Romantic writers, we have often been told, stressed the intrinsic value of emotive experience and the passions at the expense of logic and reason. What is less often stated, however, is the extent to which the Romantic discussions of the passions, and Romantic works that explore the power of the emotions, depend upon classical, especially Stoic, discourse about emotion. Sometimes this dependence is direct, as in Wordsworth’s ‘‘Ode to Duty,’’ with its epigraph from Seneca (Wordsworth 1983: 407). Sometimes it is indirect, as in Joanna Baillie’s Series of Plays in which it is attempted to delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind, which reflect the neo-Stoic theories of emotion expressed in the treatises of Adam Smith and other late eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophers. Even when, as in Madame de Stael’s Corinne, an attempt is made to rethink the nature of emotion, it is, for the most part, the Stoic view that is being criticized and reshaped. And rightly so. Not only did the Stoics give the most thorough analysis of the emotions of all the ancient writers, but Stoic writings were among the first philosophical treatises that educated Europeans of the eighteenth century would encounter, either in translation or in the original classical languages. Romantic theories of emotion begin with the Stoics, and thus are fundamentally, and paradoxically, classical.
Two familiar passages from one of the greatest Romantic lyrics, Wordsworth’s ‘‘Tintern Abbey,’’ illustrate this paradox very well. Both passages focus on the emotion of joy, and relate it to a perception of the nature of things. The first ends the second verse paragraph: ‘‘While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things’’ (lines 48-50 in Wordsworth 1992: 116-20). The second passage comes some 40 lines later in the poem: ‘‘And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused...’’ (lines 94-7). In the first passage, Wordsworth asserts that joy, working in concert with harmony, has the power to quiet the organs of perception, producing a ‘‘serene and blessed mood’’ (line 42) that enables deeper, more comprehensive cognition. In the second passage, something rather different is described. Joy is part of an emotive response to the sublime; it disturbs, rather than calms or quiets; it is specifically evoked by the ‘‘elevated thoughts’’ the sublime sense or presence generates. This joy is also cognitive, but here cognition is a product of distress or disturbance rather than contemplative serenity, and it is right to question whether a perception produced by disturbance has the same validity as one that is the product of harmonious calm. Yet most readers of the poem would agree that the perception, in both cases, is the same: ‘‘the life of things,’’ ‘‘a motion and a spirit that... rolls through all things’’ (lines 50, 101, 103). Can Wordsworth have it both ways?
We can begin to understand what Wordsworth is doing here by examining the various discourses about emotion that were available to him. Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful obviously is important, but just as important - indeed, I will argue far more important - is classical Stoic analysis of emotional experience, presented in the works of Cicero and Seneca that were familiar to him from early youth. The Stoic writers provide a systematic account of emotional experience that can serve as a model for understanding how Wordsworth treats particular emotions, whether fear, as in Peter Bell, grief, as in ‘‘The Ruined Cottage,’’ or maternal love, as in ‘‘The Mad Mother.’’ It is especially important that we give joy this kind of analysis: it and grief are at the emotional centers of most of his poems. Joy surprises, quiets, and disturbs in Wordsworth’s poetry; it also makes possible the years that bring the philosophic mind. But what, precisely, is joy, according to Wordsworth, and how do we understand and judge its effects?
We can begin to find answers to these questions by looking at the third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, where the Stoic view of the emotions is given its fullest expression. According to the Stoics, emotions are the result of
Judgments or beliefs. Thus emotions are cognitive, in that they invariably have ideational content. If, for instance, someone we love dies, we feel grief because we believe that death itself is an evil and that this death has harmed us in some way; if someone threatens us with death, we feel fear if we believe death is evil and if we believe them likely to carry out the threat. The problem with emotion, from the Stoic point of view, is that these judgments are usually made too hastily or are based on false premises, and the resulting emotions are irrational. In order to avoid irrational behavior, the Stoic attempts to discipline affective response so that judgments are based on right reason rather than irrational impulses of the mind (Graver in Cicero 2002: xix-xxiii). In the case of grief, the belief that death is an evil must be addressed, and in the Tusculans, which were written largely as therapy for Cicero’s own incapacitating grief for his daughter Tullia, Cicero offers a number of methods for correcting false beliefs, including logical argumentation, rhetorical persuasion, and various meditational techniques (Graver in Cicero 2002: xiii-xv). The professed aim is to eradicate emotions, or failing that, to blunt their force. Only by so doing can human beings hope to live well.
