NATURE
IN SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Short Biography:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St.
Mary,
He attended
Dame
Keys Reading School from 1775 (3), and the
He died in Highgate,
Beneath this sod
A Poet lies; or that which once was he.
O
lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.
That he, who many a year with toil of
breath,
Found Death in Life, may here find Life in
Death.
The
suicides argument
Ere the birth of my
life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me--it could not be so
!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be
YES; what can
NO be ? to die.
![[spacer]](SamuelTylorColeridge_archivos/image001.gif){kind=small}
NATURE'S ANSWER
Is't
returned, as 'twas sent ? Is't no worse for the wear ?
Think
first, what you ARE ! Call to mind what
you WERE !
I gave you
innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample
scope,
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair ?
Make out
the invent'ry ; inspect, compare !
Then
die--if die you dare !
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge)
COMMENT ON THE
POEM
Its very interesting to see how the
consciousness of Romanticism is so scandalous in this poem (written in 1811 and
first published in 1829) from Coleridge, and in many others he wrote; The
rebellion of nature against human race. Why didnt Nature ask him before born if
he wanted to live or not?... No question was asked me--it could not be so !
He makes Nature answer, not God; the role of nature in acquiring
meaningful insight into the human condition. This romantic poet makes appeal to
nature as if it were some kind of living entity, calls are made for nature to
rescue the struggling writer, and carry his ideas to the world. He links human
thoughts and emotions with the external world.
IN RELATION WITH OTHER ROMANTIC
POETS
1.1
Coleridge (1772-1834) VS William Blake
(1757-1827)
Blake is highly regarded today for his creativity
and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. He himself once indicated,
"The imagination is not a State: it is
the Human existence itself." Blake attacks religion, but like most of this
poets, his rejection of religiosity was not a rejection of religion, he believed
in God. Jesus, for Blake, symbolizes the relationship between divinity and
humanity. But its strage to see how Blake distances from religious issues and
critizises the way which christianism wants to suppress natural desires. Here is
were Coleridge and Blake get toghether to the same ideas: importance of Nature.
He saw the concept of 'sin'
as a trap to bind mens desires and believed that restraint in obedience to a
moral code imposed from the outside was against the spirit of life. Blake didnt
consider the doctrine of God as Lord, something superior to mankind, very in
line with his believes of liberty and equality in society and between the
sexes.
Coleridge had a view of God as All in all, but
he also had learned Platonist ideas in
'Tis the sublime of man
Our noontide
Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wondrous Whole!
This fraternises man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But
'tis God
Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole . .
.
,
but ends up criticizing the horrors of war and social injustice, his religious
thinking had a strong political flavour.
Blake
has a very interesting poem concerning to religion, The Little Black Boy, were
we can also see how important religion was, inspite of giving importance to
nature:
'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men
receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
'And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady
grove
Blake is trying to teach how God doesnt
distinguish between black and white souls, only human do, he compares the colour
of his skin with clouds that will vanish when he goes to heaven, with
God.
1.2
Coleridge (1772-1834) VS Lord Byron
(1788-1824)
Byron comments on a wide range of concerns,
including liberty, tyranny, war, love, sexuality, hypocrisy, and the mores of
high society. The way he lived also tells a lot about
his writing, he was to live abroad to escape the
censure of British society, where men could be forgiven for sexual misbehaviour
only up to a point, one which Byron far surpassed.
As
long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or
subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of
others.
Byron's frankness was not welcome
to the Victorians, and his colloquial language held little interest to the
Modernists (Auden excepted). But Byron had lived the life he describes, and that
honesty and fearless
republicanism made him immensely influential on the continent.
One of his most interesting
characters is Don Juan, from his poem Don
Juan. . Byron's
Juan reacts to, rather than manipulates, the world around him, Juan encounters
the evils of war and conquest, imperialistic tyranny, and the hypocrisies of
English society. Byron suggest that society, not the individual, bears
responsibility for evil in the world.
1.3 Coleridge(1772-1834) VS Percy Bysshe
Shelley(1792-1822)
During his life his work was frequently
censured because of his atheism and unorthodox philosophy. In the Victorian age
he was highly regarded as the poet of ideal love, and the Victorian notion of
the poet as a sensitive, misunderstood genius was modeled largely after Shelley.
