William Wordsworth on his Multiple Consciousness: “often do I seem Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself And of some other Being.”

Wordsworth is famous for saying that poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility,” which is from his Preface to Lyrical Ballads. But he says something quite different in The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind; An Autobiographical Poem.

His Preface may be quoted more often than his Prelude, because of prejudice against multiple personality (multiple consciousness).

August 3, 2014

William Wordsworth on his “Two Consciousnesses” and “other Being”

It is natural to believe that everyone has the same sense of self that you do. If you have a single sense of self, then you may suspect that anyone who claims otherwise is joking, lying, or crazy. If you have a multiple sense of self, then you may suspect that anyone who claims otherwise is lying or in denial.

So you might find it interesting to show the following quotation to people you know and get their reactions.

It is from Wordsworth’s The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem, Book Second, School-time (1850 version):

A tranquillising spirit presses now

On my corporeal frame, so wide appears

The vacancy between me and those days

Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,

That musing on them, often do I seem

Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself

And of some other Being.

Wordsworth J, Abrams MH, Gill S (Eds). William Wordsworth The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and Reception; Recent Critical Essays. New York, WW Norton, 1979.

August 4, 2014

Wordsworth footnote:

I almost did not write the last post, because the first time I read those lines from Wordsworth’s Prelude, I misread them.

At first, I thought he was making the trivial point that he had seen things differently when he was younger. But rereading, I realized that he was not making that trivial point.

Rather, he is saying that, now, as an adult, he is subjectively aware of two distinct, conscious Beings within him, one of which originated in, and relates to, his childhood; in other words, a child-aged alternate personality (the most common kind of alternate personality, because multiple personality starts in childhood).

Multiple consciousness—each with its own sense of “I”—is the essence of multiple personality. And that is what Wordsworth is describing.