Isy Mc’s Reviews > The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 > Status Update

Book V is so complex that it's taken me three days to finish it. Not complaining though, as it has two of my favourite "spots of time" so far - the Dream of the Arab and the Boy of Winander. Love the former's intertextuality with Cervantes, Descartes, Josephus - a "semi-Quixote", another double for the poet, seeking to save art from the apocalypse; and the sublime, classically Wordsworthian simplicity of the latter.

I'm actually starting to love The Prelude... Wordsworth hero and bard alike, an epic poem about failing to write an epic poem, crippling imposter syndrome, lovely/aching nostalgia for childhood, fragmented subjectivity juxtaposed with the ultimate assertion of the mind. The boy creates nature, the boy is created by nature! Can't believe that this stupid poet is Stockholm Syndrome-ing me from beyond the grave.

Finally making my way through the ex bane of my existence. Surprisingly, Wordsworth's autobiographical epic is growing on me - hatred turned love-hate. Maybe by the end I might even love it straightforwardly. I still think he can be an egotistical twat (if a self-aware, self-loathing one), but when he gets it right - wow. "But huge and mighty forms that do not live/Like living men moved slowly through my mind [...]"