Wordsworth’s thinking seems to me (and not to me alone) to resonate in a particularly wonderful way with central concepts of the Restoration. So far as I’m aware, his only documented reference to the topic is an inquiry, addressed to his American publisher, about the “wretched” sect that his niece had joined. (His publisher wrote back to say that he knew very little about “Mormonism,” but that Joseph Smith was an imposter.) Had he understood our doctrine, though, I think that he might have found it less “wretched” than he imagined it to be.
I admit that I laughed when I read this post. What aspects of the "doctrine" does he imagine that Wordsworth would have liked? Eternal progression? Polygamy? The Curse of Cain? Book of Mormon historicity? It's tough to say. DCP notes that Wordsworth's poetry frequently deals with "his life-long deep love for the natural world," but that is a remark straight out of Captain Obvious's Playbook. It's like pointing out that Carl Sagan was interested in space. That being said, what is the connection to Mormonism here? Where--one wonders--do these Wordsworth poems intersect with the key teachings of the Restoration? The Afore cites "Tintern Abbey" and "Intimations of Immortality"--arguably Wordsworth's two best-known poems--and claims that these are actually about "the pre-existent world from which we all come.'
Again: I had do laugh at this one. WTF?? You are welcome to read the poems for yourself (they are fantastic in their own right: marvels of poetic craftsmanship), but I cannot for the life of me spot anything in them that could reasonably be construed as referring to the Mormon concept of the "pre-existence." Gee, do you think that Wordsworth believed that Jesus and Satan were brothers, and that there was a "war in heaven" prior to everyone coming down to get a physical body?
No, sorry--the reality is that Wordsworth, and, indeed, the Romantic poets more generally have very little in common with LDS doctrine, and even less in common with Mopologetics, and yet what we're seeing here is something that occurs frequently in the realm of Mopologetics--i.e., the attempt to shoehorn some famous person and/or their work into and LDS context for Mopologetic purposes.
It's as if the Afore is saying, "See? See?? Even a genius poet like Wordsworth has resonance with Mormon teachings! See! We *can* be like the great geniuses of the world!" There is a somewhat bizarre wishfulness on the part of the Mopologists to "convert" these great thinkers--a kind of sad hope that, one day, beyond the veil, Wordsworth, Goethe, Beethoven, and all these other famous people will come around and say, "Oh, yeah: of course! Mormonism is obviously true and great, so, yeah! We're believers!"
It's really hard to understate the absurdity of this. For one thing, if Mormonism *is* actually true, it's not like anyone will have much of a choice in the next life: either you assent, or you are booted down to one of the lower kingdoms with non-functioning genitalia. But the other absurdity is the idea that Wordsworth or any other "great" person from history would find anything about Mormonism convincing. *That*, ultimately, is why you get this rather pathetic fantasizing from DCP, where he gives these off-the-wall readings of the poetry in the hopes that, gee, yeah, *MAY*be Wordsworth would have found the Restoration interesting! If only he were able to figure out that "Tintern Abbey" is actually about the pre-existence.
(On a sidenote: I also had to chuckle over the fact that Wordsworth is singled out as the "greatest" Romantic poet. Of course the Mopologists avoid John Keats like the plague: Keats died at the tender age of 26 or 27, meaning that, yes, he had produced a body of work at a very, *VERY* young age that blows the Book of Mormon out of the water and very seriously undercuts the apologetic arguments about 'How could Joseph have done it???')
Here is the thing: no famous or "great" person has ever been convinced by Mormonism. At least, no one of Wordsworth's stature. There is no way that Wordsworth, or Shelley, or any of the other great poets would have converted. None of the famous economists that DCP hung out with in his youth ever converted. Michael Coe was not convinced; nor was Mark Twain; nor was Philip Jenkins. Margaret Barker was not convinced, either. And think: in some of these cases, the Mopologists have had to go to great lengths in order to tear town these people--mercilessly attacking Coe, for example, and repeatedly trashing Twain for his "chloroform in print" comment. Meanwhile, probably the biggest "famous" admirer of Mormon doctrine from the past 100 years or so was Harold Bloom, and yet even he was trashed by the Mopologists. But hey: if DCP can wildly distort and misinterpret Wordsworth's poetry, then why can't Bloom give a subjective reading of the doctrine of eternal progression?
Ultimately, posts like this recent one of "SeN" show the cultural poverty of Mormonism and Mopologetics. He can't turn to an LDS writer for this sort of thing, or even to LDS hymns, for that matter. Instead, it's this vicarious, by-proxy sort of thing wherein the Mopologists has to desperately imagine that Shakespeare, or Vivaldi, or Michealangelo, or whoever, *might* have converted to Mormonism if only they had learned how cool it is! Instead, the real message is the Mormonism, sadly, is not enough--not by a long shot--and so Mopologists like DCP will go desperately seeking for edification and happiness outside of the Church.
