THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."-Henry David Thoreau
Today in 1798, William Wordsworth returned to the area of Tintern Abbey, a 12th century structure in Monmouthshire—South East Wales—that by the 18th century was in a state of ruin…the kind of ruin that attracted the romantic poets. Wordsworth had first visited the Abbey five years previously, and his revisit sparked in him something inspirational enough to write one of his most famous poems (he supposedly wrote the whole thing in his head before putting it to paper). He adorned the piece with one of the greatest and most specific titles ever: “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.”
The poem first appeared as the final poem—being thrown in at the last minute—in a joint group of poems by Wordsworth and his dear friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge (the story of how Wordsworth’s actions ended Coleridge’s poetry career are for another time). Wordsworth actually never mentions the Abbey in the poem itself, but instead meditates on the beautiful scenery in front of him as he walks the area, remembering who he was when first there…how he has changed in those five years…how the memories of his trip through nature have helped him when face to face with city life and difficult times.
I first came across this poem in a college Eng. Lit overview class with a TA who had to teach the romantics but who was vocal about her dislike for them. But she couldn’t stop me from just digging them and this poem, which to me is one of the jewels of that movement, that hits upon a key theme of the era: nature…in its wildness and beauty…is in itself a temple and a host for humanity to find a life meaning that is deep and real and uplifting. It is in this poem that Wordsworth describes himself as a “worshiper of nature” and while the Abbey is never mentioned, the concept of space for soulful nourishment is all around.
This poem is an early poem for an environmental world: being reminded of the power and importance of nature even when bound by the cities’ walls. The poem meditates on how there is no way to give back to nature what nature has given to the person: a way of dealing with the chaos of the world, of our lives.
Today, I take a different message from the poem. Kaya, my daughter, left for camp yesterday…for almost a month. Her camp is near Yosemite and if this year is like her previous, what she will take from this time in a beautiful forest-green setting will be an experience she will hold closely for the following eleven months of the year…an experience that will give her a deeper compassion for natural world, a world we need to enjoy and preserve (I need to escape into some deep forrest myself!).
***Oh, and I love that Wordsworth mentions hermits in his poem…and love the English tradition of celebrating hermits.
Great read on my friend Bill Bentley’s Roky tribute (and on Roky himself). One of my big regrets of pre-Pandemic clubbing is not going to see Roky’s Easter Everywhere at the Chapel. Bill, of course, went…came from LA specifically to see it. What was I thinking? Anyway, what I have heard from this new tribute is just killer. Here is the Black Angels’ cover of DON’T FALL DOWN from the record that is getting its full release on the 17th….
Robert Downey Sr., Director of Experimental American Movies, Dies At Age 85
Passing of a legend. I have always loved Putney Swope…and luckily enough Criterion Channel decided to show most of Downey’s films starting last month. I am digging in. Meanwhile, the interview with Paul Thomas Anderson within the above article is great watching (yes, he was Jr’s Dad)
Rock Legend Pete Townshend’s Historic London Mansion Hits the Market for $21 Million
Looks like Pete Townshend lived…like you thought he probably did. Sweet pad, great art adorning the living room (please tell me it wasn’t staged….)
A Bright New Grocery Store, Made Entirely of Recycled Plastic
The future is in plastics (not)
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Patrice Lawrence awarded Jhalak Prize 2021 for writers of colour
Makumbi’s epic Kintu was the first major novel I read after Asher turned 4 and reading became a thing I could again do. Kintu is a masterpiece. Makumbi deserves this prize and more.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened:— that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft–
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart–
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all.— I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance–
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence–wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love–oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.
