(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia
Literaria,Chapters XIII & XIV )
The "LYRICAL BALLADS"
"Lyrical Ballads" is
considered a landmark in English Romantic poetry, a clear break with the eighteenth
century in terms of diction and subject-matter. There is plenty of information
about the story of the wonderful year which produced this collection of poems
by Wordsworth and Coleridge. In Miss Fenwick's note to Wordsworth's poem "We
Are Seven" (1798)Poetical Works, 1857) Wordsworth's account of the genesis
of the book is reported as the joint composition of the "Ancient Mariner"
by the two poets on a walking tour to Lynton in November 1797, "till it became
too important for our first object, which was limited to our expecta-tion of five
pounds; and we began to talk of a volume which was to consist, as Mr Coleridge
has told the world, of poems chiefly on natural subjects taken from common life
but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium." When
we remember that nineteent of the twenty-three poems in the first collection of
1798 were Wordswoth's this account does not appear inconsistent with the one given
in the following passage by the same S.T.Coleridge who gives an account of its
genesis in his Biographia Literaria.
To begin with, Wordsworth and Coleridge thought of actual collaboration, but that
did not work. Words-worth contributions to The Ancient Mariner consisted of a
few lines and important suggestions about the story. Joint authorship of a prose
tale had previously come to nothing. Not collaboration but division of labour
was the solution. Coleridge's account in Biographia Literaria is as follows:
IMAGINATION AND FANCY
"Imagination" was a very important faculty
for the Romantic poets; Coleridge gives a reasoned account of this faculty.
His ideas are scattered in his Biographia Literaria but his central view is
set forth with reasonable conciseness in Chapter XIII. In Chapter IV, with reference
to two English poets, Coleridge writes:
"In
the present instance the appropriation had already begun and been legitimated
in the derivative adjective: Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowledy a very
fanciful, mind. If therefore I should succeed in establishing the actual exis-tence
of two faculties generally different, the nomenclature would be at once determined.
To the faculty by which I had characterized Milton we should confine the term
imagination; while the other would be contradistinguished as fancy."
******
CHAPTER XIII
"In consequence of this very judicious letter,
(preceding this extract) which produced complete conviction on my mind, I shall
content myself for the present with stating the main result of the chapter,
which I have reserved for that future publication, a detailed prospectus of
which the reader will find at the close of the second volume.
The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary
imagination I hold to be the liv-ing 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 an echo of the former, co-existing
with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind
of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation.
It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process
is rendered impossi-ble, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize
and to unify. It is essential vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially
fixed and dead.
Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and
definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from
the order of time and space; and blended with, and modified by that empirical
phaenomenon of the will which we express by the word CHOICE. But
equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all its materials ready made
from the law of association.
Whatever more than this I shall think it fit to declare concerning the powers
and privileges of the imagination in the present work will be found in the critical
essay on the uses of the supernatural in poetry and the principles that regulate
its introduction: which the reader will find prefixed to the poem of The Ancient
Mariner".
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,
Chapter XIII.)
ANALYSIS
1. Read lines 1-15 of the extract and say how Coleridge
divides "imagination". Quote the line.
2. What does Coleridge mean by "primary imagination"?
3. What does Coleridge mean by "secondary imagination"?
4. Read lines 16-18 and say what imagination is distinct from.
5. What is fancy? Quote from the text.
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
CHAPTER XIV
Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally proposed-Preface
to the second ed nsuing controversy, its causes and acrimony Philosophic definitions
of a poem and poetry with scholia.
"During, the first year that Mr Wordsworth and I were neighbours our
conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power
of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of
nature, and,the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours
of imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight
or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent
the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought
suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might
be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in
pan at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the
interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would
naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense
they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has
at any time believed himself under, supernatural agency. For the second class,
subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were
to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a
meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present
themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was
agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural,
or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest
and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.
Mr Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object to give
the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous
to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom
and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an
inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity
and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts
that ~either feel nor understand.
With this view I wrote the 'Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing,
among other poems, the 'Dark Ladie,' and the 'Christabel'
in which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first
attempt. But Mr Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful and the
number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming
a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. Mr Wordsworth
added two or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty
and sustained diction which is characteristic of his genius. In this form the
Lyrical Ballads were published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether
subjects which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial
style of poems in general might not be so managed in the language of ordinary
life as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business
of poetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considerable
length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import,
he was understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all
kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms of style
that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal
expression) called the language of real life.
