Secret(ing) Conversations: Coleridge and Wordsworth
Author(s): Bruce Lawder, Coleridge, Wordsworth
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 32, No. 1, Views and Interviews (Winter, 2001), pp. 67-89
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057648
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Secret (ing) Conversations:
Coleridge and Wordsworth
Bruce Lawder
"A Boat
becalm'd!
dear William's
Samuel
Sky-Canoe!"
Taylor
"A Letter
to-"
Coleridge,
(1802)1
I
1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
began to speak of what he
In
that
the "conversational
year he wrote, among
poem."
other works, a possible example of the "new genre," "The Eolian
in 1797 he composed
"This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" and, one
Around
called
Harp";
"The Nightingale"
and "The Nightingale."
year later, "Frost as Midnight"
was added to Lyrical Ballads as the book was going to press, replacing
and as if to acknowl
"Lewti, or the Circasian Love-chaunt,"
Coleridge's
"new
the
of
the
edge
necessity
acknowledging
genre" the title appeared
a Conversational
with the subtitle,
"The Nightingale,
Poem." Even if
Coleridge would later in his Biographia Literaria oppose what Wordsworth
was to claim for the
in poetry, Coleridge
had
language of "conversation"
himself cleared the way for the use in poetry of what Wordsworth
in the
to Lyrical Ballads called "the conversation
in the
1798 "Advertisement"
middle
and lower classes of society."2 Although Wordsworth
would omit
in the 1800 "Preface" to the book, where he changes
that phrase
the
nature of the "experiment"
to an examination
of "how far" poetry can
go in imparting "pleasure" through "a selection of the real language of
men in a state of vivid sensation"
add to
{LB 241), he would nevertheless
the 1802 version of the Preface "that the language of such Poetry as I am
a selection of the language really
is, as far as is possible,
recommending
he
men"
the
stated in a famous or infamous
{LB 254);
poet,
spoken by
a
man
to
"is
men"
{LB 255).
phrase,
speaking
or the imitation of a conversation,
If a poem is to be a conversation,
then itwill have to consist of a speaker and a person spoken to. It should
as a surprise
it does to Harold Bloom,3
that
then, although
even if the presence
"Tintern Abbey"4 has an addressee,
of
as the person
his sister Dorothy
addressed
is only acknowledged
relatively late in the poem, from line 114 on. We find a similar use of a
not
come
Wordsworth's
New Literary History, 2001, 32: 67-89
68
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
or belatedly
in Coleridge's
revealed addressee
"Dejection: An
in
written
here
the
first
much
is
addressed
1802, although
Ode,"
"Lady"
earlier in the work, in line 47, and in the very last stanza is revealed as an
to whom
absence
rather than a presence
the poet directs his words, or
lines.5 In both cases, however, we have "aman speaking," although
it is
note
to
in
of
in
Wordsworth's
insistence
his
1802
that,
interesting
spite
to a
"Preface" on the gender
it is a man
of the addressee,
speaking
"hidden"
woman.
a real conversation
the roles of speaker and
keeps reversing
as
one
in
the
other
and
breaks off. From the
addressee,
speaker breaks
idea of the "conversational
point of view of mimesis
poem"
Coleridge's
is actually a fragment of a conversation,
the isolation of one voice, where
the necessary other takes over what one might call "the silent hair of the
But
the listening
that should precede
and accompany
the speaking.
poem:
The dramatic poem would seem the more accurate mimetic model of an
actual conversation,
with its exchange
of roles and voices, just as the
seem to summon
dramatic monologue
would
the
up more
honestly
a
moment
nature
in
off
broken
from
of
individual
fragmentary
speaking
and suspended
in time. Once
is denied
the other person
the possibility
of
a
the
response,
"con"
in
"a conversational
poem"
becomes
problem
or
turns away from the usual exchange,
to
the poem
sharing,
a
not
and
else.
And
since
is
written,
spoken,
something
printed poem
on the spoken voice may
or advertently
the insistence
inadvertently
atical:
conceal
on
the
elements.
its writerly
of
presence
an
"addressee"
Itmay be, for example,
masks
another
that the insistence
presence,
not
so much
to and even against or over. At least this structure
spoken to but written
can be found
to be
in Wordsworth
and Coleridge.
What
appear
can be read as
to women
"sentimental" works dedicated
and addressed
"fragments
of
an
agon,"
moments
of
an
agonizing
struggle
between
male rivals apparently
friends but locked in a secret and mortal
for the deadly right to be "the speaker" of "the word."
two
combat
II
structure of
"Tintern Abbey" has a temporal
which
is folded upon
itself and projected
into
to imagination:
from memory
the
grammatically,
the
where
is
"present perfect,"
"past"
recuperable,
at the poem's
the present
situation
close, where
and presence
absence
the future as we move
from the
poem moves
to the "future" tense
is imagined as already
"past." The poem would appear to be about "loss" and "recompense,"
occur
as do the words
words which
in the poem
(TA lines 87-88),
once
"absence" (TA 23), "presence"
(TA 94), and
(TA
again "absence"
SECRET(lNG) CONVERSATIONS
69
can be read itself as
in the poem
the "flowing" language
a "recompense,"
or wished-for
like
for "the flow
recompense,
something
at a temporary
of time," as an attempt
if not an entirely
temporal
to the homonymie
in the very name of the
secreted
response
question
River Wye.
this structure Wordsworth
Within
presents his "impressionistic"
phi
of
with
what
appears to be an incredibly literal use of
losophy
perception
157);
and
but
language. He borrows the idea of "forms" from Platonic philosophy,
he places those forms in what appears to be the real world. He speaks of
the "beauteous
forms" (TA 22) of nature and their "gift" (TA 36) to
"inform / The mind that iswithin us" (TA 125-26);
the passage from the
as in other works by
"outer" to the "inner" is aided
in this poem,
of the word "sense": meaning
Wordsworth,
by the double
significance
itself passes from the sensed outer world available to sensory perception
to the inner sense we have of the significance
of things. Wordsworth
insists upon that movement
from "outer" to "inner" in his use of the
"im"
prefixes
and
"in":
in
this
the
poem
"forms"
of
"nature"
"?wipress"
"mform"
(TA 32),
(TA 125), and once again
appears twice in
"?mpress" (TA 126) the beholder. A counter movement
the prefix "ex," in "?xtinguished"
(TA 58) and in "existence" (TA 149),
but the force here is, if riot minimalized,
then literally halved: "And now,
(TA 6),
"influence"
with gleams
of Aa^-extinguished
and
thought"; and it is later countered
with
what
looks
like
its
other
half:
"what
create."
compensated
they half
on the importance
Wordsworth's
insistence
of the "impression,"
of
iswhat makes his "environmental
"influence," and of being "informed"
ism" both necessary and urgent.
It is also what links brother and sister,
male and female, in the poem, and this logical link ismarked within the
text by the logical connective
It first appears in conjunction
"therefore."
with Wordsworth:
am I still
Therefore
A
lover
of
the meadows
and
the woods,
and of all that we behold
And mountains;
From
this green
of all the
world
earth;
mighty
Of eye, and ear,?both
what
they half create,
And what
to
well
perceive;
pleased
recognize
In nature
and
the language
of the sense
The
anchor
of my
The
guide,
the
Of all my moral
purest
guardian
the nurse,
thoughts,
of my heart,
and soul
being.
(TA 102-11)
The
next
"environmental"
time
the word
logic:
occurs
it brings
Dorothy
into
the
same
70
NEW
And
To
on
let
blow
in thy solitary
walk,
the misty
mountain-winds
HISTORY
let the moon
Therefore
Shine
LITERARY
thee
thee
against
be
free
[...].
