Please note: Owing to an omission on my part researchers whowished to read an article on “spilt theology” were unable to findthe appropriate document. I have therefore composed this document

from passages that belong to a monograph I have written andpublished under the title of: The Emergence of the Poetic

Wanderer in the Age of Goethe 1. I hope that readers will findwhat they have been seeking.

A: Why Literary Critics Can't Help Making References toWandering

Spilt Theology 2

In this as in other enquiries into matters of literature. one

should consult the findings of those who have already engaged in

research in the field that one intends to investigate.

Regrettably there is as yet no chair in the field of Wandering

Studies. Even if in Lord Byron's words "all wandering is the worst

of sinning,” literary critics occasionally refer to "wandering"1 http://www.lulu.com/shop/julian-scutts/the-emergence-of-the-poetic-wanderer-in-the-age-of-goethe/paperback/product-22467591.html2 T. E. Hulme, Romanticism and Classicism. "You don't believe in aGod, so you begin to believe that man is a god. You don't believein Heaven, so you begin to believe in a heaven on earth. In otherwords, you get romanticism. The concepts that are right andproper in their own sphere, are spread over, and so mess up,falsify and blur the clear outlines of human experience. It islike pouring a pot of treacle over the kitchen table. Romanticismthen, and this is the best definition I can give of it, is spiltreligion."

and "wanderers" in their articles and books. In this chapter we

consider and compare four critical studies, noting different,

even conflicting, attitudes to wandering. We may then inquire how

such differences might be resolved. The first article might have

been placed near the beginning of this book in view of its

relevance to the study of works by Goethe and the Romantics, but

for non specialists in German literature might have found a

review of secondary literature at that point to be uninteresting,

even tedious.

1: A Comparison of Articles by: (a) Professor L. A.

Willoughby and (b) Geoffrey H. Hartman with Reference

to their Attitudes to "the Wanderer" as a Poetic Motif

(a)

While Professor Willoughby's article "The Image of the 'Wanderer'

and the 'Hut' in Goethe's Poetry" is exclusively concerned with

Goethe's literary works (not only poetry), G. H. Hartman's study

"Romanticism and 'Anti-Self-Consciousness'" focuses on English

Romantic poetry with the occasional reference to Goethe and his

literary works. The scholars predicate their arguments on what

they take to be the shared identity of the “Wanderer“ and “the

Poet“ in German and English poetry during the age of Goethe and

the Romantic movement.

Professor Willoughby bases his discussions on the recognition

that the images of "Wanderer" and "hut" occur so frequently in

Goethe's writings that they must be attributable to factors lying

deep in the collective unconscious. According to C. G. Jung the

libido is engaged in a quest to achieve a perfect union with its

female counterpart within the human personality. In terms of

Goethe's imagery, the "Wanderer" represents the male questing

impulse, while the "hut" represents the object of that quest, the

domain of female influence, the family hearth. These images well

up from the collective unconscious, and are not therefore only of

poetic interest. However, Goethe as a poet moulded these and

other images into constructs and patterns of aesthetic value.

The image of the "Wanderer" presented the young Goethe of the

early 1770s a very considerable problem. Being significant to him

on both a general psychological and an aesthetic level, the

"Wanderer" image poses a central ambiguity which his early

writings reflect. This ambiguity first emerges in the “Speech on

Shakespeare Day,“ an anti-Aristotelian polemic praising

Shakespeare as the greatest "Wanderer." The image lends force to

the idea of the vast range of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic

genius. However, Goethe was well aware that his choice of word

would be understood by his immediate audience, fellow members of

the Darmstadt literary circle, as an allusion to himself (his

renown as a "Wanderer" was attributable to his habit of taking

long country walks). In two poems written about a year after the

"Speech," Goethe adopted contrasting strategies to surmount the

difficulties bound up with the "Wanderer" image. "Wandrers

Sturmlied" ("Wanderer's Storm-Song") is a semi-confessional

poetic outpouring telling of the poet's bold but futile attempt

to ascend Mount Parnassus, the seat of the gods and Muses. The

poet uses humour and self-irony as a means of psychological self-

defence evident in the closing scene depicted by the poem. This

shows the Wanderer wading through mud towards a wayfarer's hut

after his inglorious descent from the sublime heights of

Parnassus and his return to a chill northern landscape on the

plane of personally experienced reality.

Der Wandrer is a dialogue between a wanderer, i.e. a cross-country

walker, touring the mountains near Cuma in Italy and a young

woman who inhabits a hut set in this mountainous region. The

interjections of this level-headed young woman produce a humorous

effect in contrast to the Wanderer's verbal rhapsodies excited by

the sight of ancient temples now in ruins. It is only in Der

Wandrer that Goethe succeeded in objectifying the image of the

Wanderer to his own satisfaction. 3

As we can judge from reading the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

3 Der Wandrer is located at the crossroads of reciprocal influencesaffecting English and German poetry; Young Goethe was an avidreader of Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield and The Traveller, anaccount in verse of Goldsmith's tour of various Europeancountries. This highly reflective poetic travelogue leaves atrace in the influence it exerted on "Der Wandrer." WilliamTaylor of Norwich translated Der Wandrer into English in the 1790s.Wordsworth read this translation, entitled "The Wanderer," andits abiding influence on him gave rise to the figure of theWanderer in The Excursion.

("Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship") the characters created by

Goethe's imagination tend to fall into the category of the

wanderer with a social mission such as the central and purposeful

protagonist, Wilhelm Meister, or distraught and so-called

"romantic" wanderers, such as Mignon and the Harpist. Why did

Willoughby refer to "romantic" wanderers before the genesis of

the Romantic movement in Germany, which the publication of the

Lehrjahre did much to bring about? ]

The association of "the Wanderer" and "the hut" recurs in Urfaust

and later in Faust Part I, for Faust confessed that his impetuous

and wilful disruption of the domestic idyll symbolized by

Gretchen's cottage ("Hüttchen") was tantamount to the physical

destruction of her humble abode. Willoughby finds in Faust's

seemingly callous order to demolish the cottage of an elderly

married couple in Faust Part II, completed in Goethe's final years,

a recall of Faust's destruction of Gretchen's cottage. In the

scene that depicts Faust as he is about to enter Heaven through

the intercession of Gretchen transformed into Mary Magdalene, the

marginal references name him the "Wanderer." The final lines "Das

Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan," ("the Eternal Feminine draws us

on high") we find a clear anticipation of the theories of Jung

and Freud to which I have made reference. Goethe pioneered the

discovery of what we now term the subconscious mind.

Professor Willoughby stresses the important term

"Wiederspiegelung," by which is indicated the notion that art and

literature mirror the course of a lifetime and reveal the

inseparable connection between Goethe's career as a creative

writer and his interaction with the world around him, which leads

us back to consider the title of Willoughby's article. The

polarity of the "Wanderer" and the "hut" has very concrete

connections with the realities of common life. The "hut" is not

only a figment of the mind, for it also stands for the family

hearth, commitment to a social and communal ideal. Professor

Willoughby stresses the reciprocal nature of influences between

Goethe's life and work, particularly with regard to his

friendship with Frau von Stein. Professor Willoughby also

stresses that there is another area in which Goethe's life and

work cannot be considered in isolation from each other - travel.

. Goethe's philosophic outlook rejected abstractions without a

basis in firsthand experience, and the best antidote to

abstraction he found in travel and the traveller's enhanced

perception of previously unexplored surroundings. According to

Professor Willoughby, Goethe's period of residence in Italy

between 1786 and 1789 induced a fundamental change in Goethe's

outlook on life, which he came to understand as a "pilgrimage."

Seeing Italy's urban architecture, its inhabitants and its works

of art meant more than recording surface features. It meant

imbibing an entire culture and its history. Professor Willoughby

also claims that the polarity of "Wanderer" and "hut" reflects

the importance Goethe attached to the biblical Festival of

Tabernacles commemorating the wanderings of the Israelites

through the wilderness of Sinai and the temporary dwellings in

which they lived during that time, for the journey through the

wilderness underlies much of the sustained symbolism of the

Wilhelm Meister novels.

Willoughby's article has great strengths but also certain

weaknesses. Let us consider its strengths first. Willoughby's

acknowledgement of the indissoluble unity of art and life

implicit in the term Weiderspiegelung poses a stark and refreshing

contrast to current theories whose holders adamantly refuse to

accept that works of literature are a part of life and common

experience. Alone among literary scholars Willoughby admitted

that the frequency of certain words, "Wanderer" being the most

noteworthy among them, constitutes a phenomenon that requires an

explanation. By adducing many citations and examples the article

demonstrates conclusively that the occurrences of the words

“Wanderer” and “Hütte” compose a unity that embraces all Goethe's

poetry written after 1770 as well as his novels and dramas. 4

4 A number of scholars have attempted to map an author's mindby noting idiosyncrasies of language and word use that emergefrom a study of his or her literary works. In her monographBrowning's Poetry of Reticence, for example, Barbara Melchiori observesthat the word "gold" is the most frequently used substantive inRobert Browning's poetic works (occurring altogether about 390times), and must consequently be regarded as a word of specialsignificance to Browning at a deep unconscious level. (see:Barbara Melchiori, Browning's Poetry of Reticence (London, 1968) 1.According to Barbara Melchiori, a careful evaluation of verbalclues will allow critics to probe into significances which thepoet himself may wish to hide, granted that he is even aware of

Willoughby's article stands out as a major contribution to Goethe

studies even to this day, over sixty years after its

composition,

For all its merits Willoughby's article still leaves important

questions unanswered. The phenomenon of wandering surpasses even

the limits set by Goethe's writings, great though they are, for

it encompasses the works of the entire generation of the German

Romantic poets and finds a strong resonance further afield in

English poetry. Willoughby makes no attempt to establish the

historical context in which the word "Wanderer" suddenly attained

its great prominence.

Willoughby attributes the multiple occurrences of the word

“Wanderer,” often in close proximity to "Hütte," to the operation

of the collective unconscious but he does not explain why this

timeless influence should have penetrated only Goethe's mind in

the year 1771. Why did the Romantic poets also adopt his word in

due course? Willoughby leaves the Romantics out of account

altogether, though the word "romantic" does find a place in his

article, almost by way of a Freudian slip. Professor

Willoughby's lack of regard for the wider historical context of

Goethe's times resulted in an inadvertent anachronism when he

makes a passing reference to what he sees as Goethe's low

"romantic" wanderers (that is "romantic" with a small "r"). In

them himself).

Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Professor Willoughby finds

two antithetical kinds of "Wanderer." On the one side, there are

Mignon, a girl troubadour of Italian origin, and the Harpist, a

figure somewhat reminiscent of a bard or biblical prophet.

Professor Willoughby emphasizes their supposedly negative

characteristics, their erratic and undisciplined life styles,

which are partly responsible for their early and tragic deaths.

On the other, there is Wilhelm Meister, a member of a wandering

troupe of actors whose errant life prepares him a socially

constructive role in the medical profession. Professor Willoughby

seems to suggest that Mignon and the Harpist convey a warning

against tendencies that were soon to culminate in the Romantic

movement. If Goethe did intend to signal such a warning, he must

have possessed vatic powers, as the Romantic movement did not

arise until after the publication of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

(1795). Indeed, Friedrich Schlegel cited the novel as one of the

main factors that gave an initial impulse to the Romantic

movement.

In view of Goethe's later altercations with the Romantics, it

might seem paradoxical that he should have been one of its chief

instigators, unless one takes account of the phenomenon called

"introversion." Introversion results from a selective

assimilation of certain elements that one author finds in the

work of another, and the exclusion of others. In accord with this

principle the Romantics avidly accepted Mignon and the Harpist as

models to emulate but rejected Wilhelm, for they saw in him one

who embodied Goethe's assertion of the principle that it is

incumbent on artists to pursue a useful and socially beneficial

goal. Joseph von Eichendorff’s celebrated novelle: Aus dem Leben

eines Taugenichts ("From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing") expresses a

rejection of Goethe's belief in the necessity of combining art

and social or utilitarian priorities. From this we see that the

word “Wanderer” was no mere undifferentiating blanket term or

conventional metaphor.

Though I consider Professor Willoughby's approach to the

phenomenon of "the Wanderer" to be essentially logocentric, his

article entitled "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut' in

Goethe's Poetry“ contains references to the "image" of "the

Wanderer," and not specifically to the word “Wanderer.” Professor

Willoughby claims that the "image" referred to in the title of

his article pervaded Goethe's dramatic and poetic works, even

informing the entire structure of the lengthy dramas Faust Part I

and Faust Part II. (1) In the sense defined by Ezra Pound a poetic

"image" is unique and hence incapable of reduplication.5 Such an

image produces a mental picture which can be apprehended in a

single act of perception, as with the perception of an object in

real life. Indeed, the term image arouses the expectation of

discovering the crisp contours of an object or an intense vision.

As such it is not applicable to Faust, the figure that occupies

the stage in two entire dramas to which it furnishes a

5 Ezra Pound, "Vorticism," Fortnightly Review (Sept. 1914).

comprehensive sustained metaphor, i.e. an allegorical frame.6 In

critical circles "allegorical" does not buzz the way 'image'

does.

(b)

In his article "Romanticism and 'Anti-Self-consciousness,"' in

Romanticism and Consciousness,7 Geoffrey H. Hartman argues that the

English Romantics were beset by the burden of acute self-

consciousness and attendant feelings of being isolated from their

roots in society and from established literary tradition.

