"There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind"
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Coetzee is describing a kind of power that looks, at first glance, like absence. If a writer’s influence can’t be traced through obvious copycats, workshop tics, or fashionable “in the manner of,” we tend to downgrade it. Coetzee flips that metric: the deepest literary force may be the kind you can’t easily footnote, because it’s been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream.
The key move is the word “mediated.” Influence isn’t a straight line from book to book; it passes through schools, national myths, tourism posters, moral vocabulary, even the way people learn to feel about “nature” and “the self.” Wordsworth becomes less a poet you imitate than a set of default settings: solitude as authenticity, landscape as spiritual teacher, childhood as a sacred reservoir. Once those settings are installed, later writers can sound “natural” while unknowingly running Wordsworthian code.
Coetzee’s subtext is also a quiet rebuke to literary criticism’s obsession with provenance. We love influence when it shows up as a visible inheritance (allusion, parody, style). Indirect influence is harder: it requires looking at culture as an ecosystem, not a family tree. For Coetzee, a novelist suspicious of grand cultural narratives yet acutely aware of how they discipline perception, Wordsworth is a perfect example: a poet whose legacy is not merely poetic technique but a reshaping of what modern people think an inner life is supposed to be. That’s influence as atmosphere, not argument.
The key move is the word “mediated.” Influence isn’t a straight line from book to book; it passes through schools, national myths, tourism posters, moral vocabulary, even the way people learn to feel about “nature” and “the self.” Wordsworth becomes less a poet you imitate than a set of default settings: solitude as authenticity, landscape as spiritual teacher, childhood as a sacred reservoir. Once those settings are installed, later writers can sound “natural” while unknowingly running Wordsworthian code.
Coetzee’s subtext is also a quiet rebuke to literary criticism’s obsession with provenance. We love influence when it shows up as a visible inheritance (allusion, parody, style). Indirect influence is harder: it requires looking at culture as an ecosystem, not a family tree. For Coetzee, a novelist suspicious of grand cultural narratives yet acutely aware of how they discipline perception, Wordsworth is a perfect example: a poet whose legacy is not merely poetic technique but a reshaping of what modern people think an inner life is supposed to be. That’s influence as atmosphere, not argument.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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