(TA 134-37)
what Wordsworth
in "Expostulation
strenuously
Coleridge
opposed
on
and Reply" had called "a wise passiveness,"
the importance
insisting
of the "imagination"
in the active role of perception.
The dispute
between
the two poets is in part a dispute between British empiricism
and German
version of Locke passed
idealism, between Wordsworth's
and
from Kant and Hegel,
through Hartley,
Coleridge's
borrowings
as a home-grown
his
colored
belated
enthusiasm
for Berkeley
by
as the too inactive role assigned
to what he perceived
alternative
to the
mind
to
The
is recapitulated
by the British
argument
empiricists.
his Biographia Literaria. In
apparent
Coleridge's
throughout
advantage
to Wordsworth's
his poetry Coleridge's
opposition
"impressionistic"
code of perception
finds its most
of expression
in
(in)famous moment
"Dejection": "Imay not hope from outward forms to win / The passion
are within"
and the life, whose
fountains
The
(45-46).
argument
between
direction.
the two poets
For Wordsworth
can
seen
thus be
in part as a difference
of
from outer to inner; where
moves
perception
the things of the world "impress," "influence,"
and "inform" the mind,
while for Coleridge,
it would
seem, "we receive but what we give":
And
A
from
the
soul
sweet
and
potent
itself must
voice,
there
of
be
its own
sent
birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
(D 56-58)
Since
the argument
involves concepts
of direction,
it should not be
terms
in
that
it
takes
in
of
part
surprising
place
prefixes. What we might
call Coleridge's
to
of
in opposition
"expressionistic"
theory
perception,
use
Wordsworth's
in
finds
"efflu
of
"impressionistic"
theory,
Coleridge's
ence"
a word
to
counter
Wordsworth's
earlier
"influence."
occurs
The
word
in a passage where
the poet presents what he calls "this strong
in the soul" (D 60), "[t]his beautiful
music
and beauty-making
power"
on Wordsworth
and
since
this
attack
would
(D 63),
apparently
public
to an equally public response
force Wordsworth
to
it may be helpful
at
the
quote
passage
length:
was
that ne'er
Joy, virtuous
Lady! Joy
given,
to the pure,
Save
in their purest
and
hour,
at once
and Life's
cloud
and
Life,
effluence,
shower,
SECRET (ING) CONVERSATIONS
71
Joy, Lady! Is the spirit and the power,
Which,
A new
Undreamt
Joy
is the
We
flows
All melodies
All
new
and
in dower
gives
Heaven,
of by the sensual
the
and
proud?
sweet voice,
the
luminous
cloud?
Joy
in ourselves
rejoice!
thence
And
to us,
Nature
wedding
Earth
colours
all
the
that
a suffusion
or
charms
of
echoes
from
that
that
ear
or
sight,
voice,
light.
(D 64-75)
lines would appear to embody
"the beautiful
and beauty-making
as stated
asserts.
that
the
But
the
for
poem
power"
problem
Coleridge,
in the poem,
is that he cannot fulfill the code he himself has proposed,
for he is plagued by
These
a pang,
A grief without
void, dark and drear,
A stifled,
drowsy,
unimpassioned
grief,
no natural
no relief
Which
finds
outlet,
In word
[...].
(D 21-24)
. . .within,"
the "effluence" of the "fountains
seem to have fallen under
here would
wither
Coleridge
the?perhaps
com
of Wordsworth.
before
ing, even disfiguring?"influence"
Shortly
he
had
heard
Wordsworth
recite
the
first
four
posing
"Dejection,"
stanzas of what
in the course
of two more
become
years would
Wordsworth's
ode on "Intimations
of Immortality." Read in relation to
For all the insistence
on
the following
assertion
a
lines become
by Wordsworth,
Coleridge's
not only of his failure to fulfill his own announced
confession
code but
also of his inability to rival Wordsworth
in his claim to be a "strong" poet;
and it is significant
that Coleridge
inscribes his lack of "relief within the
same rhyme words of Wordsworth's
had written:
poem. For Wordsworth
To me
A
timely
I
And
alone
there
utterence
again
am
came
gave
strong,
a
thought
that
(my
of grief:
thought
relief,
emphasis)6
In fact, throughout
the choice
of a language
of
poem
Coleridge's
a
turns
of
into
him
like
the lackey of the
"failure,"
"lack,"
something
"The fulness of your bliss, I
writes,
"strong" poet. Where Wordsworth
feel?I
can be read as
feel it all" (II 41), Coleridge
"I see
responding,
them all, so excellently
are!"
fair, / I see, not feel, how beautiful
(D
they
37-38).
72
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
can be ex
This antiphonal
of statement
and response
procedure
tended to other poets, other texts. In "Tintern Abbey" the "recompense"
an appropriated
of Nature's
to counter
allows Wordsworth
teaching
from
in despair
Milton's
"Samson
Samson
There
passage
Agonistes."
declares:
I feel my genial spirits droop,
So much
For Wordsworth
calls "Nature"
"natural"
nature
all flat,
My hopes
In all her
functions
me
within
weary
seems
of herself;7
it is precisely what the poet has learned from what he
that permits him to transform Miltonic
"patience" into a
value:
Nor
If I were
not
thus
taught,
perchance,
I the more
should
spirits to decay.
Suffer my genial
(TA 111-13)
in "Dejection"
is once again made within
the
of Wordsworth,
this time within
the language
of "Tintern
language
to the same passage in Milton,
but
Abbey," folded into a shared allusion
or "compensa
in a way that underscores
the lack of any "recompense"
tion" for the dejected poet:
confession
Coleridge's
My genial spirits fail;
And
what
can
these
avail
To lift the smothering weight
from off my breast?
(D 39-41)
Even
the
of
"weight"
those
and
the weary weight
heavy
in Coleridge's
Moreover,
40).
"breast,"
on
the
where
place
can
lines
be
seen
as Wordsworthian:
"...
the
"voice"
"must
issue
forth,"
as
"from
soul":
Ah! From the soul itself must
A
light,
a
glory,
Enveloping
And
A
from
the
sweet
and
the
world"
/ Of all this unintelligible
(TA 39
case the "weight" has fallen on the poet's
a fair
luminous
issue forth
cloud
the Earth?
soul
potent
itself must
voice,
there
of
be
its own
sent
birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
(D 53-58)
the
SECRET(lNG) CONVERSATIONS
73
the following passage
In the light, or darkness, of the lines just quoted
can be read as a
of Immortality"
from Wordsworth's
"Intimations
able to
of
the
cry
"strong" Wordsworth,
triumphal
self-proclaimed
"Child
of
in
world
of
the
the
Joy" (II 34),
sympathetically
participate
over the failure of his friend and rival to attain to such a state: "Oh evil
If I were
day!
is adorning"
Earth herself
/ While
(II 42-43).
to
the damage by placing
limit
have
been
may
trying
Wordsworth,
secretly, among "the sensual":
sullen
himself
Coleridge
the sense-oriented
Joy, Lady! Is the spirit and the power,
Which,
A new
wedding
Earth
Undreamt
of by
Nature
and
new
to us,
sensual
the
in dower
gives
Heaven,
and
the proud?
