"Unrememberable" Sound in Wordsworth's 1799 Prelude (Critical Essay‪)‬

I. Quietude WORDSWORTH IS THE POET OF "THE GRAND ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLE OF pleasure," but also of stark pictures of suffering. Not just a contradiction to be contained, the seeming antagonism of pleasure and pain takes us to the heart of Wordsworth's poetic practice. What pleasure and pain have in common is that both are suffered--they cannot be willed. One can suffer pleasure (or pain), but one cannot experience it by an act of will. And this is the character of all feeling, all sensation; it is visited upon us, it is involuntary.