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Coleridge conversing: between soliloquy and invocation.(Samuel Taylor Coleridge's method of writing poems)

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From: Wordsworth Circle
Date: 20070622
Author:Larkin, Peter

On the rhetorical or dialogic level are we not always dealing with an "I-thou" or "I-it" situation? And while the "thou" doesn't have to be the Thou of God, in many situations it is. Thus you get back to the desire for presence. You need the "thou" in order to be present, not just the "I" And there may be no thou that's more of a danger to self-presence than approaching God or speaking in His name. Geoffrey Hartman

"The stilly murmur of the distant sea / Tells us of silence" (11-12), Coleridge writes in "The Eolian Harp"; Coleridge isn't speaking of silence so much as evoking ...

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