THE POET AS CRITIC: AN APPROACH TO COLERIDGE
Dr. H. S. VISWESWARIAH
Although
it has been frequently claimed that Coleridge is the
forerunner of modern literary criticism–in all its range, variety and depth–it
isn’t yet clear to many how this is so. George Saintsbury’s
outburst “So then, there abide these three: Aristotle, Longinus
and Coleridge”1 appears somewhat rhapsodic when we learn that he
didn’t substantiate his claim sufficiently properly. Many have often said that
being “intensely interested in literature”.2 Coleridge
distinguished himself as a commentator on the art of poetic composition and
that his critical reflections have a peculiarly characteristic originality,
profundity and freshness. The very handsome tribute of Herbert Read that Coleridge “made criticism into a science” 3 and
that “he was the first great psychologist in criticism” 4 somewhat
predicted the nature and character of what was to follow in course of time in
understanding the greatness of Coleridge. If we said
that by “introducing a philosophical method of literary criticism”5
he brought about a transformation, it wouldn’t be saying much. Many of these
claims would appear platitudinous and even tangential when they aren’t properly
strengthened with the help of internal evidence–evidence drawn from his many-splendoured creative compositions.
If
one were asked to identify a quality, a quality that is distinctive of Coleridge’s entire critical achievement, one would
unhesitatingly assert it to be its authoritativeness. Authoritativeness, it
would seem, springs from his being a practitioner of verse of a very rare
order. It wouldn’t be enough if we brushed it aside by saying that his literary
criticism – to speak in the literary critical terminology of T. S. Eliot–is a
by-product of his private poetry workshop.
To
say that a poet’s critical theories are a by-product of his personal creative
laboratory is to suggest that a practitioner-critic gives only secondary
importance to literary-critical principles, his prime concern being poetic
creation. Further it is to suggest lack of foresight and insufficient
pre-occupation with criticism as a discipline. Perhaps this is certainly not
what Eliot meant when he said so. It is difficult even to imagine that Eliot’s
prime concern was with creation and not with criticism. To say so–to assert
that Eliot’s chief loyalty was to creation–is tantamount to suggesting the
absence of critical sensibility in any creative engagement, which isn’t what
Eliot meant when he said that his criticism was a by-product of his poetry
workshop. Perhaps, Eliot didn’t realize the full and far-reaching implications
of his statement when he spoke–what would appear–so lightly of his criticism.
The
operation of critical sensibility is implicit or explicit in all creative endeavours. It would be more appropriate if we said that
critical sensibility–there might be difference between one creative artist and
another in the degree of operation of his critical sensibility–is an
inseparable part of the repertory of the poet. The communication and
articulation–the articulation of the intricate and complex process of
involvement of the critical faculty in the creative act–is a matter of choice,
devotion, time and patience.
The
poet-as-critic hasn’t always been a rare phenomenon. In the history of literary
criticism we have many instances both before and after Coleridge.
The more distinguished among them before Coleridge
are John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Coleridge’s
contemporary and collaborator, William Wordsworth, has been thought of by many
as a great critic.
The
distinction of Coleridge lies
not only in the rare degree of the creative and critical abilities he possesed but in his pre-occupation–this has been suggested
already–with literary criticism as a science. The creator of “The Ancient
Mariner” and “Christabel” is also the author of Shakespearean
Criticism,6 a number of Letters 7 that
form a disjointed but unending commentary on literary matters and Notebooks 8
that are a veritable mine of literary-critical insights. And above all he
is the author of the magnum opus–not the one that he is supposed to have
designed and abandoned–but the surviving Biographia
Literaria. These indicate the richness and
variety of Coleridge’s criticism.
The
authoritativeness of Coleridge’s critical principles
springs from their peculiar relevance to an exegesis of his poems. No critic
before Coleridge had bestowed so much attention and
so keen an attention on the matter of understanding the inter-relationship and
inter-dependence between creative and critical faculties. What Coleridge found in Shakespeare was a projection of his own
deepest thought:
In
Shakespeare’s poems the creative power and intellectual energy wrestle as in a
war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of
the other. 9
I
know none in whom the critical potentialities coalesce with those of the
creative so harmoniously as they do in Coleridge. I know no poet whose critical reflections
elucidate his creative writings so well as Coleridge’s
do. I know no critic whose creative compositions illustrate his critical
formulae so well as Coleridge’s do.
