Lesson Two The Solitary Reaper

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born and grew up near the Lake district, a beautiful scenic spot in northwestern England. From his very early years, he had a profound love for nature, which characterizes all his works. His parents died when he was very young, and he was put under the care of his relatives. He went to study at Cambridge from 1787 to 1791. In 1791 he went to France to learn French in preparation for the career of a tutor. There he was greatly impressed by the revolutionary zeal, and he would have joined in the revolution if there had not been pressures from his relatives across the channel to call him back to England. He was also involved in a love affair with a French girl and would have married her if the war had not broken out between England and France. His revolutionary enthusiasm died down as he was shocked at the massacre during the Reign of Terror under the rule of Robespierre. From 1799 to his death he was politically very conservative and lived in retirement at Grasmere in the Lake District in the company of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth and his friend Coleridge. In 1843 after the death of Southey he was made poet laureate.

The life and thinking of Wordsworth are illustrated in the long poem The Recluse which remains unfinished. The Prelude (1850) is also a long poem which tells the growth of his mind. In 1798 he published Lyrical Ballads in collaboration with Coleridge. The preface to this collection of poems is an important piece of literary criticism in English literature. It can be read as a declaration of romanticism, in which Wordsworth openly expresses his theory of poetry, which is contrary to the theory of neo-classicism.

Wordsworth is most celebrated for his poetry of nature. His love for nature is boundless. To him nature means more than rivers, trees, rocks, mountains, lakes, and so on. Nature has a moral value and has its philosophical significance. Nature is for him the embodiment of the Divine Spirit. He believes that God and universe are identical, that God is everything and everything is God. To Wordsworth nature is the greatest of all teachers, and those who are uncorrupted by urban society, especially those simple rustic people, can communicate directly with nature which gives them power, peace, and happiness.

II. Historical Background

Romanticism in England

Romanticism is a literary which flourished in literature, philosophy, music and arts in western culture in most time of the 18th century, which prevailed in England during the period from 1789 to 1832. It first appeared in German, fully developed in England and France and it also had an influence on America and Russia. The English romanticism was inspired by the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution. The English romantic period began in 1789, the year of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, it ended in 1832 with the death of Walter Scott. The English romantic period was an age of poetry. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron were the most representative romantic writers. They started a rebellion against the neo-classical literature, which was regarded as the poetic revolution. They explored new theories and added new techniques in poetry writing. They believed that poetry could purify souls and society.

1. The Substance of English Romanticism

By the end of the 18th century, the world not only had witnessed the French Revolution and exceptional social upheavals, it also had prominent changes in philosophical thoughts, so at the turn of the 18th and 19th century, romanticism came to be new trend in English literature. The background of Romanticism in England contains the following aspects:

1.1 In politics: the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution

From the end of 18th century to the 1930s, the Europe continent experienced kinds of wars and social reforms. The darkness in politics and the unequal circumstance in the society made people in different classes, especially the intellectuals were disappointed with the Rational Kingdom, which pictured by the enlightenment thinkers, they wanted to seek for the spiritual sustenance. The French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, not only destroyed the foundation of the French Monarchy, but also shocked the whole European Continent. It not only had a great influence on politics, it also brought the new ideological trend to the European culture. The social reforms made the economy develop fast and increased the polarization between the rich and the poor. The workers, peasants, people of lower classes and progressive intellectuals hailed the French Revolution and its principle. They hoped to realize “liberty, equality and fraternity” in England.

On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution played an important role in the form of Romanticism. The rapid capitalist development had ruined the peasants who had become hired workers in the countryside. All the working people lived in the dire poverty, so they broke out the workers struggle. By breaking their master's machines, they showed their hatred of the capitalists and capitalist exploitation. So the French Revolution and the English Industrial Revolution exerted great influence on English romanticism, the romantic period was often called "age of revolution", the age which witnessed the initial transformations of Industrial Revolution.

1.2 In philosophy

The Classical German Philosophy and the Utopian Socialism in England and French were the two theoretical basis of Romanticism. This kind of philosophy expressed an extreme asserting of the self that emphasized on personal thoughts and feelings, often triggered by observation of nature. Along with the Utopian socialists put forward building a perfect social organization, all those had a great significance to the form of Romanticism. So many Englishmen believed that all people were skill and deserve, the treatment to which human beings were by nature entitled. Every person had a right to life, liberty and equal opportunity. They desired for personal freedom and individual rights.

