Byles tas a ets____ieal ial} ats ses spe gt a | pts eae eal aly eg ea suse pha sl sls ed in i go at st al sil gas $28 ye asa eet el 98 ally Batt Sy tes eet se | MOh.sobai@gmail.com sau Sei outs ene sh Jobe wy SHA pate eo ont ee do! Dr.adel afousi@yahoo.com pun 3S Sa gle eta as Dalal lod Anata Lats oes Lo}~ (87246) a= 40 00967 -6 - 509551 : asia (00967 -6 - 509553 « usté ——__| Salsa a) ne Baeeseiee = loge depts hao * ssFrom Mirror to Lamp: The Romantic Vision of Imagination Dr. Amin Ali Ahmad Al-Solel” Abstract The English Romantic poets have established a distinctive theory of imagination in which they mixed their philosophical background with poetic creativity. Coleridge set the philosophical and intellectual ground for the Romantic vision of imagination. The analogy between the human mind and the nature isthe core of Wordsworth’s concept of imagination. Imagination is the cupreme active principle in poetic composition for Keats and the spirit of poctry for Shelley. Introduction The radical change in the concept of imagination in the Romantic era is part of and derived from the remarkable change inthe theory of poetry held by the Romantics at the time, Unlike the eighteenth century, imagination has become a cardinal point in the poetical theory in the nineteenth century. In fact, it was part of the’ identity of the Romantic poets who believe that without it poetry is impossible. Tis is discussed clearly by CM. Bowra when he assures jf in the that this belief in the imagination “was part of the contemporary * Assistant Professor, Chairman of English Department, Faculty of Art, Thunar University 404(20) saat seals Llp ad aly le individual self” (87). As the Romantic poets were conscious of a wonderful capacity to create imaginary worlds, they thought that to curb imagination was to deay something vitally necessary to their whole being. They thought that it ‘was just this which made them poets, Because they are poets, Bowra states, ‘hoy insist that “the most vitel activity ofthe mind isthe imagina:ion” (87). [As it captured their minds, the English Romantics have attempted to build vp 2 distinctive theory of imagination largely different from, their predecessors. This distinctiveness is pictured metaphorically by Abrams in the title of his famous book The Mirror and the Lemp: Romantic Theory aad the Critical Tradition (1971) indicating thet in traditional ertiism fiot: Plato until the ighteenth century the mind had been & miror, a reflector of extemal objects, whereas ‘forthe Romantics it became a lamp, a radiant projector. The aim of the present study, in this respec, is to thed light on the individual efforts of the major Faglish Rowatic poots in defining imagination to, ultimately, make a total vision of what is usally called “the Romantic imaginetion’ Imagination in the Age of Enlightenment The idea of the imagination has been discussed widely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the extent that might have encouraged James Engell to open his book The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to ‘Romanticism (1981) with the statement, “The Enlightenment created the idea of the imagination” (1). He claims that the history of the creative imagination from 1660 to 1820 was a ‘human drama’, unfolding by stages. Seldom in ‘Western culture has one idea excited so many leading minds for such a stretch of time. It reached its ripeness by “humble rhymers ard home-spua philosophers, great poets and philosophers, level-headed and Lalf_mad men” (4) ts literary expression assured the birth of Romanticism, In the seventeenth century, British empirical psychology revived perspective on the world that had been relatively ignored. It was based on questions and discoveries about the formation of passions, thoughts, 4032) sass Lafpall lob Raley ne perceptions, and knowledge within the mind. This empirical psychology soon combined with at least two other elements. One was a Platonic strain, represented by the Cambridge Platonists, Shaftesbury, and a revived interest in ancient philosophy. The other was what Engell called the eighteenth century ‘retom to nature’, a new interest in the external and the cult of the natural. By the middle of the Enlightenment, the empirical systems had become more flexible end. were shedding .their farfetched physiology and mechanistic notions. The Platonic strain had picked up, from Leibniz and Locke, the idea of an active force or power in the mind paralleled by one working in nature, The cult of nature embraced aesthetic and artistic values, such as the picturesque, ‘he pathetio, and the sublime, which in tum had their roots in the way the mind pereeives and orders extemal reality. Jn the empirical systems the human mind is described as being merely the pessive recorder of sense impressions, especially those originated in the sight; images or replicas of original sense impressions are stored in the memory, whence ~in the acts of thinking or reflecting- they are recalled and combined with other stored-up images by the faculty of association. For the empiricsts the term ‘imagination’ is usually not distinguished from ‘fancy’ and is endowed with ‘a two-fold fimction’, First, it is thought to be a mode of ‘memory, that i, the mental faculty which recalls images from the memory and 0 represents sense objects not actually present. In this respect, Hobbes (1651) ‘thinks that “imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse ‘considerations has diverse names”, and so defines imagination as “nothing but decaying sense” (12). Second, the imagination is described as the power by ‘hich originally distinct impressions are welded together to form images of things that have no existence in the sense, Samuel Johnson best sums up the ‘wo fictions mentioned up when he defines ‘imagination’ in his famous ictionary as ‘fancy’; “the power of forming ideat pictures; the power of ‘epresenting things absent to one’s self or others”. 