Observations placeholder
G N M Tyrrell - The Personality of Man – The nature of Wordsworth’s inspiration
Identifier
026798
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
As quoted in G N M Tyrrell - The Personality of Man
Wordsworth told Bonamy Price that the line in his ode beginning: 'Fallings from us, vanishings,' which has since puzzled so many readers, refers to those trance-like states to which he was at one time subject. During these moments the world around him seemed unreal and the poet had occasionally to use his strength against an object, such as a gatepost, to reassure himself. And when the power would not come, the conscious mind was helpless.
"William tired himself with hammering at a passage, “wrote Dorothy Wordsworth. It was useless if the power was denied.