Sección VI Anexo Gráfico.
O BTENCIÓN Y E SQUEMATIZACIÓN DE LA I NFORMACIÓN
Dictated by the poet to a family friend Miss Fenwick in the first half of 1843, the notes, commonly referred to as The Fenwick Notes128, were first made public in 1850, in Wordsworth’s official biography,
the two volume Memoirs, written by the poet’s nephew Christopher Wordsworth. However, instead of publishing the notes as a whole, the biographer selected, rearranged and edited these notes. The Notes were published in full for the first time in 1876, in Alexander Grosart’s edition of Wordsworth’s Prose, but again with some alterations. The scholarly edition commonly used today is that of Jared Curtis, published in 1993. Just as the early publications of the notes did not give the notes much credit as a self-sufficient text, the scholarly use of these notes adopts almost the same approach. The Notes were used more often in contextualising Wordsworth’s poems, or disclosing the poet’s intention, as Wordsworth would have liked. Seldom were The Notes treated on their own merits as an independent work. Stephen Gill in Wordsworth, A Life (1989) brings forward the possibility of treating The Notes as a separate entity by suggesting that The Fenwick Notes ‘are best read entire, not as a source of information merely, but as a document in Wordsworth’s autobiography.’129 But there is startlingly
little scholarly work on this subject.
Certain perils in treating autobiography as a genre in literary studies may have contributed to the lack of scholarly interest in the notes. Autobiography itself as a genre comes with its inherent instabilities. As Paul de Man suggests, the difficulty of treating any autobiography as a piece of art work lies in the ambiguity of its genre, and its lack of aesthetic values. ‘Compared to tragedy, or epic,
128 For purpose of convenience, The Fenwick Notes will be referred to as simply The Notes. The edition cited is The
Fenwick Notes, ed. by Jared Curtis (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1993).
or lyric poetry, autobiography always looks slightly disreputable and self-indulgent in a way that may be symptomatic of its incompatibility with the monumental dignity of aesthetic values.’130 The
questions Paul de Man raises do suggest the complexities that autobiographical works possess in contrast to other literary works such as fictions or poetry. Decades have passed since Paul de Man’s book, and the study of autobiography and life writing has been more firmly established. One of the fascinating aspects of the study of autobiography is the complex texture of not only the text itself, but also how the text relates itself to the outside world, how it represents itself, how it imagines itself to be read and what the intentions are behind it. Autobiography, more than any other genres, foregrounds these concerns.
The Fenwick Notes, as Gill suggests, possesses various elements of autobiography. Early in the
1970’s, in the introduction to Approaches to Victorian Biography, the editor George P. Landow discusses several features of biography: it is in retrospect; it records a series of past acts, which are often interlinked by causality; occasionally the narrative points to a particular catastrophe as formative in the growth and maturation of the subject. The biography discloses the self by accommodating private experience and making it relevant to others, and in some degree, debunks the personal myth. A contrast between the former self and the self as it is now is detected.
This section will treat The Notes as biography as Gill suggested, but will be more specific in arguing that the notes are the poet’s literary autobiography. The Prelude, taken as autobiographical poem, is often regarded as the poet’s autobiography in the verse form. The Notes, compared to The
Prelude are much more comprehensive, as it does not only cover Wordsworth’s whole writing career
(The Prelude stops at sometime around 1805 when it first took shape), but also disclose the background
130 Paul de Man, ‘Autobiography as De-Facement’, in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University
to the writing of the poetry, whereas The Prelude primarily focuses on the growth of his mind. In The Notes, the speaker is the poet Wordsworth, at the age of seventy three, retrieving specifics of his poems from memory.131 It consists of entries named after the poem, under which, date and
circumstances when composed are disclosed. Further information regarding how the subjects of the poem were brought to the poet is added. Entries loosely follow the chronological order in which the poems were first published. Their lengths vary from a few sentences to hundreds of words. To see The
Notes as Wordsworth’s literary autobiography is to see the text as a record of literary performances,
and they aim to disclose background information, to debunk the myth of the poet’s poetic crafts (by which I mean the poems do not spring out from the poet’s imagination, but rather have source materials). It is an origin story of the poet’s literary performances, and also an excellent example of the intricacies between the selective representation of the self in relation to its imagined readership, and the author’s self-fashioning as a publishing poet.
The first question is the readership of The Notes. More than one audience seems to be envisaged. Wordsworth declares that the notes are intended for private use and not meant to be published. ‘Once more in excuse for much egotism, let me say these notes are written for my familiar friends and at their earnest request.’132 But this statement is far more problematic than its literal meaning suggests.
