How would I listen to Wordsworth's poetry like Wordsworth would have recited it?

November 25, 2010 9:57 PM

How would I listen to Wordsworth's poetry like Wordsworth would have recited it?

I read a paper the other day on how the English Romantics had a more extensive oral culture than we do(of course: writing is cheaper nowadays), and that Romantic-era English poetry was supposed to be listened to more than it was supposed to be read.
All nice and well, but I do not think I, the West Coast American, read English the same way as these eighteenth-century Englishmen did. Is there any performing body, any organization which records people who do speak like Wordsworth or Blake or Coleridge would have, reciting the poems that these poets wrote?

posted by curuinor to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

Unfortunately, Wordsworth predates recording technology. Not so for Dylan Thomas, who does not go gentle into that good night.
posted by twoleftfeet at 12:51 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]

Shakespeare predates audio recordings too but it didn't stop this production going ahead.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:09 AM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Wordsworth didn't pre-date recording technology by much - he died in 1850, and the British Library has just released a couple of sets of readings by British and American poets which includes Tennyson and Browning recorded in 1890 and 1889 respectively. So if you want to hear how English poets read their own work, but perhaps not as far back as the early nineteenth century, this might be what you want:

http://shop.bl.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/BritishLibrary/ISBN_9780712351058

I think I'm right in saying that Wordsworth also had a pronounced Cumbrian accent, and Coleridge was a Somerset boy, and while I haven't listened to this the description mentions Wordsworth's accent:

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cambridgeauthors/conversation-with-stephen-logan

See also:

http://jacketmagazine.com/28/cox-bunt.html
posted by nja at 2:00 AM on November 26, 2010

Best answer: Tennyson was a few decades later (1808 - 1882), but there's a recording from 1890 that might give you some idea.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:00 AM on November 26, 2010

(or what nja said, pretty much)
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:01 AM on November 26, 2010

Maybe not a direct answer, but you could listen to poetry from cultures that still value poetry as an important popular entertainment. I'm thinking of the Prince of Poetry ("Arab Poetry's Answer to American Idol"?!)

Much of what made poetry important during Wordsworth's time has been lost in the West but is still alive in the East. Subtleties of intonation, exuberance of expression, intensity of message... you don't necessarily need to understand the language to appreciate this.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:19 AM on November 26, 2010

Best answer: Much of what made poetry important during Wordsworth's time has been lost in the West

No it hasn't. What a load of orientalist claptrap.

Here's Ted Hughes reading from Crow.

It's not Wordsworth reading Wordsworth obviously - but it is a distinctly northern and and distinctly natural voice. See if you can spot the, uh... "intensity of message".
posted by Ted Maul at 3:44 AM on November 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

Kenneth Cox on an attempt to record Wordsworth's poetry with the poet's own accent. And here's Basil Bunting reading his own work.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 3:56 AM on November 26, 2010

[Deleted some comments. Please focus on the question and take debates to email or Metatalk?]
posted by vacapinta at 5:03 AM on November 26, 2010

Best answer: The best known description of Wordsworth's style of recitation is in William Hazlitt's essay My First Acquaintance with Poets. He characterises Wordsworth's voice as 'a mixture of clear, gushing accents .. a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine'. He also gives an account of Wordsworth reading his poem Peter Bell, as follows:

Whatever might be thought of the poem, 'his face was as a book where men might read strange matters,' and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chant in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical.

The word 'chant' suggests that Wordsworth recited his poetry with a strong metrical beat. However, he also wrote in the 1815 preface to his Poems that 'the letter of metre must not be so impassive to the spirit of versification as to deprive the Reader of all voluntary power to modulate, in subordination to the sense, the music of the poem', suggesting that he sometimes varied the rhythm in order to achieve a sort of musical effect, which is perhaps what Hazlitt meant by 'lyrical'.

The same word, 'lyrical', also occurs in the 1815 Preface, where Wordsworth writes: 'Some of these pieces are essentially lyrical; and, therefore, cannot have their due force without a supposed musical accompaniment; but, in much the greatest part, as a substitute for the classic lyre or romantic harp, I require nothing more than an animated or impassioned recitation, adapted to the subject.' 'Animated or impassioned', with the spoken voice taking the place of a lyre or harp .. that probably brings us about as close as we can get to the experience of hearing Wordsworth reciting his own verse.
posted by verstegan at 10:50 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]

Let's try to get this back on track. The OP doesn't want to hear Wordsworth's voice, so cut out all the posting about ancient recordings. He wants to hear a modern voice speaking in a Wadsworthian manner: "Is there any performing body, any organization which records people who do speak like Wordsworth or Blake or Coleridge would have, reciting the poems that these poets wrote?"
posted by exphysicist345 at 10:22 PM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd love to hear Blake recited in his Cockney accent.

related essay: Keats Speaks
posted by ovvl at 1:23 PM on November 27, 2010