"... arguably his views on poetry were stronger.... In ['Radical Wordsworth: the Poet Who Changed the World,' Sir Jonathan Bate] cautions against popular assumptions about the poets. He writes that 'among those labelled Romantics, there were abolitionists, vegetarians, advocates for women’s rights and animal rights and what we would now call an environmental ethic.' Wordsworth, while championed as the inspiration behind the national parks movement and a believer in spiritual attachment to the environment, would balk at some of the aims of Extinction Rebellion. Bate... said that although Wordsworth may have lost the radicalism of his youth, he would also have had reservations about modern concepts, such as rewilding, which is letting nature rule unhindered by human intervention. 'He’d say that not just because, like so many of us, he went from youthful rebellion to aged conservatism but also because he believed that the conservation of the environment depends on respect for ancient traditions of stewardship, as exemplified by the hill farms of the Lake District.'"
From
"William Wordsworth ‘would have marched with Extinction Rebellion’" (The London Times).
I had to look up
"Extinction Rebellion."
It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute. But which version of this dead one is relevant? Might as well take your pick:
“The young Wordsworth would have marched with them,” Bate said. “But the older Wordsworth would have written sonnets saying, ‘Lock them up’.”
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The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. - William Wordsworth
I always loved this poem. I feel this way sometimes, I think we all do. It’s a feeling though, not a plan.
It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute.
Yeah, I've never really been able to buy into arguments that presume to know what some historical person might do or think about a current dispute. There are just too many variables to make any kind of defensible inference. Is this a person who is suddenly transported to our current in time? Or is it like a genetic clone of this person that was brought up in our current time and therefore raised in an entirely different environment that the original? Is that then the same person? So where do you fall on the nature versus nurture human behavoir argument?
He said he liked his daffodils in rows instead of naturalized. What a fascist!
how is your daughter doing tim?
"But to still have a job is very heaven!"
Extinction Rebellion is the new home of militant environmentalist. Instead of chaining themselves to trees, they now glue themselves to subway cars or stand in the middle of streets to block traffic. To provide context of how radical they are, XR's first act was to stage a sit-in at Greenpeace because Greenpeace wasn't doing enough civil disobedience.
I am definitely a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
-Beck
That's the problem, you can't just pluck somebody out of their time and ask what they would do now. If you could they'd be so dazed by what happened that it would be hard for them to function. It would be hard for them to find their bearings. Even the most extreme radicals have things they don't even think about changing. It never even occurs to them that some things could change, and they would be shocked or surprised or repelled at the results. To be a radical today means having a very different set of habits and assumptions and moving in a very different crowd than an eighteenth century radicals would be used to.
On the other hand, there's also some radical chic, some desire to always be among the most progressive or revolutionary that could overcome such hesitation. Who can say which impulse is stronger? Today's Democratic party supports different policies from Jefferson, Jackson, FDR and JFK. Would they be appalled? Or would they pretty quickly adapt? Nobody knows. Eisenhower wouldn't know what to make of Trump - and that's putting it mildly. How he'd feel after making a careful study of everything that happened since he died is harder to say.
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I was never that crazy about the romantic poets. By the time it occurred to me to actually read them, I knew so much about their private lives that I was already bored with them.
"It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute."
People do it all the time when they refer to so-and-so is rolling over in her grave, implying that dead person would be appalled at the conduct of living alleged wrong-doer. It is a way to shame, but also an appeal to moral authority that cannot be checked, verified, or cross-examined.
Our inner cities have been "rewilding" for some time.
"letting nature rule unhindered by human intervention"
As if human intervention isn't part of nature.
As if nature cares.
Ah Extinction Rebellion, the source of two of my favorite videos of the last few months:
Here they are getting dragged off the roof of a tube train and pummeled by commuters with jobs to get to and failing to paint the Treasury building blood red. Heartwarming.
Lurker21 said...Even the most extreme radicals have things they don't even think about changing.
Karl Marx had a maid. While living at Walden Pond, Thoreau sent his laundry into town for somebody else to deal with.