1.3 In literary

The romanticism was the revolt to the prevailing neoclassical which only valued on rationality but ignored emotion and only valued on rules but despised individuality. It transferred the core of the poetry from describing people’s common ideal and knowledge to express people’s feeling to daily life. It liberated the serious rhythm and pattern of the poetry. It was a revolution of the literature form, which struggled to break free from the classical, got the free emotional world by liberating poetry from ideal.

The form and development of Romanticism in England was related to the development of the culture itself. The writers of enlightenment, gothic novel and the pre-romanticism in the 18th century advocated subject emotions and loved those natural and plain folk culture, which created good environment for the development of Romanticism. At the same time, it was born after the enlightenment movement and was formed in the struggle against the classical culture. The classists thought the world as having a rigid and stem structure, while the Romanticists thought the world as a place to express their ideas and believers.

2. The Features of English Romanticism

It experienced two peaks in the development of Romanticism in England. The first appeared about 1805, which was famous for the Lake Poet. The most important acknowledged representative writers were William Wordsworth, who was the most famous romantic poet and was only after Shakespeare and Milton in England. William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey were the outstanding first generation Romanticists. The lake poets liked to describe and chant the praise for nature, enjoyed and adored the nature, recalled medieval and patriarchal life, who also bated the industrial civilization and the cruel cash relation s in capitalist.

The second peak started with Byron, whose works were famous in Europe during 1815 to 1825. Along with Shelley and Keats, they were the second generation Romanticists in England. They pushed the Romanticism to the peak in England. Contrary to the thought tendency of the Lake Poet, their works expressed the active emotions to against violent resistance. Their ideal was to create an equal new world without violent revolution. The Romanticism movement essentially ended after 1848, but the trend lasted till nowadays. Although the works of Lake Poets and Satanic is Poets had different styles, they had some common features.

2.1 The revolt to the authority, tradition and reign

Generally speaking, the Romanticism expressed the ideology and sentiment of those classes of social status who were discontented with and opposed to the development of capitalism. Although there was different political attitudes, the revolts were almost the same. To the Lake poets, this kind of revolt focused on the rebellion to the dominant neoclassical and sympathy to the French Revolution. To the positive romanticists, it focused on the dissatisfaction with the rotten ruling class and the eager to the freedom. Wordsworth’s slogan “Poet is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" was the declaration to classical poets. Byron expressed the eager to freedom by shaping the hero image of Childe Harold and deeply exposed the corrupt of ruling class by describing the revolted hero's seeing and healing.

2.2 The emphasis on emotion

One of the common, outstanding and the most essential features of romanticism is subjectivity. They paid more attention to show the subject feeling and expressed the personal emotion. They emphasized the freedom of creation, but emotion and imagination in the first place and revolted the constraint of classical rationality to the art creation. The romanticists considered emotion which was the essential element in the poetry to be the basis of poetry. For example, in Shelly’s writing of Ode to the Nest Wind, his purpose was not only to describe the west wind, but to express his passion for revolution

2.3 The affection to nature

The romanticists and their works shared a deep-rooted love for nature and paid great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man. Personified nature played an important role in the pages of their works. The beauties of nature, the glory of mountains and lakes, all became the writer's inspiration. Nature became the expectation of the writers. The writers expressed their feelings, loves and disgust by using the contrast to the beauty of the nature to the ugly to the reality.

2.4 The pursue for extraordinary circumstances, the preference use for the exaggeration and symbolic means

Although the affection to the nature was different among the passive romanticists and positive romanticists, they preferred to use the intricate story, unusual circumstances, unique character, the dauntless imagination, the exaggeration and symbolic means to shape the image of the hero and got the extraordinary artistic effect.

Negative Influences of Industrial Revolution

In the second half of the 18th century, under the influence of Industrial Revolution in England, the country became the workshop of the world. The Revolution also brought modern machinery and industry, industrial capitalism, the proletariat and, a wealth beyond the country’s wildest dreams. However, the advances of technology and industry brought many negative influences upon the common people, especially the workers. That is, the distribution of that wealth broadened the gaps between the economic situations of the rich and the poor. Consequently, the rising and powerful bourgeoisie took the place of the submitting aristocratic class and became the ruling class. Together they exploited and oppressed the newly born proletariat.

