His magic, that which makes his poetry, was but the final release
in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and
theories; it was the song of release.
in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and
theories; it was the song of release.
Coleridge - Poems
" But out of those fragments no
system was ever to be constructed, though a fervent disciple, J. H. Green,
devoted twenty-eight years to the attempt. "Christabel" unfinished, the
_magnum opus_ unachieved: both were but parallel symptoms of a mind
"thought-bewildered" to the end, and bewildered by excess of light and by
crowding energies always in conflict, always in escape.
Coleridge's search, throughout his life, was after the absolute, an
absolute not only in thought but in all human relations, in love,
friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was
this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art,
passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him
seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed
in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each
supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and the philosopher
are but two aspects of one reality; or rather, the poetic and the
philosophic attitudes are but two ways of seeing. The poet who is not also
a philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same
infinitude; one apprehending the idea, the other the image. One seeks truth
for its beauty; the other finds beauty, an abstract, intellectual beauty,
in the innermost home of truth. Poetry and metaphysics are alike a
disengaging, for different ends, of the absolute element in things.
In Coleridge, metaphysics joined with an unbounded imagination, in equal
flight from reality, from the notions of time and space. Each was an equal
denial of the reality of what we call real things; the one experimental,
searching, reasoning; the other a "shaping spirit of imagination," an
embodying force. His sight was always straining into the darkness; and he
has himself noted that from earliest childhood his "mind was habituated to
the Vast. " "I never regarded my senses," he says, "as the criteria of my
belief"; and "those who have been led to the same truths step by step,
through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to want a sense which
I possess. " To Coleridge only mind existed, an eternal and an eternally
active thought; and it was as a corollary to his philosophical conception
of the universe that he set his mind to a conscious rebuilding of the world
in space.
His magic, that which makes his poetry, was but the final release
in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and
theories; it was the song of release.
De Quincey has said of Coleridge: "I believe it to be notorious that he
first began the use of opium, not as a relief from any bodily pains or
nervous irritations--for his constitution was strong and excellent--but as
a source of luxurious sensations. " Hartley Coleridge, in the biographical
supplement to the "Biographia Literaria," replies with what we now know to
be truth: "If my Father sought more from opium than the mere absence of
pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations or the glowing
phantasmagoria of passive dreams; but that the power of the medicine might
keep down the agitations of his nervous system, like a strong hand grasping
the strings of some shattered lyre. " In 1795. that is, at the age of
twenty-three, we find him taking laudanum; in 1796, he is taking it in
large doses; by the late spring of 1801 he is under the "fearful slavery,"
as he was to call it, of opium. "My sole sensuality," he says of this time,
"was not to be in pain. " In a terrible letter addressed to Joseph Cottle in
1814 he declares that he was "seduced to the _accursed_ habit
ignorantly"; and he describes "the direful moment, when my pulse began to
fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it
were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient
bewilderment . . . for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a
derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of the
intellectual faculties. " And, throughout, it is always the pains, never the
pleasures, of opium that he registers.
Opium took hold of him by what was inert in his animal nature, and not by
any active sensuality. His imagination required no wings, but rather
fetters; and it is evident that opium was more often a sedative than a spur
to his senses.
The effect of opium on the normal man is to bring him into something like
the state in which Coleridge habitually lived. The world was always a
sufficiently unreal thing to him, facts more than remote enough,
consequences unrelated to their causes; he lived in a mist, and opium
thickened the mist to a dense yellow fog. Opium might have helped to make
Southey a poet; it left Coleridge the prisoner of a cobweb-net of dreams.
system was ever to be constructed, though a fervent disciple, J. H. Green,
devoted twenty-eight years to the attempt. "Christabel" unfinished, the
_magnum opus_ unachieved: both were but parallel symptoms of a mind
"thought-bewildered" to the end, and bewildered by excess of light and by
crowding energies always in conflict, always in escape.
Coleridge's search, throughout his life, was after the absolute, an
absolute not only in thought but in all human relations, in love,
friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was
this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art,
passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him
seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed
in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each
supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and the philosopher
are but two aspects of one reality; or rather, the poetic and the
philosophic attitudes are but two ways of seeing. The poet who is not also
a philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same
infinitude; one apprehending the idea, the other the image. One seeks truth
for its beauty; the other finds beauty, an abstract, intellectual beauty,
in the innermost home of truth. Poetry and metaphysics are alike a
disengaging, for different ends, of the absolute element in things.
In Coleridge, metaphysics joined with an unbounded imagination, in equal
flight from reality, from the notions of time and space. Each was an equal
denial of the reality of what we call real things; the one experimental,
searching, reasoning; the other a "shaping spirit of imagination," an
embodying force. His sight was always straining into the darkness; and he
has himself noted that from earliest childhood his "mind was habituated to
the Vast. " "I never regarded my senses," he says, "as the criteria of my
belief"; and "those who have been led to the same truths step by step,
through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to want a sense which
I possess. " To Coleridge only mind existed, an eternal and an eternally
active thought; and it was as a corollary to his philosophical conception
of the universe that he set his mind to a conscious rebuilding of the world
in space.
His magic, that which makes his poetry, was but the final release
in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and
theories; it was the song of release.
De Quincey has said of Coleridge: "I believe it to be notorious that he
first began the use of opium, not as a relief from any bodily pains or
nervous irritations--for his constitution was strong and excellent--but as
a source of luxurious sensations. " Hartley Coleridge, in the biographical
supplement to the "Biographia Literaria," replies with what we now know to
be truth: "If my Father sought more from opium than the mere absence of
pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations or the glowing
phantasmagoria of passive dreams; but that the power of the medicine might
keep down the agitations of his nervous system, like a strong hand grasping
the strings of some shattered lyre. " In 1795. that is, at the age of
twenty-three, we find him taking laudanum; in 1796, he is taking it in
large doses; by the late spring of 1801 he is under the "fearful slavery,"
as he was to call it, of opium. "My sole sensuality," he says of this time,
"was not to be in pain. " In a terrible letter addressed to Joseph Cottle in
1814 he declares that he was "seduced to the _accursed_ habit
ignorantly"; and he describes "the direful moment, when my pulse began to
fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it
were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient
bewilderment . . . for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a
derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of the
intellectual faculties. " And, throughout, it is always the pains, never the
pleasures, of opium that he registers.
Opium took hold of him by what was inert in his animal nature, and not by
any active sensuality. His imagination required no wings, but rather
fetters; and it is evident that opium was more often a sedative than a spur
to his senses.
The effect of opium on the normal man is to bring him into something like
the state in which Coleridge habitually lived. The world was always a
sufficiently unreal thing to him, facts more than remote enough,
consequences unrelated to their causes; he lived in a mist, and opium
thickened the mist to a dense yellow fog. Opium might have helped to make
Southey a poet; it left Coleridge the prisoner of a cobweb-net of dreams.
