Virtual Lec 21

8/17/2019 Virtual Lec 21

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METRICAL COMPOSITION

• Coleridge throws light on the difference between the language

of metrical composition and that of prose.He is of the opinion

the Wordsworth views about language are impracticable.

• The power of making the selection implies the previouspossession of the language selected,the reproduction of words

only,but order in which they are used.

• This order is defective in the case of the uneducated person

because he lacks the prospective ness of mind which enables

one to foresee the whole of what one is to convey.• Coleridge illustrates from Wordsworth poems how common

words are used,but not in the order in which the rustic would

use them.


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• Coleridge elaborates Wordsworth’s sentence,there neither

is,nor can be any essential difference between the language o

prose and metrical composition.

• He points out that the language of prose differs in itselfaccording to the purpose for which it its used the prose of

argumentative works differs from the language of conversation.

• n taly and !reece they have not set aside a separate body of

words for poetry,but the same words and phrases are put under

new grabs by declining and con"ugating them in a particularway.


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• Coleridge considers the e#act significance of the

words essential difference as used by

Wordsworth.The word essence can mean one of the

two things,the inmost principle of a thing whichparticulari$es it,the point of difference or distinction

between two modifications of the same

sub"ect.Wordsworth has used the word in the latter

sense.t maybe that in some cases,what is beautifullye#presses in metre,may stand e%ually beautiful when

stated in prose in the same words.&ut generally it is

not so.


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• Coleridge reflects on the origin and effect of metre.He

contends that in both cases for the unfitness of

each'language of prose and that of poetry( for the

place of other fre%uently will and ought to e#ist.


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• He advances five points to e#plain this.)irst Coleridge

ascribes the origin of metre to the spontaneous effort

of the mind to hold in check the working of passion

and to control emotion.&ut because metre blends

delight and emotion into one,it is as good as being

the natural language or emotion,though strictly

speaking,it is artificial.


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• *econdly as afar as a metre acts in and for it self,ittends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility bothof the general feelings and of the attention.thus metre

worthless in itself gives greater vivacity to the mainpoetic idea and thus resembles yeas.&efore theinvention of printing metre had an additionalclaim,namely,as its association to memory,but anadditional claim,namely its association to memory,but

now fitness of the idea must govern the diction.Thepoet writes in metre because he thinks that alanguage different from that of prose would beappropriate for the sub"ect.


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• Thirdly metre is the proper form of poetry and poetry

is imperfect and defective without metre.

• )ourthly human beings instinctively seek unity by

harmonious ad"ustment and metre is helpful in this

respect.


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• +astly,he appeals to the practice of the best poets,of

all countries and in all ages,as authori$ing the opinion

that in every import of the word essential,there may

be,is and ought to be an essential difference betweenthe language of prose and metrical composition.


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THEORY OF IMAGINATION

• Coleridge’s contribution to literary criticism is his theory of

imagination.He was the most apt interpreter of romantic poetry

in which imagination played the supreme part.

• n &iographia +iteraria,he tells us that he felt but little sympathyfor the writings of ope and his followers.He was dissatisfied

with the artifice of the new classical school,and with the %uest

for mere novelty and the desire of e#citing wonderment..

• He liked the poems of &owles and Cowper,the precursor of the

-omantic ovement in /nglish poetry,who combined naturalthoughts with natural diction0the first two who reconciled the

heart with the head.


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• The phrase,The union of heart and head,strikes thekeynote of coleridge’s theory of imagination.Hebelieves that without this there can be no essential

poetry.His remark that not the poem which we haveread,but that to which wee return,with the greatestpleasure,possesses the genuine power and claimsthe name of essential poetry reminds us of +onginus.

• Coleridge finds that it was the continuous

undercurrent of feeling,which evoked his genuineadmiration in it and the lack of it which disguised himwith those who sacrificed the heart to the head or bothheart and head to paint and drapery.


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• &efore meeting Wordsworth,Coleridge had already formedthese ideas.1uring the first year of their friendship.n onedramatic moment,there was awakened in him a convictionwhich determined his critical attitude.

• Commenting on Wordsworth’s writings in &iographia +iteraria2,he writes.This e#cellence which in all Wordsworth’s writings ismore or less predominant and which constitutes the character ofhis less predominant and which constitutes the character of hismind.He no sooner left,than he sought to understand.

• -epeated mediations led me first to suspect that fancy andimagination were two distinct and widely different facultiesinstead of being,according to the general belief,either twonames with one meaning or at furthest,the lower and the higherdegree of one and the same power.