(D 69-70)
But Wordsworth
himself would appropriate
almost all the imagery and
even a good part of the vocabulary
for the final "joyful" stanzas of his
had composed
"Intimations" Ode, written after Coleridge
"Dejection,"
movement
his
of
the
poem
Coleridge's
by combining
accelerating
"fountain light," as well as
"fountains" and "light" into the magnificent
conjoining
Coleridge's
"clouds of glory":
separated
"glory" and
"Dejection"
I may
not
forms
The
from
hope
to
passion
outward
and
the
life, whose
fountains are within.
"Intimations
Those
win
Which,
Are
of
into his
own
Immortality"
recollections,
shadowy
be they what
they may,
yet the fountain
light
of all our day (151-53)
(45-46)
[...]
[...]
Ah! From the soul itself must
A light, a glory, a
luminous
"cloud"
cloud
fair
The Soul that rises with us,
issue forth our life's Star, (59)
But trailing clouds of glory
do we
(53-54)
come
(64)
himself had taken over the landscape as well as the language
Coleridge
of light and joy from Wordsworth's
"Tintern Abbey," but Wordsworth
took it all back with a vengeance when he converted
"Dejection" into his
own triumphal
of
the
seventh
section
of his later poem
song
"Joy," and
can
be
read
as
an
exact?and
poem. Whatever
Coleridge's
is a triumph over Coleridge
What began as a difference
exacting?trumping
of
section
seven
in
itmay be, Wordsworth's
triumph here
and thus, in a sense, a failure of friendship.
in concepts
of perception,
expressed?or
else
74
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
can be read as a dis
an opposition
of prefixes,
impressed?through
poem"
guised and deadly quarrel. The apparently private "conversation
a
has become
combat.
public
Ill
Both "Tintern Abbey" and "Dejection" have a female addressee;
they
each vary the famous pronouncement
of the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads
in the form of a man speaking to woman.
by presenting
poetic language
to Dorothy,
Wordsworth's
addressed
his "dear Sister" (TA 121)
poem,
and "dearest Friend" (TA 115), would seem to assert both a shared logic
as well as a pronominal
of a perceptive
("Therefore")
identity
equality
on
the
("us"). Coleridge's
poem,
contrary, posits a radically different
fate for his "friend" (D 127) and "Dear Lady" (D 138). In a
possible
stanza remarkably similar to the ending of H?lderlin
's great
concluding
asserts a difference
of destiny for his
hymn "Germanium,"
Coleridge
the same way that H?lderlin
would close his poem by
"Lady" in much
for his friend Sinclair a happy fate that was clearly not to be
declaring
In the last stanza of "Dejection,"
the poet's.
in
the "Lady" is addressed
terms
of
a vertical
structure
("stars,"
"rise,"
"lift,"
"guided
from
above")
to the (divine) heights of "joy"marks the insomniac
the fact that he himself
alienation
from
such a fate and underlines
poet's
has been "thrown down," or dejected,
from such an elevated position.
In
this sense, "Dejection"
is another version of "Paradise Lost," one where
where
her accession
whatever
belongs
is to be
to
the
asserted
"Lady"
and
as
of
the possibility
thus
serves
to
"Paradise
underscore
Regained"
even
more
from such a conversion.
the poet's distance
"damningly"
But the "final" poem published
in Sibylline Leaves (1817) is in some
to have been originally written
in
ways a fiction. For the poem appears
to
and first given by Coleridge
the form of a letter to Sara Hutchinson
Mary, Sara's sister, to transcribe before being sent on to her sister. All this
came to light only in 1977, when what is now most
likely the earliest
extant draft of the poem was included
in a mass of Wordsworth
letters
and papers offered for sale at auction at Sotheby's under the rubric "The
The manuscript
of the poem, now known as
Property of a Gentleman."
"the Cornell Manuscript"
after the name of its purchaser
(it was resold
seven months
to
the
Dove
Trust in
later at purchase
Cottage
price
was
later
that year
in
1802
Hutchinson,
Grasmere)
by Mary
copied
April
to become
to Sara, Mary's
wife, and addressed
directly
"
can
"A
and
be read as a
the
Letter
to-,
title,
poem
confessional
love letter to Sara, the "private" nature of which would
seem to be called into
if not compromised,
by its "public"
question,
sister. The
Wordsworth's
bears
SECRET(lNG) CONVERSATIONS
75
passage through Mary's hands. For what looks to be a private confession
no doubt her
was actually a public
involving Mary and
performance,
future husband, William Wordsworth,
who is named several times in the
course of the "letter" and who must have witnessed
whatever Mary
the "privacy" of
aspect of the poem obliterates
copied. This performative
a
into
its apparent
confession
it
by turning
public event, for the first
reader was not its apparent
but her sister and most
addressee
likely
himself.
Wordsworth
The "letter" is a rambling poem of three hundred
lines,
thirty-nine
two hundred
in
lines longer than both the version Coleridge
published
the Morning Post in October
in SybiUine
1802 and, somewhat
changed,
Leaves in 1817. Within
its fictive
"confessional
mode"
the "letter"
the two Saras in Coleridge's
life, "dearest" Sara Hutchinson,
compares
the poet's "Comforter"
(L 249)
is directly addressed
throughout
the poet's
responsible
estranged
for
wife, who
those
wear
That
out
in one
Meet
the letter's nominal
recipient, who
the poem, and Sara Fricker Coleridge,
is never named, but who is clearly held
habitual
Ills,
when
two
Life,
House,
and
and
unequal
two discordant
minds
Wills
(L 242-44)
The dowry of gifts that "Joy" bestows,
that of "wedding Nature
including
to us," survives all subsequent
revisions of the poem, but it takes on a
different
in the letter's context of marital complaint
range of meanings
and postconjugal
of a time "E'er I was wedded"
remembrance
(L 231).
Within
the apparent
"confessional" mode Wordsworth
appears directly
in the "letter," as does his future wife as well as his sister Dorothy. The
aWordsworthian
"letter" openly appropriates
image:
Yon
crescent
In it's
A Boat
[sic]
as fixed as if it
Moon,
grew
own cloudless,
starless
Lake
of Blue,
becalm'd!
dear William's
Sky-Canoe!
(L 39-41)
The wind,
through
once
it ceases
to be the "Mad Lutanist"
(L 194),
its "Sounds" with the Wordsworth
of "Lucy Gray":
And it has other Sounds, and all less deep, less loud!
A Tale of less Affright,
And tempered with delight,
As William's self had made the tender lay!
Tis of a little Child
is identified
76
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
Upon a heathy wild
Not far from home; but it has lost itsway!
And
now
And
now
moans
in utter
low
screams
loud
and
and
grief
fear,
to make
hopes
its Mother
hear!
(L 207-15)
was more
involved
than one might
intimately
can
seen
also be
from his subsequent
imagine from the "final" version
in other versions of the poem,
in particular
in the excerpts
appearances
of the poem sent as part of an actual letter toWilliam
Sotheby on July 19,
announces
in a prose note prefacing
the in
1802. There Coleridge
cluded verses that the poem was in fact written
"toWordsworth":
"... I
That Wordsworth
that by nature I have more of the Poet in me / in a poem written
. . . ."8The lines "written ... to
to Wordsworth
that dejection
during
to the
Wordsworth"
and sent to Sotheby begin with a direct apostrophe
Lake poet: 'Yes, dearest Poet, Yes!" The change of the poem's
internal
to the
the nature of the contrast from the domestic
recipient
changes
believe
poetic:
A Grief
a
without
A
stifling,
That
finds
In word,
or
Sigh,
And
sore
oft'nest
& drear!
Grief,
no
Relief
or Tear!
This, William! Well
Is that
dark,
void,
Pang,
drowsy,
unimpassioned
no natural
Outlet,
thou know'st,
I dread
Evil which
the most,
suffer.
