Hamilton Salsich
Mr. Salsich
English 9
21 September 2009

Nostalgia or Silliness:
A Study of One Article about Wordsworth’s “Intimation Ode”

1)Great poets are not supposed to be silly. 2) No one wants to come across a completely juvenile line in a famous poem by, say, William Shakespeare. 3) Poets are often accused of this offense, and William Wordsworth is no exception. 4) Erik Gray recently lamented that Wordsworth’s most famous ode is filled with immature remarks that border on foolishness, and it might be worthwhile to examine the validity of his claim.

TS Writing in the Philological Quarterly, Mr. Gray, an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, makes the claim that Wordsworth’s portrayal of youthful wisdom is entirely without foundation. SD When the poet claims that the boy is a "Mighty Prophet! [and] Seer blest ” (721), Gray chides Wordsworth for being overly syrupy and unfaithful to the facts. CM There is no rational proof, says Professor Gray, for ascribing such incredible wisdom and prophetic powers to a child (18). CM It’s silliness, according to Gray, for a poet of Wordsworth’s powers to resort to such ridiculous tricks. SD Professor Gray goes on to say that earlier critics of Wordsworth have noticed the same thing. CM Coleridge, in fact, protested against the ridiculousness of parts of the “Ode” soon after it was published. CM In addition, Gray reminds us that Mathew Arnold saw no reason to praise the famous poem, since he thought it was filled with juvenile reasoning and “silly ideas” (Gray 13). CS Professor ends his article with by saying that “great poets ought not to resort to the kind of overstatements we normally associate with rattle-brained children” (19).

TS I couldn’t disagree more with the learned professor from Columbia. SD First of all, Wordsworth was not writing an article for an encyclopedia, but a poem. CM An encyclopedia demands that we be precise, authoritative, and strictly accurate, but a poem makes no such demands. CM In the Ode, Wordsworth was simply pouring out his innermost intuitions about childhood, memory, and immortality. CM He was writing right from the heart, and, in doing so, he should not be judged in the same way that we judge scholars who write for encyclopedias. SD Furthermore, since when do we judge another person for doing exactly what we are doing? CM Professor Gray is suggesting that the poet can’t see into the mind of a child, but Gray himself is pretending to see into the mind of Wordsworth. CM He’s committing the same crime that he’s railing against. CS The learned professor should look to his own scholarly faults before he censures others.

1) William Wordsworth (and every other great poet) was probably “silly” in many of his poems, but not, I think, in the “Intimations Ode”. 2) For me it remains one of the finest poems in the English language. 3) Professor Gray, in attempting to convince his readers of the poets inanity, perhaps only succeeded in pointing the finger back at himself. 4) I found his article to be greatly inferior in depth and breadth to any single line in Wordsworth's wondrous poem.

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Works Cited


Gray, Erik. “Nostalgia, the Classics, and the Intimations Ode: Wordsworth's Forgotten Education”. Philological Quarterly, Vol. 80, May 2001. http://ww.questia.com/read/5000637724?title=Nostalgia%2c%20th