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COLERIDGE’S ELABORATION ON THE IDEA OF IMAGINATION
Rakhmonov Ulugbek Aliyevich
Student of the Master’s Department
Karshi state university
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10419920
Abstract.
The thoughtful approach to Wordsworth in the second volume represents
Coleridge’s understanding of poetry at its best. The importance of the organic metaphor and idea
for later thinking about poetry can hardly be exaggerated. The sense of the work of art as an
organism, self-germinating and self-enclosed, pervades modern writing and modern criticism.
Key word:
poetry, expressive language, the psychological acumen, semasiology.
РАЗРАБОТКА КОЛЬРИДЖЕМ ИДЕИ ВООБРАЖЕНИЯ
Аннотация.
Вдумчивый подход к Вордсворту во втором томе представляет собой
лучшее понимание поэзии Кольриджем. Важность органической метафоры и идеи для
последующего размышления о поэзии трудно переоценить. Ощущение произведения
искусства как организма, саморазвивающегося и замкнутого в себе, пронизывает
современную письменность и современную критику.
Ключевые слова:
поэзия, выразительная речь, психологическая хватка, семасиология.
The lectures of 1811-1812 on Shakespeare were influential in the general revival of interest
in the Elizabethan drama. Dr. Johnson’s 1765 preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s works had
defended him as the poet of nature who held up a mirror to life and manners. Against this mimetic
emphasis Coleridge lay stress on Shakespeare’s expressive language and the psychological
acumen associated with it: “In the plays of Shakespeare, every man sees himself, without knowing
that he does so.” A more important legacy of the lectures on Shakespeare is the idea of organicism,
which has deep roots in his earlier critical reflection. In lecture notes on Shakespeare, Coleridge
evokes organic form in terms which mimic the contemporary German critic August Wilhelm
Schlegel. The form of Shakespeare’s dramas grew out of his characters and ideas, on Coleridge’s
telling; the old dramatic conventions did not impede the conception. The structural variety of his
plays—the seeming irregularities of
The Tempest
, in particular—arose from expressive
requirements. Organic form redeemed Shakespeare’s unconventional dramatic constructions. The
importance of the organic metaphor and idea for later thinking about poetry can hardly be
exaggerated. The sense of the work of art as an organism, self-germinating and self-enclosed,
pervades modern writing and modern criticism. Coleridge’s elaboration on the idea of imagination
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in this period owes something to the distinction of mechanic and organic form as well. His
definitions of primary and secondary imagination and of fancy have become canonical; they served
I. A. Richards, notably, as a theoretical basis of the “semasiology” which he proposed in 1935.
This putative science of meaning was meant to shore up the foundations of English as an academic
discipline and proved influential not only at Cambridge but throughout the English-speaking
world, including the United States, where it provided impetus for the development of the New
Criticism, as it was called. Treating Coleridge as a provincial outpost of the new German critical
philosophy of Immanuel Kant, English and American readers have usually abandoned the complex
record of his reading and response in favor of one or two manageable ideas. The result has been
general misapprehension about his orientation and commitments. Coleridge does not make sense
as a model of aesthetic reading despite the efforts of Richards and others to bend him to this
purpose.
What sort of reader was he, then? Moral and political, certainly, but something more. On his
return from Germany in 1799, Coleridge had undertaken “a metaphysical Investigation” of “the
affinities of the Feelings with Words & Ideas,” to be composed “under the title of ‘Concerning
Poetry & the nature of the Pleasures derived from it.’” The connection of his philosophical studies
with his critical ambition is important for understanding how Coleridge imagined the critical
function. He was not interested in judging writing by current standards. Conventional judgments
of good or bad relied on unspoken assumptions which he was concerned to test and modify, where
appropriate, by the light of reason. Adjudicating taste is the usual purview of the “man of letters.”
Coleridge was trying for something more philosophical, of larger scope and bearing: “acting the
arbitrator between the old School & the New School to lay down some plain, & perspicuous, tho’
not superficial Canons of Criticism respecting poetry.”
In the wake of the republication of
Lyrical Ballads
in early 1801 (with ‘1800’ on the title
page), Coleridge’s critical project became a protracted effort to come to terms with Wordsworth’s
radical claims in the “Preface” for a poetry composed “in the real language of men.” This was the
“New School” of “natural thoughts in natural diction”: Coleridge’s own school despite his
differences with Wordsworth. His effort to make the case for the new verse in the teeth of pitched
hostility on the part of reviewers culminated in his
Biographia Literaria
(1817), where the “Old
School” is treated anecdotally in the opening chapters on the way to the triumph of Wordsworth’s
voice. The fifteen years between the “Preface” and
Biographia Literaria
were consumed with
working through the critical agenda which Coleridge set himself at the turn of the century. The
process was a fitful, often tortuous one. The metaphysical investigation assumed a life of its own,
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waylaid by deep plunges into Kant and Schelling, among others. It culminates in the first volume
of the
Biographia Literaria
with an effort to provide rational ground for the critical exercise which
follows in the second. His definition of imagination remains an important part of his poetic legacy,
nevertheless, since it underwrites the development of a symbolist aesthetic still associated with his
name though at odds with his enduring commitments.
