Biography of SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
His Life and Literature
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a pioneer in
nineteenth century Romantic English Poetry, was born at Ottery, St. Mary in
1772. He was the youngest child of his father-Reverend John Coleridge, Vicar
and school-master of St. Mary of Devonshire. Coleridge was first educated at
Christ's Hospital, where he met Lamb and grew intimate with him. He later went
to Jesus College, Cambridge. He, however, left the University in 1794, without
obtaining any degree.
Coleridge's literary career began quite
early. He started writing verses while in the university. Some of his early
verses appeared in the Morning Chronicle during 1793- 95. In 1794, he wrote,
jointly with Southey, with whom he had already developed intimacy, The Fall of
Robespierre. He also attempted to start a newspaper, under the title The Watchman,
in 1794. But that could not prove successful.
Coleridge came to be acquainted with
Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy early in 1795. That was a turning point of
his literary career. The two young poets—Wordsworth and Coleridge— worked
together and produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The volume contains some of
Coleridge's finest poems including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. His two
other celebrated works—Christabel and Kubla Khan were written possibly during
1797.
Like Wordsworth, Coleridge had the ardour of
republican enthusiasm during the French Revolution. Like his friend, he was
disillusioned, too, by the aftermath of the Revolution and the tyrannical
excesses of the revolutionists. His poem France, an Ode, written in 1798,
indicated that change in his attitude.
Coleridge toured Germany in 1798-99, and
learnt the German language. He translated Schiller's Piccolomini and Wallenstein
during his stay there. Gradually his health declined and he became an opium-addict
to sooth the acute neurologia from which he had been suffering. His remarkable
works of literary criticism—Biographia Literaria and Aids to Reflections—
appeared in 1817 and 1825 respectively.
The last phase of Coleridge's life was mainly
spent with his friends and relations owing to his poor health and addiction to
drugs. He went to Germany once more in 1928 with Wordsworth.
Coleridge died in 1834 in his sleep.
Coleridge's literary works include his poems—The
Rime of the Ancient Marine, Kubla Khan, Christabel (in two parts), France— an
Ode, Dejection: an Ode, Love, Youth and Age, Frost at Midnight and a number of
other shorter lyrics.
His prose writings are, too, well celebrated
and include his Lectures on different poets (1811), Biographia Literaria (1817)
and Aids to Reflection (1825).
Coleridge as a poet
Coleridge, characterised as the high priest
of romanticism by Saintsbury, was a pioneer, along with his friend Wordsworth,
in the dawn of romanticism on the English poetry of social, satirical and
critical poetry of the age of prose and reason. The essence of the romantic
spirit is well perceived in his poetry.
Coleridge, like Wordsworth, was a lover of
liberty and the French Revolution, at its initial stage, had a great hold on
him, as on Wordsworth. He had a speculative idealism of the Revolution and
found in it a political moral for his people and age. Unfortunately, like
Wordsworth, he was frustrated, rather disillusioned with it, as the war of
liberty was turned into a war of aggression. His celebrated Ode on France is a
clear and categorical confession of his entire connection with the French
Revolution through its different stages and his sad disenchantment about it.
Supernatural in Coleridge's Poetry
Coleridge's significance in romantic poetry'
lies in his treatment of the supernatural world. He is found to have created the
supernatural out of the natural in a way that is unique. He strikes terror
psychologically, without the representation of any gross scene of physical
horror. His great poems, like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and
Kubla Khan, bear out his power to create a supernatural or mystical enchantment
with a highly romantic suggestiveness.
Coleridge's treatment of the supernatural
indicates the mystical aspect of romantic art. But this is not all. It also
bears out his highly romantic imagination that excels in his imagination of the
situation, away from the immediate earthly reality. It is when he narrates the
strange experience of an ancient mariner in an unknown region of the Pacific,
when he delineates the dream-land of Kubla Khan, or when he peeps into the
remote medieval age in Christabel that his imagination reaches the height of excellence.
He succeeds in projecting a human interest on extraordinary and romantic themes,
'giving a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic
faith'. Coleridge's conception of the supernatural really casts a sort of enchantment
that creates a psychological state of wonder and fear. The elements of gross
and material horror are absolutely absent in him. The element of marvel is not obtruded,
but slowly distilled into the entire environment. The touch is psychological, not
physical.
Treatment of Nature
Coleridge's poetry bears out, too, his
romantic interest in Nature. He is, however, no Philosopher or idealist of
Nature, like Wordsworth or Shelley. He is rather an imagist, like Keats, of
natural elements or scenes. What is more, his supernatural comes out of the
natural and never appears anything but natural. In fact, Nature and the supernatural
are not apart, and co-exist in him for the poetic enchantment.
Medievalism
Again, Coleridge's supernatural has a close
kinship with his medievalism. Among the romantic poets, he, along with Scott
and Keats, remains the ardent painter of the medieval world. An intense
interest in the medieval time, noted for its mystery and enchantment, serves to
give an additional interest as well as an artistic curiosity to the supernatural
aspects of the poems, like Christabel. In fact, medievalism lies in the core of
his poetry and constitutes his very poetic creed. But here again, Coleridge is
not merely romanticist, but a keen spectator, with his historical imagination.
There is a precise factual, accurate representation of the medieval world, with
its external objects as well as its spirit and faith. Indeed scientific
exactness, rather than romantic exaggeration, marks Coleridge’s medievalism.
Comments
Post a comment