THE RECONCILIATION OF OPPOSITES IN THE POETRY

OF COLERIDGE AND POE

by
SHARON LOUISE RAMEY, B.A.
A THESIS
IN
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved

Accepted

Migust, 1978

(\?,i-0b^'\3

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y)

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>

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted to Dr. Marion C. Michael for his
direction of this thesis and to Dr. Warren Walker for his
helpful criticism.

11

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I.
II.

III.

IV.

ii

INTRODUCTION

POETIC THEORY

11

Coleridge

11

Poe

23

THE POETRY

30

Coleridge

30

Poe

44

CONCLUSION

60

BIBLIOGRAPHY

64

111

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Coleridge and Poe are both predominant figures in the
Romantic movements of their respective countries.

There are

many coincidental similarities between these contemporaries.

Both fell into debt at a university and failed to complete
their degrees:

Coleridge made two unsuccessful attempts to

pursue his studies at Cambridge and Poe left the University

of Virginia after one year of study.

Both were unsuccessful

in their attempts at military service.

Coleridge, under the

alias Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke, was almost totally incompetent in the Light Dragoons, and although Poe, under the alias
Edgar A. Perry, was fairly successful in the army, he was
later dismissed from West Point.

One of the most exaggerated

facts about both poets is that they were addicted to drugs

and alcohol.

This alleged addiction has been held responsi-

ble for what is sometimes considered "strange" or "weird" in

the poetry of both.
As intriguing as these parallels may be, they offer
little help in understanding Coleridge and Poe as poets.
More important similarities exist which are significant in a
study of their poetry.
poets.

Both men were talented and skilled

The frequently eerie beauty and romantic sentimen-

talism of both are complemented by a conscious craftsmanship.

Both had a strong philosophical bent.

They read heavily in

philosophy and in their own writings discussed the nature of

God, the origin and nature of life, and man's place and
purpose in the universe.

Coleridge and Poe were also

tionally perceptive critics.

excep-

They were both, at times,

editors of magazines and they contributed rather heavily to

periodicals.
ential.

Their criticism was widely read and very influ-

They did not limit their criticism to their own

contemporaries, but, as both were well read in the classics,

wrote critical interpretations and evaluations of many
literary figures, including Shakespeare.
It is the close scrutiny that both Coleridge and Poe
gave to the literature considered in their criticism that
has led

critics to consider them as touchstones for the New

Criticism.

But for both of them the poem is not "the thing."

Because they were philosophers and critics, as well as poets,

their poetry cannot be divorced from their concepts of the
universe and theories of poetry.

The most fundamental aspect

of both Coleridge's and Poe's view of the world and poetry is

the recognition of two forces.
The concept of two forces dominates Coleridge's thought
concerning philosophy, psychology, epistemology, theology,
and poetry.

Coleridge refers to the two forces by various

names, but the concept remains the same whether he is discussing natura naturans and natura naturata, vegetable and

animal, spirit

and matter, imagination and fancy, expansion

and contraction, or passivity and activity.

Coleridge

views these two forces as a necessity for life itself.

a passage from The Friend he says:

In

"The identity of thesis

and antithesis is the substance of all being; their opposition the condition of all existence or being manifested,
and everything or phaenomen is the exponent of synthesis
as long as the opposite energies are retained in that synthesis."

Coleridge makes clear that these forces have

existed since the beginning of time and that one force did
not in any way precede the other.

They counteract each

other " . . . not only in consequence of the accidental direction of each, but as prior to all direction, nay as the primary forces from which the conditions of all possible
2
direction are derivatible and deducible."

They will also

last eternally as these forces are infinite; " . . . these

forces should be assumed to be both alike infinite, both
alike indestructible."

But the infinite and indestructible

qualities of these two forces are contingent on one important thing, their interaction.

Coleridge states that "An

infinite, independent thing is a contradiction."

The result of the interaction of these two forces is
life itself.
Reflection:

As Coleridge says in the appendix to Aids to

"Life, then we consider as copula, or unity of

thesis and antithesis, position and counterposition.

Life

itself being the positive of both."^

The individual life

produced as a result of this interaction of forces, whether

it be the life of a tree, an animal or a man, is mortal or,
as Coleridge terms it, a "finite generation."

Yet the pro-

cess of life is an eternal one for the forces themselves are

infinite; the infinity of these forces assures the continuance of trees, animals and men, as well as other life forms.
For this reason Coleridge calls the life forces "inexhaustibly re-ebullient."
Nature is the main metaphor that Coleridge employs in
explaining the interaction of these two forces.

Beer says

that "Coleridge's concept of nature is based on three

natural processes: "evolving form, shaping spirit, and free7
playing energy."
Coleridge calls the evolving form "natura
naturata," the shaping spirit "natura naturans," and the
free-playing energy the life that results from the union of
the two forces.

In Aids to Reflection he defines natura

naturans and natura naturata:

. . . in speaking of the world without us as distinguishable from ourselves, the aggregate of phaenomena
ponderable and imponderable, is called nature in the
passive,in the language of the old schools, natura
naturatawhile the sum of the powers inferred as the
sufficient causes of the forms (which by Aristotle
and his followers were called the substantial forms)
in nature in the active sense or natura naturans.
Anything that is alive in the natural world is a joining of natura naturans and natura naturata.

