Data di nascita: 7. Aprile 1770
Data di morte: 23. Aprile 1850
Altri nomi: ویلیام وردزورث, Уильям Вордсворт
William Wordsworth è stato un poeta inglese.
Assieme a Samuel Taylor Coleridge è ritenuto il fondatore del Romanticismo e soprattutto del naturalismo inglese, grazie alla pubblicazione nel 1798 delle Lyrical Ballads , primo vero e proprio manifesto del movimento in Inghilterra. L'amico Coleridge vi contribuì con La ballata del vecchio marinaio , che apriva la raccolta nella prima edizione . Benché il poema postumo The Prelude di Wordsworth sia considerato il suo capolavoro, sono in realtà le Ballate liriche ad influenzare in modo determinante il paesaggio letterario ottocentesco.
Il carattere decisamente innovativo della sua poesia, ambientata nella cornice suggestiva del Lake District, nel nord del Cumberland, sta nella scelta dei protagonisti, personaggi di umile estrazione tratti dalla vita di tutti i giorni, e di un linguaggio semplice e immediato che ricalca da vicino la loro parlata.
Da considerare di eguale importanza per la letteratura romantica inglese è la Prefazione alla raccolta aggiunta all'edizione del 1802, di fatto un vero e proprio saggio critico in cui sono esposte le idee-cardine della poetica romantica.
Wordsworth, Coleridge e Southey, che si ispirarono alla medesima cornice paesaggistica dei Laghi, furono denominati Lake Poets, poeti del lago. Iniziatori di quello che è passato alla storia come romanticismo etico , essi ne costituirono la prima generazione, mentre nella seconda si possono annoverare George Gordon Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley e John Keats . Il romanticismo più tardo , persa la spinta rivoluzionaria e innovativa dei predecessori, ripiega generalmente su posizioni moralistico–didattiche : per questo esso è ritenuto parte del compromesso vittoriano.
— William Wordsworth
Source: Da Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood; citato in Jeremy Rifkin, La civiltà dell'empatia: la corsa verso la coscienza globale nel mondo in crisi, traduzione di Paolo Canton, Mondadori, Milano, 2010, p. 327. ISBN 978-88-04-59548-9
— William Wordsworth
Source: Citato in Guillaume Musso, Central Park, traduzione di Sergio Arecco, Bompiani, 2016, p. 87.
— William Wordsworth
Source: Da Il preludio, 1805, libro X; citato in Robert Fisk, Cronache mediorientali, traduzione di Enrico Basaglia et. al., il Saggiatore, Milano, 2011, [//books.google.it/books?id=EUm19hxHZzoC&pg=PA131 p. 131].
— William Wordsworth, libro Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), The Tables Turned, st. 4 (1798).
— William Wordsworth, libro Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Context: These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Stanza 2.
— William Wordsworth
Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812).
— William Wordsworth
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803), Context: Yet was Rob Roy as wise as brave;
Forgive me if the phrase be strong;—
A Poet worthy of Rob Roy
Must scorn a timid song.
Rob Roy's Grave, st. 3.
— William Wordsworth, libro The Prelude
The Prelude (1799-1805), Context: Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
Bk. I, l. 1.
— William Wordsworth
Context: From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me—farthest from earthly port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.
Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XL
— William Wordsworth, libro Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Context: And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills;
Stanza 3.
— William Wordsworth, libro Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Context: If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; And that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.
Stanza 4.
— William Wordsworth
Lines (1795), Context: If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.
