The The Intelligible Ode : Intimations Of Paradise Av Graham Davidson

From its firstpublication, what is now known as the Immortality Ode has been praised for themagnificence of its verse and disparaged for its paucity of meaning - the''immortality'' of the subtitle unsubstantiated, and the ''recollections''insubstantial. Yet Wordsworth''s idea of immortality has clear precedents in theseventeenth century, and recollections of childhood are Traherne''s startingpoint for the recovery of a lost vision comparable to Wordsworth''s. Via thepower of the imagination, or reason, they believed they could experience arenewed vision that both termed variously Paradise, or infinity, orimmortality. Graham Davidsontraces the origins of Wordsworth''s poetic impetus to his resistance to theCartesian division between mind and nature, first adumbrated by the CambridgePlatonists. If reunited, Paradise was regained, but this personal trajectorywas tempered by a deep sympathy for the woes of mortal life. Davidson exploresthe consequent dialogue through some of Wordsworth''s best-known poems, at theheart of which is the Ode. In the last section, he demonstrates howWordsworth''s publishing history led the Victorians and modernists tomisinterpret his work; if one considers Eliot''s Four Quartets as odes,facing several of the same problems as did Wordsworth, there is some irony inEliot''s dismissal of the Immortality Ode as ''verbiage''.