Natura naturans

without natura naturata lacks a form for expression and

therefore cannot exist.

Natura naturata without natura

naturans is only an empty form with np vitality; it is like

a stuffed dog or plastic flower in that it has the form of a
living thing yet lacks the ability to grow and produce.

In

a living thing, the unity of natura naturata originates

with natura naturans.

The form of physical nature is deter-

mined by the life-force within and it cannot depart from

this plan.

The physical form of nature (natura naturata)

is an accurate representation of the superphysical force

(natura naturans) which is responsible for its existence.
And as this life-force is "inexhaustibly re-ebullient,"
there is an inexhaustible number of appropriate forms.
This is the essence of organic unity which Coleridge also
discusses in a lecture on Shakespeare:
The organic form, on the other hand is innate; it
shapes as it develops itself from within, and the
fulness of its development is one and the same with
the perfection of its outward form. Such is the
life, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial
artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers is equally
inexhaustible in form. Each exterior is the
physiognamy of the being within, its true image
reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror.^
This statement concerning organic unity is an expression of
the fundamental nature of all life as Coleridge sees it:
two forces, one reflecting the other, are joined to produce
a vital, growing organism.

This concept of two forces

joined in organic unity is also the basis for Coleridge's

poetic theory and is a key principle in Coleridge's own

poetry.
Poe's concept of the universe, his poetic theory, and
his poetry are also based on the operation of two forces.
He calls the two forces "expansion and contraction" or
"attraction and repulsion," and in Eureka he explains how
these forces are responsible for all life.
Poe's attraction and repulsion bear very little resemblance to Coleridge's two forces.

Unlike Coleridge's two

forces which have existed prior to everything else, Poe's

forces have a definite origin and unity.

Poe states,

"Oneness, then, is all that I predicate of the originally

created Matter."

While one of Coleridge's forces did not

precede the other, one of Poe's forces, contraction, did

precede its opposite, expansion.

Unity is nothing but con-

traction without expansion; therefore, contraction existed

prior to expansion.

Poe makes this distinction clear in

his first proposition in Eureka:

"In the Original Unity of

the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things,

with the Germ of their inevitable Annihiliation."

The

"First Thing" is contraction and the "Secondary Cause" is

repulsion.

The secondary cause exists for only a limited

period of time which leads to ultimate unity once again:

The opposition or repulsion, already considered as
so peculiarly limited in other regards, must be

understood, let me repeat, as having power to prevent

absolute coalition, only up to a certain epoch. . . .
we are forced to conclude that the repulsive influence imagined, will finally . . . yield to a force
which, at that ultimate epoch, shall be the superior
force precisely to the extent required, and thus
permit the universal subsidence into the inevitable,
because original and therefore normal One.^2
It is clear that Poe's forces are limited to a finite time
span.

Because of this limitation, the life-force resulting

from these two forces is not "inexhaustibly re-ebullient"

like the lifenforce which Coleridge

discusses.

Poe pre-

dicts a time when everything will cease to exist, something

infeasible in Coleridge's system:
. . . when I say. Matter, finally expelling the Ether,
shall have returned into absolute Unity,it will
then . . . be Matter without Attraction and without
Repulsionin other words. Matter with Matterin
other words. Matter no more.i^
As long as repulsion is working against contraction,
matter exists.

And while these two forces are both in opera-

tion they co-exist in a delicate balance which achieves "the

utmost possible multiplicity of relation out of the emphatically irrelative one."

Poe describes this delicate bal-

ance in the following passage from Eureka:

If I venture to displace, by even the billionth part
of an inch, the microscopical speck of dust which lies
now upon the point of my finger, what is the character
of that act upon which I have adventured? I have done
a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes
the Sun to no longer be the Sun, and which forever
alters the destiny of the multitudinous myriads of
their Creator.i^

8
Although some critics point to the passage quoted above as
a statement of organic unity, the unity that Poe speaks of
is more architectural than organic.

This unity described

by Poe is like the unity of a bridge:

all its parts must

be accurately measured and planned to achieve its purpose

or the bridge will collapse, but the bridge in no way
reflects a life force which structures it as does a tree or
flower.

As Fogle points out, Poe's system is devoid of any

real life or central intelligence which would make it

genuinely organic. 16 Fogle's point follows closely that of
Peckham who, in attempting to account for the romantics
whose works did not illustrate organicism, notably Byron,
17
developed the term "negative romanticism."
This survey of how Coleridge and Poe understand the
working of two forces to produce life provides a springboard
for the comprehension of the poetic theory and poetry of
each.

Because of the consistency of thought in the philos-

ophy, theory of poetry, and poetry of each man, it is

apparent that their poetry does not exist in a vacuum but
is intimately involved with truth as each poet perceives
it.

This study will compare and contrast Coleridge's and

Poe's concept of poetry and the poetry itself and show how
the differences can be traced back to differences in their
perceptions of the nature of life.

Although Poe's writings are the more lucid, Coleridge's

are the more profound and more expansive; therefore, it is
necessary to explain Coleridge's thought more fully than
Poe's.

Because of the breadth of Coleridge's writings,

there are some things which he discusses that Poe does not.
Those aspects which are unique to Coleridge will be included
only when they are necessary to a basic understanding of
Coleridge's ideas.

