Some Thoughts on Romanticism. . . .

I am always on the lookout for early uses of the term Romanticism in English. The term Romantic as applied to literature was commonplace even in the 18th century but it usually referred things such as gothic novels or overtly pastoral material, and was often used in the pejorative sense.  Romanticism identified as a literary movement associated with the work of such poets as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, and others did not come into general until later in the 19th century. This is not to say that it then had, or even has today, a clear and straightforward connotation. Today, Romanticism as a literary term has basically lost credibility from an academic point of view. There are far too many conflicting interests and ideas within the work of those authors normally deemed to be leading Romanticists for it to be a rigorously useful notion. But then most terms in Art and Literary history are really just terms of convenience which we should only use loosely for the sake of historical and biographical ease. Thus, if I were teaching a group of highschool or young university students I would use the term Romanticism for the sake of creating a useful picture of historical movement, all the while making sure to stress that such terms are historically convenient rather than philosophically rigorous. I think what is important for young students to understand is that there were major social and economic changes taking place toward the end of the 18th century and that these changes had a significant correlate in the arts.

Anyway, getting back to my point about the use of the word Romanticism, I found an early use of the term yesterday in a 1829 edition of the London Magazine. It is found in an article entitled "Modern French Poetry" which is particularly concerned with the work of Victor Hugo who was still a young man and had not produced his important work. The passage also contains an interesting use of the word "ultraism" now usually associated with a Spanish literary movement of the early 20th century. The sentence in which the word is used is as follows - "For, in France, romanticism and ultraism (strange as the supposed union may appear) are considered, in a writer, consequent on, and inseparable from, each other; - whilst an undeviating, scrupulous attachment to the authors of the age of Louis XIV, (for, after all, the French idea of classic is nearly confined to them,) - a supercilious contempt for literature of other countries - a dread of change or innovation, in language, rhythm, or general costume - classicism, in short, as it is understood, is considered as equivalent to liberalism, though it is, in fact ultrasim in literature."

Now, I have a fair degree of knowledge of this subject and over twenty years of experience and I cannot honestly say that this sentence makes complete sense to me. The author (who, by the way remains anonymous) seems to be contradicting himself, saying that both romanticism and classicism are forms of ultraism. It also seems to strangely suggest that classicism is associated with liberalism - an idea that seems in direct contradiction to the conventional wisdom. I welcome comments by any of my five or six readers on how they read this sentence.

Despite the turgid obscurity of this sentence, it is an early use of the term Romanticism, and is therefore interesting. However, what is arguably more interesting is the paragraph that follows this passage and, by certain interpretations, it could be seen as shedding light on the previous sentence.

"These unions between parties in politics, and parties in poetry, really exist in France, as we have described them. The fact presents an evident anomaly, and not one of the least curious of our days. For, according to our general notion of things, the parties certainly should be differently assorted. The romantic, or the bold, the innovating, the irregular, in poetry, would ally itself with the speculative, the reforming, the experimental, in politics. On the other side, a scrupulous observance of ancient ordonnances in belles lettres, an exclusive reverence for the works of the great monarchy, for set forms, for the unities, for the dictionary of the Academy, (who determined, in their wisdom, some century and a half ago, that they had fixed the language of their country, which was thenceforth to know neither change nor augmentation) - in short, a devotion to every thing settled, regular, and legitimate, and an abhorrence of novelties and exotics - classicism, in a word, would take refuge in the faubourg St. Germain, the head-quarters of ultraism."

(The Faubourg Saint-Germain, for those who don't know, was the richest, most aristocratic district in Paris)

This sentence does two things. First, it eliminates once an for all the notion that obfuscating prose is a product only of the "post-modern" philosophical mind. Second, it clears up somewhat the previous sentence. The writer is suggesting that while one would expect the Romantics to be associated with radical politics and Classicists to be associated with more conservative political efforts, this is not what in fact prevails in France in the early part of the 19th century. Now, 19th century French literature is certainly not my area of expertise and I am not sure that I am qualified to make a properly informed decision on this issue. (By the way, the editor of the magazine (which at this particular point may have been either John Taylor or Thomas Hood) puts a footnote at this point in the text to suggest that he, in fact, disagrees with the writer). I suspect that this may be a misinterpretation of the events by the writer, but I will leave it to my own readers to decide for themselves.