The chief method of discipline, and perhaps the most important part of Cicero’s discussion, is his classification of the various emotions, which constitutes a major part of Tusculans 4. By understanding the nature of individual emotions and their relationship to each other, Cicero believes we can better learn to control our responses to potentially emotive events. Following Zeno, he defines emotion as a ‘‘movement of the mind contrary to nature,’’ or ‘‘a too-vigorous impulse.’’ These impulses arise from beliefs about what is good and evil: ‘‘Those arising from goods are desire and gladness, gladness being directed at present goods and desire at future goods; while those arising from evils are fear and distress, fear being directed at future evils and distress at present ones’’ (Cicero 2002: 43). Emotions arising from perceived goods elevate or elate the mind; those arising from perceived evils lower or contract it. Into these four categories - desire, gladness, fear, and distress - all the common emotions can be classified. Thus pity is ‘‘distress over the misery of another who is suffering unjustly,’’ anger is ‘‘desire to punish a person who is thought to have harmed one unjustly,’’ and vainglory is ‘‘pleasure which exults and makes a display of arrogance’’ (Cicero 2002: 45-6). But whatever the emotion, Stoics believe it to signal a ‘‘loss of control, which is a rebellion in the mind as a whole against right reason.’’ Emotions are ‘‘reason’s enemy, ... throwing [the mind] into disturbance and riot’’ (Cicero 2002: 46-7). Therefore, they must be eradicated.
But where does joy fit into this schema, and what does that tell us about ‘‘Tintern Abbey’’? For Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, joy is not an emotion at all and is contrasted with its emotional equivalent, effrenata laetitia (unbridled gladness). ‘‘There are two ways we may be moved as by the presence of something good,’’ he writes:
When the mind is moved quietly and consistently, in accordance with reason, this is termed ‘‘joy’’; but when it pours forth with a hollow sort of uplift, that is called ‘‘wild or excessive gladness,’’ which they define as an ‘‘unreasoning elevation of mind.’’ (Cicero 2002: 44)
Joy (gaudium) in such a case is, by definition, rational; it is an affect of a motion of the mind that accords with reason, and hence with nature. Cicero uses the Stoic term boulesis (volition) to describe this kind of mental action (Cicero 2002: 44); Greek Stoics more regularly used the term eupatheia (good emotion, proper feeling) to describe it (Graver in Cicero 2002: 136). Eupathic joy is an affective response to right moral decisions or accurate perceptions of the nature of things, and it contrasts with unbridled gladness (effrenata laetitia), which is the reaction of the immature or foolish to perceived pleasure. Even when this gladness is directed at genuine goods, it is dangerous, because it throws the mind into a state of uncontrolled elation or elevation. Seneca expands on this idea in the Moral Epistles. ‘‘Believe me, true joy is a serious matter,’’ he counsels Lucilius.
Do you think that it is with a relaxed and cheerful countenance that one despises death, opens his home to poverty, reins in pleasure, and rehearses the endurance of pain? One who is pondering such things is experiencing a great joy, but hardly a soft or seductive one. This is the joy I want you to possess: you will never run out of it, once you learn where it is to be found. . . . Cast aside those things that glitter on the outside, those things that are promised you by another or from another, and trample them underfoot. Look to your real good, and rejoice in what is yours. What is it that is yours? Yourself; the best part of you. (Seneca, Moral Epistles 23.4-6, in Graver forthcoming: ch. 2)
The truly wise person, the Stoic sage, is in a constant state of joy. But few would lay claim to this degree of wisdom. As Seneca elsewhere admits of himself, most people are in the process of seeking wisdom, a process of constant self-discipline and selfdiscovery. That is why so much Stoic writing takes the form of therapeutic counseling: those somewhat further on the path toward wisdom take it upon themselves to serve as guides to others, partly to help and partly as a means of sharpening their own powers of self-control.
