Traces of Mysticism in Wordsworth’s Aesthetics of Nature: A Study on William Wordsworth’s Nature Philosophy in the Light of Ibn Al-‘Arabi’s Ontology

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is generally known as a nature poet or a “worshipper of nature”. Yet, his nature poems are not merely confined to the portrayal of the physical elements of nature but are marked by his enlightened spiritual vision. The belief in one life flowing through all, which is a prominent feature of Wordsworth’s nature poetry is a prevalent theme also in the treatment of man and the universe in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s philosophy_ a Sufi mystic whose philosophy is most famously associated with the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud or “the oneness of being”. This paper is an attempt to critically analyze the traces of pantheistic and mystical elements underlying Wordsworth’s poetry, and more importantly compare this with Ibn al-‘Arabi’s stand on the matter. Through analysis of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology, particularly his concept of unity of being and his emphasis on the importance of the faculty of imagination, this study first meets the controversy surrounding the pantheistic elements in Wordsworth’s nature philosophy and then attempts to demonstrate that the mystical doctrine of unity in all beings and the reliance on intuition and imagination as a means of perception of divine immanence is evident in both Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology and Wordsworth’s nature poetry. This study also reveals that Wordsworth’s attempt to get to coalescence of subject and object via imagination and its sublime product, poetic language, resembles the mystic’s yearning for transcendental states of consciousness and unification with the divine.

COVID-19 PANDEMIC: RE-READING WILLIAM WORDSWORTH'S SELECTED NATURE POEMS FOR A PANACEA

Poets and panorama are inextricably connected as man’s visual sensory motor organ always anticipates in response to its recipience. It recreates an additional faculty of imagination in poet’s mind that resonates with the random recipience and the most influential and impactful get a transformational embodiment in the generational process through a poet’s aesthetic and synthetic version of thought process thereby taking representation in poetry form. William Wordsworth’s poetry embodies the same after going through all the filtering process in mind and Muse. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic onslaught in the world and the ‘trial and error’ process of the governments and policy makers across the world relating to invention of an effective inoculation against the virus as a part of permanent panacea with no reportedly handy solution so far at hand could not but lead the world into a state of apathy and anarchy in respect to mental and psychological kept-up, and the pandemic paranoid fevered minds across the globe seek an intermediary alternatives for solace and salvation of their suffering souls and to remain abode and oblivious of the ongoing onslaught. In this connection, re-reading and re-interpreting Wordsworth’s nature poetry could serve as an intermediary panacea to pacify the panic and phobia as well as to introspect the inner self in respect to man’s works and deeds that how far man’s activities could be liable for the present global threat in the guise of Covid-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019).

Poets in a Transnatural Landscape: Coleridge, Nature, Poetry

This essay addresses the nature of the experience of nature, as evoked, in particular, by Coleridge, and the relationship between that experience and the impulse to speak of it, especially in poetry. Always a fascinated observer of his own responsiveness, he wrote to Thomas Wedgwood in 1802 that ‘I never find myself alone within the embracement of rocks & hills, a traveller up an alpine road, but my spirit courses, drives, and eddies, like a Leaf in Autumn: a wild activity, of thoughts, imaginations, feelings, and impulses of motion, rises up from within me’. As in his verse, the rhythmic motility of these lines, so characteristic of his language, cannot bear a merely consequential correspondence to the contours of landscape: not everyone who moves through such territory writes like Coleridge. With reference to his poetry, criticism, notebooks and letters, this essay examines the more complex relation to landscape at work in Coleridge's language: the connection between the ineffable character of sensory experience and the effusion of utterance; the participatory character of Coleridge's engagement with the natural world; the irruptive, ecstatic and synaesthetic qualities of his writing with regard to landscape; and the paradoxical desire both to name and not to name, to know and unknow, imprinted in his poetry. In doing so, the essay contends for the presence in Coleridge's work of a psychotropic poetics related to the nature of his experience of the natural order, in which poetry has the potential to act as a maker of ‘nature’ – like the natural world itself, an educative stimulus to our epistemic, empathetic and creative powers – and as such, transnatural. Friedrich Schlegel made the suggestive remark that ‘one cannot really speak of poetry except in the language of poetry’, and the essay concludes with a poem of my own germane to its theme.

Contrasting Nature, Gender, and Genre in Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie"

Anne Finch came to be considered one of the most influential female figures of the Augustan era because of her free, intimate exploration of nature and gender through poetry as well as her ability to seamlessly blend both classical and modern genres. In this article, Finch's unique style, voice, and perspective are examined in the context of "A Nocturnal Reverie," the final poem in her only published collection in 1713. "A Nocturnal Reverie" best showcases Finch's subtle but subversive style as she revisits scenes from John Milton, criticizes the idyllic presentation of mankind's relationship with nature, and makes a proto-feminist argument against woman's confinement to the domestic sphere all while operating under the pretext of nature poetry.

The French Revolution and the British Revolutionary Controversy

This video introduces the French Revolution and the fierce controversy over it which ensued in Britain during the 1790s. Exploring the debate’s major contributors, arguments, its development, and its visual dimensions, the video shows how Romanticism was shaped by and responded to the tumultuous political events in Britain and Europe. It reveals how key Romantic writers such as Wordsworth and Shelley, as well as central concepts and developments, such as feminism, the imagination, the inner life, nature, poetry, and rebellion, were powerfully influenced by the initial controversy.

