Memory as Salvation: Captured in a Single Photograph
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“Memory As Salvation: Captured in a Single Photograph”
While driving in my car I noticed the beautiful Pennsylvania landscape as I drove past. This view from my car instilled in me a sense of peace and happiness. As I passed these scenes, I noticed that in my rearview mirror these scenes were captured for a few brief moments instilling in me once again how they made me feel when I passed them in the first place. Even though these scenes were merely pictures, now captured in my mirror, I still remembered the feeling they gave me when I was originally driving past. This mirror represents the ability my brain has to grasp images and retain them, so that when I want I can return to these scenes that once made me smile. No longer was that scene part of my present but now it was part of my past. It will forever be stored in my memories. This was the inspiration for my picture and I feel that this picture would inspire William Wordsworth as well.
Wordsworth was very fond of nature and often in times of sadness he would go out into it and reflect on its beauty. If for some reason he could not go out into nature he would rely heavily on his memory. “Nature, in all its forms, was important to Wordsworth, but he rarely uses simple descriptions. Instead he concentrates on the ways in which he responds and relates to the world. He uses his poetry to look at the relationship between nature and human life, and to explore the belief that nature can have an impact on our emotional and spiritual lives.” (
These memories of the nature he encountered were what got him through the day and out of his depressed state. As we pass things by in life we store those things as memories so that one day we can return them. Memory as salvation is the term that he used when describing this way of dealing with his melancholy.
“Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July13, 1781,” is one of his poems that he addresses memory as salvation. I feel that my picture would have provided inspiration for this poem. In lines 22-50 he speaks of the effect of the imaginative remembrance of a past experience. “These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind mans eye.” (Line22-25) He has not been to this place in a very long time but through his memory he can remember how it looked to him. “I owed to thee, in hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration-feelings too Of unremembered pleasure.” (Line 26-31)
Wordsworth immerses us in the natural sublime within Tintern Abbey by taking us into the role of a spectator and making us sympathetic participants. Wordsworth takes us in his passage through nature by recalling what he sees and expresses his feelings of joy that he gains from this journey. Thus, using memory as salvation.
In lines 50-57 he remembers the effect of the imaginative remembrance of the scene in times of trouble with a return to the present. The concept that I tried to capture in my rearview mirror picture is essentially what Wordsworth does when he captures a memory. An image of something of that past event is forever captured in his mind. “In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart – How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee.” (Tintern Abbey) These memories are his “spots of time.” ” Spots of time