The Romantics' traumatized state of consciousness finds

quintessential expression in the nightmarish experiences of the

Mariner as described by the speaker in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by T. S. Coleridge. The Mariner is a "Wanderer" or6 Perhaps there is one way of understanding the connection betweenthe vagaries of wandering and the creation of vivid imagery if werecognize that wandering essentially does not concern thewanderer's itinerary, his initial purposes and goals. Rather,what interests us about wandering is the wanderer's mentality,even his psychological vulnerability giving rise to hisexperience of moments of intense awareness in encountering theunexpected, that host of golden daffodils or the sea-serpentsseen by the Ancient Mariner at the turning point of Coleridge'sfamous and enigmatic ballad. In this case the vision istantamount to a conversion experience. 7 Geoffrey H. Hartman, "Romanticism and 'Anti-Self-consciousness’," Romanticism and Consciousness, ed. Harold Bloom (NewYork: W. W. Norton & Co. 1970), 46.

transfiguration of the figure of the Wandering Jew. An affinity

between the Mariner and the true Poet is inferable from their

common compulsive need to communicate verbally. The Mariner's

voyage symbolically records a transition from a state comparable

to death to one of blessing, and at the deepest level, liberation

from a false understanding of the self. The religious

connotations of the Mariner's voyage reflect a Romantic tendency

to reveal psychological and aesthetic processes in terms of

religious allegories and figures. In the place of the traditional

triad of Eden, the Fall and Redemption, "a new triad" of nature, self-

consciousness and the imagination underlies Romantic poetry. Hartman's

approach does not involve a close regard for occurrences of

particular words found within the texts of poems or works in

other genres; it identifies "the wanderer" on the basis of a

received typology associating the word wanderer with Cain and the

Wandering Jew. Hartman joins Willoughby in assigning the name of

"wanderer" to the Faust of Goethe but evidently not on the basis

of any attention given to the word "Wanderer." Hartman argues

that Goethe in his later years concentrated his literary efforts

on prose works, as prose remained the only progressive form of

language that writers of literature had left.8 Do we not hear

8 Geoffrey Hartman, "Romanticism and Anti-Self-Consciousness,"Beyond Formalism / Literary Essays 1958-1970 (New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1970) 310. "The future belonged to the analyticspirit, to irony, to prose. The death of poetry had certainlyoccurred to the Romantics in idea, and Hegel's prediction of itwas simply the overt expression of their own despair,.."

echoes of an essay that provoked Shelley's A Defence of Poetry,

Thomas Love Peacock's dismissal of poetry as an outmoded genre

out of keeping with the progress and rationality of the modern

age?

In his essay "The Internalization of Quest-Romance" Harold Bloom

arrives at conclusions that agree with Hartman's analysis of the

crisis of self-consciousness in English Romanticism but does so

with no mention of the word "Wanderer." 9 Bloom contends that

Romantic poetry underwent a process of maturation and

"internalization" involving a transition from poetry of the kind

that reflected attempts to address such external matters as

justice in the social and political realms to poetry that is

subservient to aesthetic exigencies imposed by the quest of the

libido to achieve perfect harmony with the object of its quest in

a state comparable to an ideal marriage and the fulfillment of

pure love in keeping with a Freudian understanding of psychology.

The works of Wordsworth and Blake come in for special praise as

forms of poetry that exemplify the achievement of a perfect union

of the libido and the anima postulated in the theories of Sigmund

Freud.10 Bloom claims to have located the exact juncture in the9 Harold Bloom, "The Internalization of Quest-Romance,"Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom (NY: WWNorton, 1970). 10 Harold Bloom, "The Internalization of Quest-Romance," 6, 7."Modern poetry, in English, is the invention of Blake andWordsworth, and I do not know of a long poem written in Englishsince which is as legitimately difficult or as rewardingly

final lines of Blake's Jerusalem when this perfect union was

achieved. Once English poetry had reached a pinnacle of

perfection and harmony that all subsequent works of poetry would

prove incapable of surpassing, the death or at least the

stagnation of poetry was inevitable.

(a and b)

The fact that Willoughby and Hartman both refer to Faust as a

"wanderer" conveys the implication that the Wanderer with all the

unstated associations and implications of this word is a unitary

phenomenon that transcends the barrier that normally divides one

language from another. If this is so, it is clear that Goethe

was the principal actor in promoting the fusion of the English

and German literary traditions.

A comparison of the articles by Willoughby, Hartman and Bloom

reveal other common features. All connect the "Wanderer" with the

notion of the modern poet as one who is in a state of deep crisis

and two of them relate this crisis to the quest of the libido to

attain unity with the anima within a Jungian or Freudian

conceptual framework pertaining to the unconscious.

Paradoxically perhaps, the common area of agreement in this case

highlights fundamental differences of attitude as well,

profound as Jerusalem or The Prelude. Nor can I find a modern lyric,however happily ignorant its writer, which develops beyond orsurmounts its debt to Wordsworth’s great trinity of Tintern Abbey,Resolution and Independence, and the Intimations of Immortality ode."

particularly on the question of the relationship between

literature and the non-literary world. Precisely the common

acknowledgement that the wanderer symbolizes the male urge to

achieve union with the anima, the female principle, highlights a

fundamental divergence. For Goethe, as Willoughby never tires to

stress, the male quest for union with the anima was not purely

psychological or inward in nature, for it could not be extricated

from such "external" realities as those determined by human

biology and social responsibilities.

In Professor Willoughby's view, Goethe was constrained to

objectify the image of the "Wanderer" in his earliest poems

bearing the word "Wanderer" in their titles. Did this process of

objectification imply a total and irreversible internalization of

the "Wanderer" image? In Harold Bloom's opinion, internalization

spelt not only the end of poetry's connection with life and

society, but also the end, or at least the stagnation, of poetry

itself, a logical outcome on the supposition that poetry reached

a steady state in which progressive development would lose force.

According to this analysis, internalization signalled the

imminent death of Romantic poetry, for Hartman argues that Goethe

invested his major efforts in his prose works in anticipation of

the demise of all poetry. Only "progressive" literary genres

could survive in the future.

There are serious objections to the idea of the absolute kind of

internalization posited by Harold Bloom. Within the scope of this

discussion I allow myself the bare comment that poetry is still

alive and well at the end of the twentieth century. This is not

to deny that Hartman and Bloom make a valid point in stressing

the element of anxiety that traumatized poets in the Romantic

age, an anxiety rooted in a fear that they might be deserted by

the inspirational force that had sustained poetry in earlier

ages. Without any reference to Goethe's historical context,

Willoughby stresses that Goethe underwent a period of uncertainty

and anxiety when he first contended with the problem of

representing the figure of the Wanderer in poetry.

A consensus of opinion sparked a divergence of opinion, even

acrimonious dissent, in another case. I refer to the controversy

between Goethe and the German Romantics on the issue of the

Wanderer's (the Poet's) social responsibility and usefulness..

Willoughby and Hartman diverge in other respects but not always

in a manner that results in irreconcilable contradictions.

Willoughby bases his arguments or the recognition that the word

"Wanderer" occurs very frequently and prominently in Goethe's

writings, adopting therefore an essentially logocentric mode of

analysis. Hartman discovers "the wanderer" in a work in which

this word is entirely absent. He bases his choice of word on an

evaluation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the light of its

allusions to archetypal figures drawn from the Bible and the

classical mythology that are traditionally linked to "the

Wanderer." I believe both approaches we have considered, the

logocentric (word-oriented) and the typological, are valid in our

research into wandering. The one ensures a close regard for

textual study, the other the opportunity of considering the

phenomenon beyond the span of English and German literature.

Whenever possible, we should integrate both approaches. It is

also worth noting that as yet we have considered "the Wanderer"

both as a word frequently encountered in the works of a great

poet and one that is prominent in the exposition of a renowned

literary critic.

By correlating the findings of Willoughby and Hartman we arrive

at a position that allows us to survey a picture that these

scholars were unable to view as a whole despite being aware of

certain of its details.. Essentially Willoughby did not place

the phenomenon of wandering in a historical perspective and

neither he nor Hartman submitted words based on the verbs to

wander and wandern to any scrutiny based on an appraisal of the

specific quality of poetic language and its relationship to

ordinary language.

Is it then possible to combine the insights afforded by

Willoughby, Hartman and Blooms within the same compass, some

overall unity? Willoughby treats the "Wanderer" within the

context of Goethe's poetic and other literary achievements,

which, he argues, mirror the unity of one mind, Goethe's, in

which the conscious and unconscious act in concert. Hartman

locates the "Wanderer" in the context of a time when Romantic

poets collectively underwent a psychological revolution involving

what Bloom termed the process of "internalization." Both

Willoughby and Hartman hint at the role that cultural tradition

rooted in religious or mythical archetypes played in the

composition of the wanderer, thus supplying the foundation for a

historical context, but on this they do not build. The partial

insights of Willoughby and Hartman can unite to form a greater

whole once one admits that words in poetry lie at the centre of a

plurality of contextual planes. I believe this possibility can

be demonstrated by Jujij Tynjanov's method of studying "the word

in verse," for this method provides the basis for understanding

how and why a singular word found in a poem is part of a

greater word that transcends the limitations of a work, the

author's mind, the passage of time, and, I would add in the case

of the "Wanderer," those of separate languages.

Debates between literary critics sometimes suffer from

ideological bias. It is not always easy to steer a course between

the Scylla that takes the form of a radical denial of vital

connections between literature and non-literature, (life,

religion, whatever,} and the Charybdis represented by of those

who impose their personal ideology, including religious

convictions, on their views of literature. My meaning should

become more plain in the next section.

2: A Comparison of Opinions Put Forward by Northrop

Frye and Bernard Blackstone Reflected by their Use of

the Words "Wanderer" and Other Derivatives of the Verb

to wander

Hartman's perception of "a new triad" in Romantic poetry finds

parallels in the discovery of analogous patterns associated with

"the Wanderer" by the critics whose findings we shall now

compare, namely Northrop Frye and Bernard Blackstone.

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism contains an exposition of its

author's theory of myths.11 According to this theory the

principal literary genres identified as "tragedy," "comedy,"

"romance," and "satire," incorporate recurrent mythical

archetypes that respectively mirror a season in the annual cycle.

"Romance" in such terms is a mythos of summer, while, "satire" is

a mythos of winter. "Romance" typically concerns an archetypal

hero who finally vindicates himself as the victor over evil,

though often after severe and almost fatal sufferings. In a

section of Frye's monograph with the subtitle "The Mythos of

Summer Romance," there is a paragraph containing four

occurrences of the verb to wander that throws considerable light

on the issues we have been considering. This paragraph is

concerned with the basic plan underlying Milton's Paradise Lost and

Paradise Regained.

1. Moses and the Israelites wander through a labyrinthine desert,

11 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton, 1957).

2. Adam is cast out of Eden, loses the river of life and the tree

of life, and wanders in the ....labyrinth of human history.

3. Israel is cast out of his inheritance and wanders in the

labyrinth of Egypt and the ....Babylonian captivity.

4. Christ is in the situation under the law, wandering in the

wilderness.

Frye's choice of verb reflects that of Milton.

concerning the Fall: Paradise Lost, IX, 1136 and 1146 and XII, 648);

concerning Christ's wandering in the wilderness; Paradise Regained,

IV, 600;.

concerning the wandering of Israel under Moses; Paradise Regained,

I, 354.

Frye discerns two concentric quest myths in Milton's Paradise

epics, a "genesis-apocalypse myth" and an "Exodus-millennium

myth." Both myths describe a circle, ending where they begin.

Frye seems to find little room for the educating and moral value

of wandering itself, as this would presumably point to the word's

personal and religious implications, implications which do not

accord with Frye's concept of the purely literary relevance of

"myths." He shows little interest in speculation concerning

either the origins of myth in what he describes as "murky"

unconscious factors or similarities between the "true hero" of

romance and the solar heroes that loom large in psychological and

anthropological analyses (Jung interprets the wanderers of

ancient legend and myth, Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Dionysus, etc. as

those vicariously passing through the realms of day and night in

a symbolic framework making the sun a symbol representing the

libido).

A distinctly different point of view from Frye's is upheld in

Bernard Blackstone's monograph The Travellers Lost. 12 The author begins

his study by emphasizing that the primary metaphors in Romantic

poetry are based on references to motion and journeys. He

discerns a "true wanderer pattern" in Romantic poetry based on

acceptance of Christian belief in "a Fall, an Original: or

Radical Sin, and a Redemption." 13 Coleridge, Blake and Byron

fulfill this condition, and are "Christians." Wordsworth, Keats

and Shelley do not fulfill it, and are not "Christians." While

the former group journey from Eden to Heavenly Jerusalem, the

latter's journey is "from a slum to a garden." 14 Wordsworth, in

particular, is the object of severe criticism. His journey is

"circuitous" and lacks true progression.

Blackstone points to the story of the Prodigal Son as a dominant

motif in Coleridge's poetry. The logocentric approach adopted in

this study also highlights its central importance in Romantic

poetry and elsewhere, as a future discussion of Robinson Crusoe12 Bernard Blackstone, The Travellers Lost (Norwich, 1962).