Traditions of Russian Folklore in P. A. Vyazemsky’s Poems “Another Troika” and “In Memory of the Painter Orlovsky”

Статья посвящена проблеме взаимоотношений литературы и фольклора на материале двух стихотворений русского поэта, литературного критика XIX в. П. А. Вяземского (1792-1878) « Еще тройка» (1834) и «Памяти живописца Орловского» (между 1832 и 1837), в которых слиты воедино народно-песенная образность, традиционные фольклорные мотивы и проникновенный лиризм. Отмечается, что обращение Вяземского к фольклору глубоко органично и вполне закономерно для него, неразрывно соединено с его пониманием народности литературы, поэзии природной, самобытной, а не заимствованной. Делается вывод, что связь рассмотренных в статье стихотворений Вяземского с устным народным творчеством нашла выражение в широком и функционально разнообразном использовании поэтики народных песен, пословиц и поговорок, а также мифологических персонажей русского фольклора. Применяя фольклорные образы и мотивы, Вяземский меньше всего заботится о соблюдении местного, национального колорита, так называемого couleur locale (фр.). Введение поэтических формул русского фольклора всегда обусловлено идейно-художественным замыслом, содержанием и образным строем стихотворения. Именно органичная, нерасторжимая и глубокая связь творчества Вяземского с русской национальной стихией, литературными и народнопоэтическими традициями обеспечила его произведениям непреходящую ценность и эстетическую значимость. The article considers the problem of the relationship between literature and folklore based on two poems by the 19th-century Russian poet and literary critic P. A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878), “Another Troika” (1834) and “In Memory of the Painter Orlovsky” (between 1832 and 1837). The poems merge folk song imagery, traditional folk motifs and heartfelt lyricism. The author notes that Vyazemsky’s appeal to folklore is deeply organic and quite natural for him, inextricably linked with his understanding of the national character of literature, nature poetry, and originality. The author demonstrates that the connection of Vyazemsky’s poems with oral folk art manifests itself in an extensive and functionally diverse use of the poetics of folk songs, proverbs and sayings, as well as in references to mythological characters of Russian folklore. Using folk images and motifs, Vyazemsky downplays the depiction of local, national color (so-called “couleur locale”). The introduction of poetic formulas of Russian folklore is due to the poet’s ideological and artistic design and corresponds to the poem’s content and image structure. It is the organic, indissoluble and deep connection of Vyazemsky’s poetry with the Russian national element - literary and folk poetic traditions - that provides his works with enduring value and aesthetic significance.

Towards an Ecology of Encounter in Kathleen Jamie’s Selected Poems

One of the global and crucial concerns of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is the ecological preservation of the life-supporting system of the earth. It is considered one of the most important current studies that challenge the rapid degradation of the environment and wildlife. The purpose of this paper is to explore Kathleen Jamie’s (1962) vital ecological vision that she conveys through her ecopoetry and some of her nonfiction writings, arguing that developing ecological consciousness is crucial not merely to rediscover the value of natural world but also to realize that it is another form the human self. The paper also argues that ecological degradation as revealed by Jamie's ecopoetry paradoxically stands as the very reason that would foster the ecology of mind to observe the natural world as a valuable entity in itself. Jamie’s literary output extends to generate citizens of the natural world, a world that is based on comprehending the interconnectedness and interdependence between people and their physical landscape. Otherwise, the contemporary individual would be inclined to live in self-isolation. To examine Jamie’s portrayal of the relationship between man and his environment, ecocriticism is employed as an interdisciplinary approach that emerged in the 1980s to interrogate man’s patterns of relationships with nature, questioning the common notions of belonging and dwelling. In so doing, ecopoetry is demonstrated as essential in cultivating a new canon of nature poetry that promotes a maneuver beyond the politics of place and the limitation of nationhood. Jamie is a prominent contemporary Scottish poet who endeavors not only to promote ecological consciousness but also to advocate a breakdown of all the barriers between the human and non-human world, man's individual 'I' and the assumed 'Otherness' of nature. It is the construction of a new poetic and ecological mode towards an ecology of encounter, a path towards empathy between man and nature that would render the former more human and the latter more natural.

The New German Nature Lyric

Naturlyrik has long been a contested category in German poetry, but however politically suspect some may find ‘Gespräch(e) über Bäume’ (Brecht), they are vitally important in the era of anthropogenic environmental collapse. The current generation of German-language poets have sought new ways of writing about the natural world and environments; these differ from, and draw on, pre-twentieth-century Naturlyrik as well as the complex, often critical, representations of nature in poetry after the Second World War. Representations of gardens and other human-‘managed’ natural spaces, references to and rewritings of German literary tradition, and the exploration of non-human voices and subjects all serve as means of restoring subjective fullness and complexity to Naturlyrik. The questions of voice and form which are central to the idea of the lyric genre as a whole are implicated in the development of a contemporary nature poetry beyond both Brecht and Benn, and Anthropocene Naturlyrik is pushing German lyric poetry itself into a new phase.