(17-23)
"dearest Sara" is here his "dearest Poet," the crescent moon
Coleridge's
in the later published
boat
vanish
(to
versions)
"thy own sweet Sky
is
"innocent
into
Sara" (312)
transformed
"blameless poet,"
Canoe!";
as the putative
and Wordsworth
author of the
directly acknowledged
"less fearful & less loud" tale of the wind: "As thou thyself had'st fram'd
the tender Lay?"
between
the addresser and the
(210). The difference
addressee
here ismade
in terms of "genius," and the "vertical structure"
now privileges Wordsworth
as the (divinely inspired) strong poet over the
dejected
and weak(ened)
Calm
stedfast
Coleridge:
Spirit,
guided
from
above,
O Wordsworth friend of my devoutest Choice
Great Son of Genius! Full of Light 8c Love!
Thus,
thus
dost
thou
rejoice.
To thee do all things live from pole to pole,
Their Life the Eddying of thy living Soul!
SECRET(ING) CONVERSATIONS
77
Brother & Friend of my devoutest Choice,
Thus
may'st
thou
ever,
ever more
rejoice!
(41)
soon began, however, to conceal the original addressee
in a
Coleridge
we
can
see
In
of
the
five successive versions
series of rewritings.
poem,
to
first
"Sara"
the poet deleting
"Sara" from the poem,
converting
to
to
then "Wordsworth"
the fictive
"Wordsworth" in the letter
Sotheby,
in the Morning Post on October
"Edmund" of the version published
4,
as well as
to Mary Hutchinson
1802 (the day of Wordsworth's
marriage
to Sara Flicker),
of Coleridge's
unhappy
marriage
anniversary
"Edmund" back to "William" in a letter almost one year later to Beaumont
and, finally, "William" to the abstract and anonymous
"Lady" of the "final"
in Sibylline Leaves. The changes
in the
version of the poem, published
are particularly
in
line
48 of
clear
what
would
become
addressee
poem's
as
"A
line
Letter
but
of
to-"9:
295
began
"Dejection"
the
O
Sara! We
receive
but
what
we
give
("A Letter
to-,"
O Wordsworth! We receive but what we give (Coleridge's
1802)
April
letter to Sotheby, July
1802)
O Edmund! We receive but what we give {Morning Post, October
O William! We
O Lady! We
receive but what we give (Beaumont, August
1802)
1803)
receive but what we give, {Sibylline Leaves, 1817)10
In all these drafts of the
is turned into text, as isWordsworth.
even if in the "final"
is
Wordsworth
however,
poem,
always present,
version of the poem, and as if in revenge for what Wordsworth
had done
to Coleridge
in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, his name does not appear
in print. For even deleted Wordsworth
in the allusive and
remains
even
structure
if
in
of
And
the
the "final" version
poem.
antiphonal
was
an earlier draft
transforms
into
self
in
what
Coleridge
"Otway's
Sara here
"thou
child"
thyself," the author of the "tender lay" (120) about the "little
the Wordsworth
of "Lucy Gray." The
(121) remains
implicitly
"conversation"
of the "final" version of the printed poem not only shifts
to the spoken,
the "register" or tone of the poem from the writerly
it
actually masks the addressee of all of the earlier written works and limits
if not conceals
the intertextual
struggle or agon within the poem as well.
can cancel Wordsworth
as a word
But if Coleridge
in writing,
he
cannot cancel the worth of his words.
It is no wonder,
that
"the
then,
wind"
not the "music" of the earlier
brings him from the beginning
"Eolian Harp" but "a scream / Of agony by torture lengthened
out" (D
78
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
involved as he is in an agon he is bound to lose. The "Lady" here
97-98),
a kind of textual substitute
to mask both "the romantic agony"
becomes
turns
looks like a human presence
and the textuality of this poem. What
out to be an absence
in which another presence,
that of Wordsworth,
appears to be repressed only to reappear all the more forcefully
through
of the repression. Wordsworth's
addressee,
"Dorothy," is also
in
into "text" in "Tintern Abbey." What Wordsworth
experiences
a
out
turns
to
be
of
himself:
reading
"presence"
the force
turned
her
and in thy voice I catch
The
language
of my
My former pleasures
Of thy wild eyes.
former
heart,
and
in the shooting
read
lights
(TA 116-19)
of a person,
the absence
becomes
then, as person,
herself,
Dorothy
a
text
in which the
ultimate
She
much
like Coleridge's
becomes
"Lady."
a
serves
as
in
finds
the
sense,
"[t]he language" that,
poet
pre-text to the
an
in
of
the
She
be
that her silent
may
poem.
language
enabling power,
of
but
this is only
makes
the
illusion
the
text,
"listening"
possible
spoken
an illusion, and she herself goes under
in the process.
text. "Nature" it (or her-) self is
Nor is Dorothy
alone in becoming
turned into "landscape"
and
later
(TA 8)
passed through "the language
as if, once again, we were in the
of the sense" (TA 108) and interpreted,
of the legible rather than in that of the utter and unutterable
presence
of the world.
In fact, everything
in "this green pastoral
otherness
a
even
turns
into
mode
of
"These
poetry,
hardly
landscape"
hedge-rows,
run wild:
these pastoral
little lines / Of sportive wood
hedge-rows,
farms" (TA 15-16). The poem may seem to celebrate what Wordsworth
in this poem calls "nature and the language of the sense" and at the
of The Prelude would call "the world," but it does so only by
beginning
in the world into text and so, in a sense, removing
converting
everything
it from the world and the world from the text.
is the power of the poem. But the power of
This power of conversion
as Coleridge
in
himself
conversion
makes
the world a "blank," much
an
and
had
looked
the
with
"so
blank
upon
eye,"
sky
"Dejection"
of the poem into statements
about other texts.
the statements
displaces
of Dorothy
into text makes
The transformation
it possible for the poet to
on
his male rival within what look to be sentimental
hide writerly attacks
as Coleridge's
of
assertions
conversion
spoken to a female "friend," just
the
into his "Dear Lady" allows him not only to conceal
"Wordsworth"
extent of his poetic defeat but to create a magnificent
poem on the
women
text
of
defeat.
But
transformed
into
the
lose all sem
subject
SECRET (ING) CONVERSATIONS
79
of individual identity. They are holes, listening holes, for men. If
remains in the poem, it is no longer what itwas or might
"conversation"
an attempt
to
it has turned into a battle without
have been:
bounds,
throw the other down, where "dejection" and "abjection" are the risks in
blance
a combat
between
writers
male
that is anything
women
using
as masks
for
a conversatione
sacre.
but
IV
In chapter IV of the Biographia Literaria Coleridge
claims that "[t]o
is the only way to imitate without
admire on principle,
loss of original
on
he
That
Wordsworth
while
ity."11
opposed
principle,
admiring him in
he
makes
clear
the
abundantly
practice,
throughout
Biographia Literaria
in chapter XII. By his own logic, then, anything
but especially
like an
a
"imitation" of Wordsworth
would necessarily
of
"loss
imply
originality"
of Milton
and would place his own work, along with "the appropriation"
not
in
the
of
but
rather in
by Cowley,
"superior" category
"imagination"
the lesser one of "fancy." That Coleridge
indeed have had his
may
toWordsworth
in mind when writing of Cowley's
to Milton
relationship
can be inferred from the fact that only a few lines later he comments
on
just
that relationship:
The
explanation
terms
which
"imagination"
as our
perhaps,
Mr.
and
Wordsworth
subjects
from
wise,
subject
conclusions
the advantage
I have
a poem
to which
of
happy
was Mr. Wordsworth's
as
tion
they
from
purpose
are manifested
then
sketch
of
the
roots
eye
of our
from
the
kind
the branches
as far as
common
he
himself
given
[concerning
to differ
from mine,
found
It could
had
indeed
scarcely
of
conversation
frequent
first
made
and
directed
more
of natural
the operation
to consider
in poetry,
their diversity in kind; while
and
be
enjoyed
his own
which,
concerning
instances
drawn
has
will
"fancy"]
are different.
the
from
my
lucid
the
chiefly
other
happen
with him on
and
attention,
a
my
to
myself
by many
on the mind.
