Customer Reviews

The Prelude: A Parallel Text (Penguin Classics)

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"A good deal of [Wordsworth's poetry], perhaps most of it, is very dull, like a long walk on a grey day. But just as somewhere on that walk there might be a sudden and superb flash of beauty, so in Wordsworth's poetry there are short passages, perhaps only a line or so, that are miraculous. An apparently simple unadorned phrase will suddenly blaze in the reader's imagination. These moments of his, once experienced, are never forgotten, and we never entirely lose our response to them." - J. B. Priestley. Literature and Western Man (Collins, 1960).

The Prelude contains many of these unforgettable moments - certainly more than "short passages". Besides being a wonderful poem, the work gives the reader a unique insight into the life of the poet through his own words. The four versions give us a chance to appreciate how the poet grows and develops and how his views change over time. In many cases, changes to the 1805 manuscript appearing in the final 1850 publication do not seem to be improvements at all, but attempts to cover up previous indiscretions or to subdue outbursts of passion. The sentiment of the newer portions is often far from that of the earlier drafts. The two much shorter initial drafts, "Was It for This" and the Two-part Prelude of 1799, are very different to the later books and show a superb command of language. Not surprisingly, Wordsworth's relationship with nature is a major theme throughout the poem. The direct effect of growing up in the countryside is perhaps revealed more plainly than in his other poems and a quasi-religious philosophy is evident.

This Penguin version seems to me to offer as much as one could want for a non-academic reader. The 120-odd pages of notes are quite sufficient to understand the poem thoroughly.

This book will appeal to anyone who enjoys romantic poetry, nature or autobiography. A book to be savoured, not rushed. Highly recommended.

As is becoming depressingly evident, Penguin publishers show utter contempt for the Kindle. This is the third defective Penguin e-book that I have purchased for the Kindle, and it is clear that nobody has bothered to proof-read or format these works properly. Font sizes change randomly; words, sometimes 5 at a time, run into each other; and notes are often intrusive in the poetic texts, altering the line lengths. This edition of the Prelude, however, is the worst: as it is a parallel text edition, one would expect to be able to distinguish between the two versions, but no, it is as if it is one massive poem, with nothing to orient you to the differences except when the occasional line number recurs. Hopefully Oxford Classics will bring out more Kindle editions, as they seem to care about their readership.
Also avoid the Penguin versions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

The Prelude is William Wordsworth's masterpiece and one of the greatest poems of all-time. It began as a relatively short, two part work finished in 1799 but was expanded to fourteen books by 1805. Wordsworth labored over it until 1839, polishing, making a few additions based on later events, and altering some of his more radical statements about the divinity of nature and mind to fit his increasing religious conservatism. He published several excerpts at various times, but the whole was not released - indeed, hardly even known - until shortly after his 1850 death. The edition has all three versions plus an early draft, giving readers the full experience.

The Prelude is now seen as his crowning achievement, at once his art's prelude and culmination. The work is of course an epic and highly influenced by prior ones from Spenser and Milton, but like Wordsworth's other major early work, it is ground-breakingly original. The subtitle describes it succinctly: "Growth of a Poet's Mind." After deciding to be a poet, Wordsworth surveyed his life to find the events, thoughts, and feelings qualifying him for the role, and this is the result. Though in verse, it gives an overview of his life to that point much like a traditional autobiography, but his real focus is internal. Wordsworth details what molded his mind - and perhaps more importantly, his heart - for poetry. Anyone curious about his life will naturally find it invaluable, and it is also of great value to those interested in the era. Wordsworth saw many important events, including the French Revolution nearly at first hand, and relates them vividly; this is an excellent primary source for both historians and biographers. Perhaps more notably, and at least more unusually, we also get a profoundly lifelike, detailed glimpse of rural England in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Everything from speech to landscape is on display, and we get a fascinating glimpse of the awe felt by someone from such a place first beholding London, France, and the Alps. All this gives substantial value to the poem even for non-fans. However, intriguing and worthy as all this is, the real treasure is indeed watching the growth of Wordsworth's mind. Whether we care about or agree with him is irrelevant; the poem is profoundly searching, exploring the spiritual and philosophical questions haunting all intelligent people. The honesty, insight, and sheer reach are mesmerizing. We feel for and with Wordsworth as he struggles with identity and life because it is our struggle; very few works, especially in poetry, are as moving and thought-provoking at the same time. The poetry itself is also top-notch; perfectly wrought and eminently quotable, this blank verse stands with Shakespeare's and Milton's as the greatest in English. This is essential for anyone even remotely interested in English poetry.

Wordsworth is a great poet, one of the greatest. The Prelude is also one of the greatest English epics. This edition, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth--Wordsworth's own progeny, offers readers a chance not only to read the poem in its entirety but also to compare different versions (the posthumously published 1850 version has 14 "books"), which is helpful in understanding the development of the poem and of Wordsworth.

In The Prelude, Wordsworth is his own epic hero, and the traditional epic journey is more an interior journey, but the autobiographical text helps us to see Wordsworth as someone who was meant to be a poet, indeed as someone who was created for that purpose. His message of humanity's bond with nature, through which we have access to the divine, continues to be relevant to today's readers, perhaps even more relevant as we become more mechanized and urbanized, moving further and further away from nature, a move Wordsworth anticipates with regret. Wordsworth as a poet and as a man tends to grow on readers willing to take the time to get to know him. His genius is surpassed perhaps only by Shakespeare, and his wisdom and vision help make readers better for the journey into his mind and heart.

"A babe who, through intercourse of touch, held mute dialogues with his mother's heart." unbelievably beautiful line...

This line from Wordsworth's Prelude captures the lovely tenderness of breast-feeding better than any depiction or description I have ever seen in my life. I look at my wife breast-feeding my baby and I'm already inured to the familiar image. I no longer see it. My mind is hypnotised, lulled by sense observation into dreary repetition. I become soaked and swept away by mere association. I lose all the tang of reality as I first experienced it. Whereas, if I return to this line in my head, and I regain the original image and experience in all its beauty.

That is how life is. More real in our heads, and by first impression, that by repeated sense observation. Often times we have to be blind like Milton to really understand the cosmos, or deaf like Beethoven to hear the higher melodies. Wordsworth said at the end of the Prelude that nothing in Nature is greater than the mind of man, and this is borne out in the poem itself. Certain experiences are letdowns, such as crossing the alps. Others come unexpectedly and transport us to utter shock and sublimity. It sometimes takes a shock to revive our imagination and its interaction with sense experience.

What experience of life is more authentic? That of the jaded pessimist who has "seen it all" and has never seen a miracle, and who expects that tomorrow the sun will rise? Or that of the child, who sees the sun peep its way above the horizon each new day as if rejoiced to see the world again? As G K Chesterton said, perhaps God is like a child who each day tells the moon in its orbit "do it again!"

This book is a roller-coater of litereral passages that keep you on the edge of your chair. It's a real page turner.