PEP – Lecture – week 11

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that Wordsworth is more prone to giving you lessons about life by
showing you around, by urging you to look around and notice the whole wisdom of life and world in those tiny bits and
pieces form the countryside. He wrote poetry about nature/ set in nature.

Once you start talking about Coleridge, you’re bound to get to know him, his life and the problems he faced and how he
dealt with them. He was an opium addict and he talked about it a lot in his poetry; some of those aspects we’ll address
later. He was capable of teaching you about life and the world by giving you examples from alternative realities he
created in his poetry. He gave the same lessons as Wordsworth, but he had a different ways of conveying those messages
and lessons he used realities of his own mind that can have sth to do with nature but have much more to do with
supernatural, gothic, extraordinary, weird etc. which was a great deal of his poetry is about.

It is in Lyrical Ballads that Coleridge and Wordsworth made an arrangement reflecting the content and the style of their
writing, which is mentioned later in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817). Here’s what C said regarding his work:

“...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 ...”

We’ve already discussed this: it was up to Wordsworth to give this ‘charm’ to everyday things like an average girl like
Lucy etc, while Coleridge as he already mentioned, wrote about supernatural persons. This is a hint for us when trying to
analyse excerpts/poems and identifying the poet:

WordsworthFLOWERS, MEADOWS, RIVERS etc

ColeridgeSUPERNATURAL, WEIRD

The goal is not just about writing about everyday things for the sake of writing about everyday things or writing about
supernatural things for the sake of supernatural; there was a purpose and a final goal of their writing which was
mentioned by Wordsworth – by talking about everyday things he was actually trying to address the deepest or the
ultimate human and natural laws, the way we are in this world, making sense of our life (we saw that in Ode of
Immortality, Lucy, Daffodils, Tintern Abbey), but also poetic laws.

This was the idea COLERIDGE also had, but he wanted to give his readers sth weird, supernatural, unordinary,
extraordinary events, sth scary, unusual and juicy (vidi Rukfaša kako se izražava) and that is the case with e.g. Christabel
– sth much juicier in this poem than any other of his poems including innuendos, potential sexual references; giving us sth
intriguing, scary, addressing the laws that made us who we are in this world.

They start from two different points but have the same goal. Everything that Wordsworth said in the Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads was regarding his own poetry in that collection. Coleridge had nothing to do with it. Coleridge explained
his poetry and his poems in L.B. in his work Biographia Literaria much later.

Going back to those truth/laws that Coleridge thought were necessary to understand a romantic poet some of them are
displayed in Biographia Litararia, but we’re going to mention another one of his poems that s not on the list, that has an
important title and an important excerpt that will tell us a lot about the way Coleridge perceived poetry, art, and life in this
world in general, no matter how ordinary we may seem to be.

The Eolian Harp – the importance of the instrument itself the way the instrument functions is very useful, simple, and
critical for understanding how poets function according to Coleridge and Wordsworth

-it produces the sound by blowing air into it; if we want it to play, it has to have wind going through it in order to produce
music which is according to Coleridge a wonderful metaphor of how poets create poems. Air blowing through them is
this inspiration that drives them towards creating their works.

Air = inspiration respiration, inspiration, inspire, has to do with breathing or getting in touch with this spirit that is
‘the spirit of poetry’.
There is no control over when the poet can write and produce a poem. The poet creates only when this inspiration enters
him just like the harp only plays once the air is passing through it. In terms of agency, there is no control and we’ll try to
address that particular point since Coleridge seems to have his own personal agency when it comes to writing poetry and
dealing with this talent he has or dealing with this poetic vision, his own Lucy that Wordsworth also had.

The rest of the excerpt has a great deal to do not only with the way we should understand poetry, nature but also the way
we should understand the world around us.

And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

What if we could imagine this great truth, that all things in nature, natural organic world are animated, shaped, defined,
moved by this soul that is at the same time this divine principle animates every single thing? This is what nature does to
Lucy at the beginning of the Three Years She Grew  nature shaped her to its own volition. In Coleridge’s poem the idea
is pretty much the same what if one soul/God of all permeates every single being in this organic nature?

The point isn’t what if there was sth like this. The point is that there is sth like that, the purpose of every good poet is to
recognize/identify that divine soul/principle that moves everything The fact that we live, breathe, walk, talk is the
evidence of this soul of each one of us that permeates every single being.

This is a simple way to approach things: Look around, observe, see how it all works in nature etc and you will notice sth
divine controlling everything.

Coleridge himself decided to try and upgrade this whole view of human existence in nature and make it more theoretical.
Wordsworth was a natural philosopher who promoted the idea of closing books and learning from nature. Coleridge on
the other hand was very nerdy, he was into books and philosophy, he translated a lot of books and while doing that, he
decided to ‘adjust’ a few points and ideas made by other philosophers and writers e.g. Kant.