But
it
objects
of
influences
fancy
the different
effects
and
imagina
to conclude
it ismy object to investigate the seminal principle,
to deduce
a
the degree.
has drawn
My friend
masterly
to add the trunk, and even
I wish
poetic fruitage.
lift themselves
to the naked
above
and are visible
ground,
with
their
they
consciousness.
{BL 62)
in this passage on "the seminal principle"
insistence
calls
Coleridge's
to the importance,
attention
for him, of male generational
force in the
creation of imaginative
if not
literature, and to the apparent
absence,
the necessary
of the female from that creation, an exclusion
exclusion,
a counter-model
that may have generated
in Frankenstein. But Coleridge's
for
to
his
Wordsworth
is also interesting
when
figure
relationship
80
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
in the light, or shadow, of his insistence,
in other writings,
considered
such as his Notebooks, on the importance
of "organic form" in literature.
For Coleridge's
"tree" here is not a tree but the sketch of a tree, a
cultural and not a natural
in other words, and a composite
(arti)fact,
sketch at that; a "tree," moreover,
that comes into existence,
temporally,
from the top down. And it is the prior Wordsworth
who is assigned
the
credit for "the branches
with their poetic fruitage," while Coleridge's
to realize in the following pages of the
task?which
he no doubt wished
"to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as
Biographia Literaria?is
they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our
common
seem to be the theoretical
consciousness."
The "roots" would
hold of and for the "poetic fruitage" that has curiously preceded
them, so
that even here, where Coleridge
from
differs
Wordsworth
consciously
to express that difference
and attempts
it isWordsworth
conceptually,
an
in
him
and
tops
who?literally?both
image that inverts the
precedes
as its own justification.
it appears to proclaim
very organic processes
to
is an attempt within
the individual
There
poem
by Coleridge
recover
a
But
the sacred
the
whatever
of
word.
glimpses
through
"paradise
difference
the sexes.
are lost again
in the poem
in
have
regained" we might
and division, a difference
often marked
the
alienation
of
by
on
own
This
is in part no doubt a reflection
Coleridge's
an
to
find
and
his
unsuccessful
alternative
attempts
marriage
unhappy
and sustained
and satisfaction
relationship
equal in imagined promise
to that of Wordsworth
and Mary. Coleridge's
and
fountain
light
imagery
can be read as an attempt
in "Dejection,"
to reclaim that
for example,
in the Biographia Literaria as the imagination
"active" force celebrated
in the poem as the "light" that must "issue forth" from "the
and figured
... within"
soul" (D 53-54), from those "fountains
(D 46). In spite of the
use and abuse of such a topos for male
conventional
the
sexuality,
seem
to
to
and
in
the
both
male
female
process might
apply
conjoined
"we" in the middle
of the poem, but at the close of the "final" version of
the poem
into the "passive" and
the "Lady" has (been) withdrawn
to the
role
that
in
the
"guided"
Coleridge
Biographia would
assign
is that of the isolated male poet
"fancy," and the only voice remaining
of
that
deprived
precisely
"beauty-making
power" with which the "active"
was
to
the world.
inseminate
imagination
supposed
In "Kubla Khan"
"force" of the "sacred river" literally
the male
and puts an end to, the seven successive
feminine
interrupts,
endings
that begin
the second
verse
The sexualization
of metrical
paragraph.
no
to
in the English
be
accident here?
terminology
language appears
was certainly aware of the vocabulary,
as a remark in his
and Coleridge
letter of September
it is in this
30, 1799 to Southey
proves12?for
we
meet
succession of feminine
the
"woman
that
wailing for her
endings
secret(ing)
demon
behind
women
those
conversations
81
lover." Lowes has shown us what the "artificial
that lie
paradises"
and within "Rubia Khan" may offer men in terms of women,
and
as "passive" objects of desire and decree, even if he omits what
"paradises"
offer
women
in
terms
of men.13
When
"woman" takes over the "active" role that
reserved
Coleridge
for the "imagination"
in the Biographia, as she does in "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner,"
the results are literally nightmarish
for the men:
it is
not only that "the Nightmare
turns out to be a parody of
Life-in-Death"
"the beautiful woman" of the older ballads, or that the "male" sun in the
in a parody of the "death of God" (and with the
poem is beheaded
help
of the hidden
or that this can be read as a
pun on "sun"/"son"),
"castration" ofthat "active" force Coleridge with increasing personal and
was
poetic desperation
trying to vaunt, but that the "female" ship begins
to rock like a woman
in orgasm until the
helpless male narrator, with
out
of
his
control
and
thus
in
"the
woman's
like
role," much
everything
the later Jonathan Harker
in Dracula's
avoids
the
consciousness
castle,
of impotence
by losing consciousness.
In all three poems,
in the
then, the "male force" critically acclaimed
Literaria
is
into
for
called
within
the
the poem.
Biographia
poet
question
In "Rubia Khan" the speaker of the final lyrical section can not "revive
within"
himself
"the sympathy and song" of the "Abyssinian maid"
if he could, would allow him to do what Rubia Khan had done in
which,
the first two narrative stanzas of the poem: to create
by decree, by word
if not in parody, of the power of the word
alone, in imitation,
Coleridge
so much
admired
in Saint John.14 The conditional
at the
grammar
of difference
that excludes
the speaker
poem's close marks a condition
of the poem from the wished-for
creation, which, even if realized, would
only alienate him further, as his audience would have to "close" their
of and contact with
eyes and thus lose all visual?or
readerly?image
the "presence" of that (no longer legible) "voice."
him, having merely
But Rubia Rhan's
to
"paradise" is a "false" paradise, at least compared
the "heavenly" and Christian paradise Milton claimed to celebrate, filled
as Rubia 's is with "ancestral voices
war." If for the speaker
prophesying
Rubla's
"pleasure dome" is another example of "Paradise Lost," the lost
is
"paradise" is itself not the "real" one, and so that "original" paradise
remove.
lost at a double
If "woman" ends up "wailing for her demon
lover" in the world of Coleridge's
so
logic, and in a line Byron admired
much
that he made
it the epigraph
to one of his own
it
is
poems,15
possibly because her lover has been sent off to the "war" the "ancestral
voices" prophesied,
and possibly because
she herself has been "forced"
to perform
other equally
"ancestral" practices
within
the "pleasure
dome" itself. The later "Abyssinian maid"
is no "recompense,"
neither
for the "woman" nor for the male poet: even as "vision" she cannot
help
82
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
the impotent
of isolation, for what is lacking
speaker from the abyss/sin
in the word, and in the (male) world of the word, is precisely
that power
an
or
turns
out
to
in
it
for
what
be
of
postulated
posited
imposture
power.
