Wordsworth's Daffodils

I wondered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils,

These lines from Wordsworth’s Daffodils are so deeply ingrained in us that it is very difficult to read them with detachment. The poem sums up many of the themes that are associated with Romanticism-themes such as subjectivity and imagination.

Although Wordsworth saw the Daffodils long time back , there is a sense of immediacy and involvement. It follows that along with subjectivity and imagination , it is memory that too plays a pivotal role in Romantic tradition in general and in this poem in particular.

Everybody would agree that we can never go back to our ‘good old days’ however hard we are whipped by the strongest sense of nostalgia. The concept of time machine or the theme in ‘Back to future’ are still in the realm of idea. Therefore there is no other option but to ride piggy back on memory that alone can transport us back to the past.

It is memory for which I am who I am or you are who you are. All the time throughout our lives we are engaged in creating memory right from the moment we wake up till the time we hit the bed. Memory is what creates our lives’ coherent narrative. What happens just in case there is a suppression of links in the chain of our memory? We cease to be who we are. Just imagine Wordsworth  had a highly fragmented memory? We could never have Daffodils in its present form. Wordsworth might have resorted to meaningless confabulations. It is only for his coherent memory that Wordsworth could write:

   For oft ,when on my couch I lie

   In vacant or in pensive mood,

   They flash upon that inward eye

   Which is the bliss of solitude;

 Daffodils is nothing but the celebration of human memory.

( After reading Oliver Sacks)