Unspeakable Nature in Wordsworth's Prelude: A Poetry Recital

Tonight I read Crashaw's 'The Flaming Heart'. I recited poorly but the poem didn't bear repeating. Crashaw's 'Flaming Heart' is a fiery rush of sexual-religious rhetoric.

The poem is inspired by (a better word would be 'ejeculated from') Crashaw's reading of the life of Saint Teresa: the resulting gush of verbiage represents his unmediated transposition of female orgasm into Crashaw's intellectual process. That is to say, Crashaw's sustained passion for Teresa's piety, the images of fire and melting, the forceful accumulation of ornate figures that when read aloud are so isomorphic to a desperate squirming of the body - all this and more makes Crashaw's poem 'The Flaming Heart' just NSFW.

Crashaw's poem is an example of that obscure subgenre, Catholic erotica, at its finest.

Then I turned to Wordsworth's 'Two Part Prelude (1799)'; altogether a different order of poem. Really for the first time I got the shamanic darkness of the poem. As I read I heard a roaring in the inner ears and felt, as if from a shadowy second body which stood right behind me, mine and yet not me but the body of a dream, shadowing the physical body.

I'm not ashamed to say it frightened me a bit, this darkness and motion and words that name things which I knew no names for. I stopped reciting and turned on the TV.

But it was no use: the entire field of awareness went on vibrating inexplicably with the impact of Wordsworth's greatest poem.

The unutterableness of Wordsworth's poem, neither pre- or trans-verbal, has that quality of Nature Herself which also storms uneasily beneath the verse of William Shakespeare.

Perhaps it was the recital of Crashaw that evoked it; the darkness of Wordsworth was drawn by the fire of Crashaw. I don't know.

It made me uneasy all the next day.

The Great Writer as Adolescent: Re-reading Andre Gide's Journals

Re-reading Gide's journals tonight, I am struck by how he obsessed over his image, over how others saw him. It is a little jejune for Gide to fret over what impressions his ideas and books make on others AFTER he has won public notoriety with his sex life. And how could it have been otherwise - I admit he was in a sore spot with Corydon and his autobiography - but still the overall impression of the journals is of adolescent angst.

Gide's introduction to Montaigne is a case in point. Andre Gide thinks he adds sharpness to Michel de Montaigne when all he is adding to Montaigne is Gide. Gide's Montaigne is 'risky' and 'impudent' because Gide has failed to discern his good taste from his ego.

Then there are Gide's assays into fields he is ignorant of. Three specific great writers he mentions in his journals he has signally failed to come to grips with.

First there is Marx. Gide's flirtation with communism is embarrassing because it reveals his adolescent-level political consciousness, limited (as politics should be with adolescents) to a passing enthusiasm.

Then William James. He thinks James' 'Psychology' is boring after a few pages, because he cannot understand the way James has reinvented the human soul along scientific lines without any loss of humanity or grandeur.

Finally in Freud he can see only the value of Freud as a de-mystifyer of sexual matters. About Freud's compulsive prose and striking insight into inner realities, not a word. He likes Freud because he is 'impudent'.

Gide consistently gets these great writers in a nutshell but misses the nut. And it's not simply a failure of his time or place, but a failure of imagination. Gide is too busy being 'impudent' to read these serious writers for adults.

I love Gide's work and personality, but the truth is he is basically an adolescent playing at being an adult much of the time. And it is a bitter pleasure to have outgrown his tutelage, and seen his limitations for what they are. Andre Gide is no less a great writer for the truth about him being less than complimentary. In fact, the pleasure of seeing the truth about him has inspired me to read his novels again.