Wordsworth And Coleridge : Their Poetic Creed. Poetry :- How They Define And Differentiate.

Wordsworth And Coleridge : Their Poetic Creed.

Poetry :- How They Define And Differentiate.

Name:  Pritiba B. Gohil

Roll No. :  23

Course No.3 : Literary Theory And Criticism. 

Topic:  Wordsworth And Coleridge : Their Poetic Creed. Poetry : - How They Define And Differentiate.

M.A. English Semester - 1

Batch: 2014 - 2016

Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Submitted  to :-

Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad,

Head of the Department,

Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction : -

From Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV (1817)

                           

                                Philosopher, poet, and religious and political theorist Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire, England, and attended the University of Cambridge. In 1795 Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth, with whom he was to work closely. Under Wordsworth’s influence, Coleridge’s poetry shifted to a more conversational voice and began to find inspiration in daily life. In 1796 Coleridge published his first poetry collection, Poems on Various Subjects, and from 1797 to 1798 he lived close to Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in Somersetshire.

                               Coleridge and Wordsworth collaboratively published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, marking the rise of the British Romantic movement. According to Coleridge, in their collaborative plans it was agreed Coleridge would compose a series of lyrical poems exploring the Romantic and supernatural, and seeking there to earn a readers’ “poetic faith,” while Wordsworth planned to use the self and the everyday as his subject in poems that would replace a sense of familiarity with an air of the supernatural. Pairing these two approaches, the poets hoped, might bring into harmony “the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.”

                                Coleridge contributed his well-known poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” while Wordsworth ultimately composed the bulk of the collection. After the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the pair travelled throughout Europe. Afterwards, Coleridge lectured and travelled extensively, and, while battling an opium addiction, moved in with physician James Gillman in 1816. The following year Biographia Literaria, a fusion of autobiography, literary criticism, and religious and philosophical theory, was published.

                                    While consistently praising Wordsworth’s creative work, Coleridge was unhappy that when the second edition of the book was published, Wordsworth added a preface containing a statement of poetics emphasizing the “language of ordinary life,” which Coleridge considered to be a significant departure from the collaborative impulse that shaped the work.

                                   In this rebuttal, Coleridge considers the elements of a poem—sound and meter, communication, pleasure, and emotional affect—as they function together. On attempts to shape a work into meter, or consciously add any of these elements to a poem, Coleridge notes, “nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.” Emphasizing the harmony of these elements as what sustains a poem, Coleridge describes the reader’s path through such a poem as “like the motion of a serpent . . . or like the path of sound through the air; at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward.”

My Point of View :- 

                                So, with the help of these things we can say that this is work of both the writers we cannot say that this is work of any one writer so if we differentiate their poetry we have to give justice to both of the writers because they both are contributor of this work. So, let’s lake about that how they Define And Differentiate Poetry.

What is the basic difference between the Poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge?? :- 

                         The above question is in reference to a comparative critical study between Wordsworth's "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" and Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria."

                         This question of where Williams Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge differ in opinion on the correct understanding of poems and poetry as expressed in their respective writings Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) and Biographia Literaria (1817).  For making this point clear we have to understand both the writers and their works in deep that what they said and what is their point of view. Where they makes difference in their thinking and how they define poetry or differentiate poetry.

                           Before one can understand   comparative study of both these poets we have to understand their background philosophies and sentiments of their lives.

                         Wordsworth writes in a subjective style. He examines his state of mind or consciousness before attempting to write a creative work. This is largely why he fell in love in nature and became a nature worshipper. He believes in a primordial relationship between the mind of man and the nature around him. Coleridge on the other hand is quite objective. His works arise out of the factual and biographical antecedence that surrounds his life. 

                       Wordsworth's writings are highly sequential, logical and remain in a single thought form all throughout his creative endeavours. Coleridge writes in fragments and he is unable to maintain a single thought probably due to his opium use which he is notorious for.

                       Wordsworth isn’t rebellious in his writings. He seeks not to attack any person but to establish his own views while Coleridge in his 'Biographia Literaria', he dedicates some chapters just to rebel and criticize Wordsworth's ideals.

                      Wordsworth establishes in his famous preface that there is no difference between the language of prose and poetry as they both one and the same thing while Coleridge differentiates these two concepts on the basis that poetry contains metre and rhyme while prose doesn’t contain these.

                      Wordsworth in his preface believes that a real language that can communicate to the low, common or rustic people should be the language of poetry while Coleridge admonishes that there is no 'real' language as language differs based on education, culture, belief, etc, but that a 'lingua communise' should be used.

                     Wordsworth's famous preface can be regarded as the manifesto of romanticism because it echoes key feature inherent in the works of the romantics but Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is largely an autobiographical works which strayed from its immediate purpose along the course of the work.

