William Wordsworth(otherwise: William Wordsworth, English William Wordsworth, April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland - April 23, 1850, Rydal Mount, near Grasmere, Cumberland) - English romantic poet, the main author of the collection "Lyrical Ballads", conditionally attributable to the so-called. "lake school"
Biography
William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland. William Wordsworth was the second of five children of D. Wordsworth, attorney and agent J. Lowther (later the first Earl of Lonsdale).
In 1779, young William Wordsworth was assigned to a classical school in Hawkshead (North Lancashire), from where he acquired an excellent knowledge of ancient philology and mathematics and erudition in English poetry. In Hawkshead, the future poet devoted a lot of time to his favorite pastime - hiking.
Already in 1787, William Wordsworth entered St. John's College, Cambridge University, where he studied mainly English literature and Italian. During the holidays, he walked around the Lake District and Yorkshire and wrote the heroic distich poem "An Evening Walk" (An Evening Walk, 1793), in which there are many heartfelt pictures of nature.
In July 1790, William Wordsworth and his university friend Richard Jones crossed a revolutionary awakening France on foot and reached the lakes of northern Italy via Switzerland.
Wordsworth's father died, and his employer, the Earl of Lonsdale, owed him several thousand pounds, but refused to recognize this debt. The family hoped that William Wordsworth would take holy orders, but he was not in the mood for this and in November 1791 he again went to France, to Orleans, to improve his knowledge of the French language. In Orleans, he fell in love with the daughter of a military doctor, Anette Vallon, who on December 15, 1792, gave birth to his daughter Caroline. His guardians ordered him to return home immediately. William Wordsworth acknowledged his paternity but did not marry Anette.
On his return to London in December 1792, he published An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, a travelogue with Jones written in France and colored by an enthusiastic acceptance of the revolution.
The outbreak of the Anglo-French war in February 1793 shocked William Wordsworth and plunged him into despondency and anxiety for a long time.
In the autumn of 1794, one of William Wordsworth's young friends died, bequeathing him £900. This timely gift allowed Wordsworth to devote himself entirely to poetry. From 1795 until mid-1797 he lived in Dorsetshire with his only sister, Dorothea; they were united by a complete kindred of souls. Dorothea believed in her brother, her support helped him get out of depression. He began with the tragedy The Borderers. Genuine feeling filled with a poem in blank verse "The Ruined Cottage" (The Ruined Cottage) - about the fate of an unfortunate woman; later the poem became the first part of The Excursion.
In July 1797, the Wordsworths moved to Alfoksden (Somersetshire) - closer to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived in Nether Stowe. During the year of close communication with Coleridge, the collection "Lyrical Ballads" (Lyrical Ballads) was formed, which included "The Tale of the Old Mariner" by Coleridge, "The Foolish Boy", "Turn", "Lines", written at a distance of several miles from Tintern Abbey and others poems by Wordsworth. An anonymous edition of the Ballads appeared in September 1798. Samuel Taylor Coleridge persuaded Wordsworth to start an epic "philosophical" poem about "man, nature and society" called The Recluse. William Wordsworth enthusiastically set to work, but got bogged down in the composition. As part of this plan, he wrote only a poetic introduction About Man, Nature and Life, the autobiographical poem "The Prelude" (The Prelude, 1798-1805) and "Walk" (1806-1814). At Alfoxden he also completed (but did not publish) Peter Bell.
In September 1798, the Wordsworths and Coleridge traveled to Germany. In Goslar, Wordsworth, approaching The Hermit, set out in blank verse the history of his adolescent impressions and experiences from communion with nature. He later included what was written in the Prelude as Book I. In addition, he wrote many poems, including the cycle "Lucy and Ruth".
(1850-04-23 ) […] (80 years old)William Wordsworth(otherwise: William Wordsworth, English William Wordsworth, April 7, Cockermouth, Cumberland - April 23, Rydal Mount, near Grasmere, Cumberland) - English romantic poet, the main author of the collection "Lyric Ballads", conventionally attributable to the so-called. "lake school".
Biography
Program
Representatives of romanticism sharply condemned urban culture and left it either in the Middle Ages - "Gothic novel", - or in nature. In the silence of small-scale life and the countryside, in simplification, they sought salvation from social ills, opposing city life to the simple “unspoiled” life of the province. "Simple" life became their ideal, and Wordsworth took up his apology in the field fiction. He made it a rule to "take material for creativity from ordinary life, arrange it in an ordinary way, in an ordinary language." “Ordinary life,” he says, “I have chosen because only in it is everything natural and true; in its conditions, a simple, unadorned life does not contradict the beautiful and stable forms of nature ”(preface to“ Lyrical Ballads ”). Wordsworth lowered the rational and pompous language of the poetry of classicism to the level of the spoken language; According to Wordsworth, the language of poetry should not differ from the language of prose.
