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Wordsworth's Ode to Duty and the Schöne Seele

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Newton P. Stallknecht
Newton P. Stallknecht*
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College
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Extract

Wordsworth's intellectual and spiritual development terminates with the philosophy expressed in The Excursion. Here he accepts a Christian stoicism, colored strongly by ideas drawn from Kant. He even emphasizes the extreme dualism of Kant's ethics and tends to interpret morality as solely a matter of rational duty, sharply to be distinguished from a life of inclination. Indeed, he has grown very suspicious of human inclination and insists that man must transcend his natural disposition if he is to acquire any genuine dignity.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1937 , pp. 230 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

page 230 note 1 See the author's “Wordsworth and Philosophy,” PMLA, xliv, 1135–43.

page 230 note 2 In his thorough and learned work Kant in England (Princeton, 1932) Dr. René Wellek has expressed (p. 160) doubt that the Ode to Duty belongs to the Kantian tradition. He feels that Wordsworth might easily have drawn the doctrine of this poem from a general acquaintance with Christianity. This hypothesis is perhaps not an impossible one, but the close parallel of Schiller's modified Kantianism, which we shall examine at once, indicates a more definite and tangible origin.

page 230 note 3 George M. Harper, William Wordsworth, 3rd edition, (New York, 1929), p. 442.

page 231 note 4 Schiller's Sämmtliche Werke (Stuttgart, 1862), xi, 294. (The translation is Professor Harper's).—We might consider as similar to this passage, Schiller's poem Natur und Schule, (or the Genius), where the poet describes the graceful and unreflective virtue of those who have not “lost their guardian angel.”

page 231 note 5 Ibid., i, 343 (Italics mine). See also xii, 249 (Ueber das Erhabene).

page 233 note 6 Ibid., xi, 301–302. (Ueber Anmuth und Würde) (Italics mine).

page 233 note 7 Ibid., 306 and 307. (Italics mine.)

page 233 note 8 Max F. Herzberg, “Wordsworth and German Literature,” PMLA, xl, 302 ff.—In a letter to Cottle, 1798, Coleridge compares Schiller's Robbers with Wordsworth's Borderers, praising “those profound touches of the human heart” which both works contain. (Early Recollections, i, 250).

page 235 note 9 The Prelude, A, xi, ll. 203 ff.

page 235 note 10 Op. cit., xii, 235. (Ueber den Moralischen Nutzen ästhetischer Sitten.)

page 236 note 11 Op. cit., xi, 291 (Ueber Anmuth und Würde).—The translation is that of Professor Wilm, from whose work The Philosophy of Schiller I have drawn many helpful suggestions.