13 The Travellers Lost, 20.

14 The Travellers Lost, 10.

will show. While a comparison of opinions stated by Professor

Willoughby and G. H. Hartman reveal strong differences on the

question of the relationship between literature and realities

outside it, a comparison of opinions stated by Northrop Frye and

Bernard Blackstone reveal a complete divergence of attitude to

the possible relevance of religious propositions to the criticism

of literature. Closely related to such ideological differences is

a strong readiness to place a harsh value judgment on whatever

allegedly circuitous or progressive qualities they perceive in

literary works. I cannot help expressing the opinion that

Blackstone's analyses show themselves at their weakest when he

allows religious views to intrude into his line of argument, even

though I agree in principle that questions of religious belief

have a strong bearing on literary issues. Once critics go so far

as to condemn poets because they seem to hold different religious

(or other ideological) opinions from their own, somewhere a

warning light should start blinking. According to another man's

religious book, Byron might well belong to the non-Christian

camp.

As to Wordsworth, M. Abrams discerns in The Prelude the

allegorical substructure of the wanderings of the Israelites to

the Promised Land replete with a specific reference to the vision

of Moses experienced on the summit of Mount Pisgah.15 Both the

15 M. H. Abrams, ''The Design of The Prelude Wordsworth's LongJourney Home From: Tradition and Natural Supernaturalismand .....Revolution," Romantic Literature (New York, 1971).

internal school of critics and those who adopt a more

linguistically based (logocentric approach) will agree on one

question at least: the literary text is in its very nature

progressive. A word's significance is not conditioned by its

meaning in terms of a dictionary's definition only, or indeed

most significantly, but by its position in the text. Here Calvin

S. Brown's analogy between symbols in a poem and "musical" motifs

that "develop" after the fashion of a piece of music is most

apt. While Blackstone is arbitrary in his readiness to judge or

condemn poets on the basis of the allegedly progressive on non

progressive quality of their works, Northrop Frye finds little if

any room for the even the possibility of progression in poetry.

He justifies his belief in the non-historical nature of literary

archetypes on the supposition that myths are not part of

historical processes.

3: The Four Critics' Findings Compared

The four positions articulated by the critics whose discussions I

have reviewed flatly contradict each other when they define what

they themselves identify as "wandering." Their differences emerge

most clearly when their assertions concerning the poetic

imagination imply a notion of time.

Two basic understandings of time come into question. One may

conceive of time in terms of a closed internally regulated cycle,

or in terms of an ongoing linear process such as that typical of

history or personal experience. The opposition between cyclical

and linear processes may be encountered in many fields of

learning, history, philosophy, psychology and so on. It usually

appears possible to accommodate both ways of understanding time

within a comprehensive framework.

In their various ways, the critics referred to above fail to see

wandering whole. In my view this failure leads to a bias in their

evaluation of literary works and a blindness to evidence provided

by the poets whose works they consider. I cite examples of what I

mean. In the lines from Anatomy of Criticism quoted above the verb to

wander acquires an unmitigated negative association with the

"labyrinth" of "the law" and "history."

A comparative evaluation of ccurrences of the verb to wander in

Paradise Lost will show that the verb carries a positive association

through implications concerning moral freedom, the necessity of

learning from life and experience. The mixture of negative and

positive aspects that inheres in wandering is fully compatible

with orthodox theology and the Thomist dictum of "felix culpa."

Northrop Frye is unsympathetic to Milton's theology because in

this critic's view literature is informed by "myths" and, to

follow his argument, myth and history pose diametric opposites.

Not all researchers of mythology agree. Robert Graves saw in

myths an inseparable combination of historical and imaginative or

invented elements. These elements can be discovered in the

mythical journeys of ancient heroes described in The Epic of

Gilgamesh, The Odyssey and The Aeneid. Gilgamesh, Ulysses and Aeneas

enter the underworld. Jung explained these excursions as a

symbolic representation of the solar hero's entry into the domain

of night reflecting the libido's quest for union with its source.

On the other hand, as M. M. Bakhtin points out, the journeys of

Ulysses originally had a political justification in legitimating

a hierarchy of government and land occupation. 16 To this extent,

at least, the history of Israel's migration toward the Promised

Land and the Homeric journey share a close affinity. In fact they

provide motifs and strands that have often been intertwined into

the fabric of one work. However, as Erich Auerbach argues in

Mimesis,17 the biblical mode of narrating an event typically

evinces an awareness of historical time, while the Homeric epic

evinces a more fluid sense of time. The Miltonic epic juxtaposes

elements derived from both the biblical and Homeric traditions

using nautical imagery to describe the movements of Satan, while

Jesus is depicted as a Wanderer in a "wilderness." As

protagonists seeking to establish a new order, be this the

kingdom of God or the Evil Empire, Jesus and Satan are also

Wanderers, the founders of dynasties or kingdoms.

The contention that the metaphor of the journey lost its power to

recall religious truth harbours a paradox. Advocates of internal

criticism argue that at a particular historical juncture poetry

16 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. M. Holquist (Austin, 1981).

17 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischenLiteratur, (Bern, 1946).

lost contact with history. Its shedding of all "external"

elements, Harold Bloom argues, would lead to the end of poetry,

and anticipating this, Goethe increasingly devoted himself to

prose works as these retained a "progressive" quality. The

premise that the total "internalization" of poetry would lead to

its end reveals to my mind the limitation inherent in the term

"internal," which is itself based on a metaphor. If the poetic

imagination were to it lose any connection with historical and

biographical realities, it would be reduced to the role of

reflecting a general patterns in the mind, producing perhaps a

map of the mind, even a model for explaining Freudian theories on

psychology. Poetry then ceases to be literature and becomes are

expression of a nonliterary (i.e. exterior) discipline. Poetry

still exists in the modern world, and the reason for this is, I

believe, that poetic language is irreducible to a statement about

psychology or critical theory. One may possibly "deconstruct"

poetry at one level of significance but never at the levels that

are not fully subject to a consciously directed plan or design.

Professor Willoughby comes closest of the critics whose arguments

have been considered to achieving a balance in his discussion of

the significance of the Wanderer in poetry. On the one hand, he

refers to Jung's theory of the unconscious when seeking to

explain why the "image" of the "Wanderer" occurs so frequently in

Goethe's poetry. On the other, he treats the phenomenon

surrounding the word as an inseparable aspect of Goethe's life

and personal development. Willoughby has therefore the

theoretical basis for accepting both the cyclical and the linear-

progressive facets of wandering. In effect, he emphasizes its

progressive features considerably more than its cyclical and

universal aspects. Perhaps it is for his reason that he

disparages "romantic" wandering and suggests that in the figures

of the Harpist and Mignon one should discern negative examples of

the wrong kind of Wanderer. If one looks a Goethe's works

generally, one will note a tendency to associate two

protagonists, one of whom is a survivor and the other a tragic

failure or one who meets a premature death. It is not always the

survivor who earns great interest and sympathy in the respective

work. It is Werther, Tasso and Egmont that chiefly interest us,

not Albert or William of Orange. Two apparently conflicting

kinds of wandering complement each other, being derived from a

duality than indwells the human mind and all that proceeds from

it, literature included.

B: Exploring Connections between Dante's HermeneuticStrategy and the Fourfold Categories Set Out by M. H.Abrams, to which the Terms “Mimetic,” “Pragmatic,”

“Expressive” and “Objective” Apply

In this section it is my purpose to explore ways in which the

four interpretative levels of literary texts can be related to

Abrams' fourfold system of categorizing the orientation of the

work to the universe, to its audience, to its originator and to

itself. For the sake of my argument I combine the terms used by

Dante and Abrams as follows: Literal-Mimetic; Allegorical-Pragmatic; Moral-

Expressive; Anagogical-Objective.

1: Literal-Mimetic Cross-Connections

with special regard to Erich Auerbach's observations in: Mimesis:

The Representation of Reality in Western Literature 18

Abrams construes his four categories referred to above in terms

of consecutive historic periods of time. He understands the great

epics of antiquity as attempts to record the definitive events

that grounded the civilizations to which the authors of these

epics belonged. Like Erich Auerbach I make it my premise that if

any two principal epic traditions established the archetypal

journeys that form the matrix for all subsequent depictions of

journeys in Western literature, these must be story of the

Pentateuch, particularly the Book of Exodus, and Homer's Odyssey.

Auerbach wrote Mimesis during the years he was a professor of

literature at Istanbul University after being forced to leave

Germany under the National Socialists. In Mimesis, his major work,

Auerbach sought to demonstrate how writers of literature from

Homer to Virginia Woolf reflected the life and realities of their

times. We recognize from this at once that Auerbach held mimesis,

18 Erich Auerbach: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.Princeton. 1957.

the representation of life through art, to be a formative

principle permeating all periods of literature, not only pre-

Christian antiquity. Auerbach with Leo Spitzer and Ernst Curtius

belonged to the German Historicist school of criticism based on

Hegelian precepts. In the celebrated first chapter of Mimesis,

which bears the title “The Scar of Odysseus” (originally “Die

Narbe des Odysseus"), the author contrasts the rhetorical style

of Homer with what he holds to be the realistic account of the

incident recorded in the Pentateuch telling of Abraham's

readiness to obey the divine commandment to sacrifice Isaac his

son. In this, Auerbach argued, the account of events conveys a

sense of one living in the present, which is to say, without

knowing what may come next, for only by appreciating this sense

can one grasp the nature of faith. The same sense of being fully

involved in the present Auerbach finds lacking in the Homerian

manner of recounting the incident discussed under the heading of

"Odysseus' Scar.” This treats the occasion when Euryclea, the

aged chief servant in Penelope's household, recognizes Odysseus

from seeing his scarred foot, the result of a misfortune that had

occurred during his childhood. In subsequent chapters Auerbach

argues that Western literature developed under the impetus

derived from a constant tension between the demands of the

literary rhetoric originating in Greek classicism and, set

against this, the Christian insistence on involvement in the

daily concerns of common humanity. As Auerbach had to rely on

primary resource rather that secondary (i.e. critical) works

under circumstances of relative isolation in Istanbul, he applied

a very text-oriented approach to his task. His logocentric method

cut out a lot of the waffle that one sometimes encounters in

criticism based on theories which pay little detailed regard to

primary sources.

Any rabbi would firmly deny that the Pentateuch lacks an

allegorical dimension comparable to that which underlies the

Christian interpretation of the Pentateuch. Indeed, the rabbinic

tradition has always insisted that to interpret the literal

meaning of the Torah the scholar must respect the so-called oral

Torah compounded of the opinions and commentaries of the sages

from Hillel and Gamaliel to the present.

2: Allegorical-Pragmatic Cross-Connections

Though both rabbis and Christian teachers interpret the

Pentateuch allegorically it is clear that the allegoric sense to

which the New Testament epistles and passages in the writings of

Aquinas and Dante refer marks a radical new development in

biblical exegesis, for accordingly the literal account of a

historical migration is thoroughly subordinated to the role of

explaining things that have nothing to do with that migration and

everything to do with redemption in the Christian sense. Indeed,

a fictitious story or a parable might serve this purpose equally

well, and Boccaccio pleaded that even the myths of pagan Greece

and Rome yielded allegorical truths applicable to the teaching of

Christian doctrines. When referring to the “pragmatic” phase of

literature, Abrams likewise takes account of the subordination of

literary works to the needs of those wishing to teach, persuade

or otherwise influence their audience, whatever that might be.

To compose a pure allegory devoid of "mimetic" or "expressive"

elements is at best a precarious, if not an impossible, task. On

the one side the writer must make the allegory palatable, that

is, not too dry or overbearingly didactic. On the other, the

characters depicted in the allegory must not truly come alive and

thus appear too interesting or sympathetic, otherwise the strict

message of the allegory will be tempered, even lost. 19 Chaucer's

"The Pardoners Tale" in The Canterbury Tales, perhaps the first short

story in English literature, poses the rare case of an allegory

in which a course is steered between didacticism and the dramatic

or novelistic presentation of rounded characters. The story line

I summarize as follows:

Three roisterers seek to destroy the churl Death, who has wreaked

havoc on the people of Flanders, but they seek Death in the form

of a physical being, some ogre or monster. Their aim seems

laudable. In a disrespectful tone they ask an aged man, himself a

pointer to the encroachment of life’s end, as to the whereabouts

of Death. He directs them to a tree where Death awaits them but

19 Falstaff in Shakespearean drama embodies the seven deadly sinsin the tradition of the medieval morality play but hischaracterization at least partially obscures this aspect of thefigures origins in view of his appearance as a buffoon with anamiable side.

when they reach it, nobody is to be found. Instead of finding

Death, at least in the guise they had expected, they do discover

a trove full of gold. The youngest of the three is sent off to

fetch provisions, as the treasure has to be removed after

nightfall. Greedy for gain, the young man who has been sent off

poisons the wine he is to provide to his companions. On his

return he is murdered by the other two roisterers, who then drink

the poisoned wine and perish. Chaucer did not dwell on the

character of the villains for that might obscure the moral of the

allegory. By way of a contrast, the original story of Faust

carried a warning message against dabbling in the art of magic,

but Goethe's powers of empathy with Faust resulted in the errant

scholar's ultimate exemption from damnation.