The work of William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is a poet of Nature and Man. He believed that his poetic purpose was to show nature not as a refuge of man from suffering and obligations, but as a source of "pure passion and fun", enduring inspiration and support, granting, if only a person is able to truly see and hear, eternal and universal the values of the soul and heart are love, joy, perseverance and compassion. This belief is rooted in Wordsworth's childhood and youth experiences, which determined his development as a poet. Unusually sharpened eyesight and hearing gave the young man such a deep enjoyment of the beauty and mystery of nature that he often plunged into a trance or into a state of delight, reverence and even awe.
Just as deep was William Wordsworth's love for people - children and heirs of nature. In childhood and youth, he was fascinated by rural types, especially shepherds and "pedlars", that is, itinerant merchants. Their images are found in his poetry. The character of a different plan - an unbridled, cruel, insensitive tramp, who, however, is also a child of nature, capable of repentance and tenderness - is magnificently revealed in Peter Bell. Wordsworth never judged his neighbor, and his poetry is warmed by a feeling that C. Lam called "excellent tolerance" for human weaknesses and shortcomings. Wordsworth loved the humble and meek in heart. Sympathy for the heavy female lobe also manifested itself in his work. Images of children often appear in his poetry, sometimes showing, in contrast to narrow-minded adults, the insight of the heart and imagination, as in the ballad "We are seven" (1798).
Wordsworth invariably emphasized how much he owes to his four great predecessors in English poetry - J. Chaucer, E. Spencer, W. Shakespeare and D. Milton. His style shows signs of their enduring influence, most notably of Milton, whose sonnets prompted Wordsworth to turn to this poetic form. His later poetry is mainly represented by sonnets, sometimes combined into cycles like the River Daddon and Church Essays. The plot poems of the Lyrical ballads are similar in content and style to folk poems. English ballad well known to Wordsworth.
In the best poetic works of Wordsworth, a clear thought is combined with expressive, accurate descriptions, highlighted by the power of feeling, and in the depiction of the characters, both the appearance and the soul of a person are conveyed with impeccable authenticity. The same unwavering fidelity to truth allowed him in Book I of the Walk (where the Wanderer is actually the author), in the Prelude and in Tintern Abbey, to reveal the states of delight, horror and spiritual vision he experienced in such a way that it became a new word in poetry.
In the mature and later years of his life, the creative genius inspired Wordsworth's poetry to a lesser extent than in -, but it was often the fruit of deep thought and feeling, and sometimes reached the heights of artistic skill.
images of nature
There is no city, even a provincial one, in Wordsworth. Only in the sonnet "To London" did he draw London, which, however, reminds Wordsworth of a calm and sleeping manor. There is none in the dream characteristic feature city, despite the fact that he wrote this sonnet standing on Westminster Bridge, in the very center of London.
But he opened, as critics say, nature to the English, and he is rightly considered the best master of the landscape. Everything that Wordsworth depicted is given against the backdrop of nature: a beggar sits on a distant rock, a cat plays with withered leaves, a deaf peasant lies under a pine tree, etc. He measures time with blooming springs, a long summer, abundant fruits in autumn, cold long winters. He translates the subtlest shades of the psyche into the language of nature. Such a deficiency of the human body as deafness, Wordsworth depicts as follows: for the deaf, “a deep mountain valley with ringing streams is dead, he does not hear its music; on a summer morning he is not awakened by the solemn chorus of birds, he is not pleased with the booming “coo-coo” in the noisy forest; it is not for him that the bees sing and buzz in the flowers. When strong winds shake the wide chest of the lake and it sings, plays and rumbles with thousands of seething waves, the wind bends the tops of trees to the ground and rustles in the reeds - it does not hear the music of the storm - it sees only a silent picture. He does not hear the rattle of a plow turning over heavy clods of earth, he does not hear the ringing of a scythe and the crunch of grass, he does not hear the rustle of ears of corn when his sickle cuts the stems, he does not hear the cheerful noise of labor in a bad time ”(“ Excursion Book ”).
Wordsworth, being an opponent of urban culture, was not particularly drawn to science. He learned the world by direct contact with nature. "A child, putting a shell to his ear, hears the roar of the ocean." “Nature is known not by the mind, but by the sensitive and perceiving heart. Nature is the greatest teacher. Science is looking for a distant truth, and the poet sings the songs of today, he is echoed by today's humanity, in the face of today's truth.
