Ransom rightly avers:
“Coleridge is perhaps the
best practitioner of criticism that we have in the classics of our language.”
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.”
HIS CRITICAL WORKS:
Coleridge has expressed his critical comments here and there in many
of his works The Friend, Table Talks, Letters, Aids to Reflections, Confessions
of an Inquiring spirit, Animal Poteau and Sibylline Leaves. But the most
important critical comments of Coleridge are found in his two major critical
documents as under:
(1)
Biographia Literaria
(2)
Lectures on Shakespeare and other poets.
Coleridge’s ‘Biographia Literaria’ published in 1817 is a unique
landmark in the history of English criticism. Written in two volumes, it bears
his innovative theory of Imagination.
DEFINITION & FUNCTIONS OF POETRY:
Coleridge begins
by explaining his concept of poetry. He defines poetry as:
“A poem is that species
of composition which is opposed to the works of science by proposing for its
immediate object pleasure, not truth.”
Coleridge opines
that a good poem should aim at pleasure and not truth. Poetry is opposed to
science. Science deals with truth. A good poem as a whole should lead the
reader towards pleasure. And the process of providing should be natural, not
mechanical.
POETRY, PHILOSOPHY & PSYCHOLOGY:
William Walsh calls him:
“A critic with a poet inside him and a philosopher
at his back.”
George Watson also remarks about ‘Biographia
Literaria’:
“It has the merit of balancing three great interests
of his career – poetry, philosophy and psychology.”
Coleridge was the first critic 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 his 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 poetry.
PROSE
Vs POETRY & USE OF METER:
Coleridge’s views on poetry are elaborately presented in Chapter XIV
of ‘Biographia Literaria’. After defining poetry, he moves on to show the
difference between prose and poetry. According to him, a poem contains the same
elements as that of a prose composition. Both use words. Hence, the difference
between prose and poetry does not lie in the use of medium; rather it lies in
the different use of words and the object. The essential difference lies in the
combination of the medium (words) and the content (thought).
Moreover, Coleridge says that the only use of meter does not make a
good poem. Look at this example:
“Thirty days hath September,
April,
June and November.”
Above two poetic lines (?) provide pleasure but does not contain any
serious thought or content. So it is not poetry.
Meter is very important in poetry; but this meter or rhyme should not
be superadded or imposed on poetry. For this he asks a question, “Suppose meter is added to the novels and
other works of prose, do they become poetry?” The answer is “NO”. Meter and
rhyme should be so absorbed with the thought and content that finally it leads
to the “soul of the poet” and leads to pleasure.
POEM
Vs POETRY:
Poem – Short? /
Poetry – Long? No.
“A
poem of any length neither can be nor ought to be, all poetry; size does not
decide the quality. It doesn't determine prose or poem too.”
Generally, the students of literature do not distinguish between
‘poem’ and ‘poetry’. These two terms look similar. But it was Coleridge who for
the first time drew a clear line between ‘poem’ and ‘poetry’. According to him,
the activity of the ‘poet’s’ mind is called ‘poetry’ and the verbal expression
of that activity is called a ‘poem’. The poetic process or activity which goes
on in the poet’s mind is governed by his imagination. So the process of writing
poetry is actually the process of imagination. (Dissolving, defusing and
dissipating)
David Daiches also points out that ‘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 larger sense brings, “the whole soul of man”, into
activity. This takes place whenever the “secondary imagination” comes into
operation.
PRIMARY
& SECONDARY IMAGINATION:
Imagination is
the heart and soul of the poetic creation. Coleridge calls imagination “a
magical and synthetic power.” He further writes:
“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.”
According to Coleridge,
imagination has two forms – primary and secondary. Primary imagination is
merely the power of receiving impressions of the external world through our
five senses. The impressions are restored and kept together in our mind with
the help of primary imagination. This primary imagination is possessed by every
human being on this earth. It is universal.
But the secondary
imagination may be possessed by only a few. It is an innate gift of the artist.
It is only the secondary imagination which makes artistic creation possible. It
is also known as ‘esemplastic’ (to shape into one) as it has “the power of
shaping and modifying”. It has the power to reshape the impressions of the
external objects into something which we never see in the real external world.
It is an active agent which “dissolves, diffuses and dissipates (disappear) in
order to recreate”.
Secondary
imagination fuses together the impressions and opposite forces and merges or
shapes them to create something new. It fuses past and present, concrete and abstract,
finite and infinite.
FANCY:
Coleridge writes:
“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.”
According to him, fancy is also useful in the process
of poetic creation but it is more mechanical than artistic. It is only with the
help of fancy that the poet makes use of various figures of speech like simile,
metaphor and other technical aspects in order to make his creation more
pleasing.
Coleridge puts forward his final remark at the end:
“Finally,
GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, FANCY its DRAPERY, MOTION its LIFE,
and IMAGINATION the SOUL that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into
one graceful and intelligent whole.”
CONCLUSION:
Thus, S. T. Coleridge
gave his innovative theory of esemplastic or secondary imagination in his very
important critical document ‘Biographia Literaria’. He defines poetry,
distinguishes between poem and poetry and between prose and poetry in the most
convincing manner. He has emphasized the use of meter in poetry, but at the
same time argues that meter must have proper natural relation with the content.
But his most important contribution to English criticism is his theory of
imagination.
Coleridge is indeed the first English critic who based his literary
criticism on philosophical principles. 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."
Saintsbury eliminated one after another of possible
contenders for the title
of greatest critic and concluded:
“So, then there abide these three
– Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge.”
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