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
24 Péter Dolmányos near of the stream and the prefect far of the clouds and Heaven, the opposites of "[tjumult and peace" and "the darkness and the light" are listed to feature as the constituents of an infinite unity: they "were all like workings of one mind, the features / Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree" (241, 31. 636-637). Wordsworth does not stop here, however: he goes on to specify what he sees as the "workings of one mind" —the elements constituting the vision are "Characters of the great Apocalypse", reinforcing the sublime quality of the experience; translated into the language of poetics, they are "[t]he types and symbols of Eternity" (241, 1. 639). The concluding line of this section has a profound rhetoric effect. It echoes Milton's lines: "On earth join all ye creatures extol / Him first, him last, him midst, and without end" (Milton Paradise Lost , V. 164-5). In Wordsworth's line "Of first, and last, and midst, and without end" the Miltonian scope is replaced by a different one: Milton's God is exchanged here for "Eternity." Wordsworth's lines are, however, far from being unambiguous: the word "Apocalypse" is generally taken to refer to the vision of the end of the world, and as such it is in sharp contrast with the word "Eternity". The last line contains references to time but the world of Eternity is a world of stasis, where there is no first, no last and so on. The ambiguity also owes something to the syntax of these lines —the referent of the last line is not made clear. The greatness of the passage seems to lie in its unity as a piece of text, and this unity may be analogous to the one Wordsworth observes in the scene, and consequently in the whole universe. The memorable phrases summing up the paradoxical quality of truth and the attempts he makes to join everything in a cosmic union, and the conclusion of the passage seen as an organic part of the context reads well, even ifit seems to escape attempts at word-for-word translation in isolation into common language. Snowdon The description of the ascent to Snowdon bears a strategic importance from the point of view of the structure of The Prelude : the design of Wordsworth was to keep this episode for the end of the work both in the shorter five-book version and in the extended thirteen- and later fourteen-book version. The original aim of Wordsworth in the episode was to see the sunrise from the top of Snowdon; this, however, is mentioned only once, and it never comes to be fulfilled in the poem. Instead, a different kind of experience awaits the poet, a sudden visionary moment, which may be read as a probable parallel to the 'movement' of the mind. The episode concludes with a long passage on the sight offered to the poet in this visionary moment and even longer passage on the imagination.