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IMAGINATION

• Coleridge read the faulty elder poets and his

contemporaries and found them lifeless or brainless

or both.He could not discern in them that continuous

undercurrent of deep feeling,which the greater poetshad evoked.Then as he himself tells a poem recited

by Wordsworth brought home to him in a flash what

he had been seeking to reali$e.*urely it was by some

faculty of the soul that things could be so representedas to be thus both felt and understood.


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• n &iographia +iteraria he defines imagination as a faculty thatdissolves,diffuses,dissipates,in order to recreate or where thisprocess is rendered impossible,yet still,at all events,it struggles toideali$e and unify.

• We can summari$e,Coleridge’s idea of the magination in thesewords.)ot this e#perience as Coleridge understood it,was morethan mere feelings,emotions passion.ts uni%ue %uality lay in thefact that it gave satisfaction also to the reason.

• t was a union of opposites.t bridged the gulf3unbridgeable by theintellect3between perception and understanding.The power whichthe poet had e#ercised in thus revealing the beautiful.maginationa unifying creative faculty3this beautiful and beauty making power.

• Coleridge coined a word esemplastic and called magination theessemplastic power which literally means the unifying power.


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• n &iographia +iteraria,Coleridge remarks,that the

magination is either primary,or secondary.The

primary magination is the living power and prime

agent of all human perception and as a repetition inthe finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the

infinite.

• The secondary magination is an echo of the former

coe#isting with the conscious will yet still as identicalwith the primary in the kind of its agency,and differing

only in degree and its mode of operation.


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• The rimary magination merely represents to the minds its ownworld as e#ternal to itself and it e#ists in every humanconsciousness.

• magination in its primary manifestation is the great orderingprinciple or rather an agency which enables us both todiscriminate and to order to separate and to synthesi$e and thusmakes perception possible for without it we should have only acollection of meaningless sense data.

• f the act of creation is conceived as being essentially and

perpetually the bringing of order out of chaos,destroying chaosby making its parts intelligible by the assertion of the identity ofthis designer,as it were,then the primary imagination isessentially creative and a repetition in the finite mind of theeternal act of creation in the infinite.


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• The secondary imagination is more active capacity belonging tothe artist,representing and recreating the e#ternal world in itscompleteness.

• The secondary imagination is the conscious human use of thispower.When we imply out primary imagination in the very act ofperception,we are not doing so with our conscious will,but aree#ercising the basic faculty of our awareness of ourselves andthe e#ternal world,the secondary imagination is more consciousand less elemental but it does not differ in kind from the primary.

• t pro"ects and creates new harmonies of meaning.Theemployment of the secondary magination is,in the largersense,a poetic activity which dissolves,diffuses,dissipates,inorder to recreate4struggles to ideali$e and unify is essentiallyvital.


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• 5 poem is always the word for a poet of a man

employing the secondary imagination and so

achieving the harmony of meaning,the reconciliation

of opposites.so primary imagination is the basicimagination found in all human beings,and secondary

imagination is the artistic imagination found in a few

gifted persons.


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• Coleridge makes a difference between fancy and

imagination.The fancy is no other than a mode of memory

emancipated from the order of time and space,and blended

with,and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the willwhich we e#press by the word choice.&ut e%ually with the

ordinary memory it must receive all its materials,ready made

from the law of association.

• *o we gather that the fancy can only manipulate fi#ities and

definites,which,come ready made from perception.tsproducts,therefore,are not recreations but mosaic like

reassemblies of e#isting bits and pieces.


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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FANCY

AND IMAGINATION

• )irstly,fancy is a limited process based on the law of

association.t brings the e#perience of the present to

the past.The field of imagination on the other hand is

vaster.t brings e#perience from the past to thepresent and then takes it from the present to the

future.


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• *econdly,)ancy works in all copying of nature,imaginationworks in imitation of nature which is a creative act.5 real artist isnever content to copy nature,because in doing so he will becopying only a fragment of nature,which is beautiful only in its

totality and unity.• The process of recreation of nature can take place only when

the imagination is active,fancy can only perceive thedead,mechanical aspects of nature based on baresensation,memory and associated ideas.

• t is only the secondary imagination of the poet which works inthe same manner as the divine imagination works.magination isa divine faculty in man,which makes the e#ternal,internal,andfashions new images in its own semblance.


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• Thirdly imagination is a unifying power,while fancy is the fitting

together in a design of small pieces of colored glass.

• Coleriges writes06f fancy0its images have no connection natural

or moral,but are yoke together by the poet by means of someaccidental coincidence.

• 6f imagination Coleridge says it reveals itself in the balance of

reconciliation of opposites,of discordant %ualities.

• 1avid 1aiches,e#plaining this difference remarks,)ancy

constructs surface decorations out of new combinations ofmemories and perceptions while imagination generates and

produces a form of its own.


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