Wallas and Wordsworth

May 28th, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Alchemy, Creativity, Damasio, Antonio, Emotion, Liquid, Metaphor, Transformation, Wallas, Graham, Wordsworth, William |

William Wordsworth in the introduction to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1802 described poetry as ‘the spontaneous outflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquillity’. This remark, often held to be an example of the Romanticism which dominated much (English) poetry of the period, also suggests that poetry, as a creative act (perhaps the creative act) requires the poet to move through a series of psychological stages. Also the mention of a ’spontaneous outflow’ points toward a model of creative production which is hydraulic or pneumatic, involving some metaphorical substance that is accumulating within the mind of the poet, a mind possibly limited in capacity. The limited capacity of the mind causes the substance to be compressed and alchemically transformed into its most dense state and the eventual inevitable result of this continued accumulation is the overflowing or bursting forth of this transformed substance. The mechanism by which this accumulation and transformation takes place has a number of stages. ‘Emotion recollected in tranquility’ points to two of these stages. The ‘emotion’ stage is one in which one is immersed in the experience that is the source of the poem, it might be considered a ‘preparatory’ stage or even a period of ‘research’ (although this term suggests an emotionally-disconnected activity this is not an accurate conception of research, or indeed of any form of experiential cognition. See Damasio 2005). The ‘emotion’ stage is when the object of study is given over to the senses, it is when one metaphorically runs one’s hands over the experience, gathering subtle feelings and sensations. This is followed by a period in which one is separated from the experience, the phrase ‘recollected in tranquility’ suggests a period of calm, in which the poet is not directly involved in the conscious exploration or examination of the experience, but that other, non-conscious cognitive processes are active. It is during this period presumably that the ’substance’ circulating in the mind of the poet undergoes processes of accretion and accumulation, compression and condensation, such that it eventually overflows the container of the mind. At this point the third stage in the poetic process is entered in which the tranquility is replaced by a mental state corresponding to the bursting forth of this ’spontaneous outflow’ .

These stages show some correspondence to the stages of the creative process identified by Wallas (1923) and others since. These are the phases of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Elaboration. Whereas Wallas uses the metaphor of light to relate this process, Wordsworth uses a metaphor of liquid. For Wallas, the moment of creative insight when the poet witnesses the emergence of the creative artifact into his own consciousness is seen as the sudden switching on of a light (Illumination). For Wordsworth this moment is the equally sudden breaking of a dam and the flooding of the stage of consciousness with the liquid of creativity.