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| This is a picture I took of an abbey in Scotland. It made me think of Wordsworth's poetry |
"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, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on..." (273)
Source: Wordsworth, William. "Preface to Lyrical Ballads." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. Ed. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2006. 263-274. Print.
Still, it makes me worry about the power of imagination. Can we write about things we don't personally know? Can we write about a feeling we never had?
I blogged about this idea awhile back too, Sarah. I was questioning how a person could write accurately about being in war if they had never had the experience of being in war. Or how they could write about giving birth if they had never had that experience. I think some people might be able to empathize to that extreme degree and write something accurate. Or maybe if they do enough research they can find the collective "reality" through the stories and experiences of others and write about it. I think that I often end up doing what you are talking about here, though, which is taking bits of fiction and bits of reality and sort of mashing them up to create things that are a little bit of me and a little bit nothing like me at all.
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