To the fact that pure allegory is extremely difficult to achieve

I add the corollary that works that are predominantly mimetic and

expressive bear traces of allegory. Robinson Crusoe is not

generally recognized as an allegory but Crusoe himself as the

editor of his own work insists that his writings pose an allegory

based on the figure of the Prodigal Son, who leaves his father's

house and later returns to his home country as a penitent

"wanderer." Frederick Nims goes further to suggest that an

allegory is the inescapable result of any literary representation

of a walk or journey, for he remarks in Western Wind / an introduction

to poetry,20 (New York, 1983), a manual for students of poetry: 20 Frederick Nims, Western Wind / an introduction to poetry, (New York, 1983).

"A mountain may be a symbol of salvation, a traveler may be

a symbol of a human being in his life. But if the traveler

takes so much as one step toward the mountain, it seems that

the traveller and the mountain become allegorical figures,

because a story has begun. 21

One possible explanation for the Romantic poets' massive

recourse to traditional allegorical figures and representations

of journeys and walks, all of which I subsume under the title of

"wandering," may lie in this: The basic dynamics of language

creation, once unleashed by the act of writing and speaking, kept

them and their poetry buoyant when nought else, not even the

Muses, rushed to save them from going under or, possibly even

worse, from languishing in the doldrums like the Ancient

Mariner's ship. We see again that M. H. Abrams' categories are

not so watertight as they might seem. His categories cover

literary works only to the extent that authors are able to

consciously design the macrostructure of their works and

deliberately determine their finer texture, but beyond a certain

limit subconscious undercurrents and the wayward nature of

language itself take over.

3: Moral-Expressive Cross-Connections

According to Dante the allegorical or spiritual senses of words

and passages in literature include a moral sense signifying the

conversion of the soul. How can this signification tally with

21 Western Wind. 61 in second edition).

Abrams' designation of the third phase in the evolution of

literature, to which he applied the term "expressive," when the

Romantic poets became concerned with the nature of their source

of inspiration to the point of excess? We remember that Harold

Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman more tentatively denied that the

Romantics wrestled with questions of a truly religious nature

though they expressed themselves by using images, symbols and

allegorical figures drawn from Christian tradition: Cain,

Ahasuerus, the pilgrimage to eternity and so on. It is in some

way odd that Bloom and others should apply their criteria based

on the theories of objective criticism to the Romantics, for

objective criticism itself emerged from a reaction against

Romantic poetry. Perhaps it is partly for this reason that these

critics fail, at least apparently, to empathize with Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Byron and Shelley sufficiently to appreciate that

their often distraught and agonized state of mind resulted from

personal as well as philosophically based anxieties, if such a

nice distinction may be made.

In view of Dante's reference to the moral sense of literary

texts, let us consider this aspect of “the conversion of the

soul." One would be hard put to demonstrate that any of the

Romantics experienced the kind of conversion that often took

place at a Billy Graham crusade though some passages in The Prelude

share certain affinities with the so-called religious testimony.

Men of a strong religious persuasion, typically clergymen

themselves, did much to set the tone for the Romantic age by

their emphasis on the emotive and original power of poetry: Among

the most notable of these were Klopstock, Edward Young, Bishop

Percy, Herder, Richardson and the pietistic circles known to

Goethe in his youth. One should not underrate the influence of

the nascent Methodist movement and the composition of hymns

calling for personal commitment and confession to which William

Cowper and his friend John Newman, the author of “Amazing Grace,”

made significant contributions. Going back further still, one

could recall the relentless introspection of Puritans and the

massive influence of Milton on all the English Romantic poets

and, not least, that of John Bunyan. Wordsworth's recollection of

his childhood experience of fear when he imagined being pursued

by a dark mountain recalls the Pilgrim's dread of being crushed

by Mount Sinai as narrated in The Pilgrim's Progress.22 Rousseau

propagated, unwittingly perhaps, attitudes rooted in Calvinism

and the same influence was felt by Lord Byron. Arguably the

religious background to which I point predisposed poets to look

inwards into the realm of the soul, the inner consciousness, the

22 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678: Part I, "Mr. WorldlyWiseman: "So CHRISTIAN turned out of his way to go to Mr.LEGALITY'S house for help. But, behold, when he was got now hardby the hill, it seemed so high, and also the side of it that wasnext the wayside did hang so much over, that CHRISTIAN was afraidto venture farther, lest the hill should fall on his head;wherefore there he stood still, and knew not what to do. Also hisburden now seemed heavier to him than while he was in his way.There came also flashes of fire out of the hill, that madeCHRISTIAN afraid that he should be burned."

psyche. Goethe's Werther refers to an overpowering mental

experience that, according to his own words, turned him from the

outside world to discover a world within himself. In The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner, “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and Blake's visions

we learn of overpowering quasi-religious experiences attended by

a flash of intense insight. With all my strictures against

criticism which denies a priori any religious statement in Romantic

poetry, I find much less fruitful the pronouncements of those

critics who judge the Romantics according to their supposed

fidelity, or rather infidelity, to a certain religious outlook,

in extreme cases checking the poets' baptismal certificates to

boot. To cite a case in point: In his monograph The Travellers Lost.

Bernard Blackstone places the Romantic poets into the Christian

or the non-Christian camp on the basis of what the author takes

to be their fidelity or infidelity towards Christianity. 23

Surprisingly for me at least, Wordsworth is numbers among the

non-Christians for not being guilt-ridden enough while Byron is

deemed a Christian as he had a deep sense of personal sin.

It is worth noting that the theme of conversion, indeed in the

strict religious sense, has engaged writers of different periods

with their divergent attitudes to religion that include the

atheistic standpoint. Notable in this respect are works by James

Hogg, Charles Dickens and Somerset Maugham.

4: Anagogical-Objective Cross-Connections

23 Bernard Blackstone, The Travellers Lost (Norwich, 1962).

M. H. Abrams' fourth and final phase of objective poetry is the

last of the four phases he construes in his system delineated in

the introduction of The Mirror and the Lamp. If the doctrines of

objective criticism, contextualism and the theories presented in

Northrop Frye's critical works are at all valid, then poetry and

literature must have reached a final steady state and, by the

same token, some condition of immortality that lies beyond the

ken of humanity this side of the veil of death. Poetry has thus

been freed from common life, personal feelings and truth,

whatever one may mean by this word. According to Harold. Bloom

Wordsworth and Blake interiorized their poetry to the point at

which this lost all contact with outside realities, and even the

words of their poems served only as “scaffolding” for the inward

and invisible process by which the libido finally achieves total

and permanent union with the anima.24

If poetry has indeed fled from history and life, it may well be

compared to the soul which departs from the body at death.

Northrop Frye asserts that the words of literature and the world

outside literature are totally separate, like Kipling's East and

West, one might say. The twain shall never meet. Rightly enough, Frye

points out that an event in history is not composed of words and

words are not things or objects. But why discuss only literary

works? A plumber's manual is composed of words and the pipes and

tubes the plumber installs or repairs are made of metal and24 Harold Bloom, "The Internalization of Quest-Romance," The YaleReview, Vol. LVIII, No. 4 (Summer, 1969) 6, 7.

rubber. Despite this fact the manual somehow allows the plumber

to install pipes and replace rubber tubes. We need words to

interact with the world and we need words when we think. The

relevance of words in literature to practical needs cannot be as

readily demonstrated as in the case of a plumber's manual, but it

does not thence follow that words in literature are not involved

in external realities. Indeed, though all “objective” critics

agree on the radical separation of art and life, they differ on

very much else. Some plead that words are inadequate in some

sense, serving only the role of labeling symbols and images. Frye

believed words in literature form an entire impenetrable

universe. Some critics plead that each poetic text is a unique

object and as such impervious to the influences of the world

around, even to that emanating from other works of literature as

“influence.” Frye held that recurrent and all-pervading

archetypes mysteriously impressed themselves on individual works.

Other critics who like Frye disconnect literary works from

outside influences do so on the basis of the singularity of each

work of literature. In his article entitled "The Musical

Development of Symbols: Whitman"25 Calvin S. Brown proposed that

a text, or better the reader's encounter with the text,

progressed like a musical symphony in which recognizably similar

patterns of notes were not repetitions but innovations generated

by the cumulative effects of a constantly changing totality of

25 Calvin S. Brown,"The Musical Development of Symbols: Whitman,”(Music and Literature, Athens [US], 1948) 61 in second edition).

associations. Thus the same word never recurs despite outward

appearances in much the same sense that we draw from Heraclitus'

assertion. “You could not step twice into the same river.”

Northrop Frye, on the other hand, denied the relevance of

progress either with respect to literary texts or to the greater

world of human development when asserting that the myths of the

Exodus journey to the Promised Land and that of Eden described

concentric circles, making Eden and the Promised Land identical

points. Hence he saw no value in the experience of traversing the

wilderness of Sinai and no positive lesson to be drawn from a

passage of the Israelites through the “labyrinth of Sin,” the

Law.

‘

Conclusions

It would be foolish, even presumptuous, to disregard the many

valuable insights to be garnered in the critical works of Harold

Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Northrop Frye and the various exponents

of the objective school of criticism. I do not object to the

assertion that a poem constitutes a unique configuration of

words, images or motifs, but I cannot agree with the notion that

while all poems are unique, some are more unique than others, the

premise for Harold Bloom's assertion that The Prelude and Jerusalem

pose the final stage of poetic development 26 Similarly, I reject26 The Internalization of Quest-romance," The Yale Review, Vol LVIII,No. 4 (Summer, 1969).

Calvin Brown claims that Whitman's "When First in the Door-yard

Bloom'd" is the first poem in history to effect purely musical

formations without reference to the external reality of any

persons and objects named by words. Thus, according to this line

of thinking, Whitman was not really writing about Abraham Lincoln

at all, but about the idea of a great man as a means to secure a

musical effect.

Northrop Frye's belief that all literature poses a universe

composed of interacting words finds a close parallel in the

theories put forward by the Jurij Tynjanov in his article "The

Meaning of the Word in Verse,"27 for the Russian critic also

claimed that words in literary texts partake in a transcendent

unity, but Tynjanov's analysis differs from Frye's in one

essential respect, for Tynjanov claimed that the words found in

poetry are coloured (his term) by the respective poet's

consciousness of the contemporary world, though the poet's mind

retains the ability to recall what words meant to poets of

earlier generations. This concept might come across as

suspiciously mystical but for that matter, so does Frye's notion

of the unity constituted by all words found in literary texts.

Tynjanov's analysis accords the word in a poem a unique role and

range of significance without the suggestion that it cannot

partake in a tradition compounded of works that are also unique

and in touch with realities beyond the pale of literature.

27 Readings in Russian Poetics Formalist and Structuralist Views (Ann Arbor, 1978).

Essentially Tynjanov's approach amounts to the application to

literature of Ferdinand de Saussure's thesis that language

evinces a dual nature consisting of langue, the entire system of

language, and parole, the specific articulation of language in any

verbal utterance, literary or otherwise. Tynjanov's analysis is

also predicated on de Saussure's postulation that words and texts

lie at the crossroads where the synchronic and diachronic planes

of language meet, which is to say, the aggregate meaning of a

word accrued during its passage through history is retained while

its new meaning is generated by the poet at the moment of

articulation. To be more precise: Goethe instilled a fundamental

new meaning in the word "Wanderer" but this new meaning

incorporated old meanings of the word with their mainly religious

connotations.

The word "wanderer" (see the title of this exploration in the

field of literary studies) reveals the potential that resides in

the words of poetry with singular clarity, for it is THE word par

excellence that poets such as Goethe have chosen to designate the

Poet, referring to themselves and to the informing power within

them,. What explains the all-inclusive ambit of the word's power

of evocation? Here only an excursion into the realms of etymology

combined with a study of C. G. Jung's collective unconscious

could approach an adequate explanation. "Wandering" refers to the

early migrations of tribes and people, to the allegorical figures

of Cain, Ahasuerus, the pilgrim through life and the Prodigal

Son, to the Poet himself, especially in the age or Goethe and the

Romantic poets, and to the transition from life to death, from

time to eternity, for Faust finally becomes the "Wanderer" at the

close of Faust Part II. The final line of "Wandrers Nachtied (II)"

runs: "Bald ruhest du auch."(" Soon thou shalt also rest.") Thus

it embraces the four categories of: mimetic, pragmatic, expressive

and objective that constitute M: H: Abrams' theory of literature as

set forth in The Mirror and the Lamp, and combines the senses termed

literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical in the writings of Dante and

Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In short, I do not challenge the validity of Abrams' fourfold

categories as long as they are seen to characterize the dominant

principle that determined the distinctive tenor shared works

belonging to each of the four phases he describes. The mimetic,

allegorical, expressive and objective aspects of art interpenetrate each

other at all times despite the dominance of one during a certain

stage of history, which is congruent with the premise that the

literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical senses reside and coexist in

what can be extracted from the same literary text. I certainly

cannot concede that the objective stage of literature swallowed up

the previous stages in a manner reminiscent of the lean and fat

kine in Joseph's dream, though much of modern criticism is based

on that assumption. The mimetic factor cannot be rinsed out of

poetry, any more than its allegorical or expressive elements can

be obliterated. Thus poetry cannot lose its vital connection with

history, experience and the common life of all, but does one need

this or any other argument to sense that Milton's “On his

blindness” has something to do with the heart cry of a blind

person or that one of Dylan Thomas's most celebrated poems has

something to do with emotions of one who has suffered bereavement

following his beloved father's death?

Perhaps poetry will only die when poets themselves admit defeat.

The answer to Adorno's dictum that there can be no poetry after

Auschwitz was given by Paul Celan, himself a survivor of the

Holocaust, simply by dint his refusal to give up the writing of

poetry.

