"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

Critical opinion is divided on Wordsworth's reputation as a great philosopher-poet; some consider him a mouthpiece of vague pantheistic mysticism that has no deep roots while others find him as a medium through which Nature manifests itself as a sublime interpretation of life. Amal belongs to neither of the two camps and joins Sri Aurobindo to advocate Wordsworth's yogic interpretation of life. His long association with Sri Aurobindo and his sustained interest in the Aurobindonian Integral Yoga have enabled him to see the yogic reflection in a Wordsworth lyric, A Slumber.

The present book has 13 chapters and an Epilogue. A Slumber is a two stanzaic poem and is usually classified as a Lucy poem. "Lucy" has been variously identified: Lucy as idealised Dorothy (cf. F.W Bateson's) and as a dramatic reconstruction of some girl known to the young Wordsworth (cf. Mary Moorman's). Again, the poem is generally regarded as a most moving little elegy: "These two stanzas make an elementary, pathetic contrast between the speaker's past blind illusion concerning a woman who has died and his present bleak awareness of her physical death" (Rosenthal and Smith).

But, to Sri Aurobindo, in this little poem Wordsworth "describes himself as one in his being with earth", ‘rolled round in its diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees'. Exalt this realisation to a profounder Self than physical Nature and we have the elements of Yogic Knowledge." Amal Kiran totally agrees with his Master, and takes a strong stand to defend his Master's interpretation. The debate over the lyric now is precisely whether it is the epitome of a grim tragedy or the quintessence of a deep and great happiness. Amal brushes aside Coleridge's labelling the poem an "epitaph". Perhaps Coleridge miscomprehended it. Similarly, he demolishes Mary Moorman's cleverly constructed but narrow premise that A Slumber was born out of the poet's sorrow over a girl's (Margaret's) death.

Then Amal establishes a thematic bond between Tintern Abbey and A Slumber and equates "slumber" to a trance, "a stilling of both body and spirit." What comes first is the stilling of the spirit; it is the serene and blessed mood which induces the sleep in which the body's breath and the blood's motion are almost suspended. Wordsworth is in such "a trance of thought" in this poem. Next comes the question of "she" in the poem. If the word "thing" in the poem is to be rendered meaningful, we must take "she" not as the poet's sweetheart but as his own spirit. The spirit's tranced experience is related to the line in the second stanza, "She neither sees nor hears." To Sri Aurobindo, the word "thing" harmonises the two halves of the lyric.

Another quizzical word in the lyric is "seemed". Amal argues that this word has no pejorative significance and implies a kind of surprise, a sort of paradox while it means "produce an impression" or "be experienced". Chapter 8 deals with the question of change of tense from past to present. Amal illustrates his point, with evidences from The Solitary Reaper and The Immortality Ode, that Wordsworth is undergoing a yogic experience. While the first stanza discloses as a recent happening the sense of the more-than-human and the safe-from-time within poet as a result of an utterly in-drawn mystical condition, the second recounts as a present sequel of that happening the realisation attained by him of the concrete depth of an all-stilling nirvana in the earth's inner self. The change of tense proves that the poem all through is about a spirit-slumber.

Amal then takes the two strings, "the touch of earthly years" and "earth's diurnal course." Since Sri Aurobindo considers the poem to be a spiritual self-expression, the poem, though speaking of a "thing" which has no motion, is yet concerned with the motion of the earth carrying it along. Accordingly, Amal concludes that the Spirit of the poet, a thinking thing, is carried by the earth — being in unison with objects of all thought. Having equated the slumbering of the spirit to a mystical state, Amal considers it an entry into, and a fusion with, the living sleep of "rocks and stone and trees."

Amal has thus convincingly defended his Master's mystical interpretation of the lyric while launching a counter-attack on the usual elegiac one. The poem is an expression that is possible only at the superconscious level; it is a little masterpiece of semi-vedantic mysticism; it is a kind of experienceable Yoga. As usual, Amal's insightful comments are original and fresh, and expressed with a clarity and an air of authority and boldness, unique of his own. It is a sharp, original Indian contribution to the western criticism which is often circumscribed by its overemphasised critical canons. The book is a sure bet for both an enjoyable and a profitable reading.

— D. Gnanasekaran
Teaches English Literature at Tagore Arts College, Pondicherry

July/December 1996