Rivers as Romantic Emblems of Creation

Abstract

In a return to the opening discussion of the previous chapter—Snyder’s incorporation of two archetypal Romantic emblems: mountains and rivers and the interpenetrative reciprocity of the two as a holistic representation of the universe and all its individual elements—this chapter will sustain an exploration of the idea of landscape as the embodiment of interpenetration and interdependence with a specific look at the idea of rivers in poetic traditions both Romantic and Snyderian, Eastern and Western, old and new. For, as Snyder has said, “Wherever there are mountains, there are rivers. Wherever there are mountains and rivers, there are spirits” (BC 43). I shall turn to Wordsworth’s visionary moment, in Book XIII of The Prelude (1805), atop Mount Snowdon; for, as Frederick S. Colwell asserts, “to stand astride or view [the flow of a river] from a height offers the prophetic stance by which we contemplate its entire passage, its past, present, and the brightening waters or rippling shoals ahead.” ¹