M.K. Bhavnagar
University Dept. Of English
NAME: Trivedi Disha Hiteshbhai
ROLL NO: 40
M.A SEM-1
BATCH OF YEAR: 2015-17
Paper No:3
Topic: Biographia Literaria critical study
Submitted to: Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English
Email id : trivedisha22236@gmail.com
Biographia Literaria
During the first year that Mr.
Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on 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. The sudden charm,
which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a
known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of
combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested
itself--(to which of us I do not recollect)-- that a series of poems might be
composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part
at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the
interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would
naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this
sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of
delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the
second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and
incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity,
where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice
them, when they present themselves.
In defense of Wordsworths poetic creed: Coleridge, even though he did
not agree with wordworths views on poetic diction, vindicated his poetic creed
in chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria. Coleridge writes in defence to the
violent assailant to the ‘language of real life’ adopted by Wordsworths in the
Lyrical Ballads. There had been strong criticism against Wordsworth’s views
expressed in preface also. Coleridge writes in his defence: “Had Mr.
wordsworth’s poems been the silly, the childish things, which they were for a
long time described as bring; had they been really distinguished from the
composition of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of
thought: had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies
and pretended imitations of them: they must have sunk at once, a dead weight,
into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with
them”. he wrote that the ‘eddy of
criticism’ which whirled around these poems and preface would have dragged them
in oblivion. But it has not happened. Instead, to quote Coleridge, “year after year
increased the number of Mr. wordsworth’s admirers. They were found too not in
the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young men of strong
ability and meditative minds; and their admiration was distinguished by its
intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervour”. Thus, Coleridge gives
full credit to the genius of Wordsworth.
It does not mean that he agree
with wordsworth on all the points. Coleridge writes: “with many parts of this
preface in the sense attributed to them and which the words undoubtedly seem to
authorize, I never concurred; but on the contrary objected to them as erroneous
in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other parts
of the same preface, and to the author’s own practice in the greater numbers of
the poems themselves. Mr. wordsworth in his recent collection has, I find,
degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume, to be
read or not at the reader’s choice”.
Hence , we may say that, Coleridge is frank enough to point out that some of the views of wordsworth were wrong in principle and
contradictory, not only in parts of the preface but also to the poet himself in
many of his poems.
In this idea originated the plan
of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed, that my endeavors should be
directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so
as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension
of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on
the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of
novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the
supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and
directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an
inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of
familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear
not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
With this
view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing among other poems, THE DARK
LADIE, and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have more nearly realized my
ideal, than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had
proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so much greater,
that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an
interpolation of heterogeneous matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems
written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction,
which is characteristic of his genius. In this form the LYRICAL BALLADS were
published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether subjects, which
from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial style of
poems in general, might not be so managed in the language of ordinary life as
to produce the pleasurable interest, which it is the peculiar business of
poetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considerable
length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary
import, he was understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry
of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms
of speech that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think, adopting
an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From this preface,
prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence of original
genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-
continued controversy. For from the conjunction of perceived power with
supposed heresy I explain the inveteracy and in some instances, I grieve to
say, the acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by
the assailants.
The office of philosophical
disquisition consists in just distinction; while it is the privilege of the
philosopher to preserve himself constantly aware, that distinction is not
division. In order to obtain adequate notions of any truth, we must
intellectually separate its distinguishable parts; and this is the technical
process of philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our
conceptions to the unity, in which they actually co-exist; and this is the
result of philosophy. A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition;
the difference therefore must consist in a different combination of them, in
consequence of a different object being proposed. According to the difference
of the object will be the difference of the combination. It is possible, that
the object may be merely to facilitate the recollection of any given facts or
observations by artificial arrangement; and the composition will be a poem,
merely because it is distinguished from prose by meter, or by rhyme, or by both
conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem
to the well-known enumeration of the days in the several months;
" Thirty days hath September,
April, June,
and November, &c"
others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure is found in
anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that
have this charm super-added, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems.
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 I would
exclusively appropriate 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, reveals
"itself in the balance or reconcilement 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.
Doubtless, as Sir John Davies observes of the soul--(and his words may with
slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic
Imagination)—
"Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature changes.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through the senses to our minds".
Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic
genius, Fancy its Drapery, Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is
everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
Thank You....
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