Poe's concepts will be discussed only

in the context of Coleridge's thought. To borrow a metaphor

from W. B. Yeats which Abrams also employed, Coleridge, for
the purpose of this study, will be the lamp and Poe the
mirror.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine

the extent to which Poe mirrors Coleridge's light.

NOTES
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara
Rooke (Princeton: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), I, 94n.
2
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed.
J. Shawcross (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), I,
197.
3 , . .
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 197.
4
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 182.
5
W. G. T. Shedd, ed.. The Complete Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (New York:

Harper Brothers, 1884), I, 392.

Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 198.

John Beer, Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence (London:
The McMillan Press, Ltd., 1971), p. 155.
g
Coleridge, Works, II, 310.
Q

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, ed.

Thomas Middleton Raysor (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.,
1960), I, 198.
James A. Harrison, ed., The Complete Works of Edgar
Allen Poe (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965), XVI, 207.
"^Poe, Works, XVI, 185-86.
-'^Poe, Works, XVI, 211.
-^^Poe, Works, XVI, 301-11.
^"^Poe, Works, XVI, 208.
-^^Poe, Works, XVI, 218.
'^Richard H. Fogle, "Organic Form in American Criticism
1840-1870," in The Development of American Criticism, ed.
Floyd Stovall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1955), p. 100.
""^Morse Peckham, "Toward a Theory of Romanticism,"
PMLA, LXVI (1965), 5-23.
10

CHAPTER II
POETIC THEORY
A.

Coleridge

Abrams says that one of Coleridge's primary concerns

was to effect a union between human intelligence and
nature.

Coleridge desired a union between man and nature,

for rather than seeing man and nature as opposed to one

another, as was generally thought in his day, Coleridge saw
them as partaking of the same essence and as being structured fundamentally the same.
Biographia Literaria:

As Coleridge says in

"The theory of natural philosophy

would then be completed, when all nature was demonstrated

to be identical in essence with that, which in its highest
known power exists in man as intelligence and selfconsciousness."

If human intelligence is like nature, then

it is also composed of two forces.

Coleridge confirms this

similarity when he says that one may, for purposes of understanding it, reduce human intelligence "to a kind, under the
idea of an indestructible power with two opposites and counteracting forces.""^

The two most obvious forces at work in

human intelligence are the passive force, that which absorbs

and learns and is analogous to natura naturata, and the
active force, that which creates and is analogous to natura
naturans.
11

12
Each of these two major kinds of human intelligent
activity can also be broken down into two opposite forces
which also are analogous to the forces found in nature.
Coleridge refers to the two forces in passive human intelligence as "reason" and "understanding."

Both of these

faculties are employed in the learning process.

The dis-

tinctive characteristic of the understanding is abstraction,

which is something man shares with the animals to a small
degree.

The judgments of the understanding equip man to

operate in the sensuous world, but they do not give man the
4
needed tools for perceiving the supersensuous.

The under-

standing appears to be analogous to the tree of knowledge

in the Genesis story; it is knowledge without life.

The

understanding functions in the world of natura naturata and

is incapable of perceiving the life flow of natura naturans.
Reason, on the other hand, enables man to comprehend
the organic unity which underlies the physical form.

Rea-

son, unlike the understanding, does not comprehend merely

6
things but rather the relationships between things.
Reason
operates in the superphysical world or the world of natura
naturans; therefore, reason

is a superior faculty to under-

standing and Coleridge says that the ideas of reason "are

7
of a higher origin than the notions of understanding."
This higher form of learning, the reason, is both intuitive and spiritual while the understanding is factual

13
and concrete.

while man shares understanding with the

animals, he shares reason with the divine.

And Coleridge

believes that the spiritual or divine in man (reason) must

share and control the objective, factual mode of perception
(understanding) much as natura naturans forms and gives
^^^ *^ natura naturata; "The subjective therefore must
supervene to the objective."^

Just as physical nature is

lifeless without a life-force flowing within, so factual

knowledge is dead without vitalizing intuitive knowledge.
When man is in union with the Divinity, with whom he shares
reason, he taps a life-force that gives new meaning to his
factual understanding:
Whenever by self-subjection to this universal light,
the will of the individual, the particular will, has
become a will of reason, the man is regenerate: and
the reason is then the spirit of regenerate man,
whereby the person is capable of a quickening intercommunion with the Divine Spirit.9
The active intelligence, like the passive, also consists of two forces, which Coleridge terms "fancy" and
"imagination."

They are both modes of creating.

Fancy,

the lesser force, takes the concrete reality perceived by

the understanding and rearranges it to produce an equally
concrete symbol.

Fancy is distinct from simple memory in

that fancy allows for a certain freedom from the dictates

of time and space; fancy can rearrange the external facts
to suit its purpose.

Fancy would have been an adequate

14
explanation for the creation of art for the materialists and
the believers in the theory of association in Coleridge's day.
Shawcross believes that Coleridge also for a while held
fancy to be the basis for artistic creation.

But when he

heard Wordsworth's poetry read, he was confronted with a

powerful creativity that could not be explained by association of ideas.