It is in his B. L. that we can see that clearly. One of those ideas is the distinction between PRIMARY and
SECONDARY IMAGINATION:

“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
IMAGINATION 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
operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered
impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects
(as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.”

Primary imagination  we all possess it as long as we’re in good mental health; there’s nothing special about it

Everything we do instinctively or purposely is a repetition of actions of a divine principle. It is never our own agency, but
it is controlled by this divine principle that speaks through us. God speaks through these actions we make (breathe, walk,
eat etc). Through primary imagination we recognize all that.

Secondary imagination  sth special with an exclusive aspect, not everyone has it (it makes you special - philosophers,
artists, poets etc do)

Secondary imagination “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate”

We’ll use Daffodils to explain these two concepts.

Everybody can go out there, look around. Everyone who has this basic understanding of the world will notice sth special
about daffodils, that there is this divine principle speaking through them. However, only those who have the secondary
imagination=poetic imagination will be able to pick bits and pieces form this world and recreate new worlds in their
poemsWORKS OF ART (artists)
It’s not just about recoding the world like camera would (camera-like movement)it is about breaking the world into
those puzzle pieces we mentioned when we spoke of Wordsworth and making one’s own artistic puzzle that will be new,
unique, and original that will give you this ultimate truth, the way things should be or the way they are but we as
ordinary humans are unable to see them bcs of various reasons.

This is all very significant bcs it will help us understand the point Coleridge makes at the end of Kubla Khan. This poem
is very confusing and complex to grasp in regards to the messages it bears and the point Coleridge makes there, and this
secondary imagination has a great role in it.

UNIFICATION, SYNTHESIS Romantic notion; things are not suppose to be broken up for the sake of having
shattered bits and pieces. Things are supposed to be broken up in order to reconnect them, to create sth new. It takes the
Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Blake to break th existing image of the world to be able to married these two opposites
which were originally one/united/married (heaven and hell, good and evil) bcs they all come form the same source.

In order to achieve this, one has to break this ideology (biblical, religious etc) and the differences to be able to recreate
these new worlds which require unification.

The third quality, aside from primary and secondary imagination is FANCY.

“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; while it is
blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word
CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from
the law of association.”

There’s nothing unique nor original, no agency; just the fact that we remember some pieces and repeat them but that
doesn’t make good. There’s no art there and if there is, that art is bad.

All these ideas are actually ‘borrowed’ from Kant (ukr’o znači), it’s not his originally invention, but it is very useful in
analysing his poems, especially Kubla Khan.

Kubla Khan. Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. 

Subtitle (Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment) – sth important in Coleridge’s poetry; out of three poems that we will
discuss ,only one is completed (The Rime of Ancient Mariner – though the story in this poem also continues, it’s not
really finished)

Coleridge claims that neither Christabel nor Kubla Khan have endings.

In some editions there’s Coleridge’s explanation how he came about to write this poem (Rukfaš reko da to pro čitamo, evo
vam na).

“The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord
Byron], and, as far as the Author’s own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than
on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between
Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight
indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the
moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas’s
Pilgrimage: “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And
thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.” The Author continued for about three hours in
a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that
he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called
composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the
correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared
to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and
eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a
person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room,
found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim
recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered
 lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a
stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!

Then all the charm

Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar’st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for
himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him: but the to-morrow is yet to come.”

In short, he took some medication bcs of his illness and fell asleep reading a book. The events from the book continued in
his dreams. In his dream, he saw this wonderful vision of a palace he’s trying to describe here. When he woke up, he
started writing, but sth interrupted him and he couldn’t continue later. Some critics argue over whether he was telling the
truth about this or not; many doubt his story.

the idea of the poem has a lot to do with the Eolian Harp mentioned earlier – metaphor for writing and
inspirationone cannot decide when to write, the inspiration just hits you unexpectedly and when it’s gone/interrupted
there’s nothing you can do to continue. Poetry is not about sitting down and writing whenever you think you should - it’s
about those moments one cannot control and that’s why what you get is only a fragment of what was supposed to be a
complete poem.

By the time we’re done with reading Kubla Khan, we will have every reason to doubt whether this whole story about C’s
dream was true and the poem is really unfinished or if it finished but is presented to us as unfinished.

Here’s how the poem starts, and we have particular elements that clash there; the boldened words are important to help us
understand the conflict at the core of the poem. (Keep in mind, the secondary imagination tries to unify things; if there is
a clash, the clash is supposed to be resolved by this unification)

It shows us how human civilizations deals with the other, with natural wilderness, sth that is not controlled by them.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan With walls and towers were girdled round;

A stately pleasure-dome decree: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

Through caverns measureless to man And here were forests ancient as the hills,

   Down to a sunless sea. Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

We are just going to quote a few passages from each stanza to give you an idea about this conflict and the resolution
offered to us in the poem.

