Wordsworth's First Visit to Tintern Abbey

Abstract

The complexity of Wordsworth's spiritual troubles during the critical summer of 1793 and the subtlety of his examination of his mind at the time should be excuse enough for another attempt to bring all the aspects of the truth together. The attempt affects the reading of so characteristic and popular a poem as the Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey. These Lines are as obviously autobiographical as the Prelude, and passages in each are admittedly parallel evidence of certain aspects of the poet's development. When, however, we compare the passages which refer to the period of the first visit to Tintern Abbey, we find certain discrepancies which not even the most recent students of Wordsworth's life have been able to reconcile. The contrast between his attitude towards Nature in 1793 and his attitude towards Nature in 1798, which is the substance of the Lines, does not correspond in all particulars with the contrast made in the Prelude between these two periods. Consequently the familiar passage in the Lines is differently interpreted by Wordsworth's readers. If it is to be read as authentic biography, it needs more careful harmonizing with the Prelude. If, on the other hand, such a harmony cannot be made, the shorter poem may have to be accepted as a poem symbolizing two states of mind without possessing autobiographical accuracy. While the poem would thereby lose nothing, biography would gain something in strict truth.