Wordsworth - William Wordsworth

English poet. One of the leading Romantic poets of the first half of the 19th century. Born on April 7th in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the north of England, as the second son of five siblings to lawyer John and mother Anne, his birthplace is now open to the public as a memorial museum. He lost his mother in 1778, and his father five years later. In 1778, he entered an old grammar school in Hawkshead, where he was looked after by Anne Tyson, who worked as a cook at the boarding house, as a substitute mother. He also received guidance in writing poetry from the newly appointed young principal, William Taylor, who had come from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. As he lived in the midst of nature, he spread his world of fantasy through poems and novels from his own country, as well as Don Quixote and The Thousand and One Nights. Before entering St. John's College, Cambridge, as a special exempt student in July 1787, he had written a study of over 1,000 lines, "In Esthwaite Vale." At university, he devoted himself to studying classical literature and Italian, while rebelling against the extravagant atmosphere and fierce competitive spirit. In the summer and fall of 1790, he went on a walking trip to the Alps with his friend Robert Jones, inspired by the Alpine fever that was finally beginning to spread in Europe at that time. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in January 1791, he immediately went to London, and stayed in Paris at the end of November, during the uproar of the French Revolution, and at the end of the year moved to Orléans, where he met Annette Baron, a woman five years older than him, and gave birth to a daughter, Caroline, with her in December 1792. During his stay in Blois, he was taught the political and ideological significance of the revolution by officer Michel Beaupay, which resonated with him greatly, but due to financial reasons he returned to France temporarily in December, and lost the opportunity to go to France in February 1793 when Britain and France declared war on each other. In that year, he published two books of poetry, "An Evening Walk" and "Small Descriptive Pieces," and wrote the draft of "Salisbury Plain."

In 1795, he received a bequest of £900 from his acquaintance Leslie Calvert, and with this he settled down with his sister Dorothy in Raisdown, Dorset, in the south of England. In addition to reading books and writing poetry, he also made friends with S. T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, and the radical thinker Godwin. In 1796, he wrote the tragedy The Borderers, which responded materially to Schiller's The Robbers, and ideologically aimed to overcome Godwin's theory of reason. In September 1798, he published Lyrical Ballads, a collection of narrative poems he had written with Coleridge, inspired by his interest in the ballad form inspired by German literature at the time. The collection was revised and expanded to two volumes and published in January 1801. The "Preface" became a benchmark for British Romantic literature, discussing the new materials, themes, and style of poetry as well as the mission of the poet in opposition to pseudo-classicism. The long autobiographical poem, which he began working on while staying with his sister Dorothy in Goslar, Germany from the autumn of 1798 to the spring of the following year, was completed in 1805, and after extensive revisions and additions, was published three months after his death under the title "Prelude." In the 19th century, relatively short works were popular, but in the 20th century, rigorous textual research progressed and this work came to be regarded as the core of Wordsworth's literature.

After returning from Germany in 1799, he lived for nearly ten years and devoted himself to writing poetry. Dove Cottage on the shores of Lake Grasmere is now a popular memorial museum with a wealth of related materials on display. In May 1802, the Earl of Lonsdale died, and Wordsworth received £8,500 from his heir for the Wordsworth family estate. In August, he traveled to Calais for four weeks, where he met Annette Baron and her daughter Caroline. On October 4, he married Mary Hutchinson, and later had five children. The 1807 Two Volumes of Poems is a collection of relatively short and excellent works, and the last one, "Ode to the Immortality of the Soul," is a masterpiece that combines lyricism with deep philosophical awareness. When Bonaparte became emperor in 1804, hopes for the French Revolution were completely lost, and in 1809, he published a pamphlet, "On the Pact of Sintra," which attacked the Napoleonic regime that ruled Spain under autocratic rule. In May 1813 he moved to Rydal Mount, some distance from Dove Cottage, where he died on 23 April 1850, aged 80, and is buried in Grasmere churchyard.

During this time, he published the long philosophical poem "A Journey" in 1814, "Ode of Gratitude" in commemoration of the great victory over Napoleon's army at Waterloo in 1816, and several other books of poems thereafter, as well as selected works that began to be published around 1820, and he was named Poet Laureate in 1843. The defining feature of his poetry is that he often portrays innocent, simple children and adults from the countryside, and women in unfortunate circumstances, with concise descriptions and fantastical descriptions of the correspondence between the external and internal worlds, achieving profound expressions that get to the heart of his subjects.