I'm surprised Wordsworth changed. Usually 19 y/o Poets are experts on everything.
The Reign of Terror left Wordsworth thoroughly disillusioned with the French Revolution and the outbreak of armed hostilities between Britain and France prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter for some years. In 1812 Wordsworth said he would die for the Church of England.
Joe Biden is 78 and was born in 1942. He's older than Wordsworth was in 1845. The Poet became "conservative" but Joe Biden is more radical now then he was in 1970.
The same is true of Hillary, Ginsberg, Breyer, and Pelosi. THey've all moved left, despite being rich and incredibly old. The same is true of many writers. Dorothy Parker and Twain moved left as they got older. So, did Dreiser and Shaw.
dos passos, was a similar sort, be was left anarchist in the 30s, when he had a wake up call with the Spanish civil war,
I learned of Extinction Rebellion from Judith Curry's excellent blog post, The toxic rhetoric of climate change . She's not impressed with them:
JC message to children and young adults: Don’t believe the hype that you are hearing from Extinction Rebellion and the like.[...]Climate change — manmade and/or natural — along with extreme weather events, provide reasons for concern. However, the rhetoric and politics of climate change have become absolutely toxic and nonsensical.[...]
JC message to Extinction Rebellion and other doomsters: Not only do you know nothing about climate change, you also appear to know nothing of history. You are your own worst enemy — you are triggering a global backlash against doing anything sensible about protecting our environment or reducing our vulnerability to extreme weather.[...]
(Funny thing: You can accept all the premises of AGW and still be called "a traitor to the cause.")
apparently Charles fox among the liberals, was very naïve, about the revolution, Edmund burke was one of the few that was an open critic of the terror,
WWWD?
Ludmilla update: Brunhilde started a goat awareness uprising, urging the goats to reject their pen. Ludmilla nearly pulled one of her sister's braids out. They both use a bullhorn to give speeches which echo across the pastures, up to the Human Pagoda.
Namaste from Peace Pavilion West.
Empathy. Earth Action. Equity Against the Global Elite.
I had to look up "Extinction Rebellion."
Really? You missed one of the best "feel good" videos from last year. The video had it all. Two white males got their privilege checked by a diverse crowd of working class people. The video has it all -- drama, suspense and a wild twist. A must watch!
https://youtu.be/9P1UXYS6Bmg
Dozens of Hippies Stuck at Festival in Panama Due to Coronavirus Realize Collectivist Utopia is Actually “Hell”
The Tribal Gathering Festival, billed as “paradise on earth,” was supposed to end on March 15, but 40 western hippies remain trapped at the site because Panama announced a national emergency due to COVID-19 and placed them under quarantine.
“Don’t try to steal our food, I’ll get really upset with you,” one organizer tells the rest of the crowd. “And remember where you are, you’re in my fucking manor,” he adds.
“I’ve been camping on a beach for 80 days!” said Doug Francisco, who led Extinction Rebellion climate change activists last year. “While the festival was still going on, the police came in and tried to shut it down.”
Food, cleaning products and tobacco is all in short supply, with some hippies having to do manual labor to stay fed.
-Summit News
What are we talking about dead old white guys for?
I think I've read Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey about a hundred times. Whenever I see or read about hedgerows all I can think of is "little lines of sportive wood run wild".
...; feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love
An Irish-Socialist (former) friend once asserted to me that "If Christ were alive today he'd be a socialist or a Marxist." I laughed in his face. Our friendship did not last.
Wordsworth was not as long a fellow as that wadsworth poet. Besides , My lyrical favorite is Al Tennyson.
"That's the problem, you can't just pluck somebody out of their time and ask what they would do now. If you could they'd be so dazed by what happened that it would be hard for them to function."
I can agree with the first assertion, but not the second. There are at least a few examples of people who were plucked out of their tribal, pre-industrial milieu into the modern world, and were not so dazed as to be unable to function.
"Ishi (c. 1861 - March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States."
