Traces of Mysticism in Wordsworth’s Aesthetics of Nature: A Study on William Wordsworth’s Nature Philosophy in the Light of Ibn Al-‘Arabi’s Ontology

Maryam Soltan Beyad, Mahsa Vafa

Abstract


William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is generally known as a nature poet or a “worshipper of nature”. Yet, his nature poems are not merely confined to the portrayal of the physical elements of nature but are marked by his enlightened spiritual vision. The belief in one life flowing through all, which is a prominent feature of Wordsworth’s nature poetry is a prevalent theme also in the treatment of man and the universe in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s philosophy_ a Sufi mystic whose philosophy is most famously associated with the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud or “the oneness of being”. This paper is an attempt to critically analyze the traces of pantheistic and mystical elements underlying Wordsworth’s poetry, and more importantly compare this with Ibn al-‘Arabi’s stand on the matter. Through analysis of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology, particularly his concept of unity of being and his emphasis on the importance of the faculty of imagination, this study first meets the controversy surrounding the pantheistic elements in Wordsworth’s nature philosophy and then attempts to demonstrate that the mystical doctrine of unity in all beings and the reliance on intuition and imagination as a means of perception of divine immanence is evident in both Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology and Wordsworth’s nature poetry. This study also reveals that Wordsworth’s attempt to get to coalescence of subject and object via imagination and its sublime product, poetic language, resembles the mystic’s yearning for transcendental states of consciousness and unification with the divine.

Keywords


Wordsworth, Nature Philosophy, Pantheism, Panentheism, Unity of Being, Imagination, Ibn al-‘Arabi

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abrams, M. H. (1971). Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Barth, J. Robert. (2003). Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the religious imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Burckhardt, Titus. (2008). Introduction to Sufi Doctrine. World Wisdom Inc.

Bugliari, Jeanne. (1973) “Whitman and Wordsworth: The Janus of Nineteenth Century Idealism”, Walt Whitman Review 19 (1973).

Chittick William C. (1989). Ibn al-'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination: the Sufi Path of Knowledge. Albany: New York Press.

Chittick William C. (1998). The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chittick, William C. (2005). Ibn ‘Arabi: Heir to the Prophets. Oxford, UK: Oneworld.

Chittick, William C. (2016). "Ibn al-ʿArabī: The Doorway to an Intellectual Tradition." Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society Vol. 59: 1-15.

Dombrowski, Daniel. (1985)"Wordsworth's Panentheism." Wordsworth's Circle. Vol. 16: 136-142.

Durrant, G. (1969). William Wordsworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. (1983). Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts. Berkrley: University of California Press.

Lacy, Norman. (1948). Wordsworth's View of Nature and its Ethical Consequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leary, David E. (2017). "Authentic Tidings": What Wordsworth Gave to William James." William James Studies Vol. 13: 1-26.

Levine, Michael P. (1994). Pantheism: A non-theistic concept of deity. London: Routledge.

Lewisohn, Leonard. (2009). "Correspondences Between English Romantic and Persian Sufi Poets – An Essay in Anagogic Criticism". Temenos Academy Review 12: 185-226.

Moores, D. J. (2006). Mystical Discourse in Wordsworth and Whitman: A Transatllantic Bridge. Leuven: Peeters.

Ruoff, Gene W. (1973). "Rligious Implications of Wordsworth's Imagination." Studies in Romanticism Vol. 12: 670-692.

Ryan, Robert M. (2016). Carles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Spurgeon, Caroline F. E. (1913). Mysticism in English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stace, W. T. (1916). Mysticism aand Philosophy. London: Macmillan & Co LTD.

Stallknecht, Newton P. (1929). "Wordsworth and Philosophy: Suggestions concerning the Source of the Poet's Doctrinesand the Nature of His Mystical Experience." PMLA Vol. 44: 1116-1143.

Ulmer, William A. (2001). The Christian Wordswoth, 1798_1805. Albany: SUNY Press.

Underhill, Evelyn. (1911). Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

Underhill, Evelyn. (1920). The Essential of Mysticism and Other Essays. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

Wordsworth, William. (2010). 21st- Century Oxford Authors: William Wordsworth. Ed. Stephen Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

wordsworth, William. (2009). The Poems of William Wordsworth: Collected Reading Texts from The Cornell Wordsworth Series. Ed. Jared Curtis. Vol. III. New York: Cornell University Press.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.12n.3.p.109

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.