From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence
of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the
whole long continued controversy. For from the conjunction of perceived power
with supposed heresy I explain the inveteracy and in some instances, I grieve
to say, the acrimonious passions with which the controversy has been conducted
by the assailants.
Had Mr Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things which they were
for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguished from the
compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought;
had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and
pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into
the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them. But year
after year increased the number of Mr Wordsworth's admirers. They were found too
not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young men of
strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their admiration (inflamed perhaps
in some degree by opposition) was distinguished by its intensity, I might almost
say, by its religious fervour. These facts, and the intellectual energy of the
author, which was more or 16ss consciously felt where it was outwardly and even
boisterously denied, meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions and of
alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism which would of itself
have borne upthe poems by the violence with which it whirled them round and round.
With many parts of this preface, in the sense attributed to them and which the
words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary objected
to them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least)
both to other parts of the same preface and to the author's own practice in the
greater number of the poems themselves. Mr Wordsworth in his recent collection
has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume,
to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far as I can discover,
announced any change in his poetic creed. At all events, considering it as the
source of a controversy in which I have been honored more than I deserve by the
frequent conjunction of my name with his, I think it expedient to declare once
for all in what points I coincide with his opinions, and in what points I altogether
differ. But in order to render myself intelligible I must previously, in as few
words as possible, explain my ideas, first, of a poem; and secondly, of poetry
itself, in kind and in essence.
The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction; while it
is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself constantly aware that
distinction is not division. In order to obtain adequate notions of any truth,
we must intellectually separate its distinguishable parts; and this is the technical
process of philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions
to the unity in which they actuall~ co-exist; and this is the result of philosophy.
A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the difference therefore
must consist in a different combination of them, in I?ff-sequence of a different
object proposed. According to the ',ence of the object will be the difference
of the combination. It is :s sible that the object may be merely to facilitate
the recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial =gement; and
the composition will be a poem, merely u e Is it is distinguished from prose by
metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might
attribute the name of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days in the
several months:
Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November, etc.
and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure is found
in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that
have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems.
So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents supplies
an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the communication
of truths; either of truth absolute and demonstrable, as in works of science;
or of facts experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the
highest and most permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but
it is not itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of pleasure
may be the immediate purpose; and though truth, either moral or intellectual,
ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distinguish the character of the author,
not the class to which the work belongs. Blest indeed is that state of society
in which the immediate purpose would be baffled by the perversion of the proper
ultimate end; in which no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus
even of an Anacreon, or the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!
But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically
composed; and that object may have been in a high degree attained, as in novels
and romances. Would then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme,
entitle these to the name of poems? Theansweristhat 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. They must
be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each part which
an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are calculated to excite.
The final definition then, so, deduced, may be thus worded. A poem is that species
of composition which is opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate
object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in
common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the
whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.
Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants attaching each
a different meaning to the same word; and in few instances has this been more
striking than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man chooses to
call every composition a poem which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave
his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize
the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that the whole is likewise entertaining
or affecting as a tale or as a series of interesting reflections, I of course
admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem and an additional merit. But if
the definition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer it must be one
the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion
harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical
arrangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the ultimate judgment
of all countries in equally denying the praises of a just poem on the one hand
to a series of striking lines or distichs, each of which absorbing the whole attention
of the reader to itself disjoins it from its context and makes it a separate whole,
instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained composition,
from which the reader collects rapidly the general result unattracted by the component
parts. The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical
impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution;
but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey
itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual
power; or like the path of sound through the air; at every step he pauses and
half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again
carries him onward. 'Praecipitandus est liber spiritus,' says Petronius Arbiter
most happily. The epithet liber here balances the preceding verb; and it is not
easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.
But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem, we have
still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato, and Bishop Taylor,
and the Theoria Sacra of Burnet, furnish undeniable proofs that poetry of the
highest kind may exist without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing
objects of a poem. The first chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large proportion
of the whole book) is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less
irrational than strange to assert that pleasure, and not truth, was the immediate
object of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the word
poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a
poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Yet if a harmonious
whole is to be produced, the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with
the poetry; and this can be no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection
and artificial arrangement as will partake of one, though not a peculiar, property
of poetry. And this again can be no other than the property of exciting a more
continuous and equal attention than the language of prose aims at, whether colloquial
or written.
My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the word,
have been in part anticipated in the preceding disquisition on the fancy and imagination.
