ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter of the “sestet” reflects on Wordsworth’s discourses on God as a record of his encounters with Absence. I add that perhaps the only space/spot (of time) where the Wordsworthian “I” has a chance to encounter the God present(ed) in his verse is the pantheistic Prelude of 1805. But this version was composed at the time when the Author was, most likely, not a pantheist anymore: the spiritual orientation of the 1805 text was a technical decision, just like the Platonic solution of the “Immortality Ode.” In the final section, “After-thought—Or: A Postscript,” I turn to ask about Wordsworth’s motives. Why did the poet whose finest verse was rooted in personal experience insist on (re)presenting the Absence? What prompted the poet of the “spontaneous overflow” to regularly enter the territory where he was reduced to cautious dependence upon a method? These are not appropriate questions from the point of view of post-Romantic literary theory or criticism, but, following Wordsworth’s poetic practice, the end of a sestet—the conclusion of the conclusion—is the appropriate place to ask questions which must not be answered conclusively. The motive that resonates the most (as it is placed in the end of this “Postscript”) is the poet’s struggle not to give up on God; his resolve to keep up “the mysteries of faith.” Wordsworth’s poetry cannot effectively ease the “doubts and scruples which tease the brain.” And yet it can—and certainly does—bring up those questions, tensions, mysteries, and uncertainties.