402G0 ssa Like Hobbes, Locke believes that the mind is wholly pessive in the reception of all its simple ideas. He assumes that the mind begins life as a tabula rasa, and then, from its first experiences after birth, becomes marked, scored, impressed and indented. The most important contribution of Locke's theory of Knowledge is that the mind has imate power which enables it 10 make from simple ideas new complex ones which it never received so united. Hence, Engell believes that Locke’s view of the mind’s joining and ‘amalgainating capacity became a mainstay to thinkers who identified this power with imagination Another remarkable view held by Locke is his argument about the ‘mind's formation of many ideas and elements into one integrated whole. The ‘mind, according to him, unites many ideas and associations into one. Some ‘ideas are “complicated of various simple ideas or complex ideas made up cf simple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itself as one entire thing, and signified by one name” (147). The phrase ‘when the mind pleases’, Engell comments, implies a voluntary or constious control of the productive power. This notion became central for theories of poetic imagination and symbolism. In this sense, Imagination was seen by David Hume as a turbulen:, unpredictable, but potentially beneficial force which must be refined and kert ‘within the bounds of reason. A ‘delicacy of imagination’ is "requisite to convey a sensibility of those finer emotions", the beautiful and the tue (216) Imagination is a natural structure ofthe mind which most be trained or attuned to appreciate the greatness of art, to develop a meaningfl standard of taste, Johnson's moral vision of art, imagination is the key to inspire an audieno> foward goodness, so an artist must possess a fertile and ever expanding imagination, "Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his {the poet's) imagination... for every idea is usefil for the enforcement or decoration of moral and religious truth” (228). Imagination is good when is sotJy ab taste Une power is given direction and moral purpose. Johnson assumes a somewhat utilitarian attitude toward imagination; the value of imagination is dependent on its usefulness in attaining or helping others to attain virtue. Unchecked, ‘imagination promotes virtue and vice ambivaleatly. Imaginative freedom must only exist within the bounds of an imminently rational moral code. ‘The Romantic Imagination: Coleridge and Wordsworth With, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a brillimt genius with meny-sided Intellectual intezests, imagination gets its maturity as a philosophical and aesthetic concept. He is, as Stephen Prickett admits, “widely agreed today fo stand at a critical point in the history of the ideas of creativity® (1). Along his life, which was fill of troubles and challenges, he did his best to set @ philosophical and intellectual ground for the new theory of poetry. Through his theory of imagination which seems to be his greatest contribution to literary criticism, Coleridge revolutionized the concept of artistic imitation, To him, poetry is not imitation anymore, but creation- a creation based on the sensations and impressions received from the external world. Such impressions shaped, ordered, modified and opposites are reconciled and harmonized by the imaginstion of the poet and in this way poetic creation takes place, In fact, | Coleridge introduced philosophy and psychology into literary crit | to study the process of this poetic creation and the very principles of the creative activity. In the first stage of his development, Coleridge came under the spell of | the empiricist and associationist theories of John Locke, David Hartley and [David Hume who gave a mechanistic view of the information of human {character and personality. “In their systems the mind is represented as a tabula | ‘asa or a sheet of ‘white paper void of all characters, without any ideas? on ism in order Which external impressions conveyed through the five senses are printed” (Hill, 1), Such sonse perceptions, impressions and sensations, are compounded into ideas of greater and greater complexity. According to the empirical theory, the 400(1) a) igsaly hal ld Ral Une reduced merely to a passive and inactive human mind (or imagination) recipient of impressions and sensations ffom the outside world, In opposition to this theory, Coleridge