Coleridge discusses fully his coming to

a new awareness of a greater creative power in his Biographia

r-^

12

Literaria.
Shawcross says that Coleridge saw the distinguishing
characteristic of the imagination as the ability to interpret the physical world as a symbol of spiritual principle.
This comprehension of the hidden spiritual nature of matter
was dependent upon a previous reconciliation of which it
was the symbol.13 This previous reconciliation can be no
other than the union of the ultimate polarity, that of God
and man, which takes place by way of reason.

Through reason

man comes to know God; through imagination he acts like God.

Because man is made in the image of his creator, man himself
is a creator.

Just as natura naturata is the perfect reflec-

tion of natura naturans, so man, when he is in touch with

God, reflects his creator by his own creativity.

This pro-

cess of creating is more important than the end product;

imagination can more accurately be defined as an active process than as a faculty.

It is the process by which man, in

15
active relationship with God reconciles himself to that
which is not himself in order to produce a unified creation.
The creative process is distinguished from reason, which
also unifies opposites into a whole, by its dynamic quality.
But if the imagination is dynamic and alive, it must
be composed of two forces.

In a frequently quoted passage

from Biographia Literaria Coleridge discusses the two kinds

of imagination:
The IMAGINATION then, I consider either primary or
secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the
living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception,
and as a repetition in the finite mind of the external act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former,
co-existing with the consciousness with the conscious
will, yet still as identical with the primary in the
kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and
in the mode of its operation, in order to recreate;
or where this process is rendered impossible, yet
still at all events it struggles to idealize and to
unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects
(as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.-"-^
This passage is frequently misunderstood.

It is regretable

that Coleridge neglected truly to clarify this distinction.

Many critics, in their attempts to explain this portion of
the Biographia, draw analogies between primary imagination
and natura naturata and between secondary imagination and
natura naturans, thus making the secondary imagination
living and vital and the primary imagination fixed and dead.
This interpretation is inaccurate.

Coleridge calls the pri-

mary imagination a "repetition in the finite mind of the

16
external act of creation in the infinite I AM."

Although

one may challenge any creative implications in "repetition,"

it is undeniable that it is an active process.

The key

distinction between these two types of imagination seems to

be that the secondary imagination is linked with the conscious will.

While the primary imagination is what imitates

the creativity of God, it is the secondary imagination that

channels that creativity into concrete lines of poetry or
pictures on a canvas.

The primary imagination may be con-

scious while the secondary is controlled by human will.

The

symbols of the secondary imagination must be "consubstantial

with the truths of which they are conductors,"

which is

the creativity of the primary imagination.

These symbols can be various products of man's mind.
It is natural that the product to which Coleridge usually
refers is poetry.

In the following passage from Biographia

Literaria Coleridge relates poetry to the experience involving the primary imagination and the physical evidence of
that experience which results from the secondary imagination;
Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease
to be poetry, and sink into mere mechanical art . . .
The rules of the IMAGINATION are themselves the very
powers of growth and production. The worlds, to
which they are a reducible present are only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit.-^^
The organic

unity in poetry, explained in the passage

from Biographia Literaria which is quoted above, originates

17
with the poet's achieving unity with God.

And it is the

primacy of this union of man and God that is the reason for
Coleridge's discussions of poetry frequently originating
with a definition of the poet himself.

Because the poet

has reconciled the opposites of himself and God, he is

capable of uniting other opposites:
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 we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. This
power, first put into action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremission,
though gentle and unnoticed, controul (laxis
effertur habenis) reveals itself in the balance of
reconciliation 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; judgement ever awake and steady selfpossession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound
and vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the
natural and artificial still subordinates art to
nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration
of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.i^
And by reconciling opposites, the poet should direct
the reader to the "matter" instead of the "manner," or to
the substance instead of the form; to use an anology from
nature, the poet's goal is to make the reader more aware
of natura naturans than of natura naturata.

It is the life

principle resulting from this reconciliation of opposites,

not their mere physical union, that is important.

The poet

is a man who, by his reason, grasps the meaning underlying

18
the physical reality; he "lives most in the ideal world-"''"^
He experiences that other reality through the primary
imagination and expresses the experience with the secondary
imagination.
And it is to this spiritual experience, in which the
poet has already participated, that the poet is directing
the reader.

This spiritual experience is truth, but not a

factual truth involving tangible reality; rather it is an

intuitive truth that one experiences rather than learns.
It is because Shakespeare points to this truth that
Coleridge terms him, and all true poets, "prophet":
If Shakespeare be the wonder of the ignorant, he is
and ought to be, much more the wonder of the learned:
not only from his profundity of thought, but from
his astonishing and intuitive knowledge . . . he is
rather to be looked on as a prophet than as a poet.i^
In expressing this spiritual reality, the poet, like
the truth he is conveying, must reconcile opposites to form
a unified whole.

As Barth points out, Coleridge believed

that the poet must effect three kinds of unity:

the experi-

ence which the poet expresses must be unified, the poet himself must be unified to the experience he is expressing,
20
and the poet must join the "immanent and the transcendent."
In other words, the poet's experience must be one that is
intuited with the reason, and experienced and expressed with
the imagination, so that the poet is enabled to interpret
the physical world in light of a spiritual knowledge.

19
It is apparent, from the strong emphasis that Coleridge
places on the poet's expressing the truth as he has experienced it, that true poetry's major emphasis is content
rather than form.