His poetry was always on the same line; In Prometheus Unbound Shelley
transformed the Aeschylean myth of Prometheus into an allegory on the origins of
evil and the possibility of regenerating nature and humanity through love. In
Cenci, on the other side,differs from Prometheus Unbound in tone
and setting, he based this tragedy on the history of a sixteenth-century Italian
Count who raped his daughter and was in turn murdered by her. Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of
John Keats, as a tribute to Shelley's contemporary, Keats. In the same year,
Shelley wrote Epipsychidion, in which he chronicled his search for ideal
beauty through his relationships with women.
The Triumph of Life, was left unfinished at his death. Despite its
fragmentary state, many critics consider The Triumph of Life a potential
masterpiece and evidence of a pessimistic shift in Shelley's
thought.
Modern commentators have generally focused on
his imagery, use of language, and technical achievements, in addition to his
exploration of the political and social phenomena of his
time.
1.4 Coleridge (1772-1834) VS John Keats
(1795-1821)
Elaborated word choice and sensual imagery
characterize Keats's poetry. In Hyperon
Keats integrates
his theories of aesthetics with his ideas on mortality and morality.
Keats addressed issues that were pivotal in the Romantic period, including
concerns about beauty and truth, imagination, knowledge, and the connection
between art and life. Hyperion exists in two fragmented versions, with
narratives drawn from Greek mythology, and the second poem attempts to revise
the first, The Fall of Hyperion. Hyperion relates the fall of the
Titans, elemental energies of the world, and their replacement by newer gods,
but the review is darker than Hyperion, with the former suggesting that
beauty can only be achieved through pain, and that poetry is incomplete if it
evades and leaves unexpressed the suffering of humanity. The dominant themes of
his narrartive address the nature of poetry and its relationship to humanity.
Visual and verbal representations, in the use of language and of Greek
sculptural forms, contribute to this exploration. Through his representation of
gods, Keats's commentary on Romantic opposites includes the real and ideal,
history versus myth, finite versus infinite.
1.5 Coleridge(1772-1834) VS William
Wordsworth(1770-1850)
I left this poet for the end because its the
one which Coleridge had more relation with. These two poets use a technique that
departs completely from the Neoclassical tradition where the emphasis was placed
on order and balance and reasoned thoughts, even in form. take the liberty to
write in blank verse, often without punctuation between lines, underlining the
Romantic ideal of emotion. Expression of emotion does not necessarily end at the
last syllable of a heroic couplet, but Reason invariably did. Lyrical Ballads(1798)was writen by
both of them together and marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in
literature, trying to create poetry which everybody could read and
understand.
IN RELATION WITH THE
POEM
·
Relation between the Poem and the poets
live:
We do not know the exact personal moment in
which he wrote the poem, but we suppose that it should be when he started to
take drugs for his illnesses; he ran up with a considerable debt and tried to
commit suicide, this poem reflects his feelings with suicide; what is very
difficult to understand is how a person who is trying to dye can be capable of
thinking all this things.
Coleridge was the last of 13 children, and
resented being the last child, he once threatened to kill one of his brothers
and ran away, staying out all the knighting, what made him ill for the rest of
his life. He started to take drugs for his illnesses; ran up a considerable
debt, tried to commit suicide, but was rescued by his family. When he says in
the poem that he should have been asked if he wanted to live or not, its
because he they had let him choose, he would have chosen not to
live.
·
Relation between the Poem and the Historical
moment:
In 1712 the Hannovers started to rule in
·
Relation of the poem with
today:
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Suicide_Arg.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge
http://www.stjohns-chs.org/english/Romantic/Rm-Cl.ttml
INDEX
Short Byography
2
Comment on the Poem
...
4
In relation with other Romantic
Poets:
1.1
William Blake
4
1.2
Lord Byron
.
6
1.3
Percy Bisshe Shelley
..
6
1.4
John Keats
..
7
1.5
William Wordsworth
..8
In relation with the
Poem:
- Between the poet and the poem
.. 8
- Between the poem and the
historical moment
9
Bibliography
10