In a message dated 6/9/2015 12:41:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"feel free to treat it as an empirical claim anyway, especially as this
makes Wittgenstein sound silly for ever saying such a thing. ["I wandered
lonely as a cloud" might equally be taken as an empirical claim: and plainly
false, for which of us resembles a cloud? What a silly poet.]"
As a matter of fact, Wordsworth was never sure how to parse the line.
"Some would take the 'as' a weak comparative, and further claim that poets
should be 'into' metaphor; but "I wandered lonely, a cloud" sounded very
silly to me at the time."
"When I wander, and lonely, as a cloud, the comparison holds, not with
regard to my shape, which is unlike the shape of a cloud (if it has one) but
with regard to the act of wandering in solitude."
"Strictly, as Constable has admirably showed us, not all clouds wander in
solitude, but I thought, "I wandered lonely, as a cloud that wanders lonely"
was repetitive."
"I also was intrigued, in a bad way, by someone arguing, against me, that,
as _I_ wonder, me a human being, a cloud does not wander, as the cloud is
merely moved by the wind. A full explication of the simile would require a
revisition of all that Aristotle says about similes, but I didn't have my
Aristotle to hand."
"But then, I thought to myself, and thinking of a potential reader in a
kind of rhetorical question, have you ever been in the Lake District? the
winds can be so STRONG, that even if you are not lonely, and even if the cloud
is not lonely, the eolic force is not to be dismissed."
"I must confess that I ended up chosing 'cloud', following a suggestion by
the wife, because it basically rhymes very well with 'crowd' that I was
using on line 3: I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales
and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host of golden daffodils."
Byron was not convinced. When "I wandered lonely as a cloud" appeared in
print, Lord Byron was the first to criticise it: "Mr. Wordsworth ceases to
please, clothing his ideas in language not simple, but puerile".
But then while 'puerile' is not puerile, it's the USE of 'cloud' that may
be puerile, not the word itself.
Wordsworth first thought of "I walked about a bit on my own". The
following day, he changed that, in his notebook, to "I strolled around without
anyone else".
Still, the ffollowing day, Wordsworth hit on "I wandered lonely as a cow"
until the wife told him, in Wordworth's own recollection: "William, you
can't put that". (In her "Memoirs", the actual words were the more polite:
"Perhaps 'cloud' would be better"). And while the 'cow' variant rings true of
the 'stuffed owl' author it IS allegedly true.
To the wife's complaint that Wordsworth would find an ending for line 3
more difficult to come up with (since 'cow' does not rhyme with 'crowd'),
Wordsworth was ready with a bout of inspiration:
I wandered lonely as a cow
that floats on high o'er vales and hills
when all at once I saw a plough
decorated with daffodils.
However, that Saturday, Wordsworth met with Coleridge at the local pub, and
Coleridge was in awe: "A cow is a _herd_ animal, William, if ever there
was one: she would *hardly* wander LONELY as is your wont."
Cheers,
Speranza
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
