Coleridge

[Munro]

Who wants to drop everything materially precious to them and start our own Pantisocracy? C'mon, it'll be fun.
Only a mind as absent and wild as Coleridge's could have pressed for the realisation of a concept like that so fervently... but alas, it was doomed for failure.

[Munro]

Is it just me, or does it feel like there might be a move towards some sort of Neo-Romanticism in the next decade or so? To me, of all of the philosophical movements it makes the most sense in many ways. Especially with the political climate - an emerging sub-culture of liberatarianism, and our global environmental situation like an Industrial Revolution gone wrong.

[Sindhu]

Originally posted by Munro

Only a mind as absent and wild as Coleridge's could have pressed for the realisation of a concept like that so fervently...
Um, yes and he got stuck in a miserable marriage as well, while both Southey and Wordsworth got out of the whole scheme like greased eels! You know, Coleridge was really out of his depth with them!:(
But then, from our perspective if we got Kubla Khan, Dejection and The Lime Tree Bower I suppose we shouldn't complain!
Sindhu

[Munro]

Originally posted by Sindhu
Um, yes and he got stuck in a miserable marriage as well, while both Southey and Wordsworth got out of the whole scheme like greased eels! You know, Coleridge was really out of his depth with them!:(
But then, from our perspective if we got Kubla Khan, Dejection and The Lime Tree Bower I suppose we shouldn't complain!
Sindhu

Except Wordsworth wasn't a part of the Pantisocracy scheme. The only excuse I can make for Coleridge so far is that he did spend most of his creative life constantly ill, and addicted to opium. His potential would have suffered greatly.

[Sindhu]

Um-- Sorry!:(
i was trying to combine two trains of thought- Southey's pantisocracy and WW's later acrimony and I guess my grammar got all mixed up. I didn't mean to suggest WW was into pantisocracy.
And despite the addiction, Coleridge is something of a personal cause with me, so maybe I tend to make a few extra excuses!
:)
Sindhu.

[Isagel]

What´s pantisocracy?

[Munro]

Hey Sindhu, could you recommend some of Wordsworth's best poems to me to look at? In English right now we're studying imaginative poetry, and I could use his poems in an essay maybe. I've never read him before.

As for 'Kubla Khan', it was quite difficult, but I've only recently started to understand it fully (and what a poem!). It's so intense in its ideas and imagery, I got taken apart by my teacher when I was attempting to voice my weak comprehension of it! Hopefully the blow to my pride won't give it a negative taint for me when I read it in the future.

[Munro]

Originally posted by Isagel
What´s pantisocracy?

Isagel, to explain it quickly - pantisocracy was quite an ambitious idea of both Coleridge's and Robert Southey's towards the end of their studies at university. For STC, it probably sprung partly out of his dark and self-inflicted personal crises where he fled his massive debts and personal problems at Cambridge and - yes - he joined a dragoon.

When he was finally discharged with the help of his brother, he soon found a form for his liberal ideas in a system of government called pantisocracy where he and his fellow pantisocrats would move to Pennsylvania. Their own independent community would be established where work would be divided completely between all, land ownership was non-existent, where they'd be close to nature and could spend their evenings discussing ideas, art and politics, or educating their children.
He and Southey went on walking tours all over England spreading the idea and convincing people to join, but it fell through after a while for many reasons.

This was before the stage of Coleridge's active creativity, he was only just beginning to write poems regularly. And as Sindhu and I resolved, it was pre-Wordsworth as well.

[Sindhu]

Originally posted by Munro
Hey Sindhu, could you recommend some of Wordsworth's best poems to me to look at? In English right now we're studying imaginative poetry, and I could use his poems in an essay maybe. I've never read him before.

I'm not a great Wordsworth fan, but SOME of his poems are incredible. Tintern Abbey for one, The Lucy Poems, (Not, repeat NOT Lucy Gray, but the set of "Lucy" poems, parts of the Prelude- personally I prefer the earlier parts; Some really powerful sonnets- London, Westminister Bridge for example,and The Yarrow poems.

As for 'Kubla Khan', it was quite difficult, but I've only recently started to understand it fully (and what a poem!). It's so intense in its ideas and imagery, I got taken apart by my teacher when I was attempting to voice my weak comprehension of it! Hopefully the blow to my pride won't give it a negative taint for me when I read it in the future.
Your teacher must be crazy- I'd have been jumping for joy if my students related to the intensity of Kubla Khan! And you are quite right in saying "What a Poem!" Don't even think of it's acquiring a negative taint!

[Munro]

Originally posted by Sindhu
Um, yes and he got stuck in a miserable marriage as well, while both Southey and Wordsworth got out of the whole scheme like greased eels! You know, Coleridge was really out of his depth with them!:(
But then, from our perspective if we got Kubla Khan, Dejection and The Lime Tree Bower I suppose we shouldn't complain!
Sindhu

Sindhu, your long awaited reply :)

Initially the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge was everything that a companionable poet could wish for, and such relationships are most definitely a rare occurrence in time and space. Their friendship ignited almost immediately from their first encounter of each other (to meet Coleridge was an encounter, it has been recorded to have resulted in epileptic fits from his less mentally balanced acquantinces - such as Charles Lloyd and Mary Lamb) and Coleridge's greatest creative period was nurtured in their creative friendship until he left for Germany.

