's words incorrectly reflected his own poetic style, but also because Coleridge had never even been to Mont Blanc (Thomas, 100 years old). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Three years later, Wordsworth published the first book in the thirteen-book edition of The Prelude. Parts of the work (particularly volume six) recount Wordsworth's 1790 excursions through France and the Alps with his friend Robert Jones. Of particular importance to historicist (as well as formalist) critics is what has come to be known as the "Simplon Pass" episode, in which Wordsworth and Jones, anticipating a dramatic scene at the top of the pass, are informed by a peasant that they missed the exact point where they had crossed the Alps. Wordsworth, although having passed the expected point of transcendence, continues his descent to the other side and finds sublimity in the Valley of Gondo. In contrast to this highly intellectual experience, Wordsworth characterizes his experience of Mont Blanc as being a “soulless picture” (6.527). When the episodes of the sixth volume of the Prelude are read in the historical context of Coleridge's "Hymn", glimpses of Wordsworth's ego become apparent; Thomas theorizes that "['Hymn'] becomes a negative precursive paradigm that Wordsworth strives to counter at all costs, even by appropriating his strategies" (Thomas, 83). Because his friend has usurped the genre that Wordsworth helped establish – the Sublime – he must reclaim it by doing justice to the subject. Despite the view of historicists like Thomas that "Hymn" had a "profound impact" on book six of the Prelude, other critics, such as David Miall, make little mention of Coleridge's poem in interpreting the Simplon Pass episode. In “The Alps Deferred: Wordsworth at the Simplon Pass,” Miall states: “The overall structure of the passage...shows that Wordsworth rejects the picturesque for an ecological and participatory account of nature”; revealing that Wordsworth finds transcendence in the Gondo Valley is a departure from Wordsworth's tendency to find the sublime in highly dramatic landscapes like Mont Blanc (Miall, 87). This reading asserts that the Gondo Valley became the source of transcendental thoughtfor Wordsworth when he wrote the lines 14 years later; that is, Wordsworth privileged his experience during his descent with the trees and rocks over traditionally picturesque views of high mountains and sharp horizons. Combined with the historicist view (particularly the view that Wordsworth was rewriting "Hymn" due to Coleridge's relative incompetence in the Sublime genre) reveals that Wordsworth's rejection of the picturesque might actually be a product of his contempt for Coleridge's poem. Essentially, both critics use the same type of textual evidence to justify similar points: Thomas cites the picturesqueness of Coleridge's "Hymn" and the subtle sublimity of Wordsworth's descent into the valley of Gondo to explain the counterpoint from Wordsworth to Coleridge; Miall cites the same evidence to show Wordsworth's rejection of the picturesque in favor of venerating the subtle, more "participatory" views that Wordsworth experiences in the valley. Although not without merit, these accounts fail to address a hybrid version, according to which parts of book six simultaneously rewrote the "Hymn" and negated the picturesque. In Coleridge's "Hymn", the penultimate stanza consists of six single-line apostrophes naming the picturesque inhabitants of the Chamouni Valley. Coleridge mentions “flowers,” “wild goats,” and “eagles,” images commonly associated with the Alps (64-66). Because Coleridge did not explicitly visit Mont Blanc, he might list its stereotypical inhabitants to better match the poem's content with its subject. Concerning Book Six, Wordsworth satisfies both historicist and formalist views if he neglects to mention the stereotypical images surrounding Mont Blanc. Indeed, Wordsworth denies the typical picturesqueness; he finds no transcendence, like Coleridge, only "mute cataracts" and "motionless waves" which reduce him to experiencing a more concrete reality only in "little birds" and "deciduous trees" ( 531-2, 535). The difference between Coleridge and Wordsworth here is that while Coleridge's speaker sees Mont Blanc and is immediately overwhelmed by the picturesque, Wordsworth continually strives to look beyond reality, and only when his eye encounters boring scenes that it feels limited to banal images. The proof that the picturesqueness of nature immediately surpasses Coleridge's orator lies in the first twenty lines of "Hymn." In the first lines, the speaker directly questions Mont Blanc by asking: “Have you the charm to remain the morning star / In its steep course? indicating direct engagement with its subject (1-2). His question quickly turns into a conversational form of praise of the mountain; Mont Blanc, the speaker asserts, has a “bald and horrible head” (3). Not only does Coleridge personify Mont Blanc as having a head, but he also calls the morning star a "he", suggesting that Coleridge's interaction with nature at this point is like an interaction between two humans (2). In order to respond to the immediacy with which nature dominates the speaker, Coleridge's personification of the mountain quickly transforms into a recognition of the mountain as a large, silent, divine form. Because the mountain rises "silently" from the pines and pierces the stormy sky, Coleridge's perspective is altered, and "when [he] looks again," the mountain that once showed human qualities becomes a " house” and a “crystal sanctuary”. " (7; 10-11). In the opening stanza of the poem, the speaker's view of Nature changes from a friendly view of Nature to the feeling that Nature is not a friend,but a “fearsome and silent” power which induces “entrance”, wonder and worship (13; 15-16). This change suggests that the speaker is receiving an answer to his original question, that the mountain has no "charm" to keep the morning star on its path, but is more powerful, with access straight to the sky. Wordsworth's first account of Mont Blanc is almost the opposite of Coleridge's in "Hymn": he recalls that he and Robert Jones "saw the summit of Mont Blanc and were grieved/to have a picture without a soul in his eyes, who had usurped a living thought which could never exist again” (6.526-529) The difficulty of these verses lies in their attribution to Thomas’s point of view according to which they represent a “counter-point”. direct” to the lines of “Hymn,” or, to use Miall’s terminology, imply a denial of the picturesque. Wordsworth’s feelings are not of wonder or elation, but of “mourning,” as if Wordsworth were weeping. the loss of something Whether or not the soullessness of Mont Blanc has a negative connotation in Wordsworth's mind is inherent in these lines. The image usurps a "living thought", much like. Coleridge's bodily senses disappearing from his thoughts, but the power of Mont Blanc in Wordsworth grants the "wonderful Valley" the ability to "make amends" with Wordsworth (6.528; 530; 533). . If looking at the Valley is more significant to Wordsworth than the shape of Mont Blanc, then the soulless image is the cause of this good vision, but if he denounces the view of Mont Blanc because of Coleridge's poem, Wordsworth deliberately mourns the loss of what might have been a transcendence. Shortly before Wordsworth sighted Mont Blanc, his “heart leapt” when he first sighted the Vale (6.510). Either Wordsworth's heart leaps because he longs to encounter the dense spirituality of "green corners", to participate in nature (as Miall describes it), or his heart leaps in order to foreshadow his later downplaying of Mont Blanc as a misinterpretation. to “Hymn” (6.520). Perhaps the best evidence for the historicist view that Simplon Pass is a response to "Hymn" is found in lines 542 to 558 of book six. In this stanza, Wordsworth uses the words “we” and “our” several times, and never once mentions the personal “I.” Taken literally as the account of their pilgrimage across the Alps, Wordsworth could be referring to himself and Robert Jones. Read in the context of "Hymn" and Wordsworth's friendship with Coleridge, it nevertheless provides insight into the context of Simplon Pass. Wordsworth's opening lines could describe his and Jones's state of mind, or comment directly on his and Coleridge's state of affairs when writing about Mont Blanc: All that we saw, or heard in this vast circuit, was adapted to our immature state of intellect. and the heart. By simple tensions of feeling, the pure breath of real life, we have not been left unscathed. (6.542-546) Here, Book Six and the “Hymn” could be the product of an “unripe” mind and heart. Wordsworth might reflect on his commentary on Coleridge's poem as "Mock Sublime" and attack the poem as critically as it is immature. At the same time, however, this lack of maturity of "intellect and heart" could refer to Coleridge's actual publication of the poem, suggesting that Wordsworth is saying something for the effect of: "Sam, he was not wise for you to write this poem about a place. you never were, and a little immature. But it was also my fault for criticizing you too harshly. Therefore, "What we have seen in this wide circuit" becomes representative of the experience of ? ».