The Poet as Critic: An Approach to Coleridge

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.

I

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,⁶a number of Letters ⁷that form a disjointed but unending commentary on literary matters and Notebooks ⁸that 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 as 1802 he had said that “ordinary things should be presented to the mind inan 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”, itis certain then that Coleridge incorporated the principle of novelty in the Preface because he had a first hand experience of itsuse 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 ispertinent here isthat 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 isindeed useful in the explication of the wind-image because the image isused 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.

Notes

¹ George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism (London, 1917), III, pp. 230-31. To me the judgment appears sound although the grounds are suspect.

² F. R. Leavis, “Coleridge in Criticism “. A Selection From Scrutiny (Cambridge, 1979). Vol I, p. 276. Leavis’s pithy statement that “(Coleridge’s) currency as an academic classic is something of a scandal” is thoroughly inconsistent with the evidences he produces. In fact, nothing in the essay supports his prejudicial statements. Further, one finds it difficult to reconcile the opinion in the essay with his earlier statement that we all know Coleridge’s pre-eminence in “Arnold As Critic” of the same Selection.
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, London and New York, 1960) and also Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism (London and Cambridge, Mass. 1936).
⁷ E. L. Griggs (ed. ), Collected Letters of S. T. Coleridge  (Oxford and New York, 1956.72).
⁸ K. Coburn (ed.), The Notebooks of S. T. Coleridge (London New York, 1957-)
⁹ Biographia Literaria (London, 1907 ) Ed. J. Shawcross in two Volumes, II, p. 1.
¹⁰ Ibid, p. 21.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² For a discussion of the relationship between Coleridge’s personal creative experiences and critical principles, see Coleridge(London, 1953), Humphry House, p. 92-93. It is difficult to agree with the contention of House that Coleridge’s criticism is inapplicable to an understanding of his poetry because it was written long after his poetic composition. It is precisely for this reason that his criticism has to be respectfully studied.
¹³ Lines 41.50.
¹⁴ Lines 309-319.
¹⁵ Lines 452.463.