The thoughtful approach to Wordsworth in the second volume represents Coleridge’s
understanding of poetry at its best. His account of the
Lyrical Ballads
project challenges some of
Wordsworth’s claims in the “Preface” to the second edition in a way which distinguishes the
effective from the peculiar in his verse. Readers have often taken Coleridge’s theoretic
pronouncements about imagination as constituting his poetics, while the account of Wordsworth’s
verse shows him applying more conventional standards in new and thoughtful ways. This
discussion of the new school in English poetry includes a detailed treatment of the question of
poetic language as raised by Wordsworth, and it is Coleridge’s response to his positions in
the
Lyrical Ballads
“Preface” that makes up the real centerpiece of the argument. The defense of
poetic diction in particular is important for understanding his idea of poetry. Its roots lie in a long
meditation on language, not in a philosophically derived faculty of imagination.
This meditation on language occupied Coleridge occasionally during the years between his
return from Germany in 1799 and the composition of the
Biographia Literaria
. Among projects
which he undertook during these long years of opium addiction, physical disability, and aimless
wandering,
The Friend
(1809) stands out for its originality and influence. After two years away,
in Malta, Sicily, and Rome, he returned to Keswick in 1806, separated from his wife (who had
given birth to their daughter, Sara, on 23 December 1802), lectured and dilated, and finally settled
on publishing “a weekly essay” which ran from 1 June 1809 to 15 March 1810. The publication
rose and fell by subscriptions, relying on Coleridge’s name and reputation, and finally collapsed
under the weight of his private difficulties. Eclectic in approach, broadly literary in style, its
various essays remain worth considering for what they indicate of the evolution of letters in the
period.
The Friend
established a high discursive tone which was influential among Coleridge’s
inheritors, including Carlyle and Emerson, for whom it was counted among his most valuable
works.
In 1812 the Wedgwood annuity was reduced by half due to financial difficulties related to
the war. Coleridge continued to wander, staying with friends all over the kingdom and occasionally
with his family in Keswick. In 1816 he published
Christabel
with “Kubla Khan” and “The Pains
of Sleep” in a single volume; the next year his collected verse,
Sibylline Leaves
, appeared. He
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moved into the house of Dr. James Gillman, a physician in Highgate, now a north London village,
trying to cure or at least to treat his opium problem. Here he would pass the remainder of his life,
writing only occasional verse while preparing philosophical lectures (delivered in 1818), revising
the text of
The Friend
for publication as a book, and collating the moral and theological aphorisms
which appeared as
Aids to Reflection
(1825). These were popular and influential in America as
well as in England. Coleridge published a meditation on political inspiration in
The Stateman’s
Manual
(1816) among other tracts on subjects theological and political.
On the Constitution of
Church and State
appeared in 1830;
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit
posthumously in 1840. He
planned a comprehensive philosophical synthesis which he was unable to realize, conjuring with
a system which lived only in his constantly working mind. The most finished text from among his
philosophical papers was published in 1848 as
Hints towards the Formation of a more
Comprehensive Theory of Life
. The reconstruction of his abortive synthesis is in progress.
The failure was largely relative to early expectations, however, and to hopes defeated by
disease and drugs. Despite everything, Coleridge can still be regarded as a groundbreaking and, at
his best, a powerful poet of lasting influence. His idea of poetry remains the standard by which
others in the English sphere are tried. As a political thinker, and as a Christian apologist, Coleridge
proved an inspiration to the important generation after his own. Recent publication of his private
notebooks has provided further evidence of the constant ferment and vitality of his inquiring spirit.
REFERENCES
1.
Cheyne, Peter. Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2020).
2.
Class, Monika. Coleridge and the Kantian Ideas in England, 1796–1817 (London:
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3.
The Form of Transformed Vision (Macon GA: Mercer, 1987). (Argues
that Coleridge wants to transform his reader's consciousness, to see nature as a living
presence.)
4.
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5.
Engell, James. The Creative Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard, 1981). (Surveys the various
German theories of imagination in the eighteenth century)
6.
Fruman, Norman. Coleridge the Damaged Archangel (London: George Allen and Unwin).
(Examines Coleridge's plagiarisms, taking a critical view)
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7.
Harper, George McLean (1969) [1928].
"Coleridge's Conversation Poems"
. Ayer Publishing.
. The Poems of Friendship make yet
another claim on our attention: they are among the supreme examples of a peculiar kind of
poetry. Others not unlike them, though not surpassing them, are Ovid's `Cum subit illius
tristissima noctis imago,' and several of the Canti of Leopardi.
8.
(1982). Coleridge. Oxford University Press.
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