We’ve talked before about Lewis being the last Romantic. It’s time to return to this literary movement with Dr. Weber to learn about the famed poet Coleridge.
Click here to download audio for S9E29: “Jack’s Bookshelf – Coleridge”
Show Notes
Quote-of-the-Week
“He prayeth best, who loveth best
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
Introduction
Welcome friends to Pints With Jack!
As we near the end of Jack’s Bookshelf we return once again to The Romantics. This time we’re looking at Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is why today’s opening quotation was from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Joining us today is returning guest, Dr. Carolyn Weber.
Biographical Information
Dr. Carolyn Weber is an award-winning author, popular professor and international speaker and she is the author of “Surprised By Oxford”, “Sex and the City of God”, and “Holy is the Day”.
She has served as faculty at several universities and was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford. She lives in a quirky old house out in the country with her family, along with their animal menagerie…
Chit Chat
Q. You were last on Pints With Jack in Season 8 to talk to us about Wordsworth. What have you been up to since you were last on Pints With Jack?
- Dr. Weber continues to teach at Franklin College in Tennessee.
- She’s about to release a new book “Four Questions God Asks”, which explores spiritual formation, and the things God asks of us.
- As an Inklings Fellow, she’s had the chance to work closely with the Wade Center last year, particularly on C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald.
Toast
- In our guest’s honor, David opened a Moosehead Canadian lager.
- Dr. Weber was sipping on a tea.s
Discussion
01. “The Man”
We’ve mentioned Coleridge already this season. Our core text this season has been “The Abolition of Man“and it opens with Lewis discussing an incident with Coleridge and the description of a waterfall – should it be called “Pretty” or “Sublime”.
Q. …but who was Coleridge and where does he fit into the world of literature?
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a “dark Romantic” poet largely associated with Wordsworth. Born into a large family, he was raised with an Anglican background, falling away into Unitarianism for a few years before returning to the Church of England with a fervor.
- A sickly child (later famously addicted to opium that dulled his chronic pain), Coleridge spent his time reading voraciously, and was a highly imaginative, creative person.
- He was heavily influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution which he nearly enacted in a small way in Pennsylvania.
- Coleridge was a prolific writer in many genres and styles, including essays, lectures, literary criticism, and of course, poetry. He was well versed in theology and metaphysics.
Q. What makes him an important author?
- The primary reason was the capacity of his knowledge and his manuscripts. Coleridge was a prolific reader and writer, and was highly influential both in social circles, and on the second generation of Romantics.
- Another reason was due to the number of genres and styles that he wrote in. He was particularly notable for his literary criticism and his poetry, and he reached a wide audience because of these texts.
- In 1798, the “Lyrical Ballads” he co-wrote with Wordsworth became widely known as one of the most influential revolutionary publications ever.
- Coleridge was especially influential on the later Gothic movement, including on authors like Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein”.
Q. When did you first come across him and what got you interested?
- Dr. Weber’s mother read poetry to her when she was younger, and the Ancient Mariner captivated her attention from early on. She read Coleridge herself in high school, beginning with the confusing “Kubla Khan”.
Q. Who were the writers who influenced Coleridge?
- Coleridge was so well read, it’s hard to list out all of his influences! One great influence on the writer were the metaphysical poets, especially John Dunne, who gave him permission to wrestle with God.
02. “His Works”
Q. Would you mind just guiding us through his corpus? Let’s start with the three main works I know him for…
- The “Biographia Literaria” is an autobiographical, philosophical work of literary criticism. It dives into four things:
- Coleridge’s early fascination with philosophy and theology, developed by literature of famous thinkers
- The creative process and structure of poetry
- The definition of imagination and its centrality to Romanticism and creativity more broadly
- Imagination was divided into primary and secondary, with primary being basic human perception, and secondary being the willed, artistic creative power of a poet.
