Coleridge: Esemplastic Imagination

Coleridge: Esemplastic Imagination

" Imagination makes the external internal, the internal external, to make nature thought and thought nature."

Introduction:

A philosopher, poet, and critic- all in one Coleridge has handed down a great principle for the critics of the future. The theory of imagination is the chief point in Coleridge's criticism. It is highly essential to dive deep in the life of Coleridge to understand this theory. His contacts with Wordsworth have also proved to be at the root of his philosophy his concepts and his development of this theory. Coleridge is the second great critic after Dryden.

In his 'Principles of Genial Criticism’, he asserts that while analyzing one's work, we must take into account the circumstances in which that particular book is written; only then he can give complete justice to himself, the artist and the experiences of the art.

In his 'Biographia Literaria' Coleridge traces the foundations on which his concept of ‘Imagination’ is developed. He has also narrated the qualities of a good poet. The imagination does not merely take up the objects given in sense it embraces them, penetrates them and reads them as symbols- symbols, not standing for something behind them, but as partaking of the nature of Infinite Mind. "The true symptoms of natural philosophy places the sole reality of things in as Absolute, which is at once causes suite effects.... in the absolute identity of subject and object, which it calls nature, and which  in its highest power is nothing else than self conscious will or intelligence .

Before we discuss the qualities of a good poet as enumerated by Coleridge, it would be better to give a picture of the term imagination as viewed by Coleridge himself.

1. According to Coleridge, Imagination has two sides like the sides of the coin. These are primary and secondary. He says that everybody is gifted by primary imagination by which one can unite one’s perception with object. In other word, the primary imagination is the living power, and as a repetition in the finite mind of two eternal act of creation, in the infinite “I am.”

2. The secondary imagination is the imagination of artist. The secondary imagination is an echo of the former. It is "identical with the primary in the kind... and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate." The fancy on the other hand is purely a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space. It may combines things.

3. Secondary imagination is a composite faculty of the soul, consisting of all the other faculties, perception, intellect, will, emotions. It is a 'shaping and modifying power'. It conceives external things and expresses them in its own way. In this process the mind and nature act and react on each other. The mind colouring nature becomes one with nature, and nature coloured by the mind becomes one with the mind.

4. "The internal is made external, and the external internal”. So, imagination is above all, a unifying or esemplastic power which, besides unifying the faculties of the soul, identifies the mind with nature and nature with the mind.  It is the common bond between nature and soul of the artist.

Coleridge’s views on the qualities of Poet:

Accoding to Scott-James, we are not concerned primarily with Coleridge the poet and philosopher; We are concerned with Coleridge the critic and humanist. But we must remember that his judgments of art are usually coloured by his sense as a poet. He was dissatisfied with the practices of classicists like Pope and the school of French poetry. Coleridge's poet must reconcile the heart with the head.

1. The essential poetry for him must have the union of heart and head. Coleridge insists on a continuous undercurrent of feeling which lends grace to a poem. "Union of deep feeling with profound thought" the gift of creating the atmosphere are all claimed for the poet.

2. Fancy and imagination are two distinct faculties. Milton had imagination, Cowley had fancy. So the theory of imagination is the chief point in Coleridge's criticism. His experience, his reading and his knowledge led to him to it.

3. For him the elder poets were lifeless, brainless with no undercurrent of deep feeling. Then a poem a recited by Wordsworth suddenly, in a flash, brought home to him the theory of imagination.

4 The poets who have 'fancy' use only mechanical devices and cannot present living images. But when imagination comes into play, the objects assume form, become beautiful. The cause of this is something more than feeling or passion or even reason. This faculty, imagination, made perception and understanding, simultaneous. This is the shaping spirit of imagination, the beauty-making power.

5. The sublime in literature derives its sublimity from the reader's awareness of it. This impression, awareness, is given to the reader through some power of the soul-some faculty of the soul providing a common ground between nature and the spirit.

His Views on art:

The ultimate end of criticism is to establish the principles of writing. But we must judge in the same spirit in which the artist has created.

1. The essential quality of poetry is that it makes…. (Not shapes)

 2. Coleridge emphatically said that art should communicate the poet's state of mind to his readers. Means, poet's work should directly communicate the emotion, feeling and passion of reader. So art, for Coleridge does not exist to satisfy the creative impulse of the artist but to communicate his state of mind to others.

3. Then he says that pleasure is the aim of poetry. It should be immediate pleasure. "It does not arouse by reason of some other satisfaction that might be implied". "The pleasurable experience derived from a work of art is its own intrinsic pleasure, and none other. It does not arouse from any purpose but from beauty. This satisfaction from pleasure is possible for everyone whose faculties have been trained to appreciate beauty.

This implies to learn what beauty is. The work of art should have organic beauty-unity.  "The beautiful contemplated in kind and not in degree, is that in which the many, still seen as many, becomes one." The sense of beauty subsists in simultaneous intuition of the relation of parts." The beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object... And it is always intuitive. “As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind.".

Coleridge is a cosmopolitan critic. His metaphysics does not stop him from being a practical critic. Philosophical systems always lead to conclusions that are debatable. Art and Literature assume new forms from age to age. Poetry, for example may reach the peak of perfection for a certain type of society- may even satisfy people for some time beyond its contemporary time. Philosopher's thought is never complete whereas the tragedies of Sophocles are unsurpassable even to-day.

Art deals with problems of human life. Art proclaims no demonstrable truth because its evidence lies within itself. Experience of art precedes all theories of art. The results derived by a critic should be based on the theory of art and not vice versa. If we do that we will allow many errors and false conceptions to creep into the field of art.

Principles of art should be sought from truth. Most poet- critics base their principles on their experience. Coleridge soared into the field of metaphysics but his convictions were derived from his practical experience. Sometimes metaphysics helped him.

He says:

(1) Art is no mere slavish imitation or copying of nature.

(2) The artist's temperament, imagination, must colour his communication.

(3) His imitation will look like the real thing-but with a difference.

(4) All art is less than life and also more than life. A representation will be less than reality; but it will also be something more.

(5) It does not have the actual beat of life but it has the general idea of the artist's conception superadded to it.

(6)The artist is always experimenting, developing his technique, knowledge of his medium and objects of representation.

(7) Coleridge did not say much about the medium of expression. Art must be intelligible in its communication. He was busy with imagination and its sources as vital to all art.

(8) The artist tries to present his whole awareness of life- limited by time and space. But even through these limitations, he illustrates overtones of wider life and intensity of emotions.

(9) Thus imagination is an activity of the soul, a power that artist can use only when he is at his best.

(10) Art is the reconciliation of likeness and difference, of general and the concrete; of the idea with the image of novel with freshness-all this through the power of imagination.