﻿I 



Realism and the Coloring of Imagination 



AVordsworth is one of the few poets who has written poetry 

 with the avowed aim of ilhistrating special theories of his art : 

 also he is one of the few poets who has conscionsly traced for ns his 

 poetic gT0^^1:h and endeavored to let ns into the secret of his genins. 

 In additon. there is a third reason why one may hope to make a 

 true analysis of his mind. He reflects in a manner peculiarly illu- 

 minating to his own character many varieties of the thought of his 

 time. 



He lived at the end of a period when it had been customary to 

 make sharp distinctions between phases of artistic expression, when, 

 for example, the language of prose was quite another tongue from 

 the language of poetry, when the matter of poetry was regularly 

 limited to certain well-understood fashions, and, especially, when 

 the realistic and the romantic treatment of nature were supposed 

 to indicate almost diametrically opposite tendencies. To merge 

 these distinctions in form and to emphasize the supremacy of 

 thought was the work of the revolutionary poets. It was AYords- 

 wortli. more tlian any other poet of his day in Europe, who helped 

 accomplish this. Also it was AVordswortli. more than any other 

 critic, who made it clear what are the essentials of poetic thought 

 Avhether in prose or verse, what is the poetic thing to seek for in any 

 subject, whether commonplace or mysterious, and what are the 

 essentials of creative imagination whether realistic or romantic in 

 temper. In him the Komantic Movement became a movement 

 toward unity. In his romantic mind various modes of thought tended 

 to unite and symplify ; and since his time realism and romanticism, 

 to take the fundamental distinction with which we shall have to 

 concern ourselves, have been seen to express not opposite tendencies 

 but rather gradations in unified artistic purpose. 



But AYordsworth did not always unite these qualities perfectly. 

 If he is now illuminating and sincere, he is again mechanical or 

 whimsical. Indeed, if it is his greatness that he combines the vital 

 ideas, even the most opposite, of a reactionary and revolutionary 

 period, it is his weakness that they sometimes remain too clearly 

 distinguishable in the alembic. He is both the maturest and the 



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