[Saburo Oka]

"Wordsworth Poems" selected and translated by Shigeharu Tabe (Iwanami Bunko)" ▽ "Wordsworth by Hideo Kano (1955, Kenkyusha Publishing)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

イギリスの詩人。19世紀前半のロマン派の代表的詩人の1人。4月7日イギリスの北部カンバーランドのコカマスに弁護士の父ジョンと母アンの五人兄妹の次男として生まれ、その生家は今日記念館として公開されている。1778年に母を、その5年後には父を失う。1778年ホークスヘッドの歴史の古いグラマー・スクールに入学、下宿で賄いをしていたアン・タイスンに母親がわりのめんどうをみてもらい、またケンブリッジのエマニュエル・コレジ出身の新任の若い校長ウィリアム・テイラーによって詩作の手引きを受け、大自然のなかに生きる生活とともに、自国の詩や小説のほか『ドン・キホーテ』や『千夜一夜物語』などによって空想の世界を広めた。1787年7月にケンブリッジのセント・ジョンズ・コレジに特別免費生として入学する以前に1000行余の習作「エスウェイトの谷間」を書いていた。大学では華美な風潮や激しい競争意識に反発しながら古典文学やイタリア語の学習に精励するとともに、1790年夏から秋にかけて当時ようやくヨーロッパに高まり始めたアルプス熱に刺激されて友人ロバート・ジョーンズとアルプスへ徒歩旅行をする。1791年1月学士号取得後ただちにロンドンに上京、さらに11月末にはフランス革命で騒然たるパリに滞在、年末にはオルレアンに移り、5歳年上の女性アネット・バロンに出会い、1792年12月には彼女との間に女児キャロラインが誕生する。その間ブロア滞在中に将校ミシェル・ボーピュイから革命の政治的・思想的意義を教えられて大いに共鳴したが、経済的事情で12月に一時帰国、1793年2月英仏の戦争宣言で渡仏の機会を失う。この年『夕べの散歩』『叙景的小品』の二冊の詩集を出版したほか、「ソールズベリ平野」の草稿を書く。

　1795年、知人のレズリー・カルバートが亡くなり、900ポンドの遺贈を受けて当面の経済的見通しがつき、妹ドロシーとイギリス南部のドーセットのレイスダウンに落ち着き、読書と詩作のほか、S・T・コールリッジ、ロバート・サウジーのほか急進思想家ゴッドウィンらと交友。1796年には悲劇『辺境の人々』で素材的にはシラーの『群盗』に対応し、思想的にはゴッドウィンの理性論の超克を目ざした。さらに当時のドイツ文学に刺激されたバラッド形式への関心を踏まえてコールリッジとともに創作した物語詩をまとめた『抒情民謡集（リリカル・バラッズ）』を1798年9月に500部出版したが、予想以上の好評を博した。1801年1月には改訂増補して2巻本にして出版、またその「序文」は擬古典主義に対して新しい詩歌の素材・主題・文体ならびに詩人の使命などを論じてイギリス・ロマン主義文学の指標となる。1798年秋から翌年の春にかけて妹ドロシーとドイツのゴスラーに滞在中に着手された長編自伝詩は1805年に完成したが、その後大幅な加筆訂正ののち没後3か月して『序曲』と題して出版された。19世紀には比較的短い作品が愛読されていたが、20世紀に入って厳密な本文研究も進み、この作品がワーズワース文学の核心とみなされるようになった。

　1799年ドイツから帰国後10年近く住んで詩作に没頭したグラスミア湖畔のダブ・コテジは、今日関係資料を豊富に展示する記念館として親しまれている。1802年5月にロンズデール侯が亡くなり、その嗣子(しし)からワーズワース家所有地の代価として8500ポンドの支払いを受け、8月カレーに渡り4週間滞在してアネット・バロンと娘キャロラインに会い、10月4日メアリ・ハッチンスンと結婚し、のち5人の子供が生まれた。1807年の『二巻本詩集』は比較的短い優れた作品を集めているが、とりわけ最後の「霊魂不滅を暗示するオード」は叙情性と深い哲学的認識とを融合させた傑作である。1804年ボナパルトが皇帝に即位するに至りフランス革命への期待は完全に失われ、1809年にはスペインを専制下に治めるナポレオン体制を攻撃するパンフレット『シントラ協定論』を出版した。1813年5月にダブ・コテジからやや離れたライダル・マウントに移り、ここで1850年4月23日80歳の生涯を終え、グラスミアの教会墓地に埋葬された。

　その間1814年には長編哲学詩『逍遙(しょうよう)』、1816年にはワーテルローでナポレオン軍に大勝した記念に『感謝のオード』、その後数冊の詩集のほか1820年ごろから選集が出版され始め、1843年には桂冠(けいかん)詩人に選ばれている。その詩の特徴は、田舎(いなか)の清純質朴な子供や大人、不幸な境遇の女性を多く取り上げ、簡潔な筆致で描くとともに、外界と内面との照応を幻想的に叙述し、対象の核心に迫る深味のある表現に達している点にある。

［岡　三郎］

『田部重治選・訳『ワーズワース詩集』（岩波文庫）』▽『加納秀夫著『ワーズワス』（1955・研究社出版）』

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