In return, Coleridge's explosive omissions of ideas and inspiration reared Wordsworth through his early literary career, during this time STC was the dominant man of the partnership. Wordsworth found in him a source of stimulation that would raise him into his subsequent reverence in literary circles and by the time he moved back to the Lakes District after the trip to Germany, he had been elevated to a god-like status in the intellectual groups of that time.

I disagree that Coleridge was out of his contemporaries' league. Certainly he was far more brilliant and universal (and evidently timeless) than Southey, Lloyd or Lamb. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was a giant. To some extent he exploited their relationship after their move to the Lakes District, employing STC in editing his own volumes to be published, benefitting from the praise of his friend while giving little in return to Coleridge's struggling verses. I think that in this apparent imbalance of partnership that eventuated, it could be said that Wordsworth did nothing much to help Coleridge out of his dark period that denied him of "Wordsworthian proportions" (of which you'll agree he had oceans of potential to achieve).

The reasons for STC's periods of creative lapse are complex, varied (not to mention depressing), and I believe that these all belong ultimately to his unique status as a Romantic poet, and a great one at that. Poems that you mentioned - 'Kubla Khan', 'This Lime Tree Bower' etc. were all results of energetic creative bursts that were unmatched by his fellow poet. He may never have achieved the consistency and poetic balance of Wordsworth, despite years of self-deprecation, corrosive self-doubts and frustrated dispowerment. But his "swift, half-intermitted bursts" corresponded perfectly to that natural balance ("Kubla Khan" was perhaps the eptiomy of his creative nature - lost, intense, yet misty and fragmented), and this position I feel warrants him a place as great as any of the celebrated Romantic poets have managed to hold today.

[Sindhu]

er um.. when I said Coleridge was "out of his depth" I meant in the practical business of life and marketing!:D ;) ie, I meant it as a compliment if a somewhat backhanded one! In the actual activity of being a poet, I think I would agree with you completely. Keats and Coleridge are my idea of the quintessential Romantic poets, with Wordsworth Shelley and Byron in a rather different class. So, we are, I think actually in agreement about Coleridge's poetry!:)
Your post was well worth waiting for- Thanks!
Sindhu.

[Munro]

I felt like talking about it (always up for a discussion on Romantic poetry!), and I'm glad we agree. Keats and Coleridge, despite their relatively small input of poetry, were definitely the true Romantic figures, and Keats' poetry is a constant joy for me to read, especially 'Ode to a Nightingale'.

Did anyone watch that BBC mini-series about Lord Byron? It was perfectly cast and surprisingly explicit for British public television. I really liked it.

[Basil]

Didn't see it, but I recently read the biography Byron: Life and Legend by Fiona MacCarthy. It's a fascinating read.

[Sindhu]

I always think Byron the person, far more than Byron the poet contributed to the Romantic School. The Byronic cult and the Don Juan persona was "Romantic" all right, but as an artist he was more inclined to respect the neoclassicists and I rather think he would be turning in his grave if he knew he was being grouped with Wordsworth under any rubric whatsoever! Even his attitude to Keats, though slightly more accomodating was ever sooo patronising.....
Munro, Ode to a Nightingale is quite possibly my absolute favourite Romantic poem. Certain bits in Grecian Urn run it close and Kubla Khan is uniquely wonderful, but the Nightingale is I think extra special!:)

[Munro]

Originally posted by Sindhu
Even his attitude to Keats, though slightly more accomodating was ever sooo patronising.....
Munro, Ode to a Nightingale is quite possibly my absolute favourite Romantic poem. Certain bits in Grecian Urn run it close and Kubla Khan is uniquely wonderful, but the Nightingale is I think extra special!:)

Even Shelley turned his nose up at Keats and criticised his poetry instinctively, I'm not surprised Byron was the same, probably worse.

We share similar love for these poems - Grecian Urn is second only to Nightingale in my mind, my heart warms everytime I read the lines "Darkling, I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death" and I admit that I sigh at the closing "Fled is that music: -do I wake or sleep?", they are such beautiful lines.

His death is such a tragedy to poetry, don't you think? Before he was taken by tuberculosis Keats was on the verge of a brilliant creative period (the aforementioned poems could have only been the beginning!), imagine what was to come.

Looking from the other side however, it was the presence of death that inspired "Ode to a Nightingale", maybe it would never have been written if he and his brother had lived healthily their whole lives.

[ace1426]

hi,
i hv to prepare a seminar on the topic,"Vindication of human minds inherent creativeness with special referrence to Dejection an ode".can anybody help me on this topic?

[mono]

hi,
i hv to prepare a seminar on the topic,"Vindication of human minds inherent creativeness with special referrence to Dejection an ode".can anybody help me on this topic?
Hello, ace, welcome to the forum.
The complexity in the fragment 'vindication of human minds inherent creativeness' already seems to analyze the whole theme of the Coleridge poem (http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Dejection_An_Ode.html]Dejection: An Ode). In retaining the common attributes of Romanticism (an era in poetry of which Coleridge gave many admirable contributions), the poet utilizes the ever-changing fluxuations of daytime, night-time, and nature, but the retention of the 'inherent' human creativity; very important in the poem appears the allusion to the Sir Patrick Spence poem (provided at the top of the page in the link provided above).
Judging that I feel unclear of precisely what you ask, ace, I will highlight a few selections of the poem that may help your research (especially the second quote):

And oh ! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

My genial spirits fail ;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth--
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
Good luck, and I would love to help more, if you have more questions!