I think the difference in poetic strategy used by Wordworth and Shelley in their poems “I wandered lonely as a cloud” and “The Cloud” is something to be noted. There is one area in general that I’d like to consider—personal distance from the cloud itself. In “I wandered...” the speaker begins the poem with: “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (italics added for emphasis). There is already distance between the speaker and the cloud—they are connected only by a simile. On the other hand, Shelley’s poem begins with “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers”. In this case, the speaker is the cloud—there is no distance and no separation but instead a complete unity of concepts. The entire poem happens from this distance, and as readers, we too become the cloud. On the other hand, Wordsworth’s poem keeps us at a simile’s length away—neither reader nor speaker ever becomes nature, we are merely like it.
Despite the fact that Shelley’s poem personifies the cloud, I find Wordworth’s to be distinctly more human. The speaker never truly unites with nature—he can only be like nature, and this comes out even more in the final stanza when the poem turns to the speaker’s thoughts as he is on his couch “in vacant or in pensive mood”. Shelley’s poem unites humanity and nature, whereas Wordworth uses a simile to create distance.
I think the persistent rhyming throughout "The Cloud" makes the reader feel like the poem is well connected to itself and flows together through the lines. This mirrors Shelley's unification between humanity and nature. Shelley is the cloud, and the cloud's natural cycles continue: "I change, but I cannot die." In contrast, when Wordsworth is inside on his couch nature only exists to him in his head; in essence, the sight of nature, its reality for that moment, dies for him but his memory of it exists.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm quite interested in this distinction, Victoria, and especially in how the poems' offer distinct perspectives on environment by either identifying the speaker with the cloud or positing a likeness between them. It seems productive to ask: does being the cloud enable or force the speaker (or the reader) to see differently than when he likens himself to the cloud? We talked a bit about how Wordsworth dislocates our sense of perspective by likening the speaker to a cloud floating high that then sees a host of daffodils "Beside the lake, beneath the trees." (wouldn't the tree block the cloud's view?) Does Shelley's poem also dislocate perspective? Does it provide a different take on the landscape than Wordsworth's poem?
ReplyDeleteI think, Professor Porter, that the cloud does force the reader to see differently than merely being likened to a cloud. The perspective higher-up as the cloud "sift[s] snow on the mountains below" and glides "over Earth and Ocean". I think reader gets more of a wholistic picture as the cloud and not the minuteness of certain images such as the daffodils in "I wandered lonely as a cloud". The reader of "The Cloud" is exposed to flowers, plains, mountains, seas, plains, streams, volcanos, and more. The perspective of being the cloud is on a larger scale, the reader gets the landscape in its entirety, not just the parts that Wordsworth jumps around to.
ReplyDelete