In Wordsworth's work there is a share of mysticism and deification of nature, there is a little moralization and piety, but all this is lost in his deeply lyrical and simple poetry. In the works of Wordsworth, a peasant, a soldier who returned from service, a peddler, and peasant children found their place (“A Noble Peasant”; “We are Seven”; “The idiot Boy”, etc.).
Political Views
In his youth, Wordsworth was interested in the ideals of the Great French Revolution, but after Napoleon I came to power, like many contemporaries, he became disillusioned with the revolution. In the future, Wordsworth was a conservative, and any change in the "beautiful and stable forms of nature" aroused protest and indignation on his part. He appealed to the government with requests to support the petty nobility and its stronghold - the village, since, in his opinion, the power of England was based on the petty nobility. Wordsworth opposed the parliamentary reform, rebelled against the construction of the Kendal-Windermere railway.
Poet Laureate
After the death of Robert Southey in 1843, the 73-year-old Wordsworth was appointed
Brief biography of the poet, the main facts of life and work:
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
William Wordsworth (Wordsworth) was born April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was the second of five children of D. Wordsworth, attorney and agent J. Lowther, who later received the earldom of Lonsdale. The Wordsworths lived in the north of England, in the so-called Lake District.
William's mother died early, and in 1779 his father sent the boy to a classical school in Hawkshead (a village in North Lancashire, the center of the Lake District), where the wards were given an excellent education. Already at school, William began to write poetry.
In 1787 Wordsworth entered St. James's College, Cambridge University. To a young man Didn't like it in Cambridge. A peculiar form of protest against the atmosphere of envy and sycophancy that prevailed there was a passive refusal to study. He became interested in writing poems. In Cambridge, the poet began to create "Salisbury Plain", "Evening Walk", "Fine Sketches", "Inhabitants of the Borderland".
The most important event in his student years was the vacation of 1790 for Wordsworth. In July, he and his university friend R. Jones walked across France, which was undergoing a revolutionary awakening, and through Switzerland reached the lakes in northern Italy.
In the meantime, Wordsworth's father died, and the Earl of Lonsdale owed him several thousand pounds, but refused to recognize this debt. The family hoped that after graduating from Cambridge, William would take the priesthood, but he was not in the mood for this.
In November 1791, the young man again went to France, to Orleans, to thoroughly study French. There he fell in love with the daughter of a military doctor, Anette Vallon, who soon became pregnant by him. However, at the request of the guardians, Wordsworth had to return to England before the birth of the child. On December 15, 1792, Annette gave birth to a daughter, Caroline. Wordsworth acknowledged his paternity, but could not marry.
Upon his return to England, the poet settled in London. He had no money, no definite profession, no home of his own. For almost four years, the young man spent time in the company of London radicals, which became for him a good school for learning about the life of the lower classes of English society. William interacted with abandoned mothers, beggars, homeless children, vagrants and cripples at numerous military events of the English crown.
In the autumn of 1794, one of Wordsworth's young friends died, bequeathing him £900. The poet immediately rented a house in which he settled in the company of his beloved sister Dorothy. From that time on, the sister was not separated from William until the end of his life.
Two years later the Wordsworths moved to Alfoxden House near Bristol. There William met Samuel Coleridge. Young people quickly found a common language and decided to help each other. This friendship changed not only the lives of both poets, but English poetry itself.
During the years 1797-1798, they practically did not part and spent time in "poetic amusements." Wordsworth turned to the creation of small lyrical and dramatic poems, which won him the love of the reading public. Many of them were written according to creative program, developed by Wordsworth together with Coleridge and involving the destruction of the poetic canon of neoclassicism.
Thus began a period in the life of the poet, which Wordsworth's biographers call "the great decade."
In 1798, friends published a poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads. The preface to the collection was in the nature of a literary manifesto, which defined a new style, a new vocabulary and a new theme for English poetry.
In fact, Wordsworth and Coleridge became the head of the so-called Lake School, or Lake School, which had a significant and beneficial effect on English poetry, developing a taste for the study of common man and nature. The term itself originated in 1800, when in one of the English literary magazines Wordsworth was announced as the head of the Lake School, and in 1802 Coleridge and Southey were named members of it. The life and work of these three poets are connected with the Lake District, the northern counties of England, where there are many lakes. The Leikist poets sang splendidly this land in their poems. The Lake School had a certain influence on Byron and Shelley.