- A critique of Wordsworth
- The thread running through the book is that we are connected to God by creating, and that imagination is the bridge between creativity and reason. Tolkien expressed similar sentiment in “Mythopoeia”, that we reflect God’s image by being sub-creators.
We make still by the law in which were made.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia
Q. The other two pieces that I know of (thanks to Lewis) are “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”. Can you tell us what they are about?
- These two works couldn’t be more different.
- “Kubla Khan” is a shorter poem that describes a fragment of a dream (or perhaps an opium-induced hallucination 😬). It is an emotive descent into a deeper consciousness that doesn’t fully make sense, but while you’re reading it, it is still coherent, similar to how a dream is coherent when you’re in it, and incoherent when you’re awake.
- Meanwhile, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a lengthy ballad. It begins with a sailor compelling a wedding guest on his way to the ceremony to stop and listen to him. He shares with the guest how he committed the crime of slaying an albatross, and subsequently endured the spiritual punishment.
- The Rime clearly portrays the consequences of sin, and is a wonderful allegory of the soul wrestling with himself and with God.
- It also contains many Gothic references, including a skeleton or ghost ship, which stems from Germanic folklore. One well-known name popularized in media is the Flying Dutchman.
03. “Emotion and The Abolition of Man”
Q. In the “Lyrical Ballads”, Coleridge and Wordsworth define poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion”, tempered with reason and memory. This reminds me of “The Abolition of Man” where the belly and the head are mediated by the chest. Can you talk about the importance of emotion in our everyday experience?
- In TAOM, the authors of “The Green Book” scoff at Coleridge’s descriptions of a waterfall. They think the distinction between “pretty” and “sublime” means nothing, because feelings cannot be imperially verified. However, for the Romantics especially, there is a great difference between the two.
- The Romantics have an infinite longing for deeper experiences, and the evocative language that we use contributes to this. Without it, our world becomes dull. In order to have a fully embodied experience, we need to understand that our words matter, and our feelings about things matter (so long as they’re mediated by reason and memory).
04. “Influencing Lewis”
Q. The all-important question… how did he influence C. S. Lewis?
- Lewis was very clearly influenced by the Romantics.
- The title of his autobiography “Surprised by Joy” was taken from a Wordsworth sonnet, in an attempt to Christianize it and point to the true cause of our joy.
- Romantics often looked to nature as a guide, a teacher, and a restorative force. A lover of the outdoors who frequently went on walks, Jack appreciated the attention the Romantics gave to God’s creation.
- One Coleridge example is “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison”, where the protagonist longingly imagines a walk outside that he can’t experience due to an injury that keeps him bedridden. He is soothed by the memory of nature.
- According to Lewis, imagination is “the organ of meaning”, an idea directly pulled from the “Biographia Literaria”.
- Coleridge, like Lewis, believed that following the Christian path was part God’s grace, and part our response to it, as shown in the poem “The Eolian Harp”.
- This imagery appears in TAOM, where the person is also described as an Eolian harp. The wind of the Holy Spirit plays our strings, and we tune ourselves accordingly. Without the wind we make no noise.
- Lewis’s “An Experiment in Criticism” was heavily influenced by Coleridge’s writings and reflections on William Shakespeare. The chief value of reading is how what you read shaped you as a person.
Readers may be divided into four classes: I. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. II. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. III. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. IV. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
Samuel Coleridge, Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists: With Other Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge. Volume 1
05. “First Steps”
Q. If someone wanted to dip their toe into his works, where would you recommend people begin reading Coleridge?
- Read through his beautiful poems. There are hundreds to choose from!
- The easiest to begin with are the conversational poems because they’re easy to identify with, including ones on families with children, or rejection by friends. Start with something like “Frost at Midnight”, “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison” or “Dejection: An Ode”. And, of course, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.
- Try listening to an audiobook! It’s a captivating experience.
Wrap Up
Closing Thoughts
- Read Wordsworth on a beautiful Sunday morning with a lovely cup of tea. Read Coleridge anywhere, in any weather!
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