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Ode to Intimation of Immortality
In the poem Ode to the Intimation of Immortality, Wordsworth is struggling to develop a long lost connection with nature. He is exploring the beauty of the natural would in an attempt to feel its charm and appeal the same way he could do as a child. But he finds himself at a loss since he is not able to feel any elation and joy with all the beauty surrounding him. Wordsworth knows that as a child he was more in tune with nature and realizes that when we are young, we can connect with nature much more easily simply because we still have memories of heaven alive in our minds. But as we grow older, these memories fade and the reality of the new world takes over. Thus we lose touch with our purer existence of the past and hence our love of nature too. Wordsworth looks at innocent children around him and sees their unmistakable joy and this reminds him of his own childhood. He thus decides not to allow his depression to put a damper on the actual beauty surrounding him and he resolves to enjoy nature as he would do as a child. Children play an important role in the poem as it is their undiluted happiness that makes the poet realize that we have a strong connection with heaven in our early days but as we grow older, we somehow lose that link. He cautions children against growing up too fast. The poet understands that children want to grow up quickly but if he had a second childhood, he would have tried to pause a little and grow up slowly in his attempt to truly savor the nature and its immense beauty. Immortality in this poem refers to the immortal beauty of the nature. While we may come and go, wither away with seasons, but nature stays the same for all generations to enjoy. Its beauty doesn't fade with time. It renews itself every season so people of all ages can appreciate its magnificence. Thus while children grow up and lose their connection with nature, a next generation of children enters to adore and appreciate nature in all its bloom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The cliched image of the Romantic poet is of a solitary tortured genius; it is ironic that the work of the poets collectively regarded as the 'Romantic School' is marked by collective and co-operative effort as much as by individual creativity. For none of the great figures of Romantic poetry is this so true as it is for Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The first-rate poetic output of this extraordinary,
Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of Wordsworth. The
Rousseau, Douglass, both prose writers; Whitman, Tennyson and Wordsworth, all three, poets. What bind them together, what is their common denominator? Nationalism, democracy, love for the common man, singing praises for the ordinary man on the street, fighting for the rights of the poor, seeking the liberation of the downtrodden from oppression, glorifying the human being - man! These are elements that are common to them. Jean Jacques Rousseau Consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In essence, Wordsworth sees nature as a form of both physical as well as spiritual rejuvenation and transformation. In Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey he goes on to describe the gift of nature as follows: To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened. ( "Tintern
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents: Why does Freud think life is hard for human beings? people likely to be happier in a civilized or uncivilized state? What are the benefits of order? Why is civilization hostile to sexuality? How does civilization inhibit aggression? Freud's central paradigm is that the tension between the individual and civilization is historically grounded in the violence of warfare and humanity in the early part of