But the form is still important;

Coleridge realizes that without form content cannot be expressed.

lars.

The truth must be expressed in concrete particu-

Bate says that although Coleridge accepts the

Aristotelian concept of poetry as representing the ideal,

he also understands that universals can be understood only
21
by means of the particular.

When the poet uses particu-

lars to express his ideals, he is suiting form to content.

And although one might expect the form of poetry that emphasizes meaning to be loosely constructed, Coleridge says that
"Poetry has a logic all its own as severe as that of science
and more difficult because more subtle, more complex, and
22
dependent on more and more fugitive causes."

The "fugi-

tive causes" that the form is depending on are the truth of

the poem which is superior to, and expressed through, the
form.

The truth is a "law which all the parts obey, con-

forming themselves to the outward symbols and manifestations

of the essential principle."

The form must be determined

by the truth that the poem conveys just as the environment

of a certain location will determine the type of vegetation
which will grow there; the same principle of organic unity
operates in both the natural and imaginary world.

Because

20
the form comes from within, rather than being imposed from
without, poetry, as well as nature, can be both regular and
natural, lawful without being arbitrarily controlled.
The form reflects the content much as natura naturata
reflects natura naturans.

The cactus and pine both per-

fectly reflect and are adapted to their environments; so

poetic form must be perfectly adapted to the truth it conveys.

And just as no two pine trees are perfectly identi-

cal, yet no less pine for their differences, so there is an

endless number of appropriate, although different, forms
reflecting each truth.

Just as life itself is the result

of two opposite forces and is "inexhaustibly re-ebullient,"

so the reconciliation of man and God is unlimited in creativity.

Therefore, a poem's form must be judged according

to how effectively it portrays truth, not according to how

closely it conforms to accepted standards:
We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove
both transcendently beautiful. As absurd as it would
be to institute a comparison between their separate
claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to
both, without reference to the life and being of the
animals themselvessay rather if, having first seen
the dove, we abstracted its outline, gave them a
false generalization, called them principle or ideal
of bird-beauty and then proceeded to criticize the
swan or the eaglenot less absurd is it to pass
judgement on the works of a poet on the mere ground
that they have been called by the same class-name
with the works of other poets of other times and
circumstances, or any ground save that of their inappropriateness to their end and being, their want
of significance, as symbol and physiognamy.^-^

21
The representation of truth is a truly important feature of poetry, but poetry performs another function which
is even more significant:

poetry actually participates in

the truth that it represents much in the way that the

imagination is vitally involved in the reconciliation that
it perceives.

And poetry, as a life-force that is the

result of the reconciliation of opposites, is, as all life,

"inexhaustibly re-ebullient."

Although it may be easy to

see how the union of God and poet is "inexhaustibly reebullient" because it results in an infinite possibility of
creativity, it is more difficult to see how the poem itself,
apparently a finite collection of words, can be infinite as
all life must be, according to Coleridge.
more of a process than it is a product.

But the poem is

The poem, itself

a reconciliation of poet and God, participates in the process of reconciliation of reader and God, a reconciliation
of infinite possibilities and results.

It is not only a

reconciliation of opposites but carries within itself the

possibility of infinitely more reconciliations.

Thus the

poem stands midway between two open-ended processes of

reconciliation:
God + Poet = Infinite Creativity
\

Poem
God + Reader = Infinite Response

22
The infinite response of the reader is the primary imagination and it is by the primary imagination that man becomes
like God.

If the reader is himself a poet, he may express

the experience that a poem has led him to have with God in
a poem of his own, thus employing the secondary imagination.
Or, if he is not a poet, the creativity of his encounter
may remain latent within him.

Whether the creativity is

expressed or not, the experience of reading can be as truly

creative as the experience of writing a poem.
It is because poetry is more of a process than a product that Coleridge calls "essential poetry" "not that poem
we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest
24
pleasure."
The poem as symbol of an experience does more
than merely represent; it initiates a process of realization
in the reader which is infinite in possibilities:
[The Symbol] always partakes of the reality it renders
intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole,
abides itself as a living part in that unity of which
it is the representative.25
For this reason, the symbols in Coleridge's poetry are never
fully discussed.

For every set of reconciled opposites,

there is another set of reconciled opposites which becomes

the opposite of the first set.

This process, like that of

life itself, is endless, and the infinity of this process

is what is responsible for both the complexity and the likeness of Coleridge's poetry.

23
B.

Poe

Poe, like Coleridge, sees human intelligence as being

fundamentally structured like nature.

Valery, an unsympa-

thetic critic of Poe, comments that, for Poe:

"The universe

is constructed according to a plan whose profound symmetry

is somehow present in the inner structure of our minds.
The poetic instinct should therefore lead us blindly to the
26
truth."

Poe discusses this similarity of man's mind and

nature in a review, which appeared in Southern Literary

Messenger, of Paulding's Slavery in the United States.

In

this review Poe draws an analogy between the orbit of a

comet and the activity of the human mind:
Not less eccentric, and far more interesting to us,
is the orbit of the human mind. If, as some have
supposed, the comet in its upward flight is drawn
away by the attraction of some other sun, around
which it also bends its course, thus linking another
system with our own, the analogy would be more perfect. For while man is ever seen rushing with uncontrollable violence toward one or another of his
opposite extremes, fanaticism and irreligionat
each of these we find placed an attractive force 27
identical in its nature and in many of its effects.
While the fwo forces in human intelligence mentioned
in the passage quoted above are fanaticism and irreligion,
Poe also recognizes the two forces which Coleridge terms
"reason" and "understanding."