The opening image is very significant in terms of human agency, how this ruler Kubla Khan decreed a stately palate. He
decided to turn the wilderness into a beautiful palace, the sacred river into a beautiful stream (nemam blage iz čeg on to
zaključuje), made measureless wilderness (nature is measureless; no on measures save for humans, we invented it) into a
garden that can be measured.

There are elements of light that contrast with the elements of darknessbright gardens vs. sunless sea

This is common in the English literature e.g. Beowulf vs. Grendel

But, Kubla Khan is not an artist. He manages to introduce the element of peace, calm, of sth pleasant, but the way he does
it is very significant; it’s like putting control over nature, imposing sth upon nature. Makes all sorts of interventions in
this nature and changes it to fit within this setting he’s creating. But the civilization represented by KK wants to impose
control/rule over nature, and that is opposite of what artists doUNIFICATION is not about controlling and
imposition.
The image Coleridge creates at the beginning of KK has a very potentially disturbing ending and amidst all of this garden
imagery, KK hears voices of prophecy. Where do they come from, what is their source? The answer is in the next part of
the poem. There is a clear indication that the river Alph comes from a violent, wild and very unpleasant place: sunless
sea.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A savage place! as holy and enchanted A mighty fountain momently was forced:

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail

And here is the source of those voices: that is the natural source of the river. Violent dark, with very unpleasant, menacing
voices we heara woman wailing for her demon lover is this sudden burst that breaks things up, that carries all these
fragments through the very the river stream all the way to sunless sea. Things are about to explode, to get violent because
what KK does at the very beginning is just a temporary solution bcs that is not the purpose (to kill sb in your imagination,
to turn sth strong into sth docile and weak). Imagination is supposed to produce sth strong. It’s not about killing bcs lie
KK you can’t kill nature by imposing certain human measures and standards to create sth human e.g. garden.

How then are we to deal with this, how are we to bring together the first image of civilization of who we are and the
second image the image of wilderness and the source of life which is not that pleasant and nice as the garden in Xanadu
is?  Only imagination can achieve their unity. Not just any imagination, but only the second imagination has the
potential to idealize and unify, to create this ideal image of these two contraries working together without violence
and without war, which is how his dream vision ends. He now turns his head and sees sth that is a pleasant vision but a
different kind then the one KK creates bcs this has both.

This is what he sees:

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

The dome of pleasure is civilization reflected in nature. This is how things now work together without that clash one
could normally expect. And now, instead of that unpleasant sound and violence we could hear earlier, there’s now
mingled pleasure. The dome is founded upon those caves of ice which represents nature and civilization working
together, their unity  No war, no conflict, no clash but a reflection, coexistence that Coleridge promoted.

Obviously that conflict is something that we as humans invented as a potential outcome. Some of the poets then would go
back to their childhood bcs children aren’t corrupted and they see things as they are. There are no categories that a child
sees, a child sees only what is there. Adults are the ones that see races, cultures, religions, nations etc, all sorts of
categories that we use to organize things.

To Coleridge however it’s not the childhood vision; it a poetic vision that is shaped by the secondary imagination that
brings everything together.

And this is the point where his dream ends. The poem continues when he wakes up disappointed bcs he couldn’t create
such an image. It is not his invention, it is his own dream and what he saw in his dream. He wanted to recreate that dream
when he woke up but he couldn’t bcs he’s not that good, not that good of a poet as one may think.

The poem continues by stating that unfortunately he will never manage to create sth like that. In the preface he explains
why he can’t recreate this dome. However, if it were possible, this is how I would make it.

To such a deep delight ’twould win me, I would build that dome in air,

That with music loud and long, That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there, And close your eyes with holy dread

And all should cry, Beware! Beware! For he on honey-dew hath fed,

His flashing eyes, his floating hair! And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Weave a circle round him thrice,

If I were a great poet, I would be able to create those things of ice, those castles in the air and people would admire my
skill and ability to do it. But they would also be afraid of me bcs poet is not sb who sits down and write, but he is that
crazy creature that drinks honey-dew and milk of paradise to create poems. That is why poets are perceived with a mix of
fear and admiration.

In reality, he’s just repeating what Plato said in Ion:

“For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are
inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so
the lyric poets are not in their  right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when
falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who
draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are
in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us
that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses;
they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light
and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his
senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is
unable to utter his oracles. “

Artknowledge

Poets are possessed and here Plato explains how poets actually create and the source of poems; this is also how Coleridge
explains how poets create their works: In order to write this poem the poet had to fall asleep and have a dream vision.
This possession/inspiration is sth uncontrollable, sth that comes to you rather than sth you yourself evoke.

Returning to the question from the beginning: Is this a complete vision or is this a fragment?

 From everything that we’ve said, we can conclude this is a complete poem it has a beginning, middle, and
ending and the poem is not about the dream vision of KK’s garden but about HOW POETS WRITE
POETRY AND HOW POETRY IS CREATED  spontaneous overflow of powerful
emotions (Kubla Khan - you lose your mind, fall asleep and have a dream vision)