What I do know is that in England, the ideas of Romanticism are clearly more associated (at least in peoples' minds) with radical politics. The first generation of Romantic authors began as serious radicals and reformers. And as they grew more conservative in outlook, it is almost universally acknowledged that their work declined significantly in quality and interest. The younger generation of Romantics, such as Shelley and Byron, were outspoken political radicals. Other, lesser known writers who bridged the generations and some of whom lived well into the Victorian age such as Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, Charles Lamb, Mary Mitford, John Hamilton Reynolds, Allan Cunningham,  were all committed reformers.

Again, since Romanticism is not a very rigorous concept, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to make a consistent argument that the values of Romanticism are necessarily radical in any political sense. However, I do know one thing for certain. Almost all of the writers that I really love are political radicals, and that is how I think it should be. Art, by its nature, should look toward the ideal, toward utopia, and it should believe, at some basic level, that the ideal is worth striving for. If an artist cannot strive toward utopia in the 'real' world, then she will not know how to strive for it in the aesthetic one.

My book is finally going to print soon. . . .

My book will soon be out. You can pre-order it here https://www.nimbus.ns.ca/Store/CatalogItem/tabid/904/CategoryID/208/List/1/Level/1/ProductID/5986/Default.aspx or on Amazon.

Coleridge, Conservatism and Radicalism. . . . .

I recently engaged in a rather fruitless discussion online concerning the question of whether Samuel Coleridge could properly be considered a 'conservative' thinker or not. My discussion partner seemed to be eager to classify the poet as a conservative and I expressed my belief that Coleridge's politics are considerably more ambiguous than to allow simple classification. I cannot rehash the entire conversation here but it made be think about the difficult question of classifying certain thinkers as either 'conservative' or 'radical,' particularly in the days before the Victorian era.

In the days after Karl Marx and the beginning of the Communist movement, politics became somewhat more clarified and thinkers easier to classify. However, even in those days of apparent clarity, things are not always cut and dry. I think, for example, that a pretty strong argument can be made that many in the orthodox communist movement were never really radical. I have read many such arguments by activists and academics alike who contend that the Communist movement was just a flip-side of capitalism, if you will, and that the Soviet Union was simply a form of so-called command capitalism, etc. As well as post-modern arguments by such thinkers as Derrida and Baudrillard.

Of course any such arguments are contingent on the question of what we actually think of as 'radical' and what we thing of as 'conservative.' I have long thought that one interesting why of looking at the question was encapsulated in the argument between Marx and Hegel concerning the Philosophy of Right. In the context of this discourse, radical and conservative ideologies are separated, I believe, by the degree of legitimacy of the state. A conservative before the 'democratic' era believed that the apparatus of the state, in whatever particular form it took, was the expression of the general good. In the 'democratic' ear, conservatives generally believe that the state (or government) is the expression of the 'general will.' Things are not that simple, of course, because conservatives will resist the 'general will' if it doesn't express the conservative goals.

Now on the other hand, radical ideology is expressed by the assumption that the state (whatever form it takes) is generally an expression of the ruling, or capitalist, class.(As Marx famously said; the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling) While various factors have allowed the state,  to gradually and to varying degrees, to be open and even to contain important social elements, the radial believes that there is a constant and uphill battle to keep excessive power out of the hands of those who want to create a system that simply serves the moneyed interests. Thus radicals in the modern era generally look to ensure ever greater levels of equality of opportunity and empowerment for those who lack the opportunities and even the inherent abilities to compete with those with greater power and more opportunity. Radicals, simply put, don't believe that the so-called 'market' will ensure greater levels of equality and opportunity. In fact, quiet the opposite. Radicals believe that the rich and powerful are constantly attempting to undermine the possibilities for equality, economic or otherwise.

This is, of course, an extremely truncated argument, but I think it captures the essence of what is really at stake. You could write a whole book just to clarify this argument and answer the various objections which people will put forward. And people can disagree with various parts of this analysis, but my point was really to introduce the other part of the argument.

Having said all of this, the argument that I was having online was more complicated because it concerned thinkers in the pre-marxist, pre-communist, and even pre-capitalist (in the full sense of the word), eras. Thinkers like Thomas Paine generally were suspicious of the state in general because they had never seen it as anything but the plaything of the aristocracy. Late 18th and early 19th century radicals could not have imagined the degree of democracy that later generations achieved and the degree to which the state could be a force of good for social welfare even while still largely in the hands of the rich and powerful. Furthermore, radicals and conservatives alike were struggling with the troubling events in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Men like Thomas Jefferson is often considered a genuine radical but he still supported slavery, and voting rights exclusively for a small, land-owning class.

The conservatives of this era were generally a little easier to pin down because many of them, like Edmund Burke, reacted to the French Revolution with a very simplistic argument that defended the ancient regime and the rule of the aristocracy and in many cases said point blank that the 'people' couldn't be trusted and the King and his ilk needed to guide society for its own good. Many modern conservatives actually believe the same thing only with the "market" replacing the King as an abstract sovereign and the corporations replacing the aristocracy as de facto rulers. For these people democracy is limited by the fact that it must only elect groups to 'administer' the market. If the people try to make decisions that contravene the fundamentals of the market, they will be very quick to condemn democracy.

But men like Coleridge were much harder to classify. He profoundly distrusted the aristocracy, he condemned the growing inequities and abuses of capitalism, and he spoke in favor of much greater degrees of economic and social equalities. In the early years Coleridge was clearly a Jacobin and was a radical in the same way that men like Hazlitt and Godwin were (only with a strong Christian streak guiding his morals). But Coleridge, even before the Revolution took a frightening turn, was something of a gradualist who was very wary of revolutions and thought that change should come through slow moral development of the people. But William Godwin also believed this and he is often considered the consummate radical of the late 18th century. Coleridge gradually came to believe that for society to move forward it had to be guided by institutions that encapsulated the moral and ethical good. This sounds like a fairly conservative idea, however, there are many on the left such as Christian Socialists, who also believe this. I think that even with his later, more conservative writings in mind, Coleridge is never an easy thinker to classify and that if he were alive today and saw the degree to which the state has promoted, at various times and in various ways, social and economic equality, Coleridge would be fairly radical by today's standards. I think he would distrust corporate power today in the same way that he distrusted reactionary Toryism in his own day.

The problems of radicalism and conservatism are always made more difficult by the shifting ground of power and state. But in the end I think radicalism is always defined by a desire to increase social and economic equality - not for the sake of homogeneity but for the exact opposite - so that society can benefit from the dynamic elements of difference in society.

New Books this week. . . .

This week's books in the mail - 

The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. This is one of the most interesting documents in English Literature. Ms Wordsworth had a renown intellect and her journalistic records, particularly during the years when Samuel Coleridge was the close friend of her and her brother, have been invaluable not only to academics but to anyone with an interest in Romantic literature. The saddest part of reading Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are the realization that if not for the misogyny of the society in which she lived or the sexism of the men closest to her, she may have matured into great writer. 

Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries - by Edmund Blunden. This is a book that came from Blunden's Clark Lectures in 1932 and is an excellent little text on Lamb. Blunden wrote a great deal about the Romantic writers with a great deal of insight and understanding. And of course Blunden as a renown poet and writer in his own right, and he passes his skill with words on to his criticism as well, making it exceptionally readable and always enjoyable. 

Playfulness and Poetry.

Besides doing extensive revisions on my book about Coleridge and Lamb in the past couple of weeks I have also been trying to read as much as possible. I recently reread McGann's Romantic Ideology and was frustrated once again with his strange, sometimes paradoxical and overly theoretical response to Romanticism. I was also reading a group of essays entitled Literary Theories in Praxis (ed. by Shirley Staton). The essays in this book are very interesting, but perhaps even more interesting are the short introductory remarks to each essay. But what has struck me through all this reading is not the truth of any particular literary theory but the inadequacy of all the theoretical attempts in their effort to grasp or really come to terms with literature. For example, Lipking's effort to "make sense" out of a poem like Yeat's Sailing to Byzantine does nothing for me but render the whole idea of poetical analysis 'non-sense.' Besides years of academic use of this poem rendering it rather dead (a fact that Lipking admits), Lipking's effort to make sense of this poem reminds me of the mass hysteria that drives such analysis into constructing habitual boundaries of acceptable meaning which students are then, through the process of anticipatory socialization, compelling into concluding 'for themselves.' As unpopular with 'intellectuals' as it might be, it seems to me that poetry cannot be analysed but only played with. This is not to say that poetry is a game but rather that it is a ground of aesthetic play that affords us space to make our own meaning. In our constant drive to reconcile the mind with the heart, and the individual with the universal, literature and art in general allows us a place in which we can play through this struggle, pulling in one direction and then in the other in this most human of endeavors. I speak up, therefore, for the play of poetry and the painful irrelevance of much analysis that so regularly looks toward fixed and correct meanings.