Whatis poetry? is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet? that the answer
to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting
from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts
and emotions of the poet's own mind. The poet, described in ideal perfection,
brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties
to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone
and spirit of unity that blends and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that
synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name
of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding
and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, controul (laxis
effertur habenis ) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite
or discordant qualities-. 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 freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual
state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady
self- possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while
it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art
to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy
with the poetry. 'Doubtless,' as Sir John Davies observes of the soul (and his
words may with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the
poetic imagination):
Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates Steal access through our senses to our minds.
Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its, drapery, motion its
life, and imagination the soul that is every where, and in each; and forms all
into one graceful and intelligent whole".
Samuel Taylor Colerdige, Biographia Literaria,
Chapter XIV.
Notes:
1. power ... sympathy: the act of sharing or tendency
to share in an emotion or sensation or condition of an-other person or thing.
2. accidents: events that are without apparent cause, or is unexpected.
3. practicability:
4. suggest itself: come into the mind (of an idea)..
5. incidents: events.
6. aimed at: sought as object to be attained or achieved.
7. delusion: false belief or impression.
8. agency: influence, power, force.
9. seek after: search, aim at, look for, explore.
10. endeavours: attempts, efforts.
11. romantic: Coleridge uses the term in its seventeenth-century meaning: imaginary,
fictitious,, fabulous, or extravagant, exaggerated, fantastic, extraordinary.(See
the paragraph dealing with the meaning of the term "ro-mantic" in
the Romantic "Literary Background."
12. inward: mental, spiritual, directed toward the inside.
13. willing: ready, spontaneous, quick, pleased.
14. disbelief: lack of belief that something is true or that something really
exists; failure to believe, incredulity.
15. lethargy: lazy state of mind, apathy, indifference.
16. film: a thin covering layer, veil.
17. industry: diligence.
18. impassioned: deeply felt.
19. notwithstanding: in spite of.
20. import: meaning, importance.
21. contend: to fight; to claim, to assert, to maintain.
Lake District
ANALYSIS
First Paragraph
1. The passage taken from Coleridge's "Biographia
Literaria" is a very detailed description of the kind of "con-sciousness-raising"
that goes on in the 1798 "Lyrical Ballads". Read the first sentence
and say what "the two cardinal points of poetry" are. Quote from the
text.
1.
2.
2. How can the two aims, or "cardinal points of
poetry be achieved? Substantiate and quote from the first sen-tence.
1.
2.
3. Read the second sentence and say what can combine
both "cardinal points of poetry" in the two poets' view.
4. How does Coleridge define this type of poetry? Quote
from the text.
5. Who suggested that a series of poems of two sorts
should be composed, Coleridge or Wordsworth?
6. Coleridge and Wordsworth decided to write a collection
of poems combining the "the two cardinal points of poetry". Read lines
9-18 and identify the two different areas the two poets agreed to present in
their poems of two kinds.
First
Type of poems
Second
type of poems
Second Paragraph
7. In the second paragraph of this extract Coleridge
specifies the different tasks of the two poets, and what their attention should
be directed to. Specify the lines describing Coleridge's and Wordsworth's tasks,
and the sentencing making up the whole paragraph.
1. Coleridge: lines
2. Wordsworth: lines:
8. Consider ech poet's task and analyse it in terms of:
subject, aim, and means. Then draw a graphic as to show the common poetic purpose
of both poets. Complete the table below.
Terms
Coleridge
Wordsworth
Subject
Aim
By means of
Their tasks can be graphically described as follows:
Supernatural Subjects
Subjects from ordinary
life
By exciting real
emotions
By exciting feeling
analogous to the supernatural
Real
Life
9. In the closing lines of the second paragraph Coleridge
states what prevents people to see the "truth" of both the "supernatural"
and "real" world. Substantiate.
Third Paragraph
10. In the thrid parahraph Coleridge specifies that to
realize his ideal he wrote (1).......................................................
and was preparing (2) ..................................... and (3) .....................................................................................................................
.
11. What does Coleridge say of Wordsworth's production?
12. How did Wordsworth present the Lyrical Ballads in
the first edition? Quote from the text.
13. What did Wordsworth add to the second edition of
1800?
14. As regards the style Wordsworth rejected "as
vicious and indefensible" all phrases and forms of style that were not
included in what he called .......................................................................................................................................
.
15. What was Colerige's reaction to Wordsworth's definition
of his style?