gradually develops his conviction that imagination is a ‘ore truly creative power. Rather then being simply a faculty for rearranging, materials fed to it by the senses and the memory, the imagination is a shaping and ordering power, a ‘modifying’ power which colors objects of sense with the mind’s own light. It bas often been suggested that Coleridge’s theory of imagination was derived from his study of German philosophers, especially Kant and Schelling. ‘These philosophers took a more active view of the imagination, For them the ‘human mind or imagination is not a mere passive agent, but an active and creative power. Coleridge rejected the associationist view of imagination and henceforth subscribed to the Kantien view of imagination as an ‘Esemplastic power’, an active power which shares, moulds, and recreates. According to this view, artis not a mere imitation of nature, itis re-creation, Beauty is nothing objective; it is imparted to the extemal world by the observer. In the apprehension of beauty, the soul projects itself into the outward forms of nature, In this way, the extemal is made intemal, and the intemal is made extemal. The soul of the artist fuses with the extemal reality and transforms and recreates. It is the idea which fuses and unites. (Coleridge's theory of imagination is given in its fullest exposition in his Biographia Literaria which was written in 1815 and published in 1817. In chapter XII, he draws a clear distinction between fancy and imagination. For imagination he says: ‘The IMAGINATION then, 1 consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and ss a repetition inthe Mnite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite T AM, The secondary Imagination I consider a6 an echo 399of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as ‘deatcal with the primary in the kind of is agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. I¢ dissolves, ‘diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is, rendered impossible, yet stillet all events it struggles to ideclize and to unify Iris essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. (202) ‘The distinction: here,. as Shaweross' comments, is evidently between the imagination as universally active in consciousness (creative in that it extemalizes the world of objects by opposing it to the self) and the same faculty in a heightened power as creative in a poetic sense. In the first case our exercise of the power is unconscious: in the second the will directs, though it does not determine, the activity of the imagination. The imagination of the ‘ordinary man is capable only of detaching the world of experience from the self and contemplating in its detachment; but the philosopher penetrates to the underlying harmony and gives it concrete expression, The ordinary consciousness, with no principle of unification, sees the universe as a mass of particulars: only the poet can depict this whole as reflected in the individual parts, Itis inthis sense (as Coleridge hed written many years before) that to the poet ‘each thing has a life of its own, and yet they have all our Tifet (Shawoross, 98). ‘The significance of the imagination for Coleridge is that it represents the sole faculty within man that is able to achieve the romantic ambition of reuniting the subject and the object; the world of the self and the world of nature. By esteblishing the creative act as mimicking the "organic principle" or “one”, the romantic theorist sought to establish a harmonious relationship between the ideal world of the subject and the real world of the object. For Coleridge, the most important aspect of the imagination is that it is active to the highest degree. I is, as Willey argues, “the mind in its highest state of creative 398(20) saat nplySayl lad aa tne insight anf alertness; its acts are acts of growth, and display themselves in braking down the hard commonplaceness which so easily besets us, and in remolding this stubbom rew material into new and living wholes” (124). ‘Sen Gupta (21) grasps three conclusions from the description given by Coleridge of the imagination. First of all, being the power which gives form, it is greater than the form; or in other words, is greater than shapeliness, than mere architectonic; it is the glance and the exponent of an indwelling power. Secondly, the unifying power of imagination is immediate and direct whereas the aggregation of reasoning is mediate and indirect. It has the unmechanical simplicity of an instinct. Lastly, the intuitive vision can also seize the distinctiveness of the things it portrays. Life, according to Coleridge, is ‘the principle of individuation’. In an attempt to distinguish between the primary imagination and secondary imagination, D.G. James, in his remarkable book Scepticism and Poetry, suggests that the difference between them lies in the destructive clement of the secondary imagination, By claiming that thee isa difference in the mode of operation, Coleridge is saying no more than that the conscious imaginative activity of the artist has a necessarily destructive side which the primary imagination has not. The secondary imagination, unlike the primary, hhas not only to