French Revolution

There are many reasons for the outbreak of French Revolution. The direct cause of the revolution is the France drought in the spring of 1788. The worsening economy inflation further weaken the income of farmers. The loss of the Wars during Louis XVI’s time led to the Treasury empty. The conflict between the old and the new class and the anger and desire brought by enlightenment catalyzed this Revolution

On July 14, 1789, the Parisian people stormed the Bastille. This marked the outbreak of the French Revolution, whose influence soon swept all over Europe. Owing to this influence, all social contradictions in England sharpened, too. People of the lower classes and the progressive intellectuals hoped to realize “liberty, equality and fraternity” in England. Then an upsurge of democratic movements arose among the popular masses, and radical organizations were set up in many cities. At the same time the French Revolution scared the bourgeoisie, especially its stratum, and therefore, under the banner of fighting “Jacobinism”, namely, radicalism, joined the “Holy Alliance” in the hope of prevention of a threatened revolution at home.

Ⅲ. Reading Guide

The poem was suggested by a passage in Thomas Wilkinson’s Tour of Scotland (1824) in which Wilkinson wrote: “Passed by a female who was reaping alone, she sung in Erse as she bended over her sickle, the sweetest human voice I ever heard. Her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious long after they were heard no more.” The beauty of the song is presented to the reader through two well contrived comparisons in the second stanza.

The Solitary Reaper is about the power of the imagination to transform common, everyday events into representations of a larger reality. To the Romantic poets, imagination was not a synonym for fantasy. Instead they saw it as closely allied with intuition and emotion. This faculty enabled the poet to see familiar things in a radically different way. The aim of the Romantics was to express an abstract idea using concrete images that were usually drawn from nature.

The poem is an example of the commonplace pointing the sensitive observer toward an ideal of unity or completeness of being. Although the reaper is a flesh-and-blood person, she becomes a spiritual gateway for the speaker of the poem. The natural environment that surrounds her only heightens her mystery. Her simple song is an expression of her own heritage and background, yet the speaker imagines it to be an articulation of the eternal, the boundless, the ultimate reality. This intuitive impression of the infinite leaves the speaker a different person than when he first encountered the girl. The wonder of her song permeates his intellect and lingers in his heart long after he hears the last notes.

In the poem, then, the everyday scene ignites the emotions and intuition of the speaker, leading him to the transcendent, to a state beyond human understanding. The reapers song sparks his imagination leading him to the sublime, an effect created when a writer encounters power or mystery or awe in nature that is beyond human understanding.

Ⅳ. The Solitary Reaper

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of today?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o’er the sickle bending;—

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

Ⅴ. Notes

1. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter. The thyme scheme of each stanza is ababccdd.

2. Highland: the mountainous area of Scotland

3. Lass: (Scottish) a young girl

4. strain: a tune, notes of music

5. chaunt: old form of “chant”

6. Arabian sands: Arabian desert

7. Hebrides: islands off the western coast of Scotland

8. Notice the two comparisons. Is it possible to hear the song of the nightingale in the Arabian deserts or the cry of the cuckoo-bird in the Hebrides? If not, why did Wordsworth use these comparisons?

9. Will no one tell me what she sings?: Wordsworth did not understand the language of the Erse.

10. plaintive numbers: a mournful song

11. lay: a poem meant to be sung

Ⅵ. Translation

孤独的刈麦女

你看!那高原上年轻的姑娘,

独自一人正在田野上。

一边收割,一边在歌唱。

请你站住,或者悄悄走过!

池独自在那里又割又捆

她唱的音调好不凄凉

你听!你听她的歌声

在深邃的峡谷久久回荡。

在荒凉的阿拉伯沙漠里,

疲意的旅人憩息在绿阴旁

夜莺在这时嘀呖啼啭,

也不如这歌声暖人心房;

在最遥远的赫伯利群岛,

杜鹍声声唤醒了春光,

啼破了海上辽阔的沉寂,

也不如这歌声动人心肠。

谁能告诉我她在唱些什么?

也许她在为过去哀伤,

唱的是渺远的不幸的往事,

和那很久以前的战场?

也许她唱的是普通的曲子

当今的生活习以为常?

她唱生活中的忧伤和痛苫

从前发生过,今后也这样?

不论姑娘在唱些什么吧,

歌声好像永无尽头一样

我见她举着镰刀弯下腰去

我见她边干活儿边歌唱。

我凝神屏息地听着,听着,

直到我登上高高的山冈

那乐声虽早已在耳边消失,

却仍长久地留在我的心上。