For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. (Wordsworth 19-24)
The first two lines, which convey an instance in which sublimity appears to be lacking, are reflected in the black and white version of my Picasso re-creation. This vacancy is reflected in a lack of color. This lack of color hides the dancing figures – which reminded me of the dancing daffodils in the poem – and moreover, dulls the vitality of the geometric pattern that takes the place of a sky in Picasso’s Bacchanal with Goat and Spectator. Along the lines of the Wordsworthian egotistical sublime, the poet must then fill the vacancy with sublimity using a flowery image of nature that both defamiliarizes the normal and familiarizes the foreign for the reader. I felt as though color could take on a similar role in visual art, making a muted and dull landscape into a sharp and playful fantasy.
The color-version of my Picasso recreation contains many elements of Wordsworth’s notion of the sublime, particularly as seen in “I Wandered Loney as a Cloud”. The white figure beside the small body of water lounges back in a relaxed manner while reaching up to a geometric sky; it is the spiraling black and blue of the sky that creates a dream-like aura, reflecting a loss of control and a loss of one’s sense of self. I find this to be particularly fitting giving that this figure, among the other figures in the painting, is anonymous (no face, etc.) and yet at peace in some sort of heavenly sublimity. This image also quite literally reflects the description of the first stanza. The white figure might be described as wandering “lonely as a cloud,” as they connect with what they see in the sky without concern for their own identity. The figure also nearly appears to be floating over “vales and hills,” and even rests “beside the lake” like the poem describes its subject. Color also plays an important role in grounding this sublimity by connecting it to reality. The earth-tones black, brown, and green that make up the lower half of the painting visually feel as though they are pulling or anchoring the floating upper half of the poem – indicative of the ways in which colors interact with one another to create a desired effect. As a viewer I believe this not only has to do with color, but also has to do with the spiraling, uplifting effect of the upper-half in contrast to the dense, solid shapes of the lower-half. Simultaneously, though, the figures in the lower half of the poem are dancing, and thus liberated - which to me, conjures the dancing waves and daffodils of Wordsworth's poem. I would finally like to circle back to the stanza that influenced me the most, as this is the only part of the poem that appears to be grounded – what feels like an essential pause and reality-check, juxtaposed to the sublime, that makes the ultimate continuation of the sublime possible. This part of the poem momentarily takes the audience out of the daffodil fields, and into the comfort and normalcy of the home (“when on my couch I lie”), only to return back to the daffodil fields a final time.