The Importance of the Concept of Ritual to Creativity

The concept of ritual is essential to creativity, speaking in this case to the “solemn ceremony” through which something is created. The term “ritual” brings along with it spiritual connotations, suggesting that ritual is in itself a divine act and thus declaring that what is performed in ritual or created by it is fundamentally sacred. With this in mind, I believe that William Wordsworth’s The Prelude is an example of writing as a spiritual ritual of self reflection. This idea coincides with the Romantic proposition that human beings are worthy of deep contemplation and heroic status (just as God himself is).

It is in this way that The Prelude can be examined as a spiritual ritual designed to guide Wordsworth in his autobiographical reflections. Wordsworth uses the first book of The Prelude to assert his mission in exploring his possible divinity through poetic verse.

First, he designates his calling as inherently spiritual with the line, “For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven/Was blowing on my body, felt within/A corresponding mild creative breeze”(30).

While The Prelude does follow Wordsworth’s questioning of his poetic vocation, this line is evidence that he believes his creativity is indeed a divine gift. In stating his poetic intentions, he writes, “My last and favorite aspiration-then/I yearn towards some philosophic song…Of truth… With meditations passionate…” (40). The meditation he speaks of here is the very creation of The Prelude and writing will be the very ritual by which Wordsworth will reflect upon his spiritual vocation.

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This ritual of writing for the purpose of inner-reflection suggests that The Prelude is a spiritual endeavor at its core, and thus reflective of the Romantic belief in individual divinity.

Because man rediscovers his divinity when in nature (according to romanticism/transcendentalism), Wordsworth designates a substantial amount of the poem to venerating the natural world. He writes in the final book: “A meditation rose in me that night/Upon the lovely mountain when the scene/Had passed away, and it appeared to me/The perfect image of a mighty wind,/Of one that feeds upon infinity,/That is exhausted by an under-presence,/ The sense of God, or whatso’er is dim/Or vast in its own being…”(460-62). Experiencing nature is here ritualized into an act of rediscovering one’s relationship with God, of whom nature is a physical reflection.

Thus, Wordsworth’s experiences in nature represent his relationship and experiences with God (it) self. In writing about his exploits in nature, Wordsworth is able to reflect upon the instances that pushed him to realize that poetry was his divine vocation. It is in this way that The Prelude again suggests that divine ritual is essential to creativity. While Book I suggests that The Prelude is but a work of personal reflection, it is clear by the end that the poem is indeed an epic reminiscent of Homer, Dante, and Milton. The revolutionary feature of this particular epic is the fact that Wordsworth focuses on himself, rather than God or legendary characters. Wordsworth designates the every day individual as someone who is worthy of epic poetry, which communicates the romantic belief that humans retain a divine ability within themselves. Later called a “spark of divinity” by Emerson, the ritual of writing The Prelude through poetic verse is the means by which Wordsworth declares that his divine “spark” is indeed his vocation as a poet. The work is experimental not only in its romantic suggestion that creativity is divine ritual, but also in its proclamation that all people are worthy of singing “songs of themselves”.