Taoist Reading of Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth

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Wordsworth's 'hsü': towards a Taoist reading of Tintern Abbey

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! And again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs

With a sweet inland murmur. (1-4)

"Tintern Abbey"'s opening lines prepare the reader for a reunion, notable in tone not only for the sense of anticipation with which the poet apprehends this moment, but equally so for the poignancy which immediately inflects the poem's proceedings. My reading of "Tintern Abbey" takes as its most prominent concern the sense in which Wordsworth's "Revisiting the Banks of the Wye" represents a haven-seeking of sorts. Since his visit to the Wye in 1793, much has happened to Wordsworth: he has found, and relinquished, his first romantic love in Annette Vallon. As a young would-be radical, sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, he finds himself at odds with London's entrenched conservatism. In 1795, after well over a decade of only intermittent contact with his sister, Wordsworth and his beloved Dorothy are reunited at Racedown, at about the same time that they make the acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Within two years of this happy occasion, the two Wordsworths will move to Alfoxden to be near Coleridge. The ensuing years of intense friendship and creative discourse will yield, by 1798, the collaborative Lyrical Ballads, to which "Tintern Abbey" belongs. As we consider the tumult and activity that have characterized this period of his life, we might well speculate upon the nature of the thoughts going through Wordsworth's mind as he surveys the Abbey from his vantage on the riverbank; my own temptation is to equate the quietly reflective tone of the poem with the Taoist notion of hsü.

In Taoism hsü is defined -- in describing a state of mind -- as meaning:

absolute peacefulness and purity of mind and freedom from worry and selfish desires and not to be disturbed by incoming impressions or to allow what is already in the mind to disturb what is coming into the mind. Hsü-shih means unreality and reality, but hsü also means profound and deep continuum in which there is no obstruction. (Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press, 1963.

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