NPPF Canto 1: 1-4

[charles albert]

Jbor:

> Shade characterises himself as the "shadow" of the bird which was killed
by
> (because of/due to) the reflection of sky in the window.

It is the likeliest, but not the only possibility........

"All the definite
> articles make it sound like something which had actually happened,"

So?

" a scene
> Shade had witnessed from inside his bedroom."

I'm not sure the "optics" would allow Shade to see the shadow of the waxwing
from INSIDE the window.....and others have suggested that Shade has actually
picked up the bird, a neat trick from inside the house.....

" But it's the "I was ... I was
> ... I lived ... " -- the unashamed yet hopelessly banal self-involvement
of
> it all -- which butchers what could otherwise have been quite a stunning
> setpiece."

but the "I"s don't consistently point to the same "entity" and more
importantly, have you eyeballed many elegies lately? 1st person, singular
and plural dominates the action. Elegies, are, after all, the reminiscences
of someone.....

For one of many Wordsworthian examples see

ODE: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

or Goldsmith's
The Deserted Village

these stand in contrast, again, to the much less personal concerns of Pope.
I didn't want to go here yet, but......

"In his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth attacks the poetic
diction and elaborate figures of speech characteristic of 18th century
poetry, asserting that he had 'taken as much pains to avoid it as others
take to produce it' and advoating the 'language really used by men'. He
rejected the notion of a poetic hierarchy ranking epic and tragedy over the
SUBJECTIVE mode of lyric; declared 'INCIDENTS AND SITUATIONS FROM COMMON
LIFE' as fit subjects for art; and SUBSTITUTED SINCERITY FOR STUDIED
ARTIFICE.......Wordsworth ascribed to art the duty of cultivating emotional
and moral response in an increasingly desensitized age, one more interested
in titillation than meditation."

>From Norton Anthology of Poetry, Biographical Sketches, pg. 1179..

and that's long before we get to the great sollipcist, Keats - yeeeaaach!

>
> As the bird hits the window it leaves a "smudge of ashen fluff" (the first
> of many jarring prosodies and a hopelessly overwrought image to boot) --

Smudge works because its a WAXwing, and as I pointed out, ashen plays to
both Gray and shade........

> Shade announces himself as this too. Then he also envisions himself, as
the
> imaginary shadow of the now-dead bird, flying on into the reflection of
the
> sky. Ugh.

Eh.........I see it more as illustrating the possibility of "breaking
through" (a concept central to the work, and one which will play into
another of my "theories" - due later in the week....appleshiners should go
to the description of Shade's seizure and ponder)

>
> It's the epitome of bombast, and it sets the stage for the many crimes
> against craft and subtlety which lay ahead.

I'm not sure the above indictements merit such a judgement.....

respectfully...

love,
cfa



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