Coleridge conceived a huge poem, it was supposed to tell about all the sciences, philosophical systems and religions of mankind. The poet tentatively named it "The Stream". But the impatient Coleridge did not have enough strength for such a grandiose idea, he soon lost interest in his idea and suggested that Wordsworth take up its implementation. He agreed and worked on the poem all his life, for forty years. The new author called his brainchild "The Hermit". Wordsworth managed to complete only the first part of the poem, which he published in 1814 under the title "The Walk".
In May 1802 the old Earl of Lonsdale died, and the heir agreed to pay the Wordsworths £8,000. This significantly strengthened the well-being of Dorothea and William, who was about to marry his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Since the short-lived Treaty of Amiens was concluded between England and France, in August all three went to Calais, where they saw Anette Wallon and Caroline. And on October 4, Mary and Wordsworth got married. Their marriage was very happy. From 1803 to 1810 they had three sons and two daughters. So Dorothea, who did not marry, remained to live in her brother's house. The family grew, and the Wordsworths had to periodically change their place of residence, moving to more spacious houses. In 1806, the poet purchased his own house, Dove Cottage, in Grasmere, Westmoreland. The family later moved to Rydal Mount, near Ambleside, where Wordsworth's daughter Katherine and son Charles died in 1812.
Published in England in 1807, Poems in Two Volumes completed Wordsworth's "great decade".
In 1813, under the patronage of Lord Lonsdale, Wordsworth was appointed Commissioner of Stamp Duties in two counties, Westmoreland and part of Cumberland, which enabled him to provide for his family. The poet held this position until 1842, when he was given a royal pension of 300 pounds a year.
Even during his lifetime, by the 1830s, Wordsworth was recognized as a classic of English literature. IN last years The poet devoted much of his life to what his family jokingly called "darning". He constantly and persistently reworked previously created works for each next reprint.
In 1843, the poet Robert Southey died, Wordsworth was awarded the title of poet laureate and remained so until his death.
* * *You read the biography (facts and years of life) in a biographical article dedicated to the life and work of the great poet.
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Copyright: biographies of the lives of great poets
Years of life: from 04/07/1770 to 04/23/1850
English romantic poet. An outstanding representative of the "lake school".
William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland. William Wordsworth was the second of five children of D. Wordsworth, attorney and agent J. Lowther (later the first Earl of Lonsdale).
In 1779, the young William Wordsworth was assigned to a classical school in Hawkshead (North Lancashire), from where he acquired an excellent knowledge of ancient philology and mathematics and erudition in English poetry. In Hawkshead, the future poet devoted a lot of time to his favorite pastime - hiking.
Already in 1787, William Wordsworth entered St. John's College, Cambridge University, where he studied mainly English literature and Italian. During the holidays, he walked around the Lake District and Yorkshire and wrote the heroic distich poem "An Evening Walk" (An Evening Walk, 1793), in which there are many heartfelt pictures of nature.
In July 1790, William Wordsworth and his university friend Richard Jones crossed on foot through France, which was undergoing a revolutionary awakening, and through Switzerland reached the lakes in northern Italy.
On his return to London in December 1792, he published An Evening Stroll and Descriptive Sketches, an account of a journey with Jones, written in France and tinged with enthusiastic acceptance of the revolution.
The outbreak of the Anglo-French war in February 1793 shocked William Wordsworth and plunged him into despondency and anxiety for a long time.
In the autumn of 1794, one of William Wordsworth's young friends died, bequeathing him £900. This timely gift allowed Wordsworth to devote himself entirely to poetry. From 1795 until mid-1797 he lived in Dorsetshire with his only sister, Dorothea; they were united by a complete kindred of souls. Dorothea believed in her brother, her support helped him get out of depression and become a great poet. He began with the tragedy The Borderers. Genuine feeling filled with a poem in blank verse "The Ruined Cottage" (The Ruined Cottage) - about the fate of an unfortunate woman; later the poem became the first part of The Excursion.
In July 1797, the Wordsworths moved to Alfoksden (Somersetshire) - closer to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived in Nether Stowe. During the year of close communication with Coleridge, the collection "Lyrical Ballads" (Lyrical Ballads) was formed, which included Coleridge's "The Tale of the Old Mariner", "The Foolish Boy", "Thorn", "Lines", written at a distance of several miles from Tintern Abbey and others poems by Wordsworth. An anonymous edition of the Ballads appeared in September 1798. Samuel Taylor Coleridge persuaded Wordsworth to start an epic "philosophical" poem about "man, nature and society" called The Recluse. William Wordsworth enthusiastically set to work, but got bogged down in the composition. As part of this plan, he wrote only a poetic introduction About Man, Nature and Life, the autobiographical poem "The Prelude" (The Prelude, 1798-1805) and "Walk" (1806-1814). At Alfoxden he also completed (but did not publish) Peter Bell.
