Thoughts on LB, 1800 edition.

I’ve always thought of the historical transition from the Early Modern to the Modern period as a subjective struggle to stabilize the objective world. This conflict is evident throughout the Lyrical Ballads. In the preface of the 1800 edition, Wordsworth states the efficacy for using Coleridge’s poetry: “for the sake of variety . . . as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide” (171). Coleridge’s poetry, for Wordsworth, presents the possibility of a much needed variety, with the bonus of theoretical stability. The potentiality for conflict presented in these two qualities—variety versus theoretical stability—is intriguing, for much of modernity has been marked by the marginalization of our subjectivities--the “variety” we entail as individuals--and the systematic objectification of nature and our bodies (the sciences, economics, popular culture, etc.). Wordsworth states that he has been “advised . . . to prefix a systematic defence of theory, upon which the poems were written” (172). Much of the perceived triteness of Wordsworth’s work, which we spoke about in class ("Goody-Blake"), derives from his wariness of dealing with uncertainty. Wordsworth needs the objective of the poem to be clear in order to make his theories stable, and anyone who strives to be a creative writer knows that story-telling often necessitates a certain amount of abstractness, which makes poetry, or fiction in general, less than adequate for the objective of theoretical certainty. The final stanza of the poem, “Hart-Leap Well,” for example, presents, in a way that is perhaps not entirely cognizant of the limitations of human subjectivity, the problematic way in which we try to objectify nature. “She” (Nature) “shews” and “conceals,” and we should never, according to the narrator, "blend our pleasure or our pride / With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels” (177-80). Is this possible? The Zen parable, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there is hear it, does it make a sound?” comes to mind. We are hardwired to feel, and the more we try to excise our minds from objective discourse, the more we hunger for feeling. Coleridge, imprisoned by drug addiction, is a testament to this outcome, encumbered by the conflict between positive discourse and subjective feeling. I suppose this paradox--the need to feel in a way that is objectively cogent--is what makes us such a dangerous species.