Notes
“amongst our nursery collection of books was the Bible”, « The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, G. Lindop (ed.), 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998, 104.
“[The Bible] ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music […]; the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us”, idem.
“One young nurse […] would often strain her eye to read [the Bible] for us; and, sometimes, according to her simple powers, would endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness”, idem.
“no book was so much in request amongst us”, idem.
Ibid., 124.
Ibid., 108.
“The first poem of Wordsworth’s that he came across was ‘We are Seven’, which he says was ‘handed about in manuscript’ at Bath, where he saw it during a school holiday. Who showed it to him we do not know, but the publisher of the Lyrical Ballads, Joseph Cottle, had several friends in West Country Evangelical circles, and had given a copy to Hannah More, amongst others”, G. Lindop, “Pursuing the Throne of God: de Quincey and the Evangelical Revival”, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, N° 52, 1985, 101.
G. Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, London: Dent, 1981, 31.
“‘Sisters and brothers, little maid, / How many may you be ?’ / ‘How many? seven in all,’ she said” (v. 14-5), W. Wordsworth, “We are Seven”, inBallades lyriques, suivies de Ode : Pressentiments d‘immortalité, Paris : José Corti, 1997.
De Quincey s’installe à « Dove Cottage » en octobre 1809 (G. Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., 184). En 1820, bien qu’il conserve « Dove Cottage » à Town End, il emménage avec sa femme et ses enfants dans : “a small house under Loughring Fell by the River Rothay” (G. Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., 241).
Selon J. E. Jordan, la correspondance de De Quincey avec les Wordsworth cesse en 1829 (J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, 334).
J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 349.
G. Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., 332-33.
“their relationship, however, survives both Wordsworth and De Quincey, for it lives on in their writings”, J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 355.
“In 1839 [De Quincey] quoted at some length—and understandably misquoted—passages from the still unpublished Prelude, which he had seen or heard more than twenty years before […]”, ibid., 358.
“De Quincey’s whole exploitation of his own past undoubtedly owes something to Wordsworth’s example of introspection and psychological analysis of the ‘hiding places’ of man’s power”,ibid., 359.
On peut être surpris qu’un événement aussi important que la mort de sa sœur Elizabeth, comme le laisse entendre De Quincey lui-même, ne soit pas déjà présent dans les Confessions. Il faudra attendre 34 ans avant que le mangeur d’opium dévoile cet épisode de sa vie.
F. Moreux, Thomas De Quincey : la vie—l’homme—l’œuvre, Paris : PUF, 1964, 322.
De Quincey apporte une définition du terme, qu’il dit avoir créé lui-même, dans « The Affliction of Childhood »: “involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes”, in T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 104. Pour plus d’informations concernant la différence entre les « spots of time » de Wordsworth et les « involutes » de De Quincey, nous renvoyons aux pages 89-90, dans l’étude de F. Burwick, Thomas de Quincey. Knowledge and Power, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.
“to read De Quincey’s writings is to find references to Wordsworth almost passim. […]. More than two hundred such allusions are scattered through his works from beginning to end”, J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 357.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 87-88.
Ibid., 97.
Voir aussi dans « The Affliction of Childhood », où De Quincey cite un vers de The Excursion, iv, 238, T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 120.
“De Quincey’s references to Wordsworth’s poetry, and his frequent quotation from memory, reveal how attentive he was to it”, J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 358.
“I saw at once the unsoundness of a passage in The Excursion. The book is not here, but the substance I remember perfectly”, T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 109.
“the Hermit sits alone”, W. Wordsworth, « Tintern Abbey », Ballades lyriques, suivies de Ode : Pressentiments d‘immortalité, op. cit., v. 23.
“for a Christian child [solitude] has become the power of God and the mystery of God”, T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 115.
“how much solitude, so much power”, « Introductory Notice », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 88.
“My opinion is, that where circumstances favor, where the heart is deep, where humility and tenderness exist in strength, where the situation is favorable as to solitude and as to genial feelings, children have a specific power of contemplating the truth, which departs as they enter the world”, « The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 127.
Voir le chapitre « De Quincey : l’économie, les contraires et la littérature », in René Gallet, Romantisme et postromantisme de Wordsworth à Pater, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2004, 50.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 134.
Ibid., 109.
“De Quincey was not, however, disposed to accept all of Wordsworth’s ideas”, J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 365.
“When Wordsworth began The Prelude, in 1799, he turned to Milton as a model”, L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader,Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993, 22.
M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, tradition and revolution in Romantic literature, New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1971, 94-7.