In "The Rime of the Ancient
though here it falls into obsession
Mariner"
speech also fails and falls,
even further from that
and repetition,
If speech "frees" the speaker, it can do
paradisal
"symphony and song."
so only "momently,"
those
through an act of force, and it condemns
to fates that are hardly
"forced" into being spoken to within
the poem
in the conventional
Christian
by the
"redemptive"
"reading" offered
to
later marginal
the
Pilot's
who
had
dared
the
boy,
gloss:
interpret
as
warn
to
if
the
of
"literal
mad,
goes
speaker's identity,
against
dangers
and
reading,"
or
ceremony
the bridal
its
"merry
guest
does
not
minstrelsy,"
in the wedding
participate
more
any
than
the Mariner
does.
answer
to the question,
of man art thou?" is the
"What manner
narrative itself. But if the question of identity creates the "answer" of the
the narrative cannot sustain identity beyond
itself; there is no
narrative,
out
If
rises
"a sadder and
of
the
circle
of
the
listener
breaking
language.
a wiser man," it is only after being "of sense forlorn," and in both senses
The
of
the word,
but also
stunned,
that can at best only
character of its own speech acts.
narrative
stripped
of
the
signify
a
significance
through
and
arbitrary
repetitive
V
If the "majority" of the poems
in Lyrical Ballads were originally
. . .written
as experiments
"considered
chiefly with a view to ascertain
in the middle
how far the language of conversation
and lower classes of
to
is
of
the
{LB 7), as
purposes
society
adapted
poetic
pleasure"
wrote
in his anonymous
Wordsworth
of 1798, another
"Advertisement"
use of verbs of conversation
in the same text reveals an at least equal
in the written:
interest
It is apprehended,
with
those
that
and
manners
An
and
accurate
and
a
passions,
taste
is an
observed,
long
the more
in modern
acquired
continued
times
the
fewer
in poetry,
talent,
intercourse
conversant
who
have
the
been
is with
reader
the most
our
successful
elder
writers,
in painting
to make.
have
of this kind will he
complaints
in all the other
has
arts, Sir Joshua
Reynolds
can
severe
which
be
by
only
thought,
produced
and
with
the
best
models
of
composition.
{LB 7-8)
here not only displaces but replaces
the spoken, at least for
or conversation
the reader, in an intercourse
with what turn out to be
other literary texts.
The written
secret(ing)
conversations
83
to Lyrical Ballads would
Successive
of the introduction
rewritings
even further the apparently
of the
"revolutionary"
implications
In the 1800 Preface Wordsworth
modified
the "nature"
Advertisement.
diminish
of
the
the "class" element
and
"experiment"
altogether,
removing
a more
a more
and
for
it
"decorous,"
classically
substituting
general,
as an
view of "fitting" language: "It [the "First Volume"] was published,
some
use
to
I
be
of
how
which,
ascertain,
far,
experiment
hoped, might
a
to
metrical
selection
of
the
real
by fitting
arrangement
language of
men in a state of vivid sensation,
that sort of pleasure and that quantity
to
of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavor
In the Preface
the Advertisement's
{LB 241).
(in)famous
in
of
the middle
and lower classes of
"the
conversation
phrase,
language
society," vanishes; what we find instead is "a selection," and by implica
tion one made by a "selectman" who is "superior" to those "middle and
lower classes of society" that served as a source of his poetry in the initial
impart"
volume. An exclusive gender element appears as well, for the "selection"
is now "a selection of the real language of men" (as if there could also be
an "unreal language" of men),
and "men" no longer in "conversation"
but rather "in a state of vivid sensation." Quantity
becomes
important as
and
the
is
mental
also
control
well,
("that quantity of
poet's
emphasized
. . .which a Poet
to
endeavor
may rationally
pleasure
impart"), where
the claimed
contrast to the
"rationality" of the poet stands in apparent
"men in a state of vivid sensation." When
the word "class" does appear,
later in the Preface,
it no longer has the socioeconomic
that
dimension
it had
in the earlier Advertisement;
instead, it has been turned into a
or
now writes of "a class of
for
synonym
"category"
"type": Wordsworth
as
as
a
of
well
"class of ideas" {LB 243), as he later
{LB 242)
poetry"
a
to
of
refers
"species
poetry" {LB 272).
A great deal has been taken back, in other words, a fact that should
not surprise us, since the Preface has a different
function
than the
Advertisement.
For one thing, Wordsworth's
poems now exist, acknowl
different"
{LB 243) from earlier
edged as his own, and "so materially
at least for Wordsworth,
now be
must
that the difference
poetry,
then is less a manifesto
than an explanation
of
justified. The Preface
now offers, among other
difference.
On the "surface," what Wordsworth
like an "apology" for poetry, a "defence" of his own
things, is something
an explication
of his "metrical contract,"
accomplishments,
including
on
it would seem,
Rousseau's
idea of the contrat social; he also
modeled,
adds an historical
he will expand
which
in 1802, to his
dimension,
terms such as
and moral
analysis of poetry; and he uses teleological
{LB 244, 246)
"purpose"
his work in society.
Doubts or reservations
and
"duty" {LB 244)
also appear
to define
the "poet" and
about what Wordsworth
now calls
84
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
"low and rustic life" {LB 245). Poems are "to make
the incidents
of
common
as
were
if
not
life interesting"
interest
{LB 244),
they
actually
"
... of these men
is now "purified ...
ing in themselves. The "language
to be its real defects,
from what appear
from all lasting and rational
causes of dislike and disgust"
to the
In
the 1802 additions
{LB 245).
in the middle
Preface
the erasure of "the language of conversation
and
answer
lower classes of society" is even more
"I
that
the
prolonged:
of such Poetry as I am recommending
is, as far as is possible, a
of the language
that this selection,
really spoken by men;
it is made with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a
wherever
distinction
far greater than would at first be imagined,
and will entirely
from the vulgarity and meanness
the composition
of ordinary
separate
that a dissimilitude
life; and, if metre be superadded
thereto, I believe
language
selection
will be produced
{LB 254).
mind"
and
meanness,"
altogether
"Ordinary
and
what
sufficient for the gratification
of a rational
life" has now become
the source of "vulgarity
Wordsworth
here
calls
a
"superadded"
meter
of the) subject
hardly seems to have grown from the (consideration
to what Coleridge
itself; such a meter would seem to belong much more
as opposed
to "the organic"
called "the mechanical"
{BL 73, 62). But
even the idea of the "subject" now starts to differ with itself and within
itself. In the 1798 Advertisement
Wordsworth
had declared
that "[i]t is
are to be found
of Poetry that itsmaterials
the honourable
characteristic
in every subject which can interest the human mind"
{LB 7). But in an
to the Preface Wordsworth
the subject to the
restricted
1802 addition
that "if the Poet's subject be judiciously
"judiciously chosen," claiming
it will naturally, and upon fit occasion,
lead him to passions
the
chosen,
must
of
if
be
selected
and
which,
language
truly
judiciously,
necessarily
alive
and
and
with
and
{LB
dignified
variegated,
metaphors
figures"
For Wordsworth,
the "necessity of producing
immediate
254-55).
plea
sure ... is an acknowledgement
of the beauty of the universe"
{LB 258).
. . . the mind of man as
The poet "considers
the mirror of the
naturally
fairest and most interesting qualities of nature" {LB 259). This begs the
of (the source of) those "defects,"
that "dislike" and that
question
earlier. Here
the natural
mentioned
("naturally")
"disgust" Wordsworth
to
and the artificial
be conjoined.
would
But what
("the mirror")
appear
as the vision may be, is not a totality, but a
"the mirror" offers, unified
has been left
inscribed within an act of exclusion;
"selection,"
something
to mention
not
of
out, the less fair and interesting
"nature,"
qualities
one
"the world"?almost
could
and
argue,
certainly what
everything,
had himself come to call, in the course of his revisions, "the
"the
of ordinary
life." A
defects,"
low," "the vulgarity and the meanness
even
"fall" has taken place within
if
it
has
itself, then,
gone
language
almost unnoticed,
and the "poet" is left "conversing"
the
only with
Wordsworth
SECRET(iNG) CONVERSATIONS
in the mirror,
fragments
a mere
occasion,
itself?or
for
or,
"organic,"
"beautiful"
"selection"
herself?has
85
been
as
words
of
even
feelings,
where
and thus ceases
"denatured,"
that matter,
and what
be,
they may
and
they
"nature"
to be "whole,"
"natural."
earlier emphasis on "the language of real men"?on
spoken male
a
now
as
in
other
words?can
be
language,
glimpsed
attempt
desperate
to hold back the denaturing
of the world through writing, as an attempt
as well as the
to conceal
that denaturing
that that
position
privileged
on
a
as
to
had
confer
writer
such
Wordsworth.
The
begun
denaturing
The
friend,
price paid is that everything and everyone becomes
text?family,
in the terms of "class"
and foe alike. This
is hardly
revolutionary
in 1798. But
advertised
it is a monstrous
vision
in its own right,
as
monstrous
to
as for the poet
text
for the people
the
well
subjected
four years Wordsworth
the critic could lay claim to
to
tame
how
the
beast
that
the poet had raised. The
having
come
full
"revolution" had
circle: "while he [the poet]
is only selecting
to the same thing,
from the real language of men, or, which amounts
in the spirit of such selection, he is treading upon
composing
accurately
himself.
Within
learned
safe ground"
{LB 261).
VI
was
first published
in 1798. Of
the
anonymously
and four by
poems nineteen were by Wordsworth,
the work was a collaborative
effort, the two-page
Although
Coleridge.
of
"Advertisement"
the
in
"author"
the
spoke
third-person
singular. In
the second edition, dated 1800 but published
in 1801, and consisting of
two volumes,
the title page ascribed the entire book to "W.Wordsworth,"
even though Coleridge
an additional
had contributed
poem to the new
Lyrical
original
Ballads
twenty-three
volume. Coleridge's
in the book is acknowledged
in the
participation
third paragraph
as "the assistance
of the Preface, but only anonymously,
of a Friend":
For
the
induced
sake
of
to request
a consciousness
and
from
variety
the assistance
of a Friend,
who
of the ANCIENT MARINER,
the DUNGEON,
GALE,
have
would
requested
in great
and
this
assistance,
measure
have
the FOSTER-MOTHER'S
the poem
entitled
I not believed
had
the
there would be found a difference,
colours
coincide.
of our
style;
{LB 242)
as our
of my
furnished
opinions
same
LOVE.
tendency
own
me
the Poems
the NIGHTIN
TALE,
I should
not,
the poems
as my
and
own,
that
I was
weakness
with
however,
of my
Friend
that,
though
there would be found no discordance
on
the
subject
of poetry
do
almost
in the
entirely
86
LITERARY
NEW
HISTORY
Wordsworth's
behavior
toward Coleridge,
however, had hardly been
that of the ideal "Friend." Nor in his correspondence
did he maintain
on the subject of poetry."
In a letter
the "coincidence"
of "opinions
on
to
written
the publisher
of the first edition of Lyrical
June 2, 1799
mentioned
that rather than reprint
Ballads, Joseph Cottle, Wordsworth
ing the book as it had originally appeared he would "probably add some
others in Lieu of the Ancyent Marinere."16 On the twenty-fourth
of the
same month he again wrote Cottle: "You tell me the poems have not sold
I should wish to know what number have been sold.
seems that the Ancyent Mariner
has upon the
gather it
whole been an injury to the volume,
Imean
that the old words and the
of it have deterred
readers from going on. If the volume
strangeness
I would put in its place some little
should come to a second Edition
more
which
would
be
taste" (264). As
likely to suit the common
things
ill. If it is possible,
I can
From what
to his publisher
claimed
those
that he had "published
no
that
for
alone"
it
be
he
and
(267),
poems
money
may
money
surprise
to
took the "injury" to his fortunes
risk
his
seriously enough
injuring
"Friend" by demoting
Mariner"
from its
"The Rime of the Ancient
as
to
in
the
the
first
volume
its
1798
poem
original place
subsequent
as the twenty-second
and penultimate
poem of the first volume
position
Wordsworth
of the 1800 edition. Moreover,
in a letter to his new publisher Wordsworth
asserts precisely
that
that "discordance"
between himself and Coleridge
of Mr
he denies
in the third paragraph
of the Preface:
"A Poem
was to have concluded
but upon mature
the Volumes;
Coleridge's
that the Style of this Poem
["Christabel"] was so
own
not
discordant
from my
that it could
be printed
along with my
revised the "style" of "The
(309). Coleridge
poems with any propriety"
Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
for the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.
to the
But even with its revisions Wordsworth
maintained
his objections
to
two
for
in
last
Preface
his
the
of
the
poem,
mailing
paragraphs
of
before
Ballads
Wordsworth
the
publisher
shortly
publication
Lyrical
in the 1800 edition:
added the following note, which was included
I found
deliberation
I cannot
as may
have
the gratification
of informing
such Readers
myself
or with
owe
their
of
that
this poem,
it,
any part
they
pleasure
was himself
as the Author
to me;
it should
that
be
very desirous
refuse
been
pleased
sort
in some
with
This
wish
had
suppressed.
8c from a knowledge
poem,
from
arisen
that many
a consciousness
persons
had
been
of
much
the
defects
displeased
of
the
with
it.
The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person
has
no
distinct
who
character,
been
either
under
in his
the
profession
controul
of Mariner,
of
or
as
a human
being
supernatural
impressions
having
long
to
be supposed
himself
of something
that
secondly,
might
partake
supernatural;
no
not act, but
is continually
acted
that the events
he does
upon:
thirdly,
having
SECRET(lNG) CONVERSATIONS
necessary
somewhat
touches
number
connection
do
too
not
produce
accumulated.
laboriously
of passion,
and
indeed
of the stanzas
present
87
each
the passion
beautiful
felicity of language; and the versificiation,
long poems,
that metre,
is harmonious
8c every
variety
that these several merits
highest
poems.
kind,)
On
is
lastly, that the imagery
contains
delicate
many
poem
a great
true to nature;
is every where
other;
Yet
and
the
images
8c are
though
expressed
the metre
with
unusual
is itself unfit for
of
the utmost
and artfully
varied,
powers
exhibiting
to me
it is
therefore
It
of which
appeared
capable.
(the first of which, namely that of the passion,
a value which
to the poem
is not often
gave
to permit
I
this account
of my Friend
requested
possessed
me
to
is of the
by better
republish
it.
{LB 276-77)
seems to have accepted
of his
for a time the judgments
Coleridge
ill
of
the
health may have been part
"Friend," although his progressively
toWordsworth,
for he not only revised
price paid for his acquiescence
"the old words" of his poem for the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, but
saw the book into print in its new form at a moment
when he had other
illness of his youngest
the serious
commitments,
including
pressing
to maintain
in his letters a reverence
for
child. And he continued
in saying, that since Milton no
"of whom I do not hesitate
Wordsworth,
man has manifested himself
equal to him" {CL 1.328). When Thomas
in regard toWordsworth,"
Poole charged Coleridge
"with prostration
at the age of thirty,
if
had
Milton
"What
known
you
replied:
Coleridge
if you should meet
in the
and believed all you now know of him??What
letters of any then living man, expressions
the young Milton
concerning
totidem verbis the same as mine of Wordsworth,
would it not convey to you
a most delicious
to you that your
it not be an assurance
sensation? Would
no shadow of flesh
of the Paradise Lost was no superstition,
admiration
and bloodless
but that the Man was even so, that the
abstraction,
was
com
incarnate
and
{CL 1.330). Coleridge's
greatness
personal?"
more
more
for
admiration
Wordsworth
the
became
and
poet
parative
of his own powers as a poet. He
however, with his denigration
entangled,
on September
was
to William
wrote
Godwin
8, 1800 that Wordsworth
to
to unloose'"
"'the latch of whose Shoe I am unworthy
and
{CL 1.349),
on
same
to
the
Thelwell
17
December
of
that
"[a]s
year
John
Poetry, I
that I never had the
abandoned
it, being convinced
altogether
a strong desire for original
essentials of poetic Genius,
8c that Imistook
he
power" {CL 1.369). Two days later, in a letter to Francis Wrangham,
am only a kind of a
added that Wordsworth
"is a great, a true Poet?I
{CL 1.371).
Metaphysician"
as the
It was Wordsworth
who then "replaced" Coleridge
"great," the
own statements. On March 25,1801
"true" poet in Coleridge's
Coleridge
went so far as to announce
toWilliam Godwin his own "death" as a poet:
have
88
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
"The Poet
is dead in me?my
that
(or rather the Somewhat
imagination
lies, like a Cold Snuff on the circular Rim of a
imaginative)
even a stink of Tallow to remind you that it
Brass Candle-stick,
without
was once cloathed & mitred with Flame....
If I die, and the Booksellers
will give you any thing for my Life, be sure to say?Wordsworth
on him, like the TvcoOi gecxut?v [know thyself] from Heaven;
descended
had been
to him what true Poetry was, he made
him know, that he
by shewing
himself was no Poet" {CL 2.390).
As the occasion
for the "death" of the poet, the book that is often
to have launched
in English
claimed
the "romantic movement"
litera
ture can also be said to have put an end to it, and not only for Coleridge,
even if that end would propel both Wordsworth
to differ
and Coleridge
turn out to be a posthumous
from the other in what would
and never
fiction
ending
of literary origins.
University
of Zurich
notes
1
as the Cornell Manuscript),
"A Letter
to-"
(also known
Taylor Coleridge,
in Coleridge's
and the Earliest Printings,
ed.
"Dejection": The Earliest Manuscripts
M. Parrish
cited in text as L by line
1988), p. 24; hereafter
(Ithaca and London,
Samuel
line
41,
Stephen
number.
rev. ed. (London
ed. R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones,
Wordsworth,
Lyrical Ballads,
cited in text as LB.
York, 1965), p. 7; hereafter
3
See the note to "Tintern Abbey"
line 114 in Romantic Poetry and Prose, ed. Harold
Bloom
and Lionel Trilling
1973), p. 149.
(New York,
2 William
and New
4 William
Wordsworth,
Poetical Works, ed. Thomas
a Few Miles Above
in
Tintern
..."
Abbey
Composed
rev. by Ernest de Selincourt
Hutchinson,
1936), pp.
(Oxford,
in text as TA by line number.
"Lines
cited
163-65; hereafter
5
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
An Ode"
in The Complete Poetical Works, Vol. I, ed.
"Dejection:
Ernest Hardey
hereafter
cited in text as D by line
(Oxford,
1912), pp. 362-68;
Coleridge
number.
6 William
"Ode: Intimations
of Immortality
from Recollections
of Early
Wordsworth,
in Poetical Works, pp. 460-62;
hereafter
cited in text as II by line number.
Childhood,"
7 John Milton,
in The Poems of John Milton,
"Samson Agonistes"
ed. Helen
Darbishire
lines 594-96.
(Oxford,
1961),
8
"A Letter
to-,"
lines are printed
10
These
11
Samuel
in Coleridge's
letter to William
19 July 1802,
Sotheby,
cited in text by line number.
"Dejection," p. 37; hereafter
to Coleridge's
introduction
"Dejection," p. 17.
in Parrish,
Coleridge's
"Dejection," pp. 33, 40, 54, 55.
1907), Vol.
(Oxford,
Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross
included
in Parrish,
printed
Coleridge's
9 As Parrish observes
in his
Taylor Coleridge,
cited in text as BL.
p. 62; hereafter
12 Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie
hereafter
cited in text as CL by volume
and letter number:
as
I,
2 vols. (Oxford,
1956);
Griggs,
are
"Male and Female
Rhymes
or less than
single and double Rhymes?Right,
Rhymes;
Light, are Masculine
not Male &
feminine.?At
& Feminine,
present,
they are called Masculine
I, 294). See also Biographia
Letters,"
Literaria, Vol. 2, "Satyrane's
[...]"(Vol.
p. 178:
neither
more
Ocean,
Female
Motion,
conversations
secret(ing)
89
that we were not so exact with regard to the final endings
of the
[Klopstock]
no distinction
to know
He did not seem
the French.
that we made
between
"I told him
lines
as
and feminine
(i.e. single or double)
Lowes, The Road toXanadu
John Livingston
pp. 328-67.
14 Coleridge,
I, pp.
Literaria, Vol.
Biographia
masculine
13
because
subject;
it will,
[...]."
rhymes
(London,
91-92:
1978; first
"I shall
not
ed., London,
dilate
further
1927),
on
this
and permission),
be treated of at large and
grant health
on the PRODUCTIVE
I have many
years been preparing,
on the
to, a full commentary
with, and as the introduction
(if God
which
in a work,
systematically
LOGOS
human
and divine;
of St. John."
Gospel
"Heaven
15 Byron,
in Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome
and Earth,"
a slight mistake
and Barry Weiler,
vol. 6 (Oxford,
1991), p. 346. Byron made
initial "By" to "And."
however,
quotation,
changing
Coleridge's
in The Letters of William
Wordsworth
and Dorothy Wordsworth,
16 William
ed. Ernest
J.
in
McGann
rev. ed. Chester
de
cited in text.
1967), Vol. 1, p. 263; hereafter
seems
to
tenor
as
have
the
of
Wordsworth's
Coleridge
accepted
general
literary criticism
in his correspondence
that he and
well, at least for a time, and to have maintained
Wordsworth
had
the same critical
attitude
toward poetry.
to
"The Preface,"
he wrote
Selincourt,
L. Shaver
(Oxford,
at the end of September,
our joint opinions
on Poetry"
1800, "contains
also
Wordsworth's
of
Letters, Vol.
1, 354). He
supported
public
rejection
to Josiah Wedgwood
on November
In a letter written
"Christabel."
his
1,1800, he informed
that the poem had grown
so impressive,
"so long & inWordsworth's
that
patron
opinion
Daniel
Stuart
{Collected
as
it from his volume
he rejected
both in size 8cmerit,
8c as discordant
in
disproportionate
it's [sic] character"
of "Christabel"
from Lyrical
(CollectedLetters, Vol. 1, 362). The exclusion
seems to have "increased
in him a sense of his shortcomings
as a poet,"
Ballads, however,
as
out {Collected Letters, Vol.
has pointed
two years Coleridge
1, 356 n.2). Within
Griggs
to disavow
would begin
at precisely
the congruence
of their literary opinions,
the point, as
we have
seen, when Wordsworth
of his critical
theory.
began
to
appropriate
much
of Coleridge's
own
criticism