"Ishi was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a janitor. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was depicted and discussed in multiple films and books, notably the biographical account Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961"
And weren't there a few Yanomami who traveled from their villages into the modern world? People are remarkably adaptive.
Natural scenery is highly overrated. There's only a chance correlation between the hand of God and scenic beauty, although, to be fair, He had his moments....The most comforting and pleasant scenes in England are those rolling meadows in front of the manor house. They say that rolling meadows inhabited by deer or sheep appeal to our wish to inhabit a land free of predators....Those rolling pastures come to us courtesy of enclosure. The lords of the manor screwed over their tenant farmers to create those green and pleasant views....Entropy. You can't create order and beauty in one place on earth without creating disorder and ugliness somewhere else.
Watched Gibbs'/Moore's "Planet of the Humans" this A.M.
Some great horse-laughing in store for viewers.
Who remembers the plight of the drovers? The roads in the 18th century were unpaved. In seasons of mud, it was necessary to use pack animals to move cargo along the roads. After they paved roads, it was no longer necessary to unload the wagons and put the cargo on pack animals. The drovers got screwed by this process. Their predicament was similar to that of the tenant farmers, but their plight never really captured the imagination of the poets and novelists in the way that that of the tenant farmers did.....The world is full of people that get screwed over, but only a tiny percentage have their problems memorialized in poems or major motion pictures.
Please AA you are somewhat naive if you say "....It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute..." The MSM does that every second and worse. Single source stories, rumored stories, misrepresenting timelines by conveniently leaving out the dates, etc. is the 'modus operandi' of the MSM today. Especially, since the dawn of the 'Internet' and alternative sources of information popping up everywhere. They've become like the 'Fleet Street' newspapers in London whose 'cutthroat newspaper' brands are pure fiction.
Please AA you are somewhat naive if you say "....It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute..." The MSM does that every second and worse. Single source stories, rumored stories, misrepresenting timelines by conveniently leaving out the dates, etc. is the 'modus operandi' of the MSM today. Especially, since the dawn of the 'Internet' and alternative sources of information popping up everywhere. They've become like the 'Fleet Street' newspapers in London whose 'cutthroat newspaper' brands are pure fiction.
"Entropy. You can't create order and beauty in one place on earth without creating disorder and ugliness somewhere else."
This is a naive view of entropy. One simply uses "energy input" from outside a closed system like a manor house lawn to keep entropy at bay, and the lawn growing. While the manor house lawn is kept in order, the "somewhere else" experiencing disorder and ugliness, i.e., increased entropy, is the sun, outside our local manor house, and outside our planet entirely. The sun powers the growing grass without making a single plastic straw's worth of ugliness here on earth, allowing decreased local entropy via use of lotsa externally-supplied energy. Here on earth we have the sun providing endless energy from outside our earth to use in growing that lawn. And I'm ok with increased entropy on the sun in exchange for nice manor house lawns. You should be, too.
This line ("Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven") is often quoted out of context, as though it expressed Wordsworth's mature recollection of his early enthusiasm for the excesses of the Revolution, and it looks like some such misinterpretation is going on here, too. In fact the line celebrates his youthful enthusiasm for the period of constitutional drafting that took place after the fall of Robespierre (a time when "Reason seemed the most to assert her rights," imparting an unexpected romance to "the meager, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law, and statute"). Just sayin'.
@Mikee: When I wrote of entropy, I was writing with the soul of poet as opposed to the mind of a physicist. Behind all the fine and beautiful words of poets, there is nearly always a fair amount of domestic chaos. There are some exceptions, but poets don't make good husbands or dutiful fathers.....I give Wordsworth credit. He had a thing for his sister, but he kept his hands off her. Compare this to Lord Byron who, when attracted to his half sister, resolved the dilemna by fucking her. He also fucked a number of children and just about anybody he could. For all their elevated sentiments, there is not much to emulate in the lives of the poets....When I pointed out above that I was writing with the soul of a poet, I was being ironic. Far better to write with the mind of physicist, at least when you're not writing great poetry.
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