Tintern Abbey

Tintern Abbey is the epitome of a romantic’s view on nature. Wordsworth characterizes his memory in the “sublime” as a “tranquil restoration.” He says that re-experiencing his past connection with nature takes away “the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world.” To me, he presents nature as the simplistic, ideal, good environment, while he characterizes everyday life as difficult, hard, and almost evil to an extent. Moreover, he associates the pastoral with the spiritual by saying in nature one becomes “a living soul” and can experience the “power of joy.” What I found interesting was that the speaker is “a few miles above Tinterb Abbey,” an abbey being a physical place dedicated to the spirit. While I would imagine the physical construction of a church to connect the speaker to the spiritual, he is suggesting the need for a disconnection from the physical back to the pastoral.  I almost looked at is as man’s environment of religious worship is not pure and sufficient (the speaker essentially criticizing the modern religion). Rather, in order to be truly connected, man must escape the world and its temptation, illness, negativity, in order to experience authentic, not artificial, religious connection.


In addition, I found it interesting that the speaker was younger (more innocent and naïve) when he first experienced the landscape. I get the impression that Wordsworth is commenting on how in childhood, it is easy to just be a “thoughtless youth” and view a landscape (or an idea) at its face value (there is no contemplation). However, as one grows and matures in man’s world, there is corruption of innocence. The speaker is suggesting the need to return to innocence in order to have a spiritual soul, perhaps suggesting that a grown man has more difficulty being spiritual because of his ability to reflect?