build up; it bas also to break down. It has to break down the ‘world of ‘everyday’ perception. And in this destructive clement, necessarily present in the poetic imagination, consists this difference in the mode of operation. In respect of its destructiveness it is different from the primary imagination; in respect of its coustructiveness itis identical with it “inthe kind of ts agensy’. Hence, “Coleridge was right to stress the identity rather than the difference, for its destructiveness is but an aspect of its life, incidental to its ‘passion to areate, and inspired by it” James, 17). ‘And now for fancy, Coleridge says: 397 | t || | 2) at Spey Shall as Aaa ie FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters fo play with, but fists and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other then a mode ‘of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while ‘blended with, and modified by thet empirical pienomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must eccive alts materials ready made from the law of association. (23) In s0 farts it involves. acts of selection and of arrangerent, fancy is ona higher level chan mere perception or mere memory. But itis below imagination in that, instead of making all things new, it merely constructs patiems out of ready-made materials, ‘fixites and definites’. As connevted by the fancy, ‘objects are viewed in their limitations and particularly; they are fixed and dead fn the sense that their connection is mechanical and not organic, The law, indeed, which governs it, is derived from the mind itself, but the links are supplied by the individual properties of the objects. Fancy is, in fact, the faculty of intuitions, How is, thea, fancy to be distinguished ftom imagination? In a letter to Sharp dated January 15, 1804, Coleridge speaks of the “Imagination or the ‘modifying power, in that highest sense of the word, in which I have ventured to oppose it to Fancy, oF the Aggregating power in that sense ia which it is a dim ‘analogue of creation not all that we can believe, but all that we can conceive of creation” (Griggs, 585). Imagination is an activity similar to that of the creative process; it modifies or transforms the material on which it operates. Fancy on the other is its opposite. It cannot modify the material since it can only combine or group together mechanically. In this light it is observed, Griggs illustrates, thatthe ancient music "consists of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing sounds," while “the modern embraces harmony also the result of combination and the effect of a whole” (586). Faney depends upon the Succession of events in time and it combines these events asociately in such a 396ey apa a8 Rane Ble ‘way that the event retains its original character. Imagination on the other is a principle introducing harmony, info the manifold, and by virtue of this it transforms the given info a whole, Willy mekes the distinction between fancy and imagination clear when ho illustrates the following: Je (fncy) juxtaposes images, but does not fuse thera into unity; its products are like mechanical mixtures (as of selt with iron filings), in which the ingredients, though close together, rersaia ‘he same as when apart; whereas those of Imagination are like chemical compounds (sy, of sodiurn and chlorine), ia which the ingredients Tose their separate identities ia a new substance, ‘coniposed of them indeed, but differing ftom them both. (124- 125) ‘The best way to understand Fancy is to regard it as pseudo-imagination. It same to be the same thing as imagination but is really different, because it deals with “fixitis' and ‘definites’ which cannot by modified ftom within, ‘which remain distinct even when they are made parts of@ large whole, for they could be thus transformed, they would not be fixities or definites anymore, Fancy, Sasti argues, “is not totally passive; but compared withthe imagination it is passive” (25). because it has its origin in cortain bodily sensations and feelings and abstrécts the events and the objects from the context to which they normally belong, Timagination, which played a vital role in Coletidge’s theory of mind, has become the central theme of Wordsworth poetty. In The Prelude he said: “Imagination having been our theme’, and near the end of it he acknowledged, “This faculty hath been the moving soul/ OF our long labor” (The Prelude, 232), Hence, Engell assumes, “Wordsworth is convinced that the imagination is a varied power allowing ws to perceive nature and also to infuse our deepest, feelings, sympathy, and religious faith through the material forms and ‘experience of the world” (221). Wordsworth himself describes that type of 395(1 saat! sna Ladies taal ne imagination which he calls ‘mediative’ as opposed to the ‘dramatic’ kind he finds supremely exemplified in Shakespeare. The analogy between the human mind and nature is the core of Wordsworth’s concept of imagination. This is assured by J.A.W. Heffemen ‘when he states: “Wordsworth’s concept of the imagination as a power is based con his belief that nature provides a model for the creative transformations \wrought by man” (Heffeman, 166). Both