In ‘‘Tintern Abbey,’’ Wordsworth preserves the Stoic distinction between emotion and eupathic affect. This is first evident when he compares his past and present responses to nature. The joy of the ‘‘serene and blessed mood’’ corresponds almost exactly to the quiet, consistent movement of the mind ‘‘in accordance with reason,’’ characteristic of Stoic wisdom. To ‘‘see into the life of things’’ is to experience, if only for a few moments, Stoic eupatheia. On the other hand, the passionate response to nature of his youth, with its ‘‘glad animal movements,’’ ‘‘aching joys,’’ and ‘‘dizzy raptures’’ (lines 75, 85-6), is effrenata laetitia, gladness wild and unbridled, like the roe to which Wordsworth compares himself. What is more, his emotive responses seem self-contradictory and confused. Desire for what he loves seems more like flight ‘‘from something that he dreads’’ (line 72); the ‘‘sounding cataract’’ haunts ‘‘like a passion’’ (lines 77-8); joys are ‘‘aching,’’ bringing pain as well as pleasure, and a far cry from the kind of joy Seneca and Cicero described. We can measure Wordsworth’s psychic growth by comparing these passages with the meditative calm of the opening verse paragraph, where not even the apples ‘‘disturb’’ ‘‘the wild green landscape’’ (lines 12-15). The frantic physical exertions of the past have given way to repose and an eye that moves from a fixed point steadily, and perceptively, through the natural world. Similarly, the distinction between emotion and eupatheia is evident in Wordsworth’s ‘‘exhortations’’ (line 147) to his sister that close the poem. Here William plays Seneca to Dorothy’s Lucilius, looking forward to the time when her ‘‘wild ecstasies’’ will mature into a ‘‘sober pleasure’’ (lines 139-40). This will happen, he believes, when her ‘‘mind has become a mansion for all lovely forms,’’ her ‘‘memory a dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies’’ (lines 140-3), counseling her both to discipline her emotive responses and to discover, like Lucilius, that which is truly good, that best part of herself. And her maturation will strengthen his own: nothing, he asserts, ‘‘shall. . . disturb our chearful faith that all which we behold is full of blessings,’’ and nature will lead them ‘‘from joy to joy’’ (lines 133-5, 126). As a result of experiences such as this, and the bonds they form between human beings, both William and Dorothy can look forward to a future in which their perceptions, and their affective responses, are more in accord with nature than they are on July 13, 1798, the fictive date of the poem.
Thus far, Wordsworth follows the Stoic discourse on emotion very closely, openly invoking both its ideas and its characteristic vocabulary But, as I noted above, the way Wordsworth experiences joy in the present is problematic, at least from a Stoic point of view, and here we can begin to see some of the ways in which he is modifying and departing from the Stoic model. ‘‘And I have felt a presence,’’ he writes, ‘‘that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused. . . . ’’ Joy, at least the eupathic joy of the Stoics, does not disturb: it results from a quiet, consistent movement of the mind, in accordance with reason. When Wordsworth presents joy as a disturbance, he admits that his usual state of mind is unsettled, and when he specifies joy as an affective response to the sublime, he indicates what the source of his instability might be: Edmund Burke. For Burke, the normative response to the sublime is fear and distress; in Burkean terms, Wordsworth’s joy is abnormal. But in Stoic terms, to respond to natural phenomena with fear or distress is an irrational impulse: the joy Wordsworth feels is the response of the wise, but it comes in fits and starts that disrupt his otherwise flawed perceptions. That is, Wordsworth is suggesting that his usual experience of joy is far short of ideal Stoic eupatheia:. it interrupts and disturbs typical emotive responses, with some of the same force as emotions themselves. Even the eupathic joy of his ‘‘serene and blessed mood’’ is not wholly a Stoic consistency, in that it occurs only in moments of particularly intense meditation, when the body is ‘‘laid asleep’’ (line 46). And afterwards Wordsworth’s faith in those moments of joy is not unwavering: he is concerned that it may be ‘‘a vain belief ’’ (line 51). Wordsworth needs a way to guarantee the validity of the eupathic joy he believes himself to have felt, so that he can look forward to sustaining it, somehow, in the future.