The
assertion that being a precursor he firmly laid the foundations of modern
literary criticism, can be demonstrated with the help
of evidence drawn from his own creative-critical writings. It is here that his
remarks on Shakespearean imagery appear germane. Perhaps, none would contest
their seminality in English critical history in
general, and in Shakespearean criticism in particular. Coleridge’s
criticism is important because of its anticipatory nature. At least a century
in advance, many of the later poetic and critical movements were anticipated by
him. His critical practices seem to have predicted many of the recent trends in
Shakespearean criticism, especially the modern proclivity for image-hunting.
Caroline Spurgeon, Wolfgang Clemen and G. Wilson
Knight seem to make use of Coleridge’s various hints
and guesses. Although their studies are not directly derived from him, the obligations
of several of these critics are more or less clear. When carefully studied, the
manifesto of the Imagists–a poetic movement inaugurated by Ezra Pound–reveals
nothing that Coleridge
hadn’t hinted or practised somewhere or the other.
The
field of his writings being very vast, the range of his critical reflection
being almost unlimited, I shall limit the scope of my article here to the
explication of a single image in “The Ancient Mariner”–found in various
modified forms–in the light of a few of Coleridge’s
remarks on poetic imagery selected fro Biographia
Literaria.
II
In
his commentary on poetic imagery in chapter XVI of Biographia
Literaria Coleridge
formulates three cardinal principles that come in handy here for understanding
of imagery. A study of the wind-image of “The Ancient Mariner “ in the light of
these
principles might illustrate the nature and character of Coleridge’s
critical and poetic achievement. Calling the attention of
readers to the “one striking point of difference” between the poets of the 15th
and 16th centuries and those of the Romantic period Coleridge
writes:
In
the present age the poet (I would wish to be understood as speaking generally,
and without allusion to individual names) seems to propose to himself as his
main object, and as that which is the most characteristic of his art, new and
striking images; with incidents that interest the affections or excite
the curiosity. Both his characters and his descriptions he renders, as much as
possible, specific and individual even to a degree of portraiture...
What
is of central importance here is that Coleridge
postulates three important principles of the modern art of poetic composition,
which are relevant mostly for a study of his own poems12 They are: newness, strikingness
and specificity. In fact, the principle of novelty was sought for even by
William Wordsworth himself in his famous Preface. As far back as 1802 he
had said that “ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an
unusual aspect.” This was Wordsworth’s way of saying that both expression and
imagery should be novel. Of course, Wordsworth seems to have differed from Coleridge in the elaboration and elucidation of the
principle of novelty. If the Preface, as Coleridge
later claimed, was “half a child of his own brain”, it is certain then
that Coleridge incorporated the principle of novelty
in the Preface because he had a first hand experience of its use
in many of the poems he had composed. By novelty Coleridge
meant the presentation of an image in a daringly unconventional way. It isn’t
as if we don’t come across the quality of novelty in Shakespeare’s images. What
is pertinent here is that Coleridge’s
use of the weapon of novelty is an improvement upon its use by many of his
predecessors.
So
far as the second critical principle is concerned, Coleridge
emphasizes it. Impressiveness is inseparable from novelty. An image
is striking because it is refreshingly new. Strikingness
may be due to its specificity also. Emphasis is laid on impressiveness because for
want of it readers miss a large number of images when they read the poems of
Dryden, Pope and even Johnson. Perhaps, like Keats, Coleridge
had Edmund Spenser’s “sea-shouldering whales” in mind when he singled out this
aspect for study. Impressiveness might be there as a characteristic of poetry
but may not be found in combination with novelty and precision. What Coleridge was driving home to his readers was the idea of a
wholesome synthesis of these three qualities of novelty, impressiveness and
specificity. It is really astonishing to find how Coleridge
achieved a harmonious blend of these in his poetic compositions.
It
has been frequently pointed out that Coleridge had an
idea of composing hymns to each one of the elements. This is a particularly useful
idea in the study of the images found in “The Ancient Mariner.” This idea is
indeed useful in the explication of the wind-image because the image is used
with frequent modifications. In many places in the
poem, the wind is imaged as air, breeze storm-blast, whirlwind and zephyr.
The
wind-image is presented in a most impressive manner in the opening part of the
great poem. Coleridge practises
here the art of condensation. No artist could have conveyed so much in so fewer
words:
And
now the storm-blast came, and he
Was
tyrannous and strong:
He
struck with his overtaking wings
And
chased us south along.