The letter in the bottle

episode which opens Eureka is concerned with relative merits

of factual knowledge, which Coleridge would call understanding, and intuitive knowledge, which Coleridge would call

24
reason.

Poe, like Coleridge, makes it clear that he con-

siders intuitive knowledge to be superior to and more profound than factual knowledge.

But, in contrast to Coleridge,

Poe does not believe that intuitive knowledge leads to a

union with a Divinity that is a transcendent other.

Rather

intuitive knowledge, as Poe sees it, brings man into the

presence of a Divinity that is simply the sum total of all
life.

It is by intuition that man:

. . . will at length attain that awfully triumphant
epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that
of Jehovah. In the meantime bear in mind that all
is LifeLife within usthe less within the greater,
and all within the Spirit Divine.^^

Because the end of intuitive knowledge is only the totality

of life rather than a God that is completely other, Poe sees
a considerably smaller gap in the two types of knowledge
than Coleridge does.
While Poe sees less distinction between the two forces
in passive human intelligence than Coleridge, he sees virtually no distinction between the two forces of active intelligence.

In a review which appeared in Burton's Gentleman

Magazine, Poe makes it explicitly clear that he fails to

comprehend and acknowledge the distinction that Coleridge
makes between fancy and imagination:
"The fancy," says the author of the "Ancient Mariner,"
in his Biographia Literaria, "the fancy combines, the
imagination creates." And this was intended, and has
been received, as a distinction. If so at all, it is

25
one without a difference; without even a difference
of degree. The fancy as nearly creates as does the
imagination; and neither creates in any respect.
All novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine nothing which
has not really existed . . . .29
This passage contains the essence of the difference between
Coleridge's and Poe's concept of poetry.

Coleridge's poet

has access to a transcendent God which enables him to create

an infinity of new creations.

Poe's poet has contact with

an almost pantheistic deity and is limited in his creativity to novel combinations of what has already been created;
thus he is limited to a finite number of creations.

Poe

says that the "Imagination is, possibly in man, a lesser

degree of the creative power of God."

But the distinction

which Poe makes between the imagination of God and the

imagination of man is what Coleridge considers the distinction between imagination and fancy.

As Poe goes on to say:

"What the Deity imagines i^, but was not before.

imagines i^, but was also.

What man

The mind cannot imagine what i^

not."3
The imagination, as Poe sees it, is involved in the
creation of beauty:

"From novel arrangements of old forms

which present themselves to it, it selects only such as are

harmonious;the result is, of course, beauty itself."
And because this beauty is based on rearrangement of externals rather than on a reflection of internal experience, it

26
can only be mechanically unified at best.

Like Poe's con-

ception of the universe, his conception of poetry is also

devoid of any vitality which would give it organic unity.
Poe says that unity depends on "the picture as a whole;
and thus its effect will depend, in great measure, upon the
perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its
constituent parts . . . ."

32

The unity of poetry, like the

unity of Poe's universe, is analogous to the unity of a work

of architecture; the unity depends on the relationships
among the parts, but it fails to reflect a living unity
which causes growth and production.
And this beauty, because it does not reflect a vital
experience, cannot invite the reader to join in experience.
Rather, the beauty only affords the reader "a glimpse of
things supernal and eternal."

It only takes the reader "to

the very verge of the great secrets,"

33

while Coleridge's

poetry enables the reader to become involved with the

secrets of eternity.

Like beautiful music, poetry, as Poe

sees it, leaves us weeping " . . .

through excess of an im-

patient, petulant sorrow that, as mere mortals, we are as

yet in no condition to banquet upon those supernal ecstasies
of which the music affords us merely a suggestive and indefinite glimpse.

.,34

This "desire of the moth for the star," as Poe calls

it, remains unsatisfied for the reader.

The idea of the

27
reader's being involved in an infinite response is impossible for two reasons:

the universe and all existence is

limited to a finite time span, and the poet himself is

denied the experience of participating in the divine, infinite creativity.

Coleridge conceived of a universe which

was considerably less limited than the world which Poe

imagined.

And the more expansive conceptions of Coleridge

lead naturally to poetry that is more expansive in both

content and effect on the reader than is the poetry of Poe.

NOTES
M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and
Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton
and Company Inc., 1971), p. 268.
2
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed.
J. Shawcross (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), I,
176.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 188.
4
Virginia L. Radley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (New York
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966), p. 131.
Owen Barfield, What Coleridge Thought (Middletown,
Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), p. 100.
Stephan Potter, Coleridge and -S.T.C. (New York:
Russell & Russell, 1965), p. 209.
7
W. G. T. Shedd, ed.. The Complete Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (New York: Harper Brothers, 1884), V, 375.
g
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 175.
9
Coleridge, Works, I, 292.
"^^Barfield, pp. 87-88.
Shawcross, intro. to Biographia Literaria, I, XXV.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 59-60.
^"^Shawcross, intro. to Biographia Literaria, I, LXXXV.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 202.
"^Coleridge, Works, I, 436.
"'^Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, II, 65.
'"'^Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, II, 12.
""^Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 30.