B: The Confines or Scope of Comparisons betweenWords of Similar Form in Literary Texts (withSpecial Regard to Words Derived from the Verbs

to wander and wandern)

What theoretical framework is adequate to enable us to get to

grips with the undeniable existence of the phenomenon of

recurrent verbal patterns that has emerged from Professor L. A.

Willoughby's article "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut'

in Goethe's Poetry," a phenomenon that is much larger in  scope

than even Willoughby envisaged? 28 The answer must lie in

something so pervasive and penetrating as the collective

unconscious, a possibility   which Willoughby himself suggested

but did not contemplate further. As Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher

observed, any theory assessing the scope of language  is

implicitly coextensive with  assumptions about the scope of the

mind. 29 Failure to recognize this reality can lead to the idea

28 L. A. Willoughby, "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut' inGoethe's Poetry" (Etudes Germaniques, 3, Autumn, 1951). 29 A median position between religious hermeneutics and thetheories of Ferdinand de Saussure and the Russian Formalists washeld by those German thinkers, adherents of the Romanticschool, who addressed central questions concerning the nature oflanguage, in particular Ephraim Herder, Franz Schlegel, AlexanderHumboldt and Friedrich D. E.  Schleiermacher. These thinkersopposed a prevalent philosophic trend lauding lucid unambiguousprose as the only form of language that served to advancescientific and rationally based progress as against poeticlanguage with all its apparent confusions and lack oftransparency. Schleiermacher entertained a holistic view oflanguage that embraced ordinary and poetic forms of language,according to which poetic language, far from being an artificialbyproduct of ordinary language, exploited the fullnessof language in toto, from which ordinary language skimmed off whatwas essential for practical needs (see Brent Potter’s explicationof “holistic” Elements of Self-Destruction, London 2013,34.). Recognizing the obvious fact that one cannot contemplatethe scope and potentialities of language without alsocontemplating those of the mind, Schleiermacher viewed languagefrom a linguistic and from a psychological perspective, both ofwhich he found no less needful than the two oars that propel a

that language serves only as scaffolding to be dispensed with

once some poet's mind has entered a psychological state akin to

Nirvana. Other theorists shy away from accepting any role the

"murky" subconscious could play in the processes that create

poetry for fear that this foreign influence might disrupt tidy

assumptions about the fixity and precision of the autonomous

poetic object.

 Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language offers a way out of

the way of thinking that involves choosing between alternatives

that are supposed to be mutually exclusive, for in terms of

langue a word is a unity with an infinite number of applications

but in terms of parole each occurrence of this word is unique for

no other occurrence of like appearance is situated in the same

environment. To find the right word the poet and translator of

poetry must rely on intuitive flashes of the kind that led

Longfellow to render the title of Goethe's "Wandrers Nachtlied"

rowing boat. His balanced view assured the ability to recognizeboth the linear-progressive aspect of a literary text thatresults from the sequence and order of words and also thetimeless ideals it conveys. Harold Bloom on the other hand heldthat the words that made up a poem served only as "scaffoldings"to be dismantled once their task of initiating a perfect union ofthe anima and libido had been reached. According to the sameline of argument, once Wordsworth and Blake had achieved thisfeat there was little left for later poets to achieve. A similarview that after the attainment of perfection only decline canensue was adopted by the pre-Raphaelite school of painters.

as "Wanderer's Night-Songs." No process

of exhaustive ratiocination could have helped him here.

 Returning to the question asking what theoretical framework we

need to discern and contend with the phenomenon of wandering,

perhaps we could invert the question as follows: What theoretical

framework presents the least hindrance to the recognition of

verbal patterns beyond the confines of one work or even the works

of one author, however great?  From comparisons of literary

passages in which one finds words based on the common root of to

wander and wandern, striking parallels emerge, some of which we

have considered and some of which will come to light in the

following sections of this book. The theory of Jurij Tynjanov

based on Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language encourages

the pursuit of making intertextual comparisons and probing the

unity that enfolds individual occurrences of words of like

appearance, meaning and origin. I can find no better ground for

putting Tynjanov’s approach to the study of poetry through its

paces than that offered by works that contain words derived

from the root of the verbs wandern and to wander. Preeminent, or at

least most conspicuous, among these is Wanderer, with which Goethe

and the Romantic poets, anticipated by Shakespeare and Milton,

associated themselves and their art. 30

30 Tynjanov, Jurij, ''The Meaning of the Word in Verse,'' Readingsin Russian, Poetics Formalist and Structuralist Views (ed. Ladislav Mateijkaand Krystina Pomorska). Michigan Slavic Publications: Ann Arbor. 1978.Original Russian Title: ''Znacenie slova v. stixe '' in Problemastixotvornogo jazyke. 1924.

II

It is not altogether surprising that many people are put off by

what seems to them the  longwinded theoretical jargon that

typifies the more elitist forms of literary criticism. One of the

finest examples of text-based criticism Erich Auerbach's Mimesis

owes its lack of references to secondary literature to the fact

that little of it was at hand in Istanbul during the Second World

War where its author was forced to stay as a fugitive from Nazi-

occupied Europe. Theory in literary criticism, as in most other

fields, should find practical applications whenever possible. In

literary studies such a field is textual criticism.

 It may not  always necessary for one engaged in textual

criticism to make frequent explicit references to this or that

theory  but every critic has working assumptions whether they are

enunciated or not, but it does help if  he or she has some idea

what they are. What then are the basic premises on which textual

criticism rests? On what foundation is one to understand the

difference between the language of poetry and the language of

everyday usage? A person who sees little difference between the

two will tend to look for the overall message or import of

literary work and having done this may find little need to

proceed any further with an investigation into the potential

qualities of words. Seeking a coherent message in whatever one

hears or reads is instinctive whether one reads a poem or a

newspaper article, but why do we usually discard yesterday's

newspaper but cherish a book of poetry and return to it?

 Even in the case of a brilliant example of journalistic

reportage, language is the servant of what it is supposed to

convey as information and the resultant surface tension

determines the apposite meaning of each word contained in the

reportage. Presumably the same information could be paraphrased

in the form of a resumé, but is the same not true of  the

paraphrasable core of a poem like Robert Browning's “The Pied

Piper of Hamelin”? After all students often consult booklets in

which summaries of literary works are to be found. Doubtless such

booklets have their place as long as they are seen to do no more

than secure a helpful basis for further exploration. In poetry

semantics and aesthetics have an equal place.

  To rearrange or delete words from a poem is tantamount to

committing the sacrilege of altering a detail of the Mona Lisa.

Those of the contextualist persuasion in literary criticism see

the sole determining context of a poem as the work, which they

describe as an aesthetic or autonomous object. Does this mean

that the informative aspect of language falls by the wayside?  We

recall Calvin's Brown's contention that Whitman's

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" is not about Lincoln

at all. 31 In this case Calvin Brown's emphasis on the

singularity of this poem carries the implication that it is

31 Calvin S. Brown, "The Musical Development of Symbols: Whitman,"Music and Literature (Athens [U.S.], 1948).

without precedent and superior to all other poems; in a similar

way Bloom suggests that the works of Wordsworth and

Blake represent the pinnacle of poetic achievement and

spelled the deathlike atrophy of poetry. The detachment of poetry

from relevance to the nonliterary world results in conclusions

that strike most ordinary folks as odd.

The scope of the work on this assumption can hardly

extend further than the discerning mind is able to ingest and

evaluate. Even in formal terms it is not always easy to be sure

of the parameters of a work, especially if it is part of a cycle

of poems. In the light of its wider context as part of Die Schöne

Müllerin the poem "Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust"    carries a

tragic message though taken in isolation it is

generally celebrated as a jaunty folksong.  One also has to ask

how poems in which words serve the purely aesthetic and

structural needs of the work bear comparison to any other

likewise uniquely constituted work. In practice those advocates

of internal criticism whose opinions we have consulted chose some

particular work as a prime example of poetic and artistic

craftsmanship and lent this work an inordinate status among all

other works in the domain of world literature. I think here of

Harold Bloom's vaunting of the poetry of Wordsworth and Blake to

the point of declaring all subsequent works to be in a state of

decline and redundancy. There is a further problem to consider.

 Even if  one sees a poem as a hermetically sealed object one

still has to evaluate the meanings of words if only  to

assess their  function within the work and thus will also have

to consider a word under assessment in the light of common

usage and possibly of its historical context. E. D. Hirsch Jr.

argues logically enough that there is little benefit to be

derived from treating a work as an enclosed object unless its

objectivity is preserved once transferred to the receptive mind

of any critic. 32 Thus a critic may have to compare notes between

the significance of a word within the poetic object and

other instances of this word spread around the corpus of the

relevant author's works. Such comparison may lead down the

slippery slope towards an exploration of the author's mind. I can

only speculate as to the nature of the selective amnesia required

to blot out knowlwdge that Milton was blind when composing “On

his Blindness.”

III

By taking the entire panorama of Goethe's writings into account,

Willoughby was able to establish the extent of recurrent patterns

relating to the association of the “Wanderer” and the “Hutt”

(Hütte) and elucidate their interconnections to phases of

Goethe's life in accord with the principle of Wiederspiegelung. 33 He

32 E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Objective Interpretation," PLMA 75 (1960).

33 Professor Willoughby stresses the important term"Wiederspiegelung," by which is indicated the notion that art andliterature mirror the course of a lifetime and reveal the

explained the coherence evinced by these recurrent patterns to

the overall coordinating effect of the collective unconscious but

did not attempt to demonstrate any measurable effects of such a

ubiquitous influence on Goethe, as no mention is made of Goethe's

historical and contemporary situation and hence Goethe's

interaction with other poets or writers. Willoughby's exclusive

focus on Goethe and his writings prevented him

from placing either one within a historical context and

contemporary setting, resulting in a failure to recognize the

dialogical principle that directs the evolution of literary

developments. The language theory of de Saussure overcomes such a

limitation by making a distinction between the diachronic and

synchronic axes of language. Jurij Tynjanov went further to

assert that words set in poetry pose a blend which results from a

poet's ability to combine a sense of tradition with an awareness

of the contemporary world. Byron exhibited this ability in Don

Juan when recalling Milton's choice of the verb to wander in

passages in Paradise Lost and bringing them into association with

his wry allusions to   the poetry of Wordsworth and Southey. 

  

inseparable connection between Goethe's career as a creativewriter and his interaction with the world around him, which leadsus back to consider the title of Willoughby's article. Thepolarity of the "Wanderer" and the "hut" has very concreteconnections with the realities of common life. The "hut" is notonly a figment of the mind, for it also stands for the familyhearth, commitment to a social and communal ideal.

IV

 Some critics take an opposite view from those who stress the

unique configuration of the isolated autonomous object by

concentrating attention on the unity of literary tradition T. S.

Eliot argues his case for the overriding unity of literary

tradition in his essay "Tradition and the individual talent." 34

According to his view the contribution of poets to their art in

some measure, however small, moderates tradition, which remains a

preponderant force exerted by the cumulative effect of all

literary works up to and including any period of time. Northrop

Frye posits the unity of the entire body of literature without

accepting any notion of incremental progress or really any form

of progress at all. The  cyclical pattern of his thinking based

on the rotation of the four seasons rules out any concession to

the force of progress, the irreversibility of historical time or

the accretion of knowledge derived from personal experience, in

fact to any positive aspect   discernable in wandering.

 Northrop Frye's theory aligns the literary genres with each of

the seasons, making winter the province of satire, spring the34 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," The SacredWood (first published November 4th 1920). The followingcitation is taken from the beginning of the essay's fourthparagraph: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his completemeaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is theappreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists; youcannot evaluate him alone; you must set him, for contrast andcomparison, among the dead."

province of tragedy and summer that of romance. The fourfold

structure of his system is reinforced by his choice of the term

"anagogical." According to the hermeneutic principles laid down

by Dante in his “Letter to Can Grande della Scala” the biblical

verse (Psalm 114, 1-2) referring to the exodus from Egypt 35

bears interpretation at four levels, the literal, allegorical,

moral and anagogical. These refer respectively to the

literal accuracy purported facts, the religious truth assigned to

their unstated significance, the conversion of the believer and

the parting of the body and soul at death. Frye effectively

wrenches the fourth element from its matrix for in his theory the

concert of all literature forms a closed universe with no

connection with history, religious truth or any individual’s

experience of life. It is therefore not surprising that when Frye

does refers to “wandering” he construes only its negative aspect,

ignoring its implication that deviation and even error are an

essential part of moral edication and the process of

psychological or spiritual restitution of the kind signified by

the ultimate salvation of Goethe’s Faust, who enters eternity as

“the Wanderer.” In the chapter on "Mythos of Summer: Romance" in

Anatomy of Criticism Frye  latches onto  Milton's use of the verb to

wander in passages found in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 36

35 “When Israel went out from Egypt the house of Jacob from a people of strange language Judea was made his sanctuary and Israel his dominion.” (King James Version).

36 In a section of Frye's monograph with the subtitle "The Mythosof Summer: Romance," there is a paragraph containing four

Among these there are references to the temptation of Christ in

the wilderness. Frye refers to wandering derogatorily as

subjection to the “labyrinth” of the Law. Whatever the strength

of Frye in the domain of literary criticism, he is on shaky

ground when he enters the domain of theology, for  Saint Paul

himself, who declared the supersession of the Law by the

dispensation of grace, held that the Mosaic law was a necessary

"schoolmaster." 37 In more general terms Milton implies that the

expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise involved entering

the worlds of history and experience "with wand'ring feet," so

described in the resounding final lines of Paradise Lost. To Hulme's

allegation that Romantic poetry was “spilt religion” it is

possible to retort that much literary in literary criticism comes

over a spilt theology.

occurrences of the verb to wander that throws considerable lighton the issues we have been considering. This paragraph isconcerned with the basic plan underlying Milton's Paradise Lost andParadise Regained.1. Moses and the Israelites wander through a labyrinthinedesert,.. 2. Adam is cast out of Eden, loses the river of life and the tree of life, andwanders in the ....labyrinth of human history.3. Israel is cast out of his inheritance andwanders in the labyrinth of Egypt and the ....Babylonian captivity. 4. Christ is in thesituation under the law, wandering in the wilderness. Frye's choice of verbreflects that of Milton: concerning the Fall: Paradise Lost, IX,1136 and 1146 and XII, 648); concerning Christ's wandering in thewilderness; Paradise Regained, IV, 600;. concerning the wandering ofIsrael under Moses; Paradise Regained, I, 354.

37 Galatians 3:24, 25.

 Frye has no exclusive right to interpreting literature in the

light of four seasons. According to Jung the sun as  a symbol

represented in ancient lore is the surrogate of the libido and

its quest in search for unity with the anima which  manifest

themselves as excursions through day and night and the wider

cycle of the progress of the seasons with midsummer posing the

apex of the sun's intrusion into the domain of the night. Among

Shakespeare's works the associations of wandering are at their

most felicitous in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 38 In the next section I

38 Literary works that associate aspects of wandering  with theseasons and the relationship of the sun and moon or  day andnight are so widespread and formally unconnected that theircommon features must be attributable to  the intrusion ofsubconscious influences. Certain poems suggest a sympathy of thewanderer with the motion of the sun from noon to sunset. Such apoem is Der Wandrer by Goethe depicting a foot traveller whosurveys the ruins of an ancient temple and meets a young womanand her infant at a well (reminiscent of meeting points describedin the Bible) close to their   rude dwelling made of stones thatonce belonged to the Greek temple. The heat of the sun isoppressive, showing the sun under a negative aspect. At the closeof day the wanderer continues on his way with is no suggestionthat he  is saddened at his departure except perhaps for thewistful recognition  that the time for finding his own homesteadhas not yet arrived. To take an opposite case, in Die Winterreise, acycle of poems written by Wilhelm Müller and set to music byFranz Schubert, the wanderer begins his nocturnal journey atnightfall and departs from the home of the young woman to whom hehas been bound by affection if not quite by the bond ofbetrothal. At first he is comforted by the memory of a lindentree, the subject of the poem "Der Lindenbaum," which had offered

examine what emerges from a comparison of passages in which

derivatives of the verb to wander occur. To show that the

logocentric method is not exclusively focused on words denoting

wandering I turn attention to the word be in Hamlet and attempt

to make sense of one of Dylan Thomas's most obscure poems,

"Altarwise by Owl-Light." Even in these cases we are concerned

with wandering if we allow that wandering concerns the

him its soothing shade in the days of his carefree youth. As in adream or vision  the linden tree promises renewed comfort andrepose but once the wanderer fights on though wind and sleet thevoice of the tree changes mood to the subjunctive,  confirmingonly that the wanderer would find the solace he  had known as ayouth if he should  ever return home. The wanderer moves everfarther away from the home of his estranged sweetheart and, onthe visionary plane, from the linden tree of hallowedmemory,  perhaps even from  the tree of life. Wandering atnight need not in be treated negatively in poetic literature. In"Wandrers Nachtlied" the speaker, who is not necessarily awayfarer at all, observes a still nightscape  revealing thesummits of hills and tree-tops and  receives the promise that hewill find rest.  It is not the time of day or night that countsas much as the wanderer's retrospective or forward-lookingorientation. The complexion of wandering  varies starkly in theworks of William Wordsworth in tune with their seasonal or evenmeteorological setting. Wandering is associated with death anddoom in The Borderers with its blasted heath and accounts ofbanditry while the mood of "I wandered lonely as a cloud" tapsvigour from a tradition that celebrates spring as the time ofrenewal. We shall note  similar season based variations inpassages in the works of Shakespeare that refer to wanderers andwandering.

interaction of the conscious and the unconscious. All the same,

to navigate our way in the ocean of universality we do  well to

have some experience in scrutinizing particular words and their

interaction behind us.

B: The Confines or Scope of Comparisons betweenWords of Similar Form in Literary Texts (withSpecial Regard to Words Derived from the Verbs

to wander and wandern)

What theoretical framework is adequate to enable us to get to

grips with the undeniable existence of the phenomenon of

recurrent verbal patterns that has emerged from Professor L. A.

Willoughby's article "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut'

in Goethe's Poetry," a phenomenon that is much larger in  scope

than even Willoughby envisaged? 39 The answer must lie in

something so pervasive and penetrating as the collective

unconscious, a possibility   which Willoughby himself suggested

but did not contemplate further. As Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher

observed, any theory assessing the scope of language  is

implicitly coextensive with  assumptions about the scope of the

mind. 40 Failure to recognize this reality can lead to the idea39 L. A. Willoughby, "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut' inGoethe's Poetry" (Etudes Germaniques, 3, Autumn, 1951). 40 A median position between religious hermeneutics and thetheories of Ferdinand de Saussure and the Russian Formalists washeld by those German thinkers, adherents of the Romantic

that language serves only as scaffolding to be dispensed with

once some poet's mind has entered a psychological state akin to

Nirvana. Other theorists shy away from accepting any role the

"murky" subconscious could play in the processes that create

poetry for fear that this foreign influence might disrupt tidy

school, who addressed central questions concerning the nature oflanguage, in particular Ephraim Herder, Franz Schlegel, AlexanderHumboldt and Friedrich D. E.  Schleiermacher. These thinkersopposed a prevalent philosophic trend lauding lucid unambiguousprose as the only form of language that served to advancescientific and rationally based progress as against poeticlanguage with all its apparent confusions and lack oftransparency. Schleiermacher entertained a holistic view oflanguage that embraced ordinary and poetic forms of language,according to which poetic language, far from being an artificialbyproduct of ordinary language, exploited the fullnessof language in toto, from which ordinary language skimmed off whatwas essential for practical needs (see Brent Potter’s explicationof “holistic” Elements of Self-Destruction, London 2013,34.). Recognizing the obvious fact that one cannot contemplatethe scope and potentialities of language without alsocontemplating those of the mind, Schleiermacher viewed languagefrom a linguistic and from a psychological perspective, both ofwhich he found no less needful than the two oars that propel arowing boat. His balanced view assured the ability to recognizeboth the linear-progressive aspect of a literary text thatresults from the sequence and order of words and also thetimeless ideals it conveys. Harold Bloom on the other hand heldthat the words that made up a poem served only as "scaffoldings"to be dismantled once their task of initiating a perfect union ofthe anima and libido had been reached. According to the sameline of argument, once Wordsworth and Blake had achieved this

assumptions about the fixity and precision of the autonomous

poetic object.

 Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language offers a way out of

the way of thinking that involves choosing between alternatives

that are supposed to be mutually exclusive, for in terms of

langue a word is a unity with an infinite number of applications

but in terms of parole each occurrence of this word is unique for

no other occurrence of like appearance is situated in the same

environment. To find the right word the poet and translator of

poetry must rely on intuitive flashes of the kind that led

Longfellow to render the title of Goethe's "Wandrers Nachtlied"

as "Wanderer's Night-Songs." No process

of exhaustive ratiocination could have helped him here.

 Returning to the question asking what theoretical framework we

need to discern and contend with the phenomenon of wandering,

perhaps we could invert the question as follows: What theoretical

framework presents the least hindrance to the recognition of

verbal patterns beyond the confines of one work or even the works

of one author, however great?  From comparisons of literary

passages in which one finds words based on the common root of to

wander and wandern, striking parallels emerge, some of which we

have considered and some of which will come to light in the

feat there was little left for later poets to achieve. A similarview that after the attainment of perfection only decline canensue was adopted by the pre-Raphaelite school of painters.

following sections of this book. The theory of Jurij Tynjanov

based on Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language encourages

the pursuit of making intertextual comparisons and probing the

unity that enfolds individual occurrences of words of like

appearance, meaning and origin. I can find no better ground for

putting Tynjanov’s approach to the study of poetry through its

paces than that offered by works that contain words derived

from the root of the verbs wandern and to wander. Preeminent, or at

least most conspicuous, among these is Wanderer, with which Goethe

and the Romantic poets, anticipated by Shakespeare and Milton,

associated themselves and their art. 41

II

It is not altogether surprising that many people are put off by

what seems to them the  longwinded theoretical jargon that

typifies the more elitist forms of literary criticism. One of the

finest examples of text-based criticism Erich Auerbach's Mimesis

owes its lack of references to secondary literature to the fact

that little of it was at hand in Istanbul during the Second World

War where its author was forced to stay as a fugitive from Nazi-

occupied Europe. Theory in literary criticism, as in most other

41 Tynjanov, Jurij, ''The Meaning of the Word in Verse,'' Readingsin Russian, Poetics Formalist and Structuralist Views (ed. Ladislav Mateijkaand Krystina Pomorska). Michigan Slavic Publications: Ann Arbor. 1978.Original Russian Title: ''Znacenie slova v. stixe '' in Problemastixotvornogo jazyke. 1924.

fields, should find practical applications whenever possible. In

literary studies such a field is textual criticism.

 It may not  always necessary for one engaged in textual

criticism to make frequent explicit references to this or that

theory  but every critic has working assumptions whether they are

enunciated or not, but it does help if  he or she has some idea

what they are. What then are the basic premises on which textual

criticism rests? On what foundation is one to understand the

difference between the language of poetry and the language of

everyday usage? A person who sees little difference between the

two will tend to look for the overall message or import of

literary work and having done this may find little need to

proceed any further with an investigation into the potential

qualities of words. Seeking a coherent message in whatever one

hears or reads is instinctive whether one reads a poem or a

newspaper article, but why do we usually discard yesterday's

newspaper but cherish a book of poetry and return to it?

 Even in the case of a brilliant example of journalistic

reportage, language is the servant of what it is supposed to

convey as information and the resultant surface tension

determines the apposite meaning of each word contained in the

reportage. Presumably the same information could be paraphrased

in the form of a resumé, but is the same not true of  the

paraphrasable core of a poem like Robert Browning's “The Pied

Piper of Hamelin”? After all students often consult booklets in

which summaries of literary works are to be found. Doubtless such

booklets have their place as long as they are seen to do no more

than secure a helpful basis for further exploration. In poetry

semantics and aesthetics have an equal place.

  To rearrange or delete words from a poem is tantamount to

committing the sacrilege of altering a detail of the Mona Lisa.

Those of the contextualist persuasion in literary criticism see

the sole determining context of a poem as the work, which they

describe as an aesthetic or autonomous object. Does this mean

that the informative aspect of language falls by the wayside?  We

recall Calvin's Brown's contention that Whitman's

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" is not about Lincoln

at all. 42 In this case Calvin Brown's emphasis on the

singularity of this poem carries the implication that it is

without precedent and superior to all other poems; in a similar

way Bloom suggests that the works of Wordsworth and

Blake represent the pinnacle of poetic achievement and

spelled the deathlike atrophy of poetry. The detachment of poetry

from relevance to the nonliterary world results in conclusions

that strike most ordinary folks as odd.

The scope of the work on this assumption can hardly

extend further than the discerning mind is able to ingest and

evaluate. Even in formal terms it is not always easy to be sure

of the parameters of a work, especially if it is part of a cycle

42 Calvin S. Brown, "The Musical Development of Symbols: Whitman,"Music and Literature (Athens [U.S.], 1948).

of poems. In the light of its wider context as part of Die Schöne

Müllerin the poem "Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust"    carries a

tragic message though taken in isolation it is

generally celebrated as a jaunty folksong.  One also has to ask

how poems in which words serve the purely aesthetic and

structural needs of the work bear comparison to any other

likewise uniquely constituted work. In practice those advocates

of internal criticism whose opinions we have consulted chose some

particular work as a prime example of poetic and artistic

craftsmanship and lent this work an inordinate status among all

other works in the domain of world literature. I think here of

Harold Bloom's vaunting of the poetry of Wordsworth and Blake to

the point of declaring all subsequent works to be in a state of

decline and redundancy. There is a further problem to consider.

 Even if  one sees a poem as a hermetically sealed object one

still has to evaluate the meanings of words if only  to

assess their  function within the work and thus will also have

to consider a word under assessment in the light of common

usage and possibly of its historical context. E. D. Hirsch Jr.

argues logically enough that there is little benefit to be

derived from treating a work as an enclosed object unless its

objectivity is preserved once transferred to the receptive mind

of any critic. 43 Thus a critic may have to compare notes between

the significance of a word within the poetic object and

43 E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Objective Interpretation," PLMA 75 (1960).

other instances of this word spread around the corpus of the

relevant author's works. Such comparison may lead down the

slippery slope towards an exploration of the author's mind. I can

only speculate as to the nature of the selective amnesia required

to blot out knowlwdge that Milton was blind when composing “On

his Blindness.”

