癒しと救いとしての詩作 : ウィリアム・ワーズワス(1770-1850)の心の深淵
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概要
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The present article aims to discuss aspects of William Wordsworth's (1770-1850) poetry. It is written as an extension of the article on the English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) that the author contributed to the first issue of the Bulletin, where an attempt was made to investigate the ways in which his act of writing poetry bears on the chronic melancholy that he suffered from. Unlike Cowper, Wordsworth was not a case of melancholia but underwent a crisis or a spell of despondency after having been involved in the French Revolution and having been disorientated by its consequences. During the 'great decade' (1795-1805) of his poetic career Wordsworth produced one after another of his masterpieces such as 'Tintern Abbey', 'Resolution and Independence', 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality', and, to crown the decade, The Prelude. Both Cowper and Wordsworth wrote about Nature, but, in comparison, Wordsworth's poetry is much wider in scope, deeper in philosophical insight and more intense in visionary or imaginative power. The unique ways in which he established raport with Nature can be illustrated by his childhood experiences such as 'abyss of idealism' and 'spots of time'. These experiences have features that, in the present author's view, can be explained in terms of the Freudian primary process which is characteristic of the child's perception of the external world, of the artists' imaginative process, and of abnormal psychology. It will emerge from the article that an act of writing poetry serves Wordsworth to cope with problems that are confronting him and ultimately to solve them, providing nothing less than a cure and relief and, indeed, something even more positive than that.