28

29
19
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism,
ed. Thomas Middleton Raysor (London: J. M. Dent and Sons,
Ltd., 1960), II, 181.
20
J. Robert Barth, The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge
and the Romantic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977), pp. 27-28.
21
Walter Jackson Bate, "Coleridge on the Function of
Art," in Perspectives of Criticism, ed. Harry Levin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 130.
22
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 4.
23
Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, I, 196.
24
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, I, 14.
25
Coleridge, Works, II, 438.
26
/
Kennikat
Press,
1971),
235-36.
Paul Valery,
"Onpp.
Eureka,"
rpt. in Affidavits of
Genius,
27. ed. Jean Alexander (Port Washington, N. Y.:
Lt Press, 1971), pp. 23
Poe, Works, VIII, 267.
^^Poe, Works, XVI, 314-15.
Poe, Works, X, 61-62.
^^Poe, Works, VIII, 283n.
^^Poe, Works, XII, 37.
^^Poe, Works, XI, 79.
^^Poe, Works, XIV, 197.
^"^Poe, Works, XVI, 6.

CHAPTER III
THE POETRY
A.

Coleridge

The fundamental principle of Coleridge's cosmology and

poetic theory is the reconciliation of opposites.

The the-

ories in this world view and poetic thought are reflected

in his poetry; thus another set of opposites, theory and
practice, are joined.

Structurally, most of Coleridge's

poems reflect the dialectical nature of life, while thematically, many poems metaphorically reiterate Coleridge's
concept of organic unity, his ideas concerning poetic
inspiration, and his views about the purpose of poetry.
A concern for opposites and their reconciliation is a
major structural device which is evident in the opening
three lines of "Kubla Khan:"
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree;

Where Alph the sacred River ran . . .

As G. Wilson Knight points out, the names "Alph" and
"Xanadu" suggest, by their first letters, first and last
things.

Kubla Khan, whose first and last nam.es begin with

the central letter of the alphabet, suggests a joining of

2
the two extremes.
Other structural opposites include the
damsel with the dulcimer and the woman wailing for her demon
lover, as well as the peaceful, meandering river in contrast to the bursting fountain.
30

31
Most of the reconciliation centers on the dome.

The

following passage contains the most significant

reconciliations:
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice! (p. 298)
The shadow is poised "midway on the waves" where it is the
central point between permanence and flux, time and eternity.
From this central place, one can hear the sounds from the
fountain, which projects into the sky, and the cave, which
projects deep into the earth, and can unite their opposite
sounds into a "mingled measure."

The dome itself reflects

reconciliation in its structure for it is composed of both

concavity and convexity, as well as having characteristics
of both sun and ice.
Opposites also play a vital role in the structure of
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

It is significant that

the poem opens with an impending wedding, itself, a reconciliation of the opposites of male and female.

This recon-

ciliation foreshadows the reconciliation of some of the

fundamental structural opposites in the poem as a whole.
One of the more unusual, and conspicuous, set of opposites
is the union of poetry and prose, represented by the gloss.
There is both a concise, factual, almost journalistic report

32
of the experience as well as the more lengthy, descriptive
metrical version.
Virginia Radley says that one of the major oppositions
in the poem is between the natural world, represented by
the wedding-guest, the hermit and the Kirk, and the supernatural world of the mariner's strange powers, the specter
3
bark and the spirit who loved the bird.
It is not until
the mariner can reconcile these two worlds within himself
that he can escape the horror of immobilization on a still
ocean.
The theme of fixity and motion, life and death, is
reflected in the structure several times by descriptions of
stillness and coldness that are countered by descriptions
of warmth and vitality.

The following stanza describes the

frigid weather conditions existing in the world of the first

part of the poem:
And now there came both mist and snow.
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by.
As green as emerald, (p. 188)
This stanza is countered by a stanza in the second part
which contains images of warmth and vitality associated with
blood:
All in a hot and copper sky.
The bloody Sun at noon.
Right up above the mast did stand
No bigger than the Moon. (p. 190)

33
Likewise, the static ice gives way to life-giving water.
In the first part, "the ice was here, the ice was there, /
The ice was all around" (p. 189). But in the second part
there is "Water, water every where" (p. 191). And although
this plentiful water gives life to sea-creatures, it does
not give life to man; this need for water gives rise to another set of opposites where the life principle wins out
over the death principle.

In part three the men have

"throats unslacked, with black lips baked" (p. 192) . By

the fifth part the mariner is able to say:
My lips were wet, my throat was cold.
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank, (p. 198)
The poem also progresses from death-like stillness to
lively movement.

The second part is concerned with utter

stillness:
Day after day, day after day.
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean, (p. 191)
In contrast to this stillness is the following stanza of
the fifth part:
And soon I heard a roaring wind;
It did not come anear.
But with its sound it shook the sails.
That were so thin and sere. (p. 199)
Closely related to the stillness of the second part is the
mariner's utter isolation from both nature and human

34
companionship.

