Coleridge was a man of many parts: poet, literary critic, thinker, journalist, and entertaining speaker. All his friends testified to the charm of his personality, the power of his conversation, and the richness of his mind. However, he often felt frustrated without being able to work out any reason for such frustration. His acute sensibility and his great intellect probably worked against each other to create his malaise. He believed he could react against this but, being incostant, passivity and torpidity got the better of him. Opium was his escape (or maybe justification). Consequently, the idea grew up that he was a ceaseless dreamer, a courageous voyager into the unknown, the artist who would take the risk of being an addict to understand even more of his unconscious and that he was constantly trying to let his imagination wander free and unrestricted. Being hooked on opium left him with a deep sense of guilt that plagued him till almost the end of his life. Coleridge introduced to Britain the work of the the German idealist philosophers. His essential ideas on the imagination are set forth with reasonable brevity in chapter XIII of Biographia Literaria. There Coleridge divides the imagination into two, the primary and the secondary. The primary imagination is the first act of self-consciousness, which makes knowledge and perception possible. The secondary imagination, which is the poetic imagination, is a faculty of the mind wich interprets, shapes, and re-creates its experiences. His years of collaboration with Wordsworth were the happies of his life, and the most fruitful of poetry. The two poets shared certain ideas, like the healing and revelatory power of nature, and its power in the memory, but the contrast in style between Coleridge's poems and those written by Wordsworth is remarkable. It does not only come from their differing temperaments; it is also the result of the way they planned the Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth was to choose subjects from ordinary life, while Coleridge supernatural incidents and characters. Moreover, where Wordsworth's poetry is essentially meditative, Coleridge's is passionate, mysterious, and appears to be written in total surrender to an uncontrollable vision. Coleridge meant that the poet must have the ability to make his narrative credible, so that the reader is disposed to "suspend" his incredulity and to be led into a world of strange and wonderful vision. Like the wedding guest, he is so fascinated that he "cannot choose but hear". As a poet Coleridge is best known for all small number of poems, the most famous of which are The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. The Ancient Mariner is the closet in the Lyrical Ballads collection to a true ballad. It tells a story, with the emphasis on action tather than on character; and its form probably comes from the eighteenth-century fashion for the ballad imitation. In accordance with his agreement with Wordsworth, Coleridge's tale is supernatural. The use of the supernatural was for Coleridge a technique of psychological revelation; it allowed him to bring into play in his poem the "hidden forces" of the mind. In The Ancient Mariner the chief of these force is guilt, especially as it exists in the mind to some extent indipendent of cause. The Mariner does not known why he killed the albatross; similarly he blesses the living creature of the sea "unaware". His regenative acts bring about only partial restoration. He recreatures of the sea "unaware". His regenerative acts bring about only partial restoration. He remains a frightening figure, the impact of whose experiences distrups ordinary life. Kubla Khan is strange and enigmatic. It is full of images that have the clarity and inexplicability of a dream. It is apparently about artistic creation and its mysterious and frightening power. This poem contains the most famous Romantic description of the artist, a description, deriving details from Plato, of the poet whose inspiration has driven him mad. Poetry like this, which proceeds by image and symbol, will always elude interpretation. Coleridge was also a brillant literary critic and a leading expert on Shakespear, whose plays he analysed with originalitybin numerous essays, and in his talks. His approach as a literary critic broke new ground in that he was not content to limit himself to simple criticism of technique or skills; he endeavoured to identify the very principles of the creative process. However, it is for his poetry that the ordinary reader loved him. Reading poems like the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan or Christabel is an experience that fascinates the reader with the skilful combination of rhythm and rhyme, intense symbolism and vivid imagery, capturing the essence of mysterious and supernatural events.
Programming & Design - 3 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
We don't do homework.
2 :
am sorry - I cannot !!
3 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner#Plot_summary
