The Guardian view on poetry for dark times: add Wordsworth to the stockpile
The mysterious intensity of childhood has fascinated generations of poets, particularly those with an affinity to the Romantics. William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were perhaps the most famous English explorers of the theme, seeking and celebrating in their work a past “state of simplicity” and vivid insight. Recollected, early experience seemed to them to offer clues to truths which had faded in adulthood. Wordsworth’s famous poem My Heart Leaps Up, written when he was 32, describes the child as “father of the man” and expresses the hope that the wonder present in the childlike gaze can somehow be preserved through to old age.
Taking that line as its title, a thought-provoking exhibition has just opened at Wordsworth House in Cumbria, exploring the childhood of the poet and his sister. To mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, the National Trust has placed miscellaneous objects from Wordsworth’s life on display, including a pair of ice skates and tinted spectacles, reflecting his fear of going blind. But pride of place goes to a baby bonnet knitted for Dorothy, hand sewn and almost certainly made by Ann, the children’s mother. The bonnet is the only item to be preserved from the siblings’ early childhood and it serves as a poignant reminder of the family tragedy that was to come. When William and Dorothy were eight and seven years old respectively, Ann died of an illness, possibly pneumonia. The children were orphaned and subsequently separated. As they reunited in adulthood, living together at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, the powerful memory of those early, brutally interrupted years must have played a significant part in their romantic evocations of a prelapsarian past.
The impulse that drove Wordsworth to write My Heart Leaps Up originated in a desire to recapture what he described as the “essential passions of the heart”, to see with fresh eyes rather than with the jaded cynicism of a gaze dulled by habit and routine. Something of the same spirit might serve us well in alarming times. The colossal impact of the coronavirus pandemic has made the world strange and troubling almost overnight. But as the millions of phone calls and messages of goodwill that are being exchanged testify, it has also laid bare the importance of our relationships with friends, relatives and neighbours.
The moving scenes of balcony singing in Italy were a way of articulating what Wordsworth might call “the primary laws of our nature” – in this case a need for solidarity, empathy and connectedness. In the months to come it is going to be necessary to continually see afresh and strengthen our communal bonds, looking out for those who are elderly, sick and vulnerable. As selfisolation looms for many, anecdotal evidence suggests that people are stocking up on books and pondering which classics they should finally take the time to read. A volume of Wordsworth would be a good addition to any list.