Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Cloud
I still am wondering why in the world he wanted to be a cloud. He could have been a star, an bird (eagle would be my choice), the sun, the moon, anything, but a cloud? Someone in last class mentioned something about a cloud's passiveness, but a cloud can also be quite aggressive (thunderstorms...). So, I considered the many forms of clouds and their potential. Actually, clouds can represent a person's mind (or personality) very well. It can be social and interact with others or be, in this case, solitary. They come in all shapes, forms and sizes, like the many personalities and beliefs of humankind. Also, they can be passive and pure or dark and thunderous; in other words, they are not dynamic. These clouds represent fluid beings, like humans and their thoughts. I may be thinking about this too much and making a bigger deal out of it than I should be, but I am just trying to make sense out of the "cloud" choice by Wordsworth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with your assessment of the cloud as representational of the human mind and thought, but I have one problem with it. True, clouds can be "aggressive," when they produce thunder and rain, but that's not really the kind of cloud Wordsworth is talking about here. He compares himself to a "lonely" cloud, and that's important. The kind of cloud which is destructive is not lonely, it's in a big group. Singular clouds rarely cause much destruction. Those are the passive clouds Wordsworth compares himself to. The kind of cloud Wordsworth is talking about is a big, fluffy cloud that floats about wherever the wind takes it to see what it can see. Fortunate for this cloud (Wordsworth), it found something truly worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jim about the passive nature of a cloud. An eagle or other bird of prey may look like it is just hovering, but it is probably actively searching for food and the word “wandering” implies a certain kind of passivity. The cloud does not propel itself, but is at the mercy of the wind, disconnected from the rest of the world as it drifts from one place to another. Celestial bodies like the sun/moon/stars may appear to move, but they still have a more certain purpose/orbit and you can predict where they will be at any time much more easily than you can a cloud.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you could just say that “cloud” is an easier word to rhyme than “eagle” and it fits the metre better. That was probably an influence as well.
Wordsworth is not just a cloud in the sense of passiveness but also peacefulness. I get the picture that Wordsworth is walking on a nice clear day. Think about a single white cloud in the blue sky, looking at this sky can often fill one with increased serenity. This is how I see Wordsworth walking around, as a peaceful, freely, moving body. He's a walking example of serenity in this poem. I don't think we have to analyze why he's not a star, or an eagle, or a moon but just why exactly he is a cloud (IMO, a white, nice, floating one) He's not disconnected from the world in a harmful dissociative way but moving freely as a cloud moves across the sky and coming upon the various joys in landscape that he sees. As a cloud, he "floats" over a "host, of golden daffodils," sounds pretty good/peaceful to me but we can question the nature of this floating. Is he coming from a feeling that he is above or engrained with what he sees? An interesting question is how he observes what he is seeing, "floating," "continuous," "Twinkle" are words he's using to describe his experience. They denote both separation and intermingling with nature, a quality a cloud may seem to conceptually align with. Through the cloud metaphor, the reader experiences how he perceives his world.
ReplyDelete