His solution marks his most radical departure from Stoic thought. For Wordsworth refuses to reject emotional experience. Rather, the more powerfully emotional an experience has been, the deeper an impression it makes on the memory, and the deeper the impression, the more opportunity one will have to return, in thought, to the memory itself and understand its genuine significance. Using this Lockean model of memory and mind, Wordsworth develops a meditative technique for disciplining emotional experience that turns on its head an ancient meditative technique for relieving mental pain: the pre-rehearsal of future ills. Following the Cyrenaics, Cicero recommends the pre-rehearsal of future ills (praemeditatio futurorum malorum) as a means of strengthening ourselves against extreme mental pain. To avoid extreme grief, for instance, we should spend time regularly imaging the death of our children, or parents, or a spouse, or friends, and rehearse how we should respond (Cicero 2002: 24-8). Pre-rehearsal works very well for those facing torture, or attempting to overcome a phobia, such as fear of airplane flight. But to spend one’s time meditating on the possible death of loved ones seemed, even to Cicero, a bit morbid. Wordsworth may have pre-rehearsal in mind when he suggests to Dorothy that ‘‘neither evil tongues, / Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men’’ shall ‘‘disturb our chearful faith’’ (lines 129-30, 134-5). But rather than pre-rehearse sneers, or imagine the possibility that the two of them may, someday, be separated, Wordsworth charges her to remember ‘‘That on the banks of this delightful stream, / We stood together’’ (lines 151-2). That is, we can sustain ourselves best against mental pain by concentrating our thoughts on past moments of emotional intensity, deriving from them ‘‘life and food / For future years’’ (lines 65-6). In ‘‘Tintern Abbey’’ it is a past moment of intense pleasure; we know from The Prelude that moments of intense pain can be just as valuable. For Wordsworth, there can be no eupatheia without intense emotions, which imprint themselves so deeply in the memory that he can, again and again, return to them and ‘‘drink, / As at a fountain’’ (Prelude 1805, 11.383-4, in Wordsworth 1979: 436).
I would like to close by turning to another familiar passage, so familiar that we have probably stopped thinking about it, where Wordsworth also invokes the Stoic distinction between emotion and eupatheia:
I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. (‘‘Preface’’ to Lyrical Ballads, in Wordsworth 1992: 756)
In light of Stoic emotion theory, this passage takes on a new significance, and it is a significance we need to explore, if we are to understand the aesthetics, and the moral psychology, of Romantic emotion.
FURTHER READING
Good introductions to the classical tradition in romanticism may be found in Webb (1993) and Graver (2005), with information on the classical scholarship of the period available in Brink (1985). Highet (1949) and Wellek (1963) offer an introduction to the perceived conceptual tension between ‘‘romantic’’ and ‘‘classical’’; Abrams (1953) also remains useful. On Homer and oral poetry, see Blackwell (1735), Wood (1775), and Wolf (1985), accompanied by the modern discussions in Foerster (1947), Groom (1999), McLane (2000), and Trumpener (1997). On Stoicism and the emotions, see Cicero (2002) and Graver (forthcoming). Wordsworth deserves special attention in the context of this essay: see Wordsworth (1979, 1983, 1989, 1992, 1998), with the critical commentary of Johnston (1998) and Clancey (1999).
A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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