L. Newlyn rapporte un épisode du Prelude : “In the third book of The Prelude, Wordsworth remembers a visit during his Cambridge days to a fellow student who lived in rooms once occupied by Milton. Here, ‘seated with others in a festive ring’, the young poet proceeded to get drunk on the memory of his great (and, importantly, ‘innocent’ and ‘temperate’) precursor. Having ‘poured out libations’ to Milton in his private thoughts ‘till [his] brain reeled’, he recalls running awkwardly to chapel, overcome by the ‘fumes of wine’. Summing up the episode, his adult persona dismisses it with shame, and asks forgiveness from both Milton and Coleridge for the moral weakness he then displayed:
Empty thoughts!
I am ashamed of them; and that great Bard,
And thou, O Friend! Who in thy ample mind
Hast stationed me for reverence and love,
Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour
In some of its unworthy vanities
Brother of many more. (Prelude, iii, 322-8)”, L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 24.
Au sujet de Wordsworth et Milton, De Quincey pensera : “William Wordsworth—the sublimest intellect and the most majestic, even if far from the most active, since the days of Milton”, De Quincey cité dans J. E. Jordan, De Quincey to Wordsworth. A Biography of a Relationship, op. cit., 210.
“Charles Lamb once referred to Wordsworth as ‘the best knower of Milton’”, L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 85.
Dans une note de bas de page éclairante, L. Newlyn précise : “In ‘The Discharged Soldier’ (1798), the line ‘While I wandered, step by step led on’ (l. 36) clearly recalls Christ as he goes out into the wilderness, in Paradise Regained: ‘Thought following thought, and step by step led on’ (i. 192). The Christian association is intriguing, given that Wordsworth saw himself at this time as having a mission to begin his millenarian poem, ‘The Recluse’”, ibid., 31.
“the earth is all before me”, The Prelude, i, 15-19 en écho à “the world was all before them”, Paradise Lost, xii, 646-7, comme le signale L. Newlyn, ibid., 85.
W. Wordsworth, “London”, Selected Poems of William Wordsworth, London: Oxford UP, (1913), 1966, v. 7, 293.
L’expression est de Coleridge : “this man [Wordsworth] is […] at least a Semi-atheist” , S. T. Coleridge, The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Earl Leslie Griggs (ed.), vol. 1: 1785-1800, Oxford, 1956.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings op. cit., 151.
W. Wordsworth, « Tintern Abbey », Ballades lyriques, suivies de Ode : Pressentiments d‘immortalité, op. cit., v. 110.
T. De Quincey, The Works of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., vol. 11, 436.
L’expression est de L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 4.
Sur la question de la réputation de Milton à cette époque, nous renvoyons à l’étude de L. Newlyn, ibid.
Voir n. 36.
G. Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., 101.
Milton, devenu mal-voyant et pauvre, compose ses poèmes à plus de 60 ans. En 1667 paraît Paradise Lost et en 1671 Paradise Regained.
Comme De Quincey l’écrira en 1848 dans « The Works of Alexander Pope » : “what you owe to Milton (…) is power, – that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite”, T. De Quincey, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, D. Masson (ed.), 14 vol., Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1889-90, vol. 11, pp. 55-6.
L’expression est extraite de l’Anthologie de la littérature anglaise, F. Laroque, A. Morvan, A. Topia, Paris : PUF, 1991, 172.
C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, London: The Penguin Press, 1993, 374.
Ibid.
J. Milton, Paradise Lost, i, 26.
G. W. von Leibniz, Essais de théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal, 1710, Paris : Garnier Flammarion, 1969.
C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, op. cit., 375.
J. Milton, Paradise Lost, ii, 446-7, cité dans L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 54.
W. Cowper, Milton, ii, 430, cité dans L. Newlyn, ibid.
M. H. Abrams consacre une sous-partie du chapitre II de son ouvrage Natural Supernaturalism à l’imagination de Wordsworth dans The Prelude,« The Redemptive Imagination », Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, op. cit., 117-22.
Au sujet du surnaturalisme naturel, nous ne pouvons que renvoyer à l’ouvrage de référence de l’Américain M. H. Abrams sur la question, v. n. 60.
L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 224.
C’est ce que dira A. Clej selon qui De Quincey aurait, dès tout petit, contesté Milton : « De Quincey tells us that as a child he discovered the ‘unaccountable blunder’ that Milton had made in Paradise Lost and on which the whole story of the fall of man subsequently ‘hinges’ », A. Clej, A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995, 250.
“it is not so fair to class Milton with the greatest of poets as to class him apart. … [F]or any continuous and sustained blaze of the sublime, it is in vain to look for it except in Milton, making allowances … for the inspired sublimities of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and of the great Evangelist’s Revelations”, T. De Quincey, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, D. Masson (ed.), op. cit., vol. 10, 300.
Dans une note, G. Lindop renvoie (à cause d’une erreur de frappe ?) au vers 991, in The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit.,245. De Quincey est imprécis dans sa citation qui dans le texte de Milton est : « Should God create another Eve »(Paradise Lost, ix, v. 911).
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 100.
