Theory of Poetry As in the Biographia Literaria

Theory of Poetry

• As in the Biographia Literaria the definition of poetry does not get itself written without the aid of conscious will and understanding. So too the pleasure attached to the poetic emotion or excitement is not merely a sympathy with the objects emotion or incidents contemplated by the poet but is also the pleasure of the mind in the exhibition of its powers for their own sake. It is a pleasure peculiar to poetry as poetic emotion is peculiar.

• Coleridge said that no man was ever a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts , passion , emotions and language

• Coleridge stands for the unity of spontaneous and voluntary in poetry. Regarding his own poetry he wrote “ I feel strongly and think strongly but I seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence though my poetry has in general a line of tenderness or passion over it yet it seldom exhibits unmixed and single tenderness or passion “

• Though such a perfect fusion of thought and feeling is not there in coleridges poetry he at least held that such a fusion was essential for great poetry. He himself was torn between the conflicting plains of dream and sensations passions and meta physicals and altruistic desire.

Theory of Poetic diction • The critic who took part in the debate was wordsworths own friend and collaborator who after a lapse of seventeen years took up wordsworths theory and analyzed it part by part in Biographia Literaria

• Coleridge occupies a unique position not only in English but in European criticism as a whole he represents a suggestive and in some respects challenging attempt to unite the traditional rationalistic values of classicism with the organic vitalism to which the romantic movement aspired and to rest this union upon an ultimate metaphysical base.

• We can now make assessment of coleridges contribution to literary criticism his claim to the title of the greatest english critic is perfectly legitimate but he also stands amongst the greatest critics of all times. He has been said to play a duel role of coleridge the first one is the transcendental philosopher and the second colridge is the genial and cosmopolitan critic passing judgment on art

• His work is unique combination of theory and concrete practice a building so spacious that many see only parts of it and not the whole of his achievement • “ He is basically a Platonist in search of the one in the many. To some scholars of romanticism he shows kinship to Aristotle as in his conception of symbol and character as a fusion of the particular and the general

• His thought is distrusted for its seeming eclecticism whereas others are dismayed by a certain obsessive monotony in it. There is detected in coleridge the sterility of a close mind and his freedom in handing the great Germans such talk that would not have been permitted in Germany

Coleridge and Wordsworth • Coleridge has analyzed wordworths poetry and pointed out certain defects and beauties in it • The first defect is the inconsistent of style. By this coleridge means the sudden and unprepared transition fronm lines or sentences of peculiar felicity to a style not only unimpassioned but undistinguished. • He sinks too often and too abruptly to the styles which belongs to the second division of language

• The second defect is a “ matter of factness” in certain poems. This defect may be further divided into categories • A) A laborious minuteness in the representation of objects and their positions as they appear to the poet himself • B) The insertion of accidental circumstances in order to explain fully his living characters their dispositions and actions

• The third defect is an undue predilection for the dramatic form from which one or other of the two evils result. Either the thoughts and diction a different from that of the poet or they are the same and indistinguishable

• The fourth defect consist of “occasional prolixity”, repetition instead of progression of thought • The fifth defect is that there are thpoughts and images too great for the subject. This isan approximation to what might be called a mental bombardment as distinguished from the verbal

• These defects are counterbalanced by certain beauties in wordsworths poetry • 1. A purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning

• 2. The weight and sanity of thoughts and sentiments won not from the books but from the poets own meditative imagination.

• 3. The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs. Even the severest critics of wordsworth have been compelled to acknowledge this quality of his poetry.

• Another beauty is the perfect truth of nature in his images and description as taken immediately from nature and proving a long intimacy with a very spirit which gives expression to all the works of nature

• The fifth excellence is a meditative pathos a union of deep and subtle thoughts with sensibility a sympathy with man as man but the sympathy of a contemplator rather than a fellow sufferer.

• The sixth excellence is the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton but in a kind perfectly un borrowed and his own