S. T. Coleridge As a Critic

 

 

Coleridge is one of the greatest of literary critics, and his greatness has been almost universally recognized. He occupies, without doubt, the fist place among English literary critics. After eliminating one after another the possible contenders for the title of the greatest critic, Saintsbury concludes:

"So, then there abide these three – Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge."

According to Arthur Symons, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is,

"… the greatest book of criticism in English."

Herbert Read concludes Coleridge as:

" … head and shoulders above every other English critic."

I. A. Richards considers him as the fore-runner "of the modern science of semantics", and Rene Wellek is of the view that he is a link, "between German Transcendentalism and English Romanticism."

 

A man of stupendous learning, both in philosophy and literature, ancient as well as modern, and refined sensibility and penetration intellect, Coleridge was eminently fitted to the task of a critic. His practical criticism consists of his evaluations of Shakespeare and other English dramatists, and of Milton and Wordsworth. Despite the fact there are so many digressions and repetitions, his practical criticism is always illuminating and highly original. It is rich in suggestions of far reaching value and significance, and flashes of insight rarely to be met with in any other critic. His greatness is well brought out, if we keep in mind the state of practical criticism in England before him. The Neo-classic critics judged on the basis of fixed rules. They were neither legislative nor judicial, nor were carried away by their prejudices. Coleridge does not judge on the basis of any rules. He does not pass any judgment, but gives his responses and reactions to a work of art. His criticism is impressionistic-romantic, a new kind of criticism, a criticism which dealt a knock out blow to neo-classic criticism, and has been in vague, more or less, ever since. He could discover new beauties in Shakespeare and could bring about fresh re-valuations of a number of old English masters. Similarly, his criticism of Wordsworth and his theories enable us to judge him and his views in the correct perspective.

 

In the field of theoretical inquiry, Coleridge was the first to introduce psychology and philosophy into literary criticism. He was interested in the study of the process of poetic creation, the very principles of creative activity, and for this purposes freely drew upon philosophy and psychology. He thus made philosophy the basis of literary inquiry, and thus brought about a union of philosophy, psychology and literary criticism. His literary theories have their bases in philosophy; he imparted to criticism the dignity which belongs to philosophy. He philosophized literary criticism and thus brought about a better and truer understanding of the process of creation and the nature and function of poetry.

 

His greatest and most original contribution to literary criticism is his theory of imagination. Addison had examined the nature and function of imagination, and Wordsworth, too, had developed his own theory on the subject. But all previous discussions of imagination look superficial and childish when compared with Coleridge's treatment of the subject. He is the first critic to differentiate between Imagination and Fancy, and to differentiate between primary and secondary Imagination. Through his theory of imagination he revolutionized the concept of artistic imitation. Poetic imitation is neither a servile copy of nature, not is it the creation of something entirely new and different from Nature. Poetry is not imitation, but creation, but it is creation based on the sensations and impressions received from the external world. Such impressions are shaped, ordered, modified and opposites are reconciled and harmonized, by the imagination of the poet, and in this way poetic creation takes place.

 

Further, as David Daiches points out:

"It was Coleridge who finally, for the first time, resolved the age old problem of the relation between the form and content of poetry."

Through his philosophical inquiry into the nature and value of poetry, he established that a poem is an organic whole, and that its form is determined by its content, and is essential to that content. Thus metre and rhyme, he showed, are not merely, "pleasure super-added", not merely something superfluous which can be dispensed with, not mere decoration, but essential to that pleasure which is the true poetic pleasure. This demonstration of the organic wholeness of a poem is one of his major contributions to literary theory.

 

Similarly, his theory of "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" marks a significant advance over earlier theories on the subject. His view that during the perusal of a poem or the witnessing of a play, there is neither belief nor disbelief, but a mere suspension of disbelief, is not universally accepted as correct, and the controversy on the subject has been finally set at rest.

 

However, it may be mentioned in the end that as Coleridge's views are too philosophical, he is a critic no easy to understand. Often it is fragmentary and unsystematic. Victorians, in general, could not appreciate him and his appeal was confined to the few.

 

It is only in the 20th century that his literary criticism has been truly understood and recognition and appreciation have followed. Today his reputation stands very high, and many go to him for inspiration and illumination. Despite the fragmentary nature of his work, he is now regarded as the most original critic of England.

S. T. Coleridge: Function of Poetry

 
Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of a poem. 

He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry.
"A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition."
Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, "consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed." A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different.

"All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better."

Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, "sounds and quantities", yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to give the name of poem to a composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says:
"But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and rhyme, metre and rhyme have been 'superadded'; they do not arise from the nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily memorized."
The "Superficial form", the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for distinguishing between different ways of handling language.
"A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction."
The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. "The immediate purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. The communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate end." Similarly, if the immediate aim be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while in an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure without having any concern with "truth, either moral or intellectual".
"The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or function, of each."

The immediate aim of poetry is to give pleasure.

But, "The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed" – in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies by emphasizing a very important principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. "To 'superadd' metre is to provide merely a superficial decorative charm." "Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it." Rhyme and metre involve, "an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound" which in turn "are calculated to excite" a "perpetual and distinct attention to each part." "A poem, therefore, must be an organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable in itself and conductive to an awareness of the total pattern of the complete poem."

"Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as its immediate object pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each competent part." Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, "parts mutually support and explain each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement."

Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the age old controversy whether the end of poetry is instruction or delight or both. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the whole.

Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a 'Poem' from 'Poetry'. According to Shawcross:
"This distinction between 'poetry' and 'poem' is not very clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination."
This is so because 'poetry' for Coleridge is an activity of the 'poet's' mind, and a 'poem' is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out:
"'Poetry' for Coleridge is a wider category than that of 'poem'; that is, poetry is a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical language, or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, 'the whole soul of man', into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its 'relative worth and dignity'."
This takes place whenever the 'secondary imagination' comes into operation. Whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.
"The employment of the secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and we can see why Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet's activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination."
A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a specific work of art produced by a special handling of language.

The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition; one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, "of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshens, with old and familiar objects", and so on, for an indefinite period. A long poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed, Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning.

In a legitimate poem, i.e. in a poem which is poetry in the true sense of the word, there is perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all Coleridge's pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,

"Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise."

Nothing that is, "superadded", merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole nature and be an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it, because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure arising from the parts augments the pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, "recurrence of accent and sound", they invite attention to the pleasure of each separate part, and thus add to the pleasure of the whole.
"When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the language and content of the poem, it excites a 'perpetual and distinct attention to each part', 'by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited', and carries the reader forward to the end 'by the pleasurable' activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is one unbroken pleasure trip from the parts to the whole."
Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry, and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, and shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and unifying power, which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that 'rhyme and metre' are merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the word.

S. T. Coleridge: Criticism on Wordsworth's Theory of Poetic Diction

Wordsworth and Coleridge came together early in life and mutually arose various theories which Wordsworth embodied in his "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" and tried to put into practice in his poems. Coleridge claimed credit for these theories and said they were "half the child of his brain". But later on, his views underwent the change; he no longer agreed with Wordsworth's theories and so criticized them. 

In his Preface, Wordsworth made three important statements all of which have been objects of Coleridge's censure.

First of all Wordsworth writes that he chose low and rustic life, where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil to attain their maturity. They are less under restraint and speak a plainer and more emphatic language. In rustic life our basic feelings coexist in greater simplicity and more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rural life, sprang from those elementary feelings and from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily realized and are more durable. Lastly the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

Secondly, that the language of these men is adopted because they hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived. Being less under social vanity, they convey their feelings and ideas in simple and outright expressions because of their rank in society and the equality and narrow circle of their intercourse.

Thirdly, he made a number of statements regarding the language and diction of poetry. Of these, Coleridge refutes the following parts: "a selection or the real language of men"; "the language of the men in low and rustic life": and, "Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference".

As regards the first statement, i.e. the choice of rustic characters and life, Coleridge points out, first, that not all Wordsworth characters are rustic. Characters in poems like Ruth, Michael, The Brothers, are not low and rustic. Secondly, their language and sentiments do not necessarily arise from their abode or occupation. They are attributable to causes of their similar sentiments and language, even if they have different abode or occupation. These causes are mainly two:
Independence which raises a man above bondage, and a frugal and industrious domestic life.
A solid, religious education which makes a man well-versed in the Bible and other holy books excluding other books.

The admirable qualities in the language and sentiments of Wordsworth's characters result from these two causes. Even if they lived in the city away from Nature they would have similar sentiments and language. In the opinion of Coleridge, a man will not be benefited from a life in rural solitudes unless he has natural sensibility and suitable education. In the absence of these advantages, the mind hardens and a man grows, 'selfish, sensual, gross and hard hearted'.

As regards the second statement of Wordsworth, Coleridge objects to the view that the best part of language is derived from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates. First, communication with an object implies reflection on it and the richness of vocabulary arises from such reflection. Now the rural conditions of life do not require any reflection, hence the vocabulary of the rustics is poor. They can express only the barest facts of nature and not the ideas and thoughts which results from their reflection. Secondly, the best part of a man's language does not result merely from communication with nature, but from education, from the mind of noble thoughts and ideals. Whatever rustics use, are derived not from nature, but from The Bible and from the sermons of noble and inspired preachers.

Coleridge takes up his statements, one by one, and demonstrates that his views are not justified. Wordsworth asserts that the language of poetry is:
"A selection of the real language of men or the very language of men; and that there was no essential difference between the language of prose and that of poetry".
Coleridge retorts that:
"'Every man's language' varies according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings".
Every man's language has, first, its individual peculiarities; secondly, the properties common to his class; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use.
"No two men of the same class or of different classes speak alike, although both use words and phrases common to them all, because in the one case their natures are different and on the other their classes are different".
The language varies from person to person, class to class, place to place.

Coleridge objects to Wordsworth's use of the words, 'very' or 'real' and suggests that 'ordinary' or 'generally' should have been used. Wordsworth's addition of the words, "in a state of excitement", is meaningless, for emotional excitement may result in a more intense expression, but it cannot create a noble and richer vocabulary.