With
sloping masts and dipping prow,
As
who pursued with yell and blow
Still
treads the shadow of his foe
And
forward bends his head,
The
ship drove fast, loud roared the blast
And
southward aye we fled. 13
These ten lines of
poetry offer us an example of visual imagination at its best. Reconciling
opposite or discordant qualities, Coleridge has drawn
here an extremely interesting visual image with the help of the invisible. Wind
is invisible, but its effects are felt. Coleridge has
drawn a life-like image with the help of the nebulous element. The storm-blast
is not just a storm-blast. It is akin to a person, a strong and tyrannous
person, not unlike the archetypal family father. Chasing the mariners towards
the south, he strikes them with his overtaking wings. With the help of a
seductive modification, the second stanza produces what we may call a
cumulative effect. “Sloping masts” and “dipping prow” are transferred epithets
that cunningly picturize the family father. There is
here what I would call a delightful confusion of imagery. In
order to drive home the idea of the figure of a despotic family father, Coleridge deliberately confuses us here by transferring all
the
fatherly qualities to the parts of a ship. “Sloping mast” stands for the
standing posture of the father. The “dipping prow” is not unlike the sweating
nose of a terribly angry father. The expression “loud roared the blast” re-links
the personified figure of the father to the original point of commencement of
the description namely “blast.” The novel element in this precise but
impressive archetypal family father is how the artist, by making use of the
wind–the invisible element–has delineated a highly individualized visual image.
The
wind-image may be seen in an entirely modified form in the following lines of
poetry:
And
soon I heard a roaring wind;
It
did not come anear;
But
with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The
upper air burst into life!
And
a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To
and fro they hurried about;
And
to and fro, and in and out,
The
wan stars danced between.
And
the coming wind did roar more loud,
And
the sails did sigh like sedge... 14
The wind-image in the
foregoing lines is entirely auditory. These lines offer us an example of the
auditory image at its best.
The
daring unconventionality of Coleridge is better seen
in the portrayal of the wind-image in another section of the same poem:
But
soon there breathed a wind on me
Nor
sound nor motion made;
Its
path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It
raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like
a meadow-gale of spring–
It
mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet
it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly,
swiftly flew the ship,
Yet
she sailed softly too;
Sweetly,
sweetly blew the breeze–
On
me alone it blew. 15
The tertiary image seen
in the above lines is neither clearly visual–like the one that we have already seen–nor is it clearly auditory in character.
It isn’t even kinetic; it is a tactile image at its best. Although
visualization isn’t totally absent, one finds it difficult to call the
foregoing image a visual one. “Nor sound nor motion” gives the clue to its
being neither auditory nor kinetic. What may be noted here is its highly
particularized character.
The
foregoing examples of the use of a single image in modified
forms speaks eloquently of the importance that Coleridge
attached to images in poetry. The account might show how Coleridge’s
literary criticism gains in athoritativeness because
of its rootedness in creative practices. Furthermore,
it emphasizes the fact that Coleridge’s poems can be
profitably studied in the light of his own literary criticism. Because of the
experiential component of his critical utterances, because of the applicability
of his critical utterances, because of the applicability of his
literary-critical principles to an elucidation and understanding of his own
poems, Coleridge may be thought of as a harbinger of
modern literary criticism.
1 George
Saintsbury, A History of Criticism (
2
F. R. Leavis, “Coleridge in Criticism “.
A Selection From Scrutiny (
3 Herbert
Read, “Coleridge As Critic”, Coleridge
(1967), ed. K. Coburn, P 103.
4 Ibid,
p. 100.
5 Ibid,
p. 100.
6 T.
M. Raysor (ed.), Coleridge’s
Shakespearean Criticism, new edn. (2 Vols., Everyman’s Library,
7 E.
L. Griggs (ed. ), Collected Letters of S. T. Coleridge (
8 K.
Coburn (ed.), The Notebooks of S. T. Coleridge (London
New York, 1957-)
9
Biographia Literaria
(
10 Ibid,
p. 21.
11
Ibid.
12 For
a discussion of the relationship between Coleridge’s
personal creative experiences and critical principles, see Coleridge
(
13
Lines 41.50.
14 Lines
309-319.
15
Lines 452.463.