In September 1798, the Wordsworths and Coleridge traveled to Germany. In Goslar, Wordsworth, approaching The Hermit, set out in blank verse the history of his adolescent impressions and experiences from communion with nature. He later included what was written in the Prelude as Book I. In addition, he wrote many poems, including the cycle "Lucy and Ruth".
In December 1799, he and Dorothea rented a cottage in Grasmere (Westmoreland County).
In January 1801, William Wordsworth produced a second edition of Lyric Ballads, adding the Grasmere narrative poems Brothers and Michael and an extensive preface discourse on the nature of poetic inspiration, the purpose of the poet, and the content and style of true poetry. Coleridge did not give a single new work to the second edition, and it, having absorbed the first, was published under the name of one William Wordsworth.
The winter and spring of 1802 were marked by the creative activity of the poet: The Cuckoo, the Butterfly triptych, Promises of Immortality: Ode, Resolve and Independence were painted.
In May 1802 the old Earl of Lonsdale died and the heir agreed to pay the Wordsworths £8,000. This greatly strengthened the welfare of Dorothea and William, who was about to marry Mary Hutchinson. In August, all three went to Calais, where they saw Anette Vallon and Caroline, and on October 4 Mary and Wordsworth were married. Their marriage was very happy. From 1803 to 1810 she bore him five children. Dorothea stayed with her brother's family.
In 1808 the Wordsworths moved to a larger house in the same Grasmere. There Wordsworth wrote most of The Walk and several prose works, including his famous pamphlet on the Convention at Cintra, motivated by sympathy for the Spaniards under Napoleon and indignation at the treacherous policies of England. This period was overshadowed by a quarrel with Coleridge (1810-1812) and the death in 1812 of his daughter Catherine and son Charles.
In May 1813 the Wordsworths left Grasmere and settled at Rydel Mount, two miles from Ambleside, where they lived for the rest of their lives. In the same year, Wordsworth received, under the patronage of Lord Lonsdale, the office of State Commissioner of Stamp Duties in two counties, Westmorland and part of Cumberland, which enabled him to provide for his family. He held this position until 1842, when he was given a royal pension of £300 a year.
After finishing Napoleonic Wars(1815) William Wordsworth was able to satisfy his wanderlust by visiting Europe several times. "Prelude", "a poem about his life", he finished back in 1805, but in 1832-1839 he carefully rewrote it, softening too frank passages and inserting pieces imbued with emphatically Christian sentiments.
In 1807 he published Poems in Two Volumes, which included many of his great lyric poetry. The Walk appeared in 1814, followed in 1815 by the first collection of poems in two volumes (with a third added in 1820). In 1816, the Thanksgiving Ode was published - for the victorious end of the war. In 1819, Peter Bell and the Charioteer (The Waggoner), written back in 1806, saw the light of day, and in 1820, the cycle of sonnets, The River Duddon, was published. In 1822, Ecclesiastical Sketches was published, in the form of sonnets, outlining the history of the Anglican Church from the time of its formation. Back at Yarrow (Yarrow Revisited, 1835) was mostly written from impressions of trips to Scotland in 1831 and 1833. last book, published by William Wordsworth, became Poems, written mainly in youth and old age (Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, 1842), which included "The inhabitants of the frontier" and the early poem "Guilt and Sorrow" (Guilt and Sorrow).
The last twenty years of the poet's life were overshadowed by the long illness of his beloved sister Dorothea. In 1847 he lost his only daughter, Dora, whom he loved very much. His support was his wife and devoted friends. Wordsworth died at Rydel Mount on April 23, 1850.
Bibliography
1793 -- (An Evening Walk) and Descriptive Sketches
1795 -- The Borderers, The Ruined Cottage and The Excursion
The Recluse
Peter Bell (Peter Bell) the book was finished but not published
1802 -- Cuckoo
1802 - Butterfly
1802 -- Promises of immortality
1805 -- The Prelude (changed until 1939)
1807 -- Poems in Two Volumes
1816 -- Thanksgiving Ode
1819 -- Peter Bell and the Charioteer (The Waggoner)
1820 -- The River Duddon sonnet cycle
1822 -- Church essays (Ecclesiastical Sketches)
1835 -- Back in Yarrow (Yarrow Revisited)
1842 -- Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years (Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years)