                   Wordsworth believes that poetry should contain events from real, common and everyday life while Coleridge believes that this feature is too limiting.

                  Wordsworth believes that a poem should be spontaneous and that it should arise out of powerful emotions which are recollected in ecstasy or tranquillity while Coleridge believes that poetry deals with the communication of both truth and pleasure and that some poems may even lack pleasure and communicate only truth as in the case of Isaiah 1:1 which Coleridge tags as a poem.

                  Wordsworth believes the mind of man is capable of achieving ecstasy even without influence drugs while Coleridge is notorious for his drug abuse and critics have even written that Coleridge was having an opium rush when he wrote his 'Biographia Literaria.' This assertion is evident on his illogicality in sequence and ideas all through the essay.

                  Wordsworth is a worshipper of nature to a dogmatic level in that he is so fanatic that he believes nature is his religion and that those who don’t see the beauty of nature are as well as mundane. Coleridge, in as much as he admonishes the creative power of nature, he doesn’t take it to a fanatical or a dogmatic level before of Orphism which is evident on his Catholicism.

                    Wordsworth admonishes simplicity of diction and style which is also evident of his famous preface but Coleridge is known for his convoluted, esoteric and philosophical language in his Biographia Literaria.

                    Breaking with the earlier eighteenth century, which maintained that poetry should be rational and objective, Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" focused on the subjectivity of the individual. He writes, "Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart...speak a plainer and more emphatic language."  He believed that feelings "coexist in a state of greater simplicity" than "rational thought. Thus, to Wordsworth it is a poet's duty to capture and express experience with authentic and internal force, "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings with emotions recollected in tranquillity."The poet should descend from his or her "supposed height" and "express himself as other men express themselves". This statement lies at the very essence of Wordsworth's theory of poetry. Notice that in the preface to "Lyrical Ballads," there is not much about imagination.

                  Samuel Taylor Coleridge brought back the issue of imagination and fancy in his discussion of poetry in "Biographia Literaria." While to Wordsworth, imagination was something taken for granted, especially in poets, Coleridge, while agreeing with Wordsworth's premise, nevertheless, clarifies for himself what imagination was; what was the difference between imagination and fancy that the eighteenth century critics tended to merge together.

                   The Biographia Literaria was one of Coleridge's main critical studies. In this work, he discussed the elements of writing and what writing should be to be considered genius. The "Biographia" blends criticism of poetry with literary theory, philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and is full of discussions on politics, religion, social values and human identity.

                   Central them of the “ Biographia Literaria," is his discussion of imagination and fancy.

                            Wordsworth and Coleridge both rejected that the mind was a tabula rasa on which external experiences and sense impressions were imprinted, stored, and recalled. Rather, he believed that imagination is innate. Coleridge divides the mind into imagination and fancy.

                              To Coleridge imagination was primary and secondary. Primary imagination, was the creative force behind perception itself; meaning that there is nothing called objective perception. Perception, according to Coleridge, is essentially subjective. While the human being is finite, Coleridge maintained that the poet's creation of "I AM" is his or her expression of the infinite. What this means is, according to Coleridge, if we could remind ourselves of the "I AM," we can, through our writings, move gradually from the finite to the infinite.

                                 FANCY, on the contrary, is much more limited. It comes from memory, according to Coleridge. When we free our memory from being to bound up with time and space, we are in the realm of fancy. Its provenance is memory and its interaction is through the association of ideas. Whereas imagination is active and dynamic, fancy is "passive and mechanical." Imagination, on the other hand, is "vital" and transformative, "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of “creation and inventive genius."

                               Frederick Engell, one of the two original Marxist's critics, has observed that Coleridge's division of the imagination into the "primary" and "secondary" draws a distinction between creative acts that are unconscious and those that are intentional and deliberate. Imagination works at the unconscious level, while fancy is wilful and deliberate.

Coleridge’s disagreements with William Wordsworth is like this what is given below in the following points :-

(1) What constitutes the language of "real life?"

(2) Whether the feelings of lesser educated farmers are more genuine than the feelings of people in the higher classes. 

(3) Whether Aristotle's principles of poetry do or do not govern poems and poetry.

(4) What is to be done about language that is dull and garrulous in everyday conversation, which is still dull and garrulous in poems? Wordsworth cleans it up, so to speak; Coleridge says don't use it because it has to be cleaned up, which renders it the same as the language of higher classes.

(5) That Wordsworth's poetry about "low rustic" people, feelings, and ideas disproves his own philosophic assertions because of point.

(6) That rustics focus on facts while individuals at higher levels of education, work and experience focus on the connections between facts and the connection of facts to governing laws, hence focusing on a higher order of thought, ideas, language, conversation.