Stay tuned for some more observation on this issue as I try to post some blogs about my recent readings of Colerige.

Coleridge on Politics

“That general Illumination should precede Revolution, is a truth as obvious, as that the Vessel should be cleansed before we fill it with a pure Liquor. But the mode of diffusing it is not discoverable with equal facility. We certainly should never attempt to make Proselytes by appeals to the selfish feelings – and consequently, should plead for the Oppressed, not to them. The Author of an essay on political justice considers private Societies as the sphere of real utility – that (each one illuminating those immediately beneath him,) Truth by a gradual descent may at last reach the lowest order. But this is rather plausible than just or practicable. Society as at present constituted does no resemble a chain that ascends in a continuity of Links. – There are three ranks possessing intercourse with each other: these are well comprised in the superscription of a Perfumer’s advertisement which I lately saw – “the Nobility, Gentry, and People of the Dress.” But alas! between the Parlour and the Kitchen, the Tap and the Coffee-room – there is a gulph [sic] that may not be passed. He would appear to me to have adopted the best as well as the most benevolent mode of diffusing Truth, who uniting the zeal of the Methodist with the views of the Philosopher, should be personally among the Poor, and teach them their Duties in order that he may render them susceptible of their Rights.”

Coleridge: Introductory Address to his 1795 Lecture series.

Problems of Literature (Part 3)

When one follows this line of reasoning, even to a minimal degree, you are soon overcome with a queasy feeling that is rooted in the nagging sense that one is inevitably going to be faced with the problem of quality; the very problem that drove the narrator of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to the edge of madness. While the individual aspect of aesthetic experience drives one away from universal or objective notions of quality, such an idea is deeply unsettling as well as counter intuitive. On the other hand, the idea of fixed meanings and interpretations which tie us to a possible universal, albeit subtextual , experiences which are represented in literature. However, a felling of nausea grips you either way. Perhaps it is simply rooted in the vagaries of the ego, but the question nags one’s mind because how are we comprehend the idea that there is no qualitative distinction to be made between Coleridge and Rod McKuen, or Velazquez and Leroy Neiman? Is this just too disturbing to contemplate? There is no doubt something profoundly disturbing about the idea that there is no conceptual hook on which to hang the idea of aesthetic quality. On the other hand it is very clear that much of art or literary theory has been little more than an elaborate practice of elitism, intentional obfuscated theoretical constructs designed to promote certain values and agendas. This opinion was famously taken up by George Orwell who suggested that works of art were really “judged on political ground which are then given an aesthetic disguise.” Such a notion was made blatant and more refined by Fredric Jameson in his remarkable book The Political Unconscious. Here Jameson suggests that lying behind all acts of artistic creation as well as interpretation are fundamental political assumptions that serve to make them meaningful to their producers. It is, perhaps, a particularly tricky way of introducing an erstwhile universalism but makes no issue out of the thorny problem of quality. There is no question of the liberatory aspects of a non-qualitative approach to literature which doesn’t look at a literary document as a fixed object with correct and incorrect possible interpretations, but rather an object of utility which can serve whatever function we chose. This reminds me of Michael Radford’s film Il Postino where the shy but lovable postman uses one of Pablo Neruda’s poems in a love letter to the woman who he has been wooing. Neruda is upset that the man has used his poem, but the Postman suggest that poems don’t belong anyone in particular but to anyone who needs them. Indeed! At a more prosaic level I think of comedian Mitch Hedberg’s funny observation in which he says he just bought a three-bedroom house, but then he thought “Wait a minute, isn’t it up to me how many bedrooms it has. The kitchen is a bedroom that happens to have a refrigerator in it.

Coleridge, Conservatives, and Meritocracy

Continuing on with the themes that I have been addressing lately, I was recently reading a very interesting book by Mario Praz,  a Italian scholar of English Romanticism, entitled The Hero In Eclipse In Victorian Literature. He has an interesting discourse concerning the move of the first generation of Romantic from a radical to a conservative paradigm. Much has been made out of this issue over the years. But while I agree that Wordsworth and Southey clearly turned into conservatives, I have always been reluctant to make the same judgment concerning Coleridge. (As indeed other writers have. Basil Wiley for example contended that Coleridge was the precursor to modern ‘socialism’ or the welfare state) 

I have thought a lot about why I think Coleridge is different from many of his contemporaries. Like many of his peers, Coleridge harbored a great deal of fear concerning the threat of the mob which was so evident in the years after the Revolution in France. But fear of violence does not a conservative make. But this begs the question, or course, ‘what constitutes a conservative?’ I have thought about this question in relation to a thinker and poet like Coleridge and it is a very interesting problem. In the end I have concluded that Coleridge may have believed that social change should be gradual and that the there is a certain amount to be feared from revolutionary upheavals, but this didn’t make him a conservative. What really constitutes a conservative in the modern era (and by this I mean the post-enlightenment), is a belief, often hidden or unspoken, that the world is essentially a meritocracy.

 There are various breeds of conservative ideology but I think the vast majority of conservatives share this basic outlook, even if they are reluctant to admit it in public. Some conservatives will pay lip-service to different programs of equalization but in the end they really think that people are where they are because of their merit. Coleridge wasn’t’ a conservative because he never embraced this notion. Coleridge, perhaps because of his own weaknesses, recognized that there are many reasons that one might achieve above or below their possible merit. This also explains why many people become more conservative as they get older; because as they reach a certain level of achievement they are easily convinced that it is precisely their merit that has taken them there. This is exactly why Southey and Wordsworth, Coleridge’s friends and contemporaries became conservatives, while Coleridge himself did not. This ideology is more easily embraced in a modern democracy because there is less in the way of traditional power and tradition that keeps people from achieving their goals. However, what non-conservatives realize is that in a milieu of democracy and capitalism, it is one’s ability to sell oneself, regardless of actual ability in one’s field, that brings you to ‘success’ in our society. One could be the greatest piano player in world, for example, but without the right sales and or connections, all this merit will be for naught. But conservatives want us to believe, particularly in today’s context, that even if some are born with more wealth than others, we all basically have the same opportunities and if we ‘make’ it or fail to ‘make’ it, it is our merit that counts. And conservatives have managed to sell this fabrication well enough that they can even begin to chip away at programs that help to eliminate barriers to success because so many are convinced that we are already operating in a meritocracy so we don’t need, unions, women’s rights organizations, legal defense funds to challenge potentially discriminatory laws, free universal education, etc, etc. Of course, one might argue that men like Stephen Harper, for example, don’t really believe that we live in a meritocracy but that they are using this falsehood to sell their capitalist agenda. Perhaps, but this is neither here nor there. The fact is that many people do buy this ideology and it has become the cornerstone of much of what constitutes conservative ideology. 

Comparing the Ages

Following up on the subject of the Romanticism and the French Revolution which I touched upon yesterday - These are subject which are close to my heart and should, I believe, be more widely known and discussed because they are remarkably instructive as well as just plain fascinating. One of the interesting aspects of the events that followed the French Revolution is the strange similarity his has to our own times. The Revolution in France ushered in a terrific sense of optimism throughout Europe in people who  had grown extremely weary of the terrible injustice which so endemic to European society. Writers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and even Joseph Priestly had generated strong feelings toward a ‘natural’ sense of equality and justice which, in large part due to the strong resistance on the part of the ruling-class, eventually erupted into the uncontrollable anger of the events in France. In England the feelings of ‘leveling’ gave weight to a generation of writers and activists like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, William Blake, and the members of the London Corresponding Society.  This radicalism was relatively short lived however as the events in France seemed to spin increasingly out of control. Anti-Jacobin groups emerged all over  Britain and the Government passed various laws to make suppression of dissent easier.

These events were very similar to the mood in the West in the decades after the ‘socialist’ revolutions  in the 20^th century. A  genuine space was opened up in which reformers could call for more transparency, more democracy, and more socially responsible policy making. Governments reacted much the way William Pitt’s government had in the 1790s, with paranoia and suppression of dissent. J. Edgar Hoover was the Lord Castlereagh of the 20^th century. With the apparent failure of the socialist projects real economic and social reform seemed impossible in the 1990s in the same way that reform was anathema in the decades after the French Revolution. Reform took ages. Universal Male suffrage which had emerged in 1792 in France took another 60 years to return. And the vote for women was still generations away. But the feelings of reform in Britain might be said to have turned inward into the literary struggles of the Romantics. Coleridge and Wordsworth may have abandoned reform but it was taken up again in the poetry of Shelley and Byron. Romanticism carried the mantle of reform until the Victorian writers began to make reform and the condition of the working-class  a fundamental part of their literary project.

So where are we today? The final failure of the neo-conservative project that began in the Reagan years seems to have once again opened up a space socialist types of reforms. At the very least, faith in the market has been badly shaken. However, we seem to live in a age of cynicism and there is very little of the Romantic idealism around in our time. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a Neo-Victorian sense of practical reform. 

Beginning New Research

As some may know, I have now finished a solid draft of my book Humble Men in Company: The Unlikely Friendship between Samuel Coleridge and Charles Lamb. I have put it into the hands of a few brave souls who have agreed to read it to give me feedback on its consistency and readability. For this favor I am thankful. In the meantime I looked through my research on friendships in the Romantic era and eventually began to concentrate on Thomas Hood,  humorist whose work I really enjoy. I had already run across Hood in my research for the previous book because Hood was one of the closest friends of Charles Lamb. The interesting thing about Hood for me is that he was apprenticed as an engraver and continued throughout his career to illustrate his humorous prose and verse with small drawings. Yet no books on Hood, and there are only a few, say almost anything about these illustrations or Hood's place in the history of illustration in the 19th century. But Hood worked closely with a number of the early Punch illustrators and some of his writing even appeared in editions of Punch. But though as an illustrator Hood was by no means a genius, he clearly played a role in the development of humorous illustration that would evolve into the great Punch cartoons later in the century by such illustrious men as Phil May, and Bernard Partridge. And I have no doubt that had Hood lived past the youthful age of 46 his illustrations would have gone on to improve as did his contemporary John Leech. This aspect of Hood's life and work as been heretofore overlooked and I hope, at least in part, to correct this oversight. I you look back at my posts for late last year you will find on one Thomas Hood. 

I will continue to post updates on how this research is going as it forms into a new book. 

On Scholarly Honesty

Essay iv of Coleridge’s The Friend concludes with a – word sentence that is remarkable in its form as well as content. Wordsworth was known to have admired this particular sentence for its ‘architecture’ and was said to have been cited by a statesman, perhaps George Canning. It is a sentence from which we can learn both grammatically and ethically. And although Coleridge did not always live up to it himself, it is a welcome recommendation. The sentence addresses the question of intellectual integrity in the process of scholarship. Coleridge writes;


“As long therefore as I obtrude no unsupported assertions on my Readers; and as long as I state my opinions and the evidence which induced or compelled me to adopt them, with calmness and that diffidence in myself, which is by no means incompatible with a firm belief in the justness of the opinions themselves; wile I attack no man’s private life from any cause, and detract from no man’s honors in his public character, from the truth of his doctrines, or the merits of his compositions, without detailing all my reasons and resting the result solely on the arguments adduced; while I moreover explain fully the motives of duty, which influenced me in resolving to institute such investigations; while I confine all asperity of censure, and all expressions of contempt, to gross violations of truth, honor, and decency, to the base corrupter and the detected slanderer; while I write on no subject which I have not studied with my best attention, on no subject which my education and acquirements have incapacitated me from properly understanding; and above all while I approve myself, alike in praise and blame, in close reasoning and in impassioned declamation, a steady FRIEND to the two best and surest friends of all men, TRUTH and HONESTY; I will not fear an accusation of either Presumption of Arrogance from the good and the wise, I shall pity it from the weak, and despise it from the wicked.”

Coleridge, Plagiarism, and Authorship

"A mixture of lies doth ever add pleasure." -Coleridge, "The Friend" essay 1

I have been reading a great deal lately about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet a philosopher. Coleridge was a remarkably interesting man and not only changed the course of English poetry but had an important influence on literary theory and indirectly on philosophy. There is a great deal of controversy concerning Coleridge’s alleged plagiarism, particularly of various passages of German idealist philosophy. In the 1970s Norman Furman wrote an exhaustive text on this subject entitled Coleridge: Damaged Archangel, a phrase that he took from the great essayist Charles Lamb who was a friend of Coleridge. Personally, despite all the work that Furman put into his book which runs to some 500 pages, I believe that the majority of Coleridge’s plagiarism can be put down to a combination of his opium use, a rather disorganized and muddled mind, and simple scholarly carelessness. I say this because Coleridge’s brilliance is something agreed upon by supporters and detractors alike, and his direct plagiarism is often surrounded by sophisticated and ground-breaking analysis and summery that, if it were just properly foot-noted would, on its own, constitute important and original work. He had, therefore, little to gain by lucid and conscious plagiarism of the work of German philosophers that he had a more thorough knowledge of than any other thinker in England at the time.

Another interesting issue in the literary biography of Coleridge is his habit of changing the dates of certain poems or even fabricating stories surrounding the writing of certain work. The most famous example of this is the story he told about the creation of his renowned poem Kubla Khan, which he claimed was revealed to him all at once in a opium induced sleep. Upon being interrupted by a mysterious person from Porlock, Coleridge claims that he lost his connection to this nether world and was unable to complete the poem which ever remained a fragment.
What I find most interesting about both these issues is not the hard facts about the degree to which Coleridge’s plagiarism was conscious or not, nor whether or not some of Coleridge’s greatest poems were really written under the influence or drugs or not. In the end these are issues that probably cannot be settled anyway and what matters more than the facts is the way you choose to look at the life and work of this remarkable man. What all of these issues really point to is the degree to which the facts of ‘authorship’ are really slippery and shadowy issues that seem, at first glance, clear and orderable, but on closer examination are not clear at all.

This idea got me thinking about the concept in literary theory referred to as the ‘intentional fallacy.’ This concept, first used in the forties by Wimsatt and Beardsley, can basically be summed up in the idea that the intention of the author doesn’t really matter when it comes to analysing and understanding a work of art or literature. Over the years this idea gained ever-increasing currency and today, in the atmosphere of post-modernism and deconstruction it is taken as read that an author’s intent is largely irrelevant to a work of literature. Putting together the idea slippery status of authorship as raised by the issues surrounding Coleridge’s work with the notion off the intentional fallacy, I began to think about the creation of a new, more radical concept which we could refer to as the ‘Authorial Fallacy.’ This idea would help to remind us that originality and authorship is never really a clear cut issue and that, despite the current obsession of academic authorities with plagiarism, the lines of authorship constantly blur.

This blurry world of authorship is in large part what makes Samuel Coleridge such an interesting and challenging writer; he created not only stories and ideas but stories about stories and ideas about ideas. Where reality fiction begins and reality ends is never clear and the lines of ‘truth’ are constantly shifting. This is also what might make Coleridge one of the great precursors to post-modern thought.

The great French writer, Lautremont (himself a precursor to the Surrealists) once said; “Plagiarism is necessary; the world demands it!” I wonder when we will catch up to this strange and enigmatic 19th century thinker?

Coleridge

Few great thinkers have been as insecure and deeply troubled as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But, of course, few people of Coleridge’s stature, at least in modern times, have had so many reasons to be troubled. Coleridge was deeply scarred by a difficult upbringing, and the weaknesses that emerged from his plight led understandably to terrible problems as an adult. Coleridge was the youngest of ten children by his father’s second wife. Not all of his siblings lived into adulthood, and by the time Coleridge reached his age of majority he had lost five brothers and his only sister. Coleridge’s father was a clergyman of very modest means and the family seldom had enough for a descent life. Then, as if to add insult to injury, Coleridge’s father died when the boy was only nine. As a result of this untimely death, Coleridge was ripped from the only security that an insecure boy had and he was given a scholarship to the famous boarding school Christ’s Hospital. Coleridge’s experience at boarding school was both the making and breaking of this remarkable man. Christ’s Hospital was a ruthless institution rife with violence and punishments. Such an atmosphere must have been devastating for a youth already stained by insecurity and death. But Coleridge was a naturally talented youth and took quickly to Latin, Greek, philosophy and versifying. Coleridge was deeply fortunate to learn in this atmosphere and Christ’s Hospital surely set him on the path to his eventual achievements. But it was also a deeply lonely place for Coleridge and during his entire nine years of attendance it seems that his mother failed to visit him even once, and visits from his older brothers were few and far between. Coleridge felt abandoned by his mother and even referred to himself as an orphan on more than one occasion.
Given these difficult youthful experience it is not surprising that Coleridge eventually fell into a spiral of debt, marital problems, and opium addiction. His constant problems mad it very difficult for Coleridge to finish most of the major projects that he took on. All his life he desired to create an epic work of poetry but failed to even get it off the ground. Instead, Coleridge counselled Wordsworth on writing the epic work; which he did, assuring his status as one of the great poets of the English language. And yet despite all his shortcomings, Coleridge must be said to be the most accomplished man who never lived up to his potential. Depending on the edition, Coleridge’s collected works run from eight to thirteen volumes, and though some of the works are highly challenging (some even impenetrable), many of them are full remarkable insights as well as great poetry. Coleridge gave several sets of lectures on literature and philosophy which garnered him a fair degree of attention. But much of what he said in these lectures was extempore and the only records we have of them is what others noted. But what I find remarkable in Coleridge is the fact that his failure to create any ordered and reasoned body of work, it is this very failure that makes him interesting. It is the fact that Coleridge’s work darts from place to place and subject to subject that gives him his challenging beauty. Coleridge is never sedate, orderly, or methodical. Instead he dips through the world and touches truth in strange and unlikely snippets. In a post-modern age that eschews meta-narratives of all kinds, Coleridge seems perfect for contemporary readers. He may hold many traditional views but the twists and turns of his thought means that you are unlikely ever to find entirely solid ground on which to rest.