“‘Creature in whom excell’d/ Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d,/ Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet’”, J. Milton, Paradise Lost, ix, v. 897-99.
Ibidem.
Ibid., v. 912-16.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 136.
J. Milton, Paradise Lost, i, v. 91-2. Une fois encore, De Quincey paraît citer Milton de mémoire : « into what pit thou seest, / From what height fallen ».
Comme le souligne R. Maniquis : « De Quincey’s language preserves a Bunyanesque emblematic tradition » ; R. Maniquis, “The Dark Interpreter and the Palimpsest of Violence: De Quincey and the Unconscious”, in Robert Lance Snyder, Thomas De Quincey. Bicentenary Studies, Norman & London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 110.
« A Sketch from Childhood – No. II », T. De Quincey, The Works of Thomas De Quincey, op. cit., vol. 17, 91.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 111.
“The inventive powers of man are divine”, « The Palimpsest », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 139.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 111.
Ibid., 107.
Pour une étude approfondie du mythe du Juif errant, nous renvoyons à l’ouvrage de l’Américain G. K. Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, Rhode Island: Brown UP, 1965.
Jn 21.22.
S. T. Coleridge, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kathleen Coburn (ed.), vol. I, New York: Pantheon, 1957, Note 45.
Dans The Excursion, Wordsworth fait une référence indirecte au Juif errant dans le premier livre du poème intitulé « The Wanderer ».
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 107.
Ibidem.
“doom of sorrow”, ibidem.
L’image du fardeau revient plusieurs fois dans les Suspiria. Le fardeau est à la fois celui de la corporalité, « the burden of the flesh » (118), de la pensée, « the burden of thought » (141) et de la solitude, « burthen of solitude » (114),T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit.
« The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 108.
“the Pariah”, « Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 151.
L’expression est de J. H. Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard UP, 1963, 25.
“a woman-servant […] had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally”, « The Affliction of Childhood », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 97.
Ibid., 102.
“now dilated to colossal proportions”, ibid., 138.
“like a superb Medea”, ibid.
“Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams”, « Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 146.
“Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you”, ibid.
“Levana was [a] Roman goddess”, ibid.
J. Black, “Levana: Levitation in Jean Paul and Thomas de Quincey”, Comparative Literature, 1980, vol. 30 (1), 42.
L. Newlyn, Paradise Lostand the Romantic Reader, op. cit., 142
L’expression est de J. Black, « Levana: Levitation in Jean Paul and Thomas de Quincey », op. cit., 46.
Pour plus de détails concernant la figure de Levana dans la pensée de Jean Paul, nous renvoyons à l’article de J. Black, ibid.
“[Levana] […] therefore watches over human education”, « Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 147.
Idem.
Ibid., 148.
“Levana […] performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness”, ibid., 146-47.
“mighty phantoms”, ibid.
“Like God, whose servants they are”, ibid.
La tournure rappelle celle de l’apôtre Paul.
“They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols,—mine are the words”, « Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow »,T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 149, (nous soulignons).
Idem.
Jr 31.15
Mt 2.16-18.
“she stood in Rama, when a voice was heard of lamentation—Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted (…) she it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod’s sword swept its nurseries of Innocents”, « Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow »,T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings,op. cit., 149-50.
“her eyes are […] oftentimes rising to the clouds; oftentimes challenging the heavens”, ibid., 150.
“this sister […] it is that carries keys more than Papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every place”, ibid.
“this sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew”, ibid., 151.
Ibid., 152.
“her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers”, ibid.
“she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within”, ibid.
“she also is […] the suggestress of suicides”, ibid.
“she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all”, ibid.
“tiger’s leaps”, ibid.
“she is the defier of God”, ibid.
“The Interpreter is anchored and stationary in my dreams”, ibid., 157.
Voir note « The Apparition of the Brocken », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 154.
“in uttering your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the dark symbolic mirror for reflecting to the daylight what else must be hidden for ever”, ibid.
Idem.
Idem.
“what he says, generally is but that which I have said in daylight”, ibid.
“hidden for the moment or imperfectly developped”, ibid., 157.
“sometimes, as his face alters, his words alter; and they do not always seem such as I have used, or could use”, ibid., 156.
F. Burwick définit l’Interprète Obscur comme : “the recalcitrant nature of the alien self”, F. Burwick, Thomas De Quincey. Knowledge and Power, op. cit., 20.
“the Interpreter sometimes swerves out of my orbit, and mixes a little with alien natures”, « The Apparition of the Brocken », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 156.
Ibid., 157.
“the Greek chorus is perhaps not quite understood by critics, any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself”, ibid.
Idem.
“look here: […], behold!”, « Savannah-la-Mar », T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings, op. cit., 158-59.
“oftentimes in dreams did I and the dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her streets”, ibid., 158.
“the silent nurseries, where the children were all asleep”, ibid.
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