Wordsworth and Coleridge found in ature a sanction or archetype for the postic fusion of novelty and truth, This ‘movement to nature as guide and authority, so typical of Wordsworth in all of ‘his thinking, is fandamental to his concept of imagination ‘To state the harmony between nature and the mind of man Wordsworth ‘wrote in 1802 thatthe poet “considers man and nature as essentially adapted to cach other, and the mind of man as naturally the mitror ofthe fairest and most interesting properties of nature (Cited in Heffernan, 167). The key word here is, as Hefleman comments, is ‘mirror’ It clearly indicates that the consonance cof mind and universe is founded on a vital éomespondence; a profound analogy ‘between their receptive powers. In Wordsworth’s view, man is the image and likeness of natere, According to Wordsworth, a consciousness of analogy originates in the tind of the ‘favored’ child, gradually emerging and expanding with the péssage of time. As the child matures, he finds ‘his image’ in the universe; the ‘inexhaustible’ majesty of nature, abundantly manifest in the beauty, ‘excellence, and sublimity of her countenance, appears before hiim as a fitting counterpart to the “insetiate’ power, aspiration, and dignity of his own mind. Hence, nature renders back to him his deepest self, so that what he sees is & vital analogy between the energies within him and the energies without. In this Sense, Wordsworth held that the creation of postry imitates the ection of creative power in the visible world. In Book Il of The Prelude, the infant Shown to us is a ‘creator’ of the world about him, operating on it as ‘an agent 398en sal of the one great mind”. This operation demonstrates “the first/ Poetic spirit of fe,” and therefore constitutes a paradigm of the creative act. Like yal hab Reale A our bomen the infant, “the poet must imitate the living power menifest in nature itself the exercise of imagination then becomes, as Wordsworth later called it, ‘a God- Tike [function] ofthe soul” (Uleffernan, 168), Jn Wordsworth’s view on imagination, there are two powers of imaginstion, ‘pereeting’ and ‘creeting’. The perceiving nanre of imagination ‘can be compared, as suggested by Engell with Coleridge's ‘primary imagination’, the ability to form a coberent vision of the wortd from a jumble of sease impressions. This power of perceiving hes “First-bom affinities that ‘AU Our new existence to existing things.” Similarly, the ‘creating nature of imagination is equivalent to Coleridge's ‘secondary imagination’. In this respect, Wordsworth asks, in the 1815 Prefece, “Thus fer of an endowing or ‘modifying power” in one or several images, “but imegination also shapes and creates" by “consolidating numbers into unity, and dissolving and separating ‘unity into number,” (~), phrases similar to those in Coleridge's definition of the secondary imagination. But, according to Rene Wellek, Wordsworth disconvertingly vacillates, in his treatment with imagination, among three epistemological conceptions. At fist, he makes imagination purely subjective, an imposition of the human mind on the real world, Secondly, he maces it an illumination beyond the control of the conscious mind and even beyond the individual soul. But most ftequently ha takes an in-between position which favors the idea of collaboration, “An ceanobling interchange’ Of action ftom within and from without” (The Prelude, 2). Ir the 1815 preface to the Lyrical Bellads, Wordsworth defends the ordering of his poems by explaining imagination and fancy in psychology terms, He objects to the usual definitions as making imagination and fancy only modes of memory and then tls that it rather means ‘processes of creation 393 i& spay tea ae ine ‘or compositioy. Although Wordsworth followed Colendge’s distinction between ‘fancy’ and ‘imagination’, he argued that Coleridge's definition of “fancy” as the ‘eggregative or associative power’, in coutrast to imagination as the ‘shiping or modifying power’, is too general. He maintained that imagination, as well s fancy, aggregates and associates, evokes and combines, ‘and that fancy, like imagination, isa creative faculty. ‘The Romantic Imagination: Keats and Shelley Keats understood the imagination to be the supreme active principle in poetic composition. An analysis of his utterances on the subject reveals that he has reached two significant conclusions as to the nature and funetion of the imagination. First, the imagination as an instrument of intuitive insight is the ‘most authentic guide to ultimate truth; second, the imagination in its highest ‘orm is a generative force, in itself creative of essential reality. CD. Thrope suggests, that Keats would have been in complete agroement with Plato's statement, “Not by wisdom do poets write, but by @ sort of genius and inspiration,” if by wisdoni Plato means knowledge through reasoning. “For, though he believed firmly in the wisdom thet springs from lose contact with a harsh world and flowers into gracious human sympathy, Keats had no faith in mere old knowledge and reason” (177), For Keats poetry ‘as its genesis in imagination, end feeling is both its rudder end its sails. Deep feeling makes possible thinking with our whole selves, soul and body. Tt ‘emancipates the poet’s mind ffom the incidental end temporary, leaving it fee to probe the deeper mysteries of existence. Jn mid-November 1817, Keats wrote a letter about the ‘authenticity of imagination’ to his friend Bailey in which he makes his famous and attractive Statement, “Imagination may be compared to Adara's dream — he awoke and found it truth.” Then he finds it necessary to start talking about the afterlife: “Adam's dream... seems to be @ conviction that imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as buman life and its spiritual repetition” (Scott, 54). 