Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

PÉTER DOLMÁNYOS Wordsworth and the Mountains: The Crossing of the Alps and the Ascent to Snowdon

Wordsworth and the Mountains: The Crossing of the Alps. 23 expectations are justified this time and the experience which awaits them in the "narrow chasm" is something verging cm the visionary: The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent at every turn Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light

— Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree; Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. (239-241, 11. 624-640) The passage is full of paradoxical juxtapositions which express truth. The first one of these is "woods decaying, never to be decayed"

—it expresses the idea of continuity as it is observable in a wood: the individual trees may perish but the wood lives on sustained on the organic material produced during the process of decomposition of dead trees. "The stationary blasts of waterfalls" is another line of this kind, expressing stability and movement at the same time by bringing together the sights and sounds of the scene and expressing the paradoxical essence of the immobile waterfall which is constituted by the movement of the water. The words "bewildered and forlorn" may equally refer to the "[w]inds thwarting winds" and the travellers experiencing the sublime. "The torrents shooting from the dear blue sky" is only an experience distorted by the senses, an optical illusion (as streams do not come from the sky

—though the ultimate source is precipitation, taking its origin in a long process driven by solar radiation) but it provides Wordsworth with an image which connects earth and sky, an image which is the expression of change and permanence at once. The idea of everything being interconnected is elaborated in the next few lines of the passage: rocks are seen as if they were capable of intelligible communication

—"Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside / As if a voice were in them" (241, DL 631-632); the imperfect