The movement of the fifth part foreshadows

the interaction between the hermit and mariner as well as

the communion with "Old men, and babes, and loving friends /
And youths and maidens gay!" (p. 208).
Community and isolation are also important structural
opposites which are set forward from the first line of
"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison":

"Well, they are gone, and

here must I remain" (p. 178). While Charles learns to assimilate nature's own opposites, the roaring dell and hilly
fields, so that he can sense that "No sound is dissonant
which tells of life" (p. 181), the persona is reconciling
his own isolation with his friends' experience so that he
can say ". . . I am glad / As I myself were there! . . . "
(p. 181). All is brought into unity by the imagination.
The imagination likewise synthesises diversities in
"The Eolian Harp."

There exists a reconciliation between

man and nature, subject and object, light and dark, and
silence and sound.

The "one intellectual breeze" is the

shaping spirit that reconciles the persona to nature around

him and makes him one with the subject of his poem.

Because

he is at one with the world about him, he can perceive that

nature stands in equipose.

Dark and light are balanced in

the darkening clouds " . . . that late were rich with light."
And the ocean, with its "stilley murmur," reconciles sounds
and silence and "Tells us of silence" (p. 100). The

35
opposites of sound and silence and the opposites of light
and dark are both reconciled, and even the sets of reconciled opposites are united, by the imagination which is
described as "A light in sound, a sound-like power in light"
(p. 101). And the persona stands on the "midway slope," at
the very center of the reconciled opposites in the poem.
Because the reconciliation of structural opposites
accurately reflects Coleridge's concept of life resulting
from the union of two opposite forces, the form is an organic
representation of Coleridge's concept of life.

Besides ex-

emplifying organic unity in his poetry, Coleridge also makes

metaphorical commentary about organic form in some of his
poetry.
The character Kubla Khan does not recognize the necessity of form reflecting content for he tried to enclose
infinite nature within the narrow strictures of walls and
towers:
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girded round, (p. 2 97)
However, in contrast to Kubla Khan's narrow plot of ground
that can be measured mathematically, there is:
. . . that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted, (p. 297)
This "romantic chasm" is representative of life and its true
form:

it is natural rather than artificial and arbitrary.

36
and it is native to the depths of the earth just as organic
form rises from the essence of life.

The chasm could also

symbolize the unconscious which is the arena for receiving

poetic inspiration.

Like all living things, the chasm is

the result of reconciled opposites; it is both "holy" and

"savage."

Its life is evident for it is as if it breathes

in "fast, thick pants."

And, like all life, it is "in-

exhaustibly re-ebullient"; its turmoil is "ceaseless."

It

is easy to see that a plot of "twice five miles" can hardly

be an adequate representation of such vigorous and complex
life.
Coleridge's ancient mariner, in his egotism, makes an
effort at finiteness and limitation that is similar to the
restrictions on nature of Kubla Khan.

It is the urge to-

wards fixity that prompts the mariner to kill the albatross.

When he kills the creature, he suffers the effect of imposing a static form on a living thing, his own immobilization
in a still ocean.

The mariner's ship comes under the con-

trol of Life-in-Death who is analogous to form without

vitality.

Part of her appearance is deceitfully realistic:

Her lips were red, her locks were free.

Her locks were yellow as gold:
But it is only a facade; there is no life in her, for "Her
skin was white as leprosy" (p. 194).
As Beer points out, it is not until the mariner sees
the water snakes moving in free energy in the ocean that he

37
comprehends the infinity and vitality of life that is so
4
far removed from the figure Life-in-Death.
The fires and
flashing lights suggest a divine intellect that permeates
5
nature or natura naturans.
Like the chasm in "Kubla Khan,"
the water here also represents the depths of the unconscious from which the poetic vision comes.

The vision of

the snakes also stands up to Coleridge's true test of life.

It is reconciled opposites; the snakes are surrounded by
both water and its opposite, fire.
Although it is difficult to make anything other than a
speculative interpretation of an unfinished work, it appears
that another schism of form and content is symbolically presented in the uncompleted "Christabel."

Geraldine bears a

resemblance to the figure of Life-in-Death in "The Rime of

the Ancient Mariner":
life-force.

she is shape and form with no vital

Like Life-in-Death, she is externally bright

and colorful; yet her feet are "blue-veined" and her forehead "moist and cold."

In contrast to Geraldine, there is

Christabel, a life-force that has yet to find form; she is

potential.

When introduced, she is communing with God and

nature, an ideal situation for a poetic vision.

Yet, at

least in the part Coleridge finished, Christabel, representative of the life-force, comes under the sway of Geraldine,
representative of a false form.

The union of Geraldine and

Christabel, symbolic of the union of life and form, is not

38
an organic one.

It is Christabel's dead mother who managed

to combine the ideal and tangible to produce the cordial

wine.

It is organic and full of "virtuous powers" from wild

flowers.

The wine is capable of briefly exposing Geraldine

for what she really is.

Perhaps the wine represents the

vital life-force of blood that should organically join form,

represented by Geraldine, and the life-force, represented
by Christabel.
While "Kubla Khan," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"
and "Christabel" all deal in part with the necessity of
unifying form with the energy that form represents in order
to produce organic unity, "The Eolian Harp" depicts an
already realized organic unity par excellence.

The warm,

fertile earth, the growing bean plant and the blowing breeze
suggest the trinity of energy or natura naturans, form or
natura naturata, