Samuel Taylor Coleridge BIO poem The Eolian Harp

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the greatest of the English Romantic poets. He was born on 21 October 1772 in Devonshire 'shaire'), the ninth and youngest son of Rev John Coleridge and Anne Bowden. His father died when he was eight and in July 1782, he entered Christ's Hospital school in London and became an outstanding classical scholar, though he was lonely and homesick in the city.

Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge, but left without taking a degree. It was at Cambridge that he became interested in utopian and revolutionary politics. After 1794, along with Robert Southey, he drew up plans for a utopian society to be in America, known as "Pantisocracy". The scheme collapsed, but through it he met, and married, Sarah Fricker, a marriage that was at first happy, but was to prove a complete failure.

Use your mouse to explore some of the pivotal events of Coleridge's life

 

Coleridge was to enter the church to make a living, but an annuity of 150 given him by Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood in 1798 freed him to be able to write poetry. 

By this time he had met William Wordsworth and the great literary partnership began. Wordsworth and his sister moved to be near the Coleridges at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire. 

In 1798 the pair published Lyrical Ballads, designed to revolutionise the style and subject matter of English poetry and it was between July 1797 and July 1798 that Coleridge wrote his greatest poems: 'Kubla Khan', 'Frost at midnight', 'Christabel', 'France: an ode' and 'The rime of the ancient mariner'.

From 1799, he was writing regular political articles for the Morning Post. In 1800 Coleridge moved to the Lake District with the Wordsworths and they prepared a new edition of the Lyrical Ballads, though Wordsworth omitted 'Christabel', leading to Coleridge's increasing lack of confidence in himself - a problem compounded by his failing marriage and love for Sara Hutchinson, a friend of Wordsworth's. 

By now he was also addicted to opium, and this addiction was deepened by various sojourns abroad. He returned to England in 1806, and finally separated from Sarah Fricker. He returned to journalism at this time and friends gathered around financially, though he fell out with Wordsworth in 1810 over his addiction.

 Use your mouse to explore some of the pivotal events of Coleridge's life

 

Coleridge was to enter the church to make a living, but an annuity of 150 given him by Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood in 1798 freed him to be able to write poetry. By this time he had met William Wordsworth and the great literary partnership began. Wordsworth and his sister moved to be near the Coleridges at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire. In 1798 the pair published Lyrical Ballads, designed to revolutionise the style and subject matter of English poetry and it was between July 1797 and July 1798 that Coleridge wrote his greatest poems: 'Kubla Khan', 'Frost at midnight', 'Christabel', 'France: an ode' and 'The rime of the ancient mariner'.

From 1799, he was writing regular political articles for the Morning Post. In 1800 Coleridge moved to the Lake District with the Wordsworths and they prepared a new edition of the Lyrical Ballads, though Wordsworth omitted 'Christabel', leading to Coleridge's increasing lack of confidence in himself - a problem compounded by his failing marriage and love for Sara Hutchinson, a friend of Wordsworth's. By now he was also addicted to opium, and this addiction was deepened by various sojourns abroad. He returned to England in 1806, and finally separated from Sarah Fricker. He returned to journalism at this time and friends gathered around financially, though he fell out with Wordsworth in 1810 over his addiction.

From 1811 to 1815, he gave a highly successful series of lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, produced a successful play, made great progress on his Biographia Literaria and made great efforts to reduce his drug-taking.

From 1816 till his death in 1834, he lived under the friendly care of Dr Gillman in Highgate. From Highgate, he published a number of his works, continued political journalism and delivered further lecture series. It was in this period from 1811 till his death that he published many of the prose essays and philosophical tracts that established his reputation alongside his poetry, as well as completing Biographia Literaria, though he never finished the work embodying his entire philosophical system, the Opus Maximum.

Conversation poems express the poet's feelings.

Conversation poems are addressed to imagined or real friends.

The term "Conversation poem" is a term Coleridge himself used (see 'The Nightingale') and has come to refer to those poems in which the poet is aware of the imagined or real presence of a loved one, and the poems are partly addressed to these friends in a conversational tone, concerning the poet's own feelings. Coleridge wrote that the most interesting passages in our most interesting Poems are those, in which the Author develops his own feelings.

The term "Conversation poem" itself relates to a phrase Coleridge had used about an earlier English poet, William Cowper. At a time when he felt that his own poetry was too forced, mannered and inflated, he had turned to Cowper who had what Coleridge saw as a relaxed, informal, natural style. He referred to Cowper's style as "divine chit chat", and tried to achieve it these poems of blank verse - hence the phrase, "Conversation poems".

The best known Conversation poems are:

'The Eolian Harp,

Frost at Midnight,

This Lime-Tree Bower, my Prison,

The Nightingale

and

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement.'

Because they adopt the tone of natural conversation, these poems appear artless, but in fact they are highly structured and carefully created. One of the techniques that Coleridge uses, for example, is that of moving from one subject to another because of the associations that a particular word might have - just as in a real conversation.

Coleridge referred to William Cowper's poetical style as "divine chit chat" and aimed to achieve this quality in his own work.

The best known Conversation poems are:

'The Eolian Harp,

Frost at Midnight,

This Lime-Tree Bower, my Prison,

The Nightingale

and

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement.'

Because they adopt the tone of natural conversation, these poems appear artless, but in fact they are highly structured and carefully created. One of the techniques that Coleridge uses, for example, is that of moving from one subject to another because of the associations that a particular word might have - just as in a real conversation.

conversation poems move like the beat of a heart they expand and contract as the poet considers his concrete self and the wider world.

Coleridge critic, Albert Guerard, in an important essay 'The systolic rhythm: the structure of Coleridge's Conversation poems', coined the term "systolic rhythm" to refer to the structure of these poems. The term refers to the notion that the Conversation poems move like the beat of a heart - systole and diastole - contracting and expanding as the poet wanders to and fro between his concrete, immediate self and the wider world.

From the early 17th century to the late 18th century, the dominant intellectual force in Europe was reason. This was the 'Age of Reason'.

It is represented by writers such as Francis Bacon:

'Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.' (1620)

or

Alexander Pope:

'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 

The proper study of mankind is Man.' (1733)

The Romantics, however, revolted against this "tyranny of reason" and demanded recognition of the importance of imagination and feeling. They perceived reason as aligned with science and technology and partly blamed these forces for the ugliness of the Industrial Revolution. In revolting against this, the Romantics proclaimed a new appreciation of Nature - not the nature of private parks under human control that Pope had so loved, but Nature wild and solitary and untamed.

 Age of reason

celebrated 'social man' rather than the individual.

focused on intellectual thought and reason.

Romanticism

emphasised imagination and feeling

expressed an appreciation of wild, solitary and untamed nature.

proclaimed the power of the individual self.

represented artists as godlike figures.

From the early 17th century to the late 18th century, the dominant intellectual force in Europe was reason. This was the 'Age of Reason'.

It is represented by writers such as Francis Bacon:

'Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.' (1620)

or

Alexander Pope:

'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 

The proper study of mankind is Man.' (1733)

The Romantics, however, revolted against this "tyranny of reason" and demanded recognition of the importance of imagination and feeling. They perceived reason as aligned with science and technology and partly blamed these forces for the ugliness of the Industrial Revolution. In revolting against this, the Romantics proclaimed a new appreciation of Nature - not the nature of private parks under human control that Pope had so loved, but Nature wild and solitary and untamed.

 Coleridge critic, Albert Guerard, in an important essay 'The systolic rhythm: the structure of Coleridge's Conversation poems', coined the term "systolic rhythm" to refer to the structure of these poems. The term refers to the notion that the Conversation poems move like the beat of a heart - systole and diastole - contracting and expanding as the poet wanders to and fro between his concrete, immediate self and the wider world.

 

 

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