Bartleby Weekly: April 3, 2000

Bartleby Weekly

Volume I, Issue 3. April 3, 2000

William Wordsworth

Celebrate Literary Birthdays at Bartleby.com

April 4th: Washington Irving (1783–1859)

Known today mostly for his writing the short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, he was once the best-known figure in American literature both at home and abroad. Read a story of this lauded writer, as well as the works of many other famous literary figures in The Short-Story.

April 5th: Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

A forceful and potent voice in the fight for African-American equality in turn-of-the-century America, Booker Taliaferro Washington worked his way out the salt furnaces and coal mines to developing the esteemed Tuskegee Institute. Under Washington’s leadership and belief that industrial training was a means to self-respect and economic independence for black people, Tuskegee became one of the leading African-American academic institutes.

Washington was widely respected in America and abroad for his skill of rhetoric and spoke often on the cause of African-American equality. His speeches were at times controversial and not supported by other black leaders, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, for his stance that African Americans should strive for economic equality before social equality.

See Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery.

April 7th: William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Two hundred thirty years ago, William Wordsworth, one of the foremost poets of the English language and defining voice of the Romantic movement, was born in the small English town of Cockermouth, Cumberland. After enjoying a lively and loving childhood home with his parents and siblings, Wordsworth pursued his studies at Cambridge University in 1787. While an able student, his studies left him distinctly uninspired and chose in 1780, to the consternation of his relatives, to trek through France and the Alps with a college friend.

His experiences on that first, and subsequent, trips to France awoke within him many passions. He fell in love and fathered a child with Annette Vallone, but ultimately could not remain with her. The Revolution in France was just reaching its climax and the young Wordsworth could not help but to be swept up in the fervent nationalism and the power of the masses. Perhaps the most important and lasting passion inspired by his journeys was his love for natural beauty, as witnessed in his early poem An Evening Walk (1793) and Descriptive Sketches (1793). Wordsworth yearned to access and channel through his poetry pure Truth. Nature for him held that truth, that “calm of mute insensate things.” Rebelling against the strict rules and structure of traditional classical poetry, Wordsworth wrote on the experiences and perspectives of everyday life, and the inherent beauty to be found there. While at times he would venture into the abstract and metaphysical, Wordsworth wrote in common language about common things. His poems were written in the vernacular of the real and immediate world around him describing in minute and joyous detail his observations of nature and the beauty of truth held within.

In 1798, Wordsworth collaborated with fellow poet Samuel Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads, the work that launched the Romantic literature movement in England. Coleridge and Wordsworth, though different in many fundamental ways, forged a deep friendship built on mutual creative inspiration: where Coleridge would loft up into the ethereal philosophies of platonic truth, Wordsworth remained grounded, speaking the voice of the common man.

While spending most of his early life with his sister, Dorothy, Wordsworth married in 1802. While a happy marriage, much of the spontaneity and immediate joy of his early poetry transformed into a more staid and traditional perspective, as evidenced by Ode to Duty. Such a transition in spirit did not diminish his popularity; he was awarded the poet laurealship in 1843.

Select from the 900 poems of The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.

April Is National Poetry Month

And, Bartleby.com is the perfect place to honor it! Bartleby.com’s collection of verse contains close to 5,000 poems culled from the great verse anthologies of, for example, Arthur Quiller-Couch and Louis Untermeyer, to the individual collections of such classic poets as T. S. Eliot, Siegfried Sassoon, Emily Dickinson and W. B. Yeats. In acknowledgement of National Poetry Month, the Library of Congress will host a cybercast of U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky presenting video and audio recordings from the Favorite Poem Project, including readings by Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Louise Gluck, W.S. Merwin, Joshua Wiener and Naomi Shihab Nye. See www.loc.gov/loc/cyberlc for more information.

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