To whom Wordsworth is speaking? And for what purpose? If as he claims that the notes are for ‘the familiar friends at their earnest request’, the reader, having requested the notes, would be eager to learn everything Wordsworth has to say. Being too self-centred is the last thing they would detest. Yet, the
131 The speaker is Wordsworth, while the note taker is Miss Fenwick. Whether Miss Fenwick had applied her creativity
to the notes is not clear. If she did, then a whole new set of questions will be raised, such as the authenticity of the text, and the relationships between the poet as dictator and Miss Fenwick as the note taker. However, there seems to be a consensus that the authenticity of the written text is not to be questioned. This section will cast this question aside and focus on the selective self-representation of the poet in relation to its readership, through which to unfold how Wordsworth, as a publishing author, engages with his imagined reader.
poet is being apologetic. He is not apologizing for appearing to be egotistic, but for being egotistic to the wrong audience, which is other than familiar friends. This suggests that the poet has imagined The
Notes being read by a larger audience. For the sake of his public persona, he is differentiating himself
from the ‘egotistical sublime’ as Keats claims, in case the general public might have access to The
Notes. Further on, another entry confirms the design for a large audience. When recalling the sonnets
about the Italy trip in 1837, Wordsworth adds ‘should this note by any possible chance be seen by any of my country men who might have been in the gallery at the time (& several persons were there) &witnessed such an indecorum, I hope he will give up the opinion which he might naturally have formed to my prejudice.’133
The poet may not have had the general public in his mind when he first started the notes, but as much as he would like the notes to stay in private circle, he could foresee they would nevertheless go public at some point. By the time The Notes were taken, Wordsworth had long enjoyed his fame. The interesting anecdotes Gill in Wordsworth and the Victorians (1998) provides are good examples providing glimpses of the poet’s fame: people would travel to Rydal, come to the poet’s residence Rydal Mount, not go in, but linger at the gate and snatch a leaf from his garden as a souvenir. Wordsworth’s speculation that The Notes will reach the general public—later proven to be right— results in an acute sense of his contemporary readership and posterity in the notes.
The idea of ‘the birth of the reader’ as juxtaposed with ‘the death of the author’ and its rationale were developed by Roland Barthes in the 1960’s, his main reason being that linguistics facilitates the destruction of the author. The author is only a writing subject, he claims, while the text, being a ‘tissue of signs’, has language itself as its origin.134 Michael Foucault, at various points agrees with Barthes,
133 The Notes, p.73.
134 Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Authorship: from Plato to the Postmodern, A Reader, ed. by Seán
claiming that the text has its own grammarians, and that literary criticism has constructed the figure of the author, but essentially, he modifies Barthes in bringing forward the idea of the author-function. The writing subject matters mainly in the sense that it provides the basis for explaining certain events and their transformations and modifications; it is responsible for the unity of writing by neutralizing the contradictions in the texts.135 Thus, the unresolved issue here is how reader and writer fit into each
other’s scheme, and up to what limit does the author possess authority over the text? How does one exercise that limited authority?
In The Notes, the subtle paradox of asking the reader to consider the origins of the poem but excluding his own critical reviews is a revealing example of Wordsworth’s awareness and execution of that limited control. The early Wordsworth, on various occasions, defended himself against the criticism and accusations he faced or may have faced. The discussion of what is a poet in the Preface to the 1802 edition of the Lyrical Ballad is his defence of poetry, specifically his poetry. Thus, it is slightly surprising to find Wordsworth does not take the opportunity The Notes provide to explain himself regarding the principles of composition to ward off the negative reception of certain poems, especially some of his badly received ones, such as Peter Bell.
Drafted in 1798 and published on 22 April, 1819, Peter Bell invited sarcastic parodies and harsh criticism (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 7). John Hamilton Reynolds in his parody Peter Bell, A
Lyrical Ballad (1819) draws a portrait of the conceited speaker, targeting Wordsworth and the
Wordsworthian subject: ‘out of sparrow’s eggs I have hatched great truths, and with sexton’s barrows have I wheeled into human hearts, piles of the weightiest philosophy.’136 Shelley’s parody Peter Bell
135 Michel Foucault, ‘What is An Author’, in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. by
Josué V. Harari (London: Methuen), pp. 141-60.
136 John Hamilton Reynolds, ‘Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad’, in Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831, ed. by David A. Kent,
Dale R. Ewen (Cranbury, London and Ontario: Associated University Press, 1992), p. 174. Reynolds’ parody came out a week before Wordsworth’s Peter Bell, but it contains echoes suggesting that Reynold perhaps had some knowledge of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. See Introduction in Cornell edition, p. 17.
the Third, composed in October 1819 but unpublished until 1839, mocks the specific theme of
redemption in Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Henry Crabb Robinson claims that ‘Wordsworth has set himself back ten years by the publication of this unfortunate work’.137 Leigh Hunt refers to Peter Bell
as Mr. Wordsworth’s ‘didactic little horror’138.