III

By taking the entire panorama of Goethe's writings into account,

Willoughby was able to establish the extent of recurrent patterns

relating to the association of the “Wanderer” and the “Hutt”

(Hütte) and elucidate their interconnections to phases of

Goethe's life in accord with the principle of Wiederspiegelung. 44 He

explained the coherence evinced by these recurrent patterns to

the overall coordinating effect of the collective unconscious but

did not attempt to demonstrate any measurable effects of such a

ubiquitous influence on Goethe, as no mention is made of Goethe's

historical and contemporary situation and hence Goethe's

44 Professor Willoughby stresses the important term"Wiederspiegelung," by which is indicated the notion that art andliterature mirror the course of a lifetime and reveal theinseparable connection between Goethe's career as a creativewriter and his interaction with the world around him, which leadsus back to consider the title of Willoughby's article. Thepolarity of the "Wanderer" and the "hut" has very concreteconnections with the realities of common life. The "hut" is notonly a figment of the mind, for it also stands for the familyhearth, commitment to a social and communal ideal.

interaction with other poets or writers. Willoughby's exclusive

focus on Goethe and his writings prevented him

from placing either one within a historical context and

contemporary setting, resulting in a failure to recognize the

dialogical principle that directs the evolution of literary

developments. The language theory of de Saussure overcomes such a

limitation by making a distinction between the diachronic and

synchronic axes of language. Jurij Tynjanov went further to

assert that words set in poetry pose a blend which results from a

poet's ability to combine a sense of tradition with an awareness

of the contemporary world. Byron exhibited this ability in Don

Juan when recalling Milton's choice of the verb to wander in

passages in Paradise Lost and bringing them into association with

his wry allusions to   the poetry of Wordsworth and Southey. 

  

IV

 Some critics take an opposite view from those who stress the

unique configuration of the isolated autonomous object by

concentrating attention on the unity of literary tradition T. S.

Eliot argues his case for the overriding unity of literary

tradition in his essay "Tradition and the individual talent." 45

45 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," The SacredWood (first published November 4th 1920). The followingcitation is taken from the beginning of the essay's fourthparagraph: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his completemeaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the

According to his view the contribution of poets to their art in

some measure, however small, moderates tradition, which remains a

preponderant force exerted by the cumulative effect of all

literary works up to and including any period of time. Northrop

Frye posits the unity of the entire body of literature without

accepting any notion of incremental progress or really any form

of progress at all. The  cyclical pattern of his thinking based

on the rotation of the four seasons rules out any concession to

the force of progress, the irreversibility of historical time or

the accretion of knowledge derived from personal experience, in

fact to any positive aspect   discernable in wandering.

 Northrop Frye's theory aligns the literary genres with each of

the seasons, making winter the province of satire, spring the

province of tragedy and summer that of romance. The fourfold

structure of his system is reinforced by his choice of the term

"anagogical." According to the hermeneutic principles laid down

by Dante in his “Letter to Can Grande della Scala” the biblical

verse (Psalm 114, 1-2) referring to the exodus from Egypt 46

bears interpretation at four levels, the literal, allegorical,

moral and anagogical. These refer respectively to the

appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists; youcannot evaluate him alone; you must set him, for contrast andcomparison, among the dead." 46 “When Israel went out from Egypt the house of Jacob from a people of strange language Judea was made his sanctuary and Israel his dominion.” (King James Version).

literal accuracy purported facts, the religious truth assigned to

their unstated significance, the conversion of the believer and

the parting of the body and soul at death. Frye effectively

wrenches the fourth element from its matrix for in his theory the

concert of all literature forms a closed universe with no

connection with history, religious truth or any individual’s

experience of life. It is therefore not surprising that when Frye

does refers to “wandering” he construes only its negative aspect,

ignoring its implication that deviation and even error are an

essential part of moral edication and the process of

psychological or spiritual restitution of the kind signified by

the ultimate salvation of Goethe’s Faust, who enters eternity as

“the Wanderer.” In the chapter on "Mythos of Summer: Romance" in

Anatomy of Criticism Frye  latches onto  Milton's use of the verb to

wander in passages found in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 47

47 In a section of Frye's monograph with the subtitle "The Mythosof Summer: Romance," there is a paragraph containing fouroccurrences of the verb to wander that throws considerable lighton the issues we have been considering. This paragraph isconcerned with the basic plan underlying Milton's Paradise Lost andParadise Regained.1. Moses and the Israelites wander through a labyrinthinedesert,.. 2. Adam is cast out of Eden, loses the river of life and the tree of life, andwanders in the ....labyrinth of human history.3. Israel is cast out of his inheritance andwanders in the labyrinth of Egypt and the ....Babylonian captivity. 4. Christ is in thesituation under the law, wandering in the wilderness. Frye's choice of verbreflects that of Milton: concerning the Fall: Paradise Lost, IX,1136 and 1146 and XII, 648); concerning Christ's wandering in thewilderness; Paradise Regained, IV, 600;. concerning the wandering ofIsrael under Moses; Paradise Regained, I, 354.

Among these there are references to the temptation of Christ in

the wilderness. Frye refers to wandering derogatorily as

subjection to the “labyrinth” of the Law. Whatever the strength

of Frye in the domain of literary criticism, he is on shaky

ground when he enters the domain of theology, for  Saint Paul

himself, who declared the supersession of the Law by the

dispensation of grace, held that the Mosaic law was a necessary

"schoolmaster." 48 In more general terms Milton implies that the

expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise involved entering

the worlds of history and experience "with wand'ring feet," so

described in the resounding final lines of Paradise Lost. To Hulme's

allegation that Romantic poetry was “spilt religion” it is

possible to retort that much literary in literary criticism comes

over a spilt theology.

 Frye has no exclusive right to interpreting literature in the

light of four seasons. According to Jung the sun as  a symbol

represented in ancient lore is the surrogate of the libido and

its quest in search for unity with the anima which  manifest

themselves as excursions through day and night and the wider

cycle of the progress of the seasons with midsummer posing the

apex of the sun's intrusion into the domain of the night. Among

Shakespeare's works the associations of wandering are at their

most felicitous in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 49 In the next section I

48 Galatians 3:24, 25.

49 Literary works that associate aspects of wandering  with theseasons and the relationship of the sun and moon or  day and

examine what emerges from a comparison of passages in which

derivatives of the verb to wander occur. To show that the

logocentric method is not exclusively focused on words denoting

wandering I turn attention to the word be in Hamlet and attempt

to make sense of one of Dylan Thomas's most obscure poems,

night are so widespread and formally unconnected that theircommon features must be attributable to  the intrusion ofsubconscious influences. Certain poems suggest a sympathy of thewanderer with the motion of the sun from noon to sunset. Such apoem is Der Wandrer by Goethe depicting a foot traveller whosurveys the ruins of an ancient temple and meets a young womanand her infant at a well (reminiscent of meeting points describedin the Bible) close to their   rude dwelling made of stones thatonce belonged to the Greek temple. The heat of the sun isoppressive, showing the sun under a negative aspect. At the closeof day the wanderer continues on his way with is no suggestionthat he  is saddened at his departure except perhaps for thewistful recognition  that the time for finding his own homesteadhas not yet arrived. To take an opposite case, in Die Winterreise, acycle of poems written by Wilhelm Müller and set to music byFranz Schubert, the wanderer begins his nocturnal journey atnightfall and departs from the home of the young woman to whom hehas been bound by affection if not quite by the bond ofbetrothal. At first he is comforted by the memory of a lindentree, the subject of the poem "Der Lindenbaum," which had offeredhim its soothing shade in the days of his carefree youth. As in adream or vision  the linden tree promises renewed comfort andrepose but once the wanderer fights on though wind and sleet thevoice of the tree changes mood to the subjunctive,  confirmingonly that the wanderer would find the solace he  had known as ayouth if he should  ever return home. The wanderer moves everfarther away from the home of his estranged sweetheart and, on

"Altarwise by Owl-Light." Even in these cases we are concerned

with wandering if we allow that wandering concerns the

interaction of the conscious and the unconscious. All the same,

to navigate our way in the ocean of universality we do  well to

have some experience in scrutinizing particular words and their

interaction behind us.

B: The Confines or Scope of Comparisons betweenWords of Similar Form in Literary Texts (withSpecial Regard to Words Derived from the Verbs

to wander and wandern)

the visionary plane, from the linden tree of hallowedmemory,  perhaps even from  the tree of life. Wandering atnight need not in be treated negatively in poetic literature. In"Wandrers Nachtlied" the speaker, who is not necessarily awayfarer at all, observes a still nightscape  revealing thesummits of hills and tree-tops and  receives the promise that hewill find rest.  It is not the time of day or night that countsas much as the wanderer's retrospective or forward-lookingorientation. The complexion of wandering  varies starkly in theworks of William Wordsworth in tune with their seasonal or evenmeteorological setting. Wandering is associated with death anddoom in The Borderers with its blasted heath and accounts ofbanditry while the mood of "I wandered lonely as a cloud" tapsvigour from a tradition that celebrates spring as the time ofrenewal. We shall note  similar season based variations inpassages in the works of Shakespeare that refer to wanderers andwandering.

What theoretical framework is adequate to enable us to get to

grips with the undeniable existence of the phenomenon of

recurrent verbal patterns that has emerged from Professor L. A.

Willoughby's article "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut'

in Goethe's Poetry," a phenomenon that is much larger in  scope

than even Willoughby envisaged? 50 The answer must lie in

something so pervasive and penetrating as the collective

unconscious, a possibility   which Willoughby himself suggested

but did not contemplate further. As Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher

observed, any theory assessing the scope of language  is

implicitly coextensive with  assumptions about the scope of the

mind. 51 Failure to recognize this reality can lead to the idea

50 L. A. Willoughby, "The Image of the 'Wanderer' and the 'Hut' inGoethe's Poetry" (Etudes Germaniques, 3, Autumn, 1951). 51 A median position between religious hermeneutics and thetheories of Ferdinand de Saussure and the Russian Formalists washeld by those German thinkers, adherents of the Romanticschool, who addressed central questions concerning the nature oflanguage, in particular Ephraim Herder, Franz Schlegel, AlexanderHumboldt and Friedrich D. E.  Schleiermacher. These thinkersopposed a prevalent philosophic trend lauding lucid unambiguousprose as the only form of language that served to advancescientific and rationally based progress as against poeticlanguage with all its apparent confusions and lack oftransparency. Schleiermacher entertained a holistic view oflanguage that embraced ordinary and poetic forms of language,according to which poetic language, far from being an artificialbyproduct of ordinary language, exploited the fullnessof language in toto, from which ordinary language skimmed off whatwas essential for practical needs (see Brent Potter’s explication

that language serves only as scaffolding to be dispensed with

once some poet's mind has entered a psychological state akin to

Nirvana. Other theorists shy away from accepting any role the

"murky" subconscious could play in the processes that create

poetry for fear that this foreign influence might disrupt tidy

assumptions about the fixity and precision of the autonomous

poetic object.

 Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language offers a way out of

the way of thinking that involves choosing between alternatives

that are supposed to be mutually exclusive, for in terms of

langue a word is a unity with an infinite number of applications

but in terms of parole each occurrence of this word is unique for

of “holistic” Elements of Self-Destruction, London 2013,34.). Recognizing the obvious fact that one cannot contemplatethe scope and potentialities of language without alsocontemplating those of the mind, Schleiermacher viewed languagefrom a linguistic and from a psychological perspective, both ofwhich he found no less needful than the two oars that propel arowing boat. His balanced view assured the ability to recognizeboth the linear-progressive aspect of a literary text thatresults from the sequence and order of words and also thetimeless ideals it conveys. Harold Bloom on the other hand heldthat the words that made up a poem served only as "scaffoldings"to be dismantled once their task of initiating a perfect union ofthe anima and libido had been reached. According to the sameline of argument, once Wordsworth and Blake had achieved thisfeat there was little left for later poets to achieve. A similarview that after the attainment of perfection only decline canensue was adopted by the pre-Raphaelite school of painters.

no other occurrence of like appearance is situated in the same

environment. To find the right word the poet and translator of

poetry must rely on intuitive flashes of the kind that led

Longfellow to render the title of Goethe's "Wandrers Nachtlied"

as "Wanderer's Night-Songs." No process

of exhaustive ratiocination could have helped him here.

 Returning to the question asking what theoretical framework we

need to discern and contend with the phenomenon of wandering,

perhaps we could invert the question as follows: What theoretical

framework presents the least hindrance to the recognition of

verbal patterns beyond the confines of one work or even the works

of one author, however great?  From comparisons of literary

passages in which one finds words based on the common root of to

wander and wandern, striking parallels emerge, some of which we

have considered and some of which will come to light in the

following sections of this book. The theory of Jurij Tynjanov

based on Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language encourages

the pursuit of making intertextual comparisons and probing the

unity that enfolds individual occurrences of words of like

appearance, meaning and origin. I can find no better ground for

putting Tynjanov’s approach to the study of poetry through its

paces than that offered by works that contain words derived

from the root of the verbs wandern and to wander. Preeminent, or at

least most conspicuous, among these is Wanderer, with which Goethe

and the Romantic poets, anticipated by Shakespeare and Milton,

associated themselves and their art. 52

II

It is not altogether surprising that many people are put off by

what seems to them the  longwinded theoretical jargon that

typifies the more elitist forms of literary criticism. One of the

finest examples of text-based criticism Erich Auerbach's Mimesis

owes its lack of references to secondary literature to the fact

that little of it was at hand in Istanbul during the Second World

War where its author was forced to stay as a fugitive from Nazi-

occupied Europe. Theory in literary criticism, as in most other

fields, should find practical applications whenever possible. In

literary studies such a field is textual criticism.