392Keats's first statement makes a large enough claim for imagination: that which {s imagined will be found to be real. His second one, which is regarded by ‘Wasserman as the heart of Keats's view of imagination, complicates this by suggesting that human imagination is not the same relation to its clestial ‘reflection’, as human existence is to heaven. In this respect, Duncan Wu states that “It would be easier (as well as more traditional) to think of the kumaa as ‘reflecting’ the divine, but Keats has i the other way round” (487). Imagination, with its springs in the heart rather than the head, though the heed too has its place, becomes with Keats the highest and most authentic ‘guide to truth, Not only is the imagination to be trusted more implicitly than reason in mutters where both are operative, but there are evea things clear to the imagination of which the reason knows nothing. As Joubert says, in words thet well express Keats’s thought on this subject, “Heaven, seeing that there were many truths which by our nature we could not know, and which it was to cour interest, nevertheless, not to be ignorant of, t00k pity on us and granted us the faculty of imagining them” (Cited in Thrope, 178). To gain the ultimate truth through imagination the poet has to strengthen his intellect and the only means of doing so, Keats declares, “is to ‘make up one's mind about nothing — to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party” (Scott, 380). What type of mind, Thrope asks, better fited for this thoroughfare than thst of a poet who bas no self-identity, ‘but whose penetrative mind can roam whither it will, can soe and apprehend all clearly, and bring home its fruits of truth unattained by bias or prejudice? Is it not a pleasing thought that the mind of the greatest poet may be a sort of filter through which the great truth of the etemal universe are clacified, organized, and given to the world? Keats’s logic would fead one to consider the poet as so closely indentfying himself with his object, his own identity being submerged, that his utterance really becomes a true and ushampered expression of the 391‘object itself: These retlections at once stagest to our minds his definition of a poet Where isthe post? Show hit! show his, Muses ine hat may know him. "Ts the man who with» man Ison equal, bee king, Orpocrest ofthe beggt-el, Orany other wondrous things -A.men may betwixt pe and Plato; “Tis this man who with a bind, ‘Wren, or egle finds its way to Allis instincts; he hat bea The Lion's ossog, and ean tell Wat his horny throst expreseth, And to him the Tiger's yeti Comes ancalate sd presseth ‘On is ear ike mother tongue, (Whereis the Pos”) Keats believes that the imagination of the true poet was capable not only of perceiving, but of creating essential reality. He declares in Spiember, 1819, when he was at the peak of his poetic powers, that Byron ‘describes what he sees’, but ‘I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task’, The truo art Which he regarded as the product of his generative power of the mind, embodies both the visible sensuous and the generative creation. Thrope assures that there is n0 room to doubt Keats’s conviction as the capacity of the ‘imagination to create spiritual reality (178). Itis the fimetion of the imagination ‘to combine and create new forms of beauty from the truths that lie beyond the visible. The world of senses is imperfect and incomplete. The more we know the more inadequacy we find in the world to satisfy us. Therefore, every ‘Sppearance must be scrutinized for its possible implications as to the larger 390(2) saath reality, Pereeptions ofthis imaginative faculty; only through the imagination can the poet see the world iy cop aS Raabe Une ty, can come only through the operation of the ‘true and see it whole, and only through the imagination car he create and re- create new forms of “beauty” which is regarded by Engell as “a shorthand term for the unity of real and ethereal, or it may be some intuitive standard of judgment” (296). Later, as the two Hyperions seem to say, ‘beauty’ changes {nto ‘a fresh perfection’ brought by the new deities, ‘a power mote strong in beauty”. This change is a result ofthe self-transforming quality of imagination, Shelley’s theory of imagination is part of his theory of poetry which was explored clearly in his Defence of Poetry (1821). ‘work was originally intended to be a reply to a pamphlet by Peacock, The Four ‘Ages of Poetry, but the result was something different from a mere answer fo is