(7) These support Coleridge's chief point that there is a difference between the language of prose and poetry, while Wordsworth asserts that there is no difference.

How William Wordsworth Defines Poetry :-

                            In the preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defines poetry thus: 

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

                             In this definition of poetry there are two apparent contradictions.  The "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" on one side and "emotion recollected in tranquility" on the other side are apparently two contradictory statements.  "Spontaneous overflow" must be immediate and unrestricted without any interval of time between feeling and its expression.  The expression "recollected in tranquility" would suggest intervention of time between feeling and its expression.  "Recollection" means remembering some impression after some lapse of time.  Wordsworth himself has tried to reconcile this apparent contradiction in his further elucidation of his definition.  Immediate impression has a blending of both important and unimportant impressions.  When they are allowed to rest for some time, only the important impressions remain in the memory, and the unimportant ones wash away.  The poet would then express those powerful impressions spontaneously with ease and felicity without any imposition of restriction in point of language or poetic diction.  The poet's expression of those powerful feelings must be easy, smooth and natural.

How Samuel Taylor Coleridge Defines Poetry :-

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Definition of Poetry

“ The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusive appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control (laxis effertur habenis [i. e. driven with loosened reins]) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. “

—  “Biographia Literaria”, Chapter 14

S.T.Coleridge's Definition of Poetry :-

                               Poetry is the activity of the imagination, idealizing the real and realizing the ideal-what Wordsworth and Coleridge did in the lyrical ballads. A poem naturally takes this general object of poetry but it has a form, too, which distinguishes it from other kinds of compositions. Coleridge asks what this form is, how it comes to be there, and what relation it bears to its content. A poem he says uses the same medium as a prose composition, namely words.

'A poem (therefore) is the species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part'.

Another definition:

"Prose-words in their best order, poetry-the best words in their best order."   - S.T. Coleridge.

Wordsworth V/S Coleridge :-

Differences between the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge :-     

                                Wordsworth and Coleridge are best friends and great poetic writers yet so different in their beliefs and writings of poetry.

                                 In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, we are first introduced to Wordsworth and his opinions of poetry. He goes on to say that,

"The principal object, then proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men..." (pg. 2 ln 16-18)

                             Wordsworth believes in "adopting the very language of men" (pg. 3 ln 45- 46) and he goes on to believe that "each of these poems has a worthy purpose". (pg. 2 ln 50-51) Wordsworth then goes into detail about his poetry in "Lyrical Ballads" and says that "the reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes." (pg. 3 ln 48-49) He "utterly rejects them [personifications of abstract ideas] as a mechanical device of style." (pg. 3 ln 53-54) Wordsworth then goes on to believe that "poetry is the most philosophic of all writing" (pg. 6 ln 22) and that it is the "image of man and nature." (pg. 5 ln 26) Lastly Wordsworth believes that "criticism is destructive of all sound unadulterated judgment and let the reader then abide independently, by his own feelings." (pg. 11 ln 6-8) which shows us that Wordsworth does not care about the criticism received from his readers.

                                 Coleridge seems to me as the idea starter you could say. He was the one who wanted to make a preface of the Lyrical Ballads but it was Wordsworth who went through with it and carried it out. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge seems to believe in metre as "passion" is found in it. Coleridge unlike Wordsworth also believes that "common language does not apply to all classes; and therefore, should not be practiced." That is in complete disagreement with Wordsworth as he believes common everyday language should be used in pieces of his work.

                                     Similarly, both poets are in common ground with nature. Wordsworth and Coleridge believe that nature is a very reflective place for man to go to. I agree with Wesley as that I found it ironic that Wordsworth and Coleridge found dread and despair while observing nature. In "Lines" by Wordsworth, he is "in that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind." (ln 3-4) Towards the end, even though Wordsworth is enjoying nature he continues to think about the dark thoughts of humanity as he asks, "have I not reason to lament what man has made of man? (ln 23-24) In "Nightingale" by Coleridge, he finds despair in nature as well. The tone in the beginning is very calm and reflective but as the poem progresses, we find that the character told the Nightingale all "of his own sorrows" (ln 21) and now the Nightingale echoes the sorrow.

                          So with their so many differences and similarities Wordsworth and Coleridge are different in their writing in somehow. 

Conclusion :-

                            So, at the end in conclusion we can say that Wordsworth and Coleridge's overall point was that as people we need to view things in life just as they are. If things are bound to happen, let them happen, don't put more thought into it, in other words, "go with the flow", and then later determine what's next. "...determine how far it has been attained; and, what is a much more important question, whether it be worth attaining: and upon the decision of these two questions will rest my claim to the approbation of the Public."(34).  This is all about poetic creed of William Wordsworth and Coleridge that how they define and differentiate it.