Poetry vs Conservatism

I don’t know about you but I have little sympathy for Robert Southey. Born in 1774, Southey was the son of a linen draper and though he received a rather patchy education, he displayed an early talent for Latin and writing verse. Although he began an education at Oxford with an eye toward the clergy, Southey was drawn to writing, eventually earning an impressive reputation and living as an author of poetry and a number of histories, including a multi-volume history of Brazil. In 1813 Southey won the appointment of Poet laureate, guaranteeing him a place in the history of English poetry. Now even though the ‘office’ of Poet Laureate has been occupied by such illustrious names as Dryden, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, none of the truly great poets of passion and vision have ever held the title. In fact a number of interesting poets have refused the title including William Morris and Philip Larkin. But it is not his status as Poet Laureate that turns me off of Robert Southey, rather it is his abandonment of idealism, the true focus of great poetry, that makes it difficult for me to sympathise with him. As a young man Southey admired the motivations behind the French Revolution and was committed to the struggle for political reform and social equality. For a long time Southey was committed to elaborate plans with his friend Coleridge to found a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. But Southey quickly abandoned his political radicalism and became a fervent and active Tory, supporting the government of Lord Liverpool. Southey, like most Tories, was fond of blaming reformers and the working-class for their own oppression and was strongly opposed to Catholic emancipation. Now as much as I despise Tories in general, I hold a special place of loathing for a person who begins at point of poetry and idealism only to abandon the cause of humanity. The greatest consolation we can draw from Southey’s abhorrent abandonment of everything good and humane (as all Toryism is) is that he is now a largely forgotten poet, little known or read. A couple of years ago I had a friend who was taking a university course in English Romanticism and Southey wasn’t even included! Perhaps the only thing that Southey wrote that is still widely known is the Three Bears.

Yet despite Southey’s Toryism and abandonment of hope, I recently found something interesting and ironic. I was reading through a six volume edition of the Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey compiled by his son, Charles, when I found something he had written in a letter to friend named John May that sparked my interest. Southey wrote:
“It is not manners and fashions alone that change and are perpetually changing with us. The very constitution of society is unstable: it will, and in all probability will, undergo as great alterations, in the course of the next two or three centuries, as it has undergone in the last. The transitions are likely to be more violent, and far more rabid. At no very distant time, these letters, if they escape the earthquake and the volcano, may derive no small part of their interest and value from the faithful sketches which they contain of a stage of society which has already passed away, and a state of thing which then will have ceased to exist.”

This letter, written when Southey had already abandoned his youthful ideals, is remarkable. It is amazing that a man committed to the deplorable ideology of Toryism – an ideology distinguished by its blind commitment to tradition and resistance to social and political change – could make this basic insight concerning the inevitability of change. A conservative is someone who accepts a radical idea a century after it was conceived, after the radicals have moved on to something better. Unfortunately conservatives also fail to recognize this basic reality, imagining instead that, because of fundamental human inadequacies, we have now reached the greatest height of social or moral development. It is odd therefore to read these words written from the hand of rather despicable Tory, words that recognize that his own beliefs and commitments will soon be surpassed.