brilliant piece of Peacock; it was rather an exalted defense of the honors of poetry and the ‘imagination, It is regarded by, Graham Hough 1953, as “te best statement in English of the early Romantic theory of poetry” (216). For James Engelt, itis “a great aesthetic’ perporation on many themes concerning the imagination developed in the two generations preceding Shelley” (256). In the Defence, Shelley distinguishes between reason and imagination, ‘Both work with the materials supplied by sense, but only imagination has the power of making new combinations, of discovering new truth, Imagination is the poetic faculty, and by its power the artist creates what is new. In this paragraph, Shelley writes conceming the ‘principles of analysis’, “Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of these qualities, both separately and as a whole, Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.” He further glorifies {imagination when he states, “Reason is to imagination as the instrement to the agent, asthe body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance” (Shelley, 12). Shelley is very close to Keats when he says in one of the most famous passages in the Defence: 389 | | |ee ‘The great secret of morals is love; or & going out of our own nature, and an identification with the besutifil.. nat our own. A ‘man ... must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself is the place of another and of many others. The eat instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause, Poetry enlarges the e-cumference ofthe imagination. (49) ‘Thus, poetry is the best teacher of morals because it is the greatest sympathetic exercise of imagination, Shelley's use of ‘love’, as stated by Engell, as a synonym for the sympzthetic imagination is paralleled by Keats, Blake, Schelling, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. “Love becomes another name for the ‘individual imagination as it tums outward and sympathizes with world and ‘with other human beings” (Engell, 258). Shelley believes that thore is a ‘universal power’ working through the individval imagination, which is defined by him as one of the modes in which thoughts ate combined by the imagination, This power is not strictly personal attribute, Its “the wind that fins the fading coal of the creative mind” (Engell, 259), Shelley assured that the, individual self needs to establish an identity and to affirm its own nature, “But if the self is indeed part of a larger mind, as Shelley conceives it, then the same thing must be true of this larger, supra- personal being or intelligence. I, too, need to establish its own identity and to affirm itself” (259) In shor, if there was, and remains, one original Being and ‘creative imagination, then we are still part of It and must recognize our essential unity with it — snd hence with each other. This concept is reflected clearly end powerfully i Shelley's great poem “Ode to the West Wind’, Shelley declares that poetry is the expression of imagination, and was ‘wate to explain this claim when he wrote towards the climax of his eloquent Defence of Poetry that: All things exist as they are perceived; at Teast ia relation to the pripient. “The mind is its own place, and of itself can make & 388GA al iy Sapa jad tale Heaven of Hel, a Hell of Heaven.’ But poetry defeats the curse Which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or ‘withdraw life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a cheos. It reproduces the common Universe of which we are portions and ppercipichts, and it purges ffom our inward sight the film of familiarity which obsoures from us the wonder of oar being, It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that ‘which we Imow, It ereates anew the universe (56) Jn this brilliant compact and subtle passage Shelley has delineated the iain strands of the Romantic view of imagination: the dependence of so-called realty on the subjective perception of the individual imagination, its power to release us from an earth-bound existence, to create a new world within, into which we are projected so that our vision may be renewed. In shor, the poetic imagination brings into being an entirely new kingdom, distinct from the outer physical realm, a ‘dear image’ projected by ‘the mind’s too faithful eye’ in the words of his poem The Recollection, In conchision, the crux of the romantic revolution in the evaluation of imagination lies in the distinction between its imitative and its creative capacities. Whereas the former leads to a reproductive, representational type of ant, the leter is conductive to an original illumination in the light of the inner image, a new vision of the world based on a highly individual peroeption. As shown above, almost all the Romantic poets believe in the creative power of ‘the imagination and declare thet theit view of imagination is extremely different from that oftheir predecessors. Work Cited ‘Abrams, M. HL The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical ‘Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1971. Print 387i (20) sa pl ub tale ine Bowra, C.M. The RomantisInegination. 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