 It may not  always necessary for one engaged in textual

criticism to make frequent explicit references to this or that

theory  but every critic has working assumptions whether they are

enunciated or not, but it does help if  he or she has some idea

what they are. What then are the basic premises on which textual

criticism rests? On what foundation is one to understand the

difference between the language of poetry and the language of

52 Tynjanov, Jurij, ''The Meaning of the Word in Verse,'' Readingsin Russian, Poetics Formalist and Structuralist Views (ed. Ladislav Mateijkaand Krystina Pomorska). Michigan Slavic Publications: Ann Arbor. 1978.Original Russian Title: ''Znacenie slova v. stixe '' in Problemastixotvornogo jazyke. 1924.

everyday usage? A person who sees little difference between the

two will tend to look for the overall message or import of

literary work and having done this may find little need to

proceed any further with an investigation into the potential

qualities of words. Seeking a coherent message in whatever one

hears or reads is instinctive whether one reads a poem or a

newspaper article, but why do we usually discard yesterday's

newspaper but cherish a book of poetry and return to it?

 Even in the case of a brilliant example of journalistic

reportage, language is the servant of what it is supposed to

convey as information and the resultant surface tension

determines the apposite meaning of each word contained in the

reportage. Presumably the same information could be paraphrased

in the form of a resumé, but is the same not true of  the

paraphrasable core of a poem like Robert Browning's “The Pied

Piper of Hamelin”? After all students often consult booklets in

which summaries of literary works are to be found. Doubtless such

booklets have their place as long as they are seen to do no more

than secure a helpful basis for further exploration. In poetry

semantics and aesthetics have an equal place.

  To rearrange or delete words from a poem is tantamount to

committing the sacrilege of altering a detail of the Mona Lisa.

Those of the contextualist persuasion in literary criticism see

the sole determining context of a poem as the work, which they

describe as an aesthetic or autonomous object. Does this mean

that the informative aspect of language falls by the wayside?  We

recall Calvin's Brown's contention that Whitman's

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" is not about Lincoln

at all. 53 In this case Calvin Brown's emphasis on the

singularity of this poem carries the implication that it is

without precedent and superior to all other poems; in a similar

way Bloom suggests that the works of Wordsworth and

Blake represent the pinnacle of poetic achievement and

spelled the deathlike atrophy of poetry. The detachment of poetry

from relevance to the nonliterary world results in conclusions

that strike most ordinary folks as odd.

The scope of the work on this assumption can hardly

extend further than the discerning mind is able to ingest and

evaluate. Even in formal terms it is not always easy to be sure

of the parameters of a work, especially if it is part of a cycle

of poems. In the light of its wider context as part of Die Schöne

Müllerin the poem "Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust"    carries a

tragic message though taken in isolation it is

generally celebrated as a jaunty folksong.  One also has to ask

how poems in which words serve the purely aesthetic and

structural needs of the work bear comparison to any other

likewise uniquely constituted work. In practice those advocates

of internal criticism whose opinions we have consulted chose some

particular work as a prime example of poetic and artistic

53 Calvin S. Brown, "The Musical Development of Symbols: Whitman,"Music and Literature (Athens [U.S.], 1948).

craftsmanship and lent this work an inordinate status among all

other works in the domain of world literature. I think here of

Harold Bloom's vaunting of the poetry of Wordsworth and Blake to

the point of declaring all subsequent works to be in a state of

decline and redundancy. There is a further problem to consider.

 Even if  one sees a poem as a hermetically sealed object one

still has to evaluate the meanings of words if only  to

assess their  function within the work and thus will also have

to consider a word under assessment in the light of common

usage and possibly of its historical context. E. D. Hirsch Jr.

argues logically enough that there is little benefit to be

derived from treating a work as an enclosed object unless its

objectivity is preserved once transferred to the receptive mind

of any critic. 54 Thus a critic may have to compare notes between

the significance of a word within the poetic object and

other instances of this word spread around the corpus of the

relevant author's works. Such comparison may lead down the

slippery slope towards an exploration of the author's mind. I can

only speculate as to the nature of the selective amnesia required

to blot out knowlwdge that Milton was blind when composing “On

his Blindness.”

III

By taking the entire panorama of Goethe's writings into account,

Willoughby was able to establish the extent of recurrent patterns54 E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Objective Interpretation," PLMA 75 (1960).

relating to the association of the “Wanderer” and the “Hutt”

(Hütte) and elucidate their interconnections to phases of

Goethe's life in accord with the principle of Wiederspiegelung. 55 He

explained the coherence evinced by these recurrent patterns to

the overall coordinating effect of the collective unconscious but

did not attempt to demonstrate any measurable effects of such a

ubiquitous influence on Goethe, as no mention is made of Goethe's

historical and contemporary situation and hence Goethe's

interaction with other poets or writers. Willoughby's exclusive

focus on Goethe and his writings prevented him

from placing either one within a historical context and

contemporary setting, resulting in a failure to recognize the

dialogical principle that directs the evolution of literary

developments. The language theory of de Saussure overcomes such a

limitation by making a distinction between the diachronic and

synchronic axes of language. Jurij Tynjanov went further to

assert that words set in poetry pose a blend which results from a

poet's ability to combine a sense of tradition with an awareness

55 Professor Willoughby stresses the important term"Wiederspiegelung," by which is indicated the notion that art andliterature mirror the course of a lifetime and reveal theinseparable connection between Goethe's career as a creativewriter and his interaction with the world around him, which leadsus back to consider the title of Willoughby's article. Thepolarity of the "Wanderer" and the "hut" has very concreteconnections with the realities of common life. The "hut" is notonly a figment of the mind, for it also stands for the familyhearth, commitment to a social and communal ideal.

of the contemporary world. Byron exhibited this ability in Don

Juan when recalling Milton's choice of the verb to wander in

passages in Paradise Lost and bringing them into association with

his wry allusions to   the poetry of Wordsworth and Southey. 

  

IV

 Some critics take an opposite view from those who stress the

unique configuration of the isolated autonomous object by

concentrating attention on the unity of literary tradition T. S.

Eliot argues his case for the overriding unity of literary

tradition in his essay "Tradition and the individual talent." 56

According to his view the contribution of poets to their art in

some measure, however small, moderates tradition, which remains a

preponderant force exerted by the cumulative effect of all

literary works up to and including any period of time. Northrop

Frye posits the unity of the entire body of literature without

accepting any notion of incremental progress or really any form

of progress at all. The  cyclical pattern of his thinking based

56 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," The SacredWood (first published November 4th 1920). The followingcitation is taken from the beginning of the essay's fourthparagraph: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his completemeaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is theappreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists; youcannot evaluate him alone; you must set him, for contrast andcomparison, among the dead."

on the rotation of the four seasons rules out any concession to

the force of progress, the irreversibility of historical time or

the accretion of knowledge derived from personal experience, in

fact to any positive aspect   discernable in wandering.

 Northrop Frye's theory aligns the literary genres with each of

the seasons, making winter the province of satire, spring the

province of tragedy and summer that of romance. The fourfold

structure of his system is reinforced by his choice of the term

"anagogical." According to the hermeneutic principles laid down

by Dante in his “Letter to Can Grande della Scala” the biblical

verse (Psalm 114, 1-2) referring to the exodus from Egypt 57

bears interpretation at four levels, the literal, allegorical,

moral and anagogical. These refer respectively to the

literal accuracy purported facts, the religious truth assigned to

their unstated significance, the conversion of the believer and

the parting of the body and soul at death. Frye effectively

wrenches the fourth element from its matrix for in his theory the

concert of all literature forms a closed universe with no

connection with history, religious truth or any individual’s

experience of life. It is therefore not surprising that when Frye

does refers to “wandering” he construes only its negative aspect,

ignoring its implication that deviation and even error are an

essential part of moral edication and the process of

57 “When Israel went out from Egypt the house of Jacob from a people of strange language Judea was made his sanctuary and Israel his dominion.” (King James Version).

psychological or spiritual restitution of the kind signified by

the ultimate salvation of Goethe’s Faust, who enters eternity as

“the Wanderer.” In the chapter on "Mythos of Summer: Romance" in

Anatomy of Criticism Frye  latches onto  Milton's use of the verb to

wander in passages found in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 58

Among these there are references to the temptation of Christ in

the wilderness. Frye refers to wandering derogatorily as

subjection to the “labyrinth” of the Law. Whatever the strength

of Frye in the domain of literary criticism, he is on shaky

ground when he enters the domain of theology, for  Saint Paul

himself, who declared the supersession of the Law by the

dispensation of grace, held that the Mosaic law was a necessary

"schoolmaster." 59 In more general terms Milton implies that the

expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise involved entering58 In a section of Frye's monograph with the subtitle "The Mythosof Summer: Romance," there is a paragraph containing fouroccurrences of the verb to wander that throws considerable lighton the issues we have been considering. This paragraph isconcerned with the basic plan underlying Milton's Paradise Lost andParadise Regained.1. Moses and the Israelites wander through a labyrinthinedesert,.. 2. Adam is cast out of Eden, loses the river of life and the tree of life, andwanders in the ....labyrinth of human history.3. Israel is cast out of his inheritance andwanders in the labyrinth of Egypt and the ....Babylonian captivity. 4. Christ is in thesituation under the law, wandering in the wilderness. Frye's choice of verbreflects that of Milton: concerning the Fall: Paradise Lost, IX,1136 and 1146 and XII, 648); concerning Christ's wandering in thewilderness; Paradise Regained, IV, 600;. concerning the wandering ofIsrael under Moses; Paradise Regained, I, 354.

59 Galatians 3:24, 25.

the worlds of history and experience "with wand'ring feet," so

described in the resounding final lines of Paradise Lost. To Hulme's

allegation that Romantic poetry was “spilt religion” it is

possible to retort that much literary in literary criticism comes

over a spilt theology.

 Frye has no exclusive right to interpreting literature in the

light of four seasons. According to Jung the sun as  a symbol

represented in ancient lore is the surrogate of the libido and

its quest in search for unity with the anima which  manifest

themselves as excursions through day and night and the wider

cycle of the progress of the seasons with midsummer posing the

apex of the sun's intrusion into the domain of the night. Among

Shakespeare's works the associations of wandering are at their

most felicitous in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 60 In the next section I

60 Literary works that associate aspects of wandering  with theseasons and the relationship of the sun and moon or  day andnight are so widespread and formally unconnected that theircommon features must be attributable to  the intrusion ofsubconscious influences. Certain poems suggest a sympathy of thewanderer with the motion of the sun from noon to sunset. Such apoem is Der Wandrer by Goethe depicting a foot traveller whosurveys the ruins of an ancient temple and meets a young womanand her infant at a well (reminiscent of meeting points describedin the Bible) close to their   rude dwelling made of stones thatonce belonged to the Greek temple. The heat of the sun isoppressive, showing the sun under a negative aspect. At the closeof day the wanderer continues on his way with is no suggestionthat he  is saddened at his departure except perhaps for thewistful recognition  that the time for finding his own homestead

examine what emerges from a comparison of passages in which

derivatives of the verb to wander occur. To show that the

logocentric method is not exclusively focused on words denoting

wandering I turn attention to the word be in Hamlet and attempt

to make sense of one of Dylan Thomas's most obscure poems,

has not yet arrived. To take an opposite case, in Die Winterreise, acycle of poems written by Wilhelm Müller and set to music byFranz Schubert, the wanderer begins his nocturnal journey atnightfall and departs from the home of the young woman to whom hehas been bound by affection if not quite by the bond ofbetrothal. At first he is comforted by the memory of a lindentree, the subject of the poem "Der Lindenbaum," which had offeredhim its soothing shade in the days of his carefree youth. As in adream or vision  the linden tree promises renewed comfort andrepose but once the wanderer fights on though wind and sleet thevoice of the tree changes mood to the subjunctive,  confirmingonly that the wanderer would find the solace he  had known as ayouth if he should  ever return home. The wanderer moves everfarther away from the home of his estranged sweetheart and, onthe visionary plane, from the linden tree of hallowedmemory,  perhaps even from  the tree of life. Wandering atnight need not in be treated negatively in poetic literature. In"Wandrers Nachtlied" the speaker, who is not necessarily awayfarer at all, observes a still nightscape  revealing thesummits of hills and tree-tops and  receives the promise that hewill find rest.  It is not the time of day or night that countsas much as the wanderer's retrospective or forward-lookingorientation. The complexion of wandering  varies starkly in theworks of William Wordsworth in tune with their seasonal or evenmeteorological setting. Wandering is associated with death anddoom in The Borderers with its blasted heath and accounts ofbanditry while the mood of "I wandered lonely as a cloud" taps

"Altarwise by Owl-Light." Even in these cases we are concerned

with wandering if we allow that wandering concerns the

interaction of the conscious and the unconscious. All the same,

to navigate our way in the ocean of universality we do  well to

have some experience in scrutinizing particular words and their

interaction behind us.

vigour from a tradition that celebrates spring as the time ofrenewal. We shall note  similar season based variations inpassages in the works of Shakespeare that refer to wanderers andwandering.