Wordsworth was disappointed by the poem’s reception. In a letter to Lord Lonsdale, he writes: ‘—Peter Bell has furnished abundant employment to the Witlings and the small critics, who have been warring with me for more than 20 years, and seem more bitter than ever.’139 It is not only the critics
who were bitter, but the poet himself seemed to be wearied of the war against the contemporary critical engagement with his publications. However perfect the opportunity The Notes provided, the poet still chose to remain silent. The origin of the subject matter of Peter Bell and its various components are explained, but there is little comment and almost no response to the criticism the poem received, as in almost every other entry of The Notes. The Notes do not engage with the critical discourse around Wordsworth’s poetry. Apart from the possibility that Wordsworth may have taken pride in not feeling the need to explain himself, the silence on his part opens a door for future generations to explore aspects of the poems which may not necessarily appeal to the contemporary readers of these poems. The silence itself is an invitation, sent by Wordsworth to his posterity.
Lucy Newlyn argues that this anxiety of reception becomes ‘especially pressing at the point where the writing subject displaces past authority through antithetical reading, for it is here that the subject recognizes the threat that reading poses for writing, and therefore its own instability.’140 The act of
not providing commentary on his poems in The Notes acknowledges the instability of the meaning of
137 William Wordsworth, The Critical Heritage, Volume 1, 1793-1820, ed. by Robert Woof (London and New York:
Routelege, 2001), p. 655.
138 Ibid., p. 651. 139 MY, II, p. 542.
140 Lucy Newlyn, ‘“Reading after”: The Anxiety of the Writing Subject’, in Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 35, No. 4,
written texts: poems referred to in The Notes. The efforts to manipulate the reader into reading poems from certain perspectives would be futile. However, Wordsworth is dancing a shackled dance. On one hand, tracing the origin of the poem invites the reader to consider historical and biographical context of the poems, but on the other hand, The Notes stop there, refusing to provide critical insights to the interpretation of the poem. It is a half opened door. To fully open it requires cooperation of both the reader and the author. If the Wordsworth collection could be compared to a long ruined historic edifice that archaeologists try to disclose and reconstruct as Kenneth Johnston suggests,141 then The Fenwick
Notes exist as part of that edifice in its prime. It is a long and narrow corridor, linking every room,
which are the published works. It is where the host opens the door for visitors. Walking along the corridor, the visitor can get a glimpse of every room, yet not enough of it. One has to go into the room to see the whole picture, while the host is standing alongside the visitor, pointing to various designs of the house, explaining how they come to be, wishing the visitor could take account of such record into their appreciation, or depreciation. Whichever side the visitor decides is out of the host’s hands. There is a perceivable delicate balance of not saying anything, not saying much and saying too much on the host or the poet’s part.
There is, however, one exception, which is the entry under The White Doe of Rylstone. Wordsworth specifically says here ‘let me say a few words on this Poem in the way of criticism.’ 142
The reason is that The White Doe of Rylstone was read alongside some of Walter Scott’s poems, and Wordsworth felt ‘the comparison is inconsiderate’.143 Scott’s poems usually have plenty of actions
with various turns of fortune, so such a comparison blames The White Doe for its lack of action, which
141 See the metaphor in the opening paragraph in Kenneth Johnston, ‘‘‘Home at Grasmere’’: Reclusive Song’, Studies
in Romanticism, 14 (1975), No.1, 1-28.
142 The Notes, p. 32. 143 Ibid., p. 32.
is indeed the main defect for which the poem was criticized. Wordsworth devotes a fair amount of words to explaining why his poem centres on the moral and spiritual, and is not meant to be read as an action poem like Scott’s. It is a direct response to the reception of his poem and rare in The Notes. The comparison with such an overwhelmingly respected and celebrated figure like Scott seriously threatens Wordsworth’s individuality as a poet. In offering his defence, Wordsworth is reclaiming his individuality.
In retrospect, The Fenwick Notes provide biographical and historical contexts for Wordsworth’s poems, link together the entire poetic oeuvre, and more importantly, serve as an introduction for later readers. Its very existence demonstrates Wordsworth’s awareness of his readership and posterity, and, his anxiety of reception among them. By leaving out critical reviews and any engagement with the contemporary criticism of the poems, Wordsworth made The Notes open and timeless. It is about the poems written in the past, but its aim is to engage a large and a future audience. This implied futurity and the self-revealing nature of the text make The Notes prophetic, a prophecy of why Wordsworth truly deserves a place in literary history. His attempt to utilise the prophetic in self-fashioning reaches its peak and end, the process of which remains inspirational even as today. Such is his rich and timeless legacy.
Part I of the thesis has re-examined the prophetic aspirations in Wordsworth, in the hope of highlighting the prophetic as a mode of his self-fashioning. Anxiety of influence and anxiety of his contemporary reception and reception in posterity are channelled through the prophetic in his poems. Part II of the thesis will argue that the prophetic, initially adopted as the mode of self-fashioning, soon became a mode of writing, prominent in his golden decade. To see the prophetic as a mode of writing sheds new light in our understanding of some of Wordsworth’s well-known works, such as Lyrical
Ballads, and helps us to understand better those that did not do well when it comes to reception, such