To Wordsworth's argument about having no essential difference between the language of poetry and prose, Coleridge replies that there is and there ought to be, an essential difference between both the languages and gives numerous reasons to support his view. First, language is both a matter and the arrangement of words. Words both in prose and poetry may be the same but their arrangement is different. This difference arises from the fact that the poetry uses metre and metre requires a different arrangement of words. Metre is not a mere superficial decoration, but an essential organic part of a poem. Even the metaphors and similes used by a poet are different in quality and frequency from prose. Hence there is bound to be an 'essential' difference between the arrangement of words of poetry and prose. There is this difference even in those poems of Wordsworth's which are considered most Wordsworthian.

Further, it cannot be confirmed that the language of prose and poetry are identical and so convertible. There may be certain lines or even passages which can be used both in prose and poetry, but not all. There are passages which will suit the one and not the other.

Thus does Coleridge refute Wordsworth's views on the themes and language of poetry.

Imagination and Fancy in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria

Coleridge,in his essay "Biographia Literaria",rejecting the empiricist assumption that the mind was tabula rasa on which external experience and sense impressions were imprinted, stored,recalled, combined both come from respectively the Latin word 'imaginato' and Greek word 'phantasia'.

Coleridge defines imagination by saying that "The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception,and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am . The secondary I consider as am echo of the former, co-existing with the concious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degrees, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate, or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to dealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects are essentially fixed and dead."

Coleridge either the imagination into Primary and Secondary and draws a distinction between creative acts those are unconscious and intentional and deliberate acts. Primary imagination was for Coleridge, the "necessary imagination" as it "automatically balances and fuses the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the one receives through the senses."

Secondary imagination, on the other hand, represents a superior occulty which could only be associated with artistic genius. It is more active and concious in its working. It is at the root of all poetic activity. The secondary imagination selects and orders the raw material and reshapes and remodels it into objects of beauty. Thus it is "a shaping and modifying power." It "dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate." primary imagination is the conciousness shared by all men, while the secondary imagination is limited to poets.

"Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixitier and definities. Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space. But equally with the ordinary memory it must receive but its materials readymade from the law of association."

So, Coleridge seems to be saying that one can use fancy as a kind of power to create memory mosaics or colleges, rearranging what we've experienced into a new contribution or share to suit our fancy.

Coleridge has distinguished between Fancy and Imagination in the following ways:

# Fancy in Coleridge's eyes was employed for Tasks those were 'passive' , 'mechanical', the accumulation s of fact and documentation of what is seen. Fancy, Coleridge argued, was "too often adulterator and counterfeiter of memory." (59)

The imagination, on the other hand, was 'vital' and transformative, "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation". For Coleridge it was the imagination that was responsible for acts that were truly creative and inventive and, in turn, that identified true instances of find or noble art. (60)

# Fancy is "the faculty of mere images or impressions, as imagination is the faculty of intuitions."

# Fancy is light and playful, while Imagination is grave and solemn.

# Fancy was concerned with the mechanical operations of the mind, those which are responsible for the passive accumulation of data and shortage of such data in the memory.

Imagination on the other hand, described the "mysterious power," which extracted from such data, "hidden ideas and meaning"

# Fancy sports with the definite and static images and doesn't modify them; while imagination dissolves and reshapes them into new wholes.

# For Coleridge, fancy is the attribute of poetic genius, but imaginaton is its soul, which transforms all hoto one graceful and intelligent whole.

# Fancy is equated with a mechanical mixture and Imagination is equated with a chemical compound. In a mechanical mixture a number of ingredients are brought together. They are mixed up, but they do not tore their individual properties, they will exist as separate identities.

In a chemical compound, on the other hand, the different ingredients combine to form something new. The different ingredients no longer exist as separate identities. They kore their respective properties and fuse together to safate something new and entirely different. A compound is am act of creation; while a mixture is merely a bringing together of a number of separate elements.

Thus imagination creates new shapes and forms of beauty by during and unifying the different impressions it receives from the external world. Fancy is not creative, it is a kind of memory; it arbitrarily brings together images and even when brought together, they continue to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no colouring or modification from the mind. It is merely mechanical juxtaposition, and not a chemical fusion.

Coleridge explains the point by quoting two passages from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The following lines from this poem serve to illustrate fancy :

"Full gently now she takes him by the hand
A lily prisoned in a hold of snow
Or ivory in an albaster band
So white a friend engirds so white a foe.

In these lines images drawn from memory, but they do not interpenetrate into one another.

The following kind from the same poem, illustrate the power and function of imagination:

"Look! How a bright star shooteth from the sky
So glides he in the night from Nenus' eye.

"How many images and feelings", says Coleridge, "are here brought together without effort and without discord-the beauty of Adones - the rapidity of the flight - the yearning yet helplessness of the unamoured gazes- and a shadowy, ideal character thrown over the whole."

Coleridge's brief discussion of imagination and fancy in Biographia Literaria has been called,"perhaps the most famous single prose passage in all of English literature,yet . . .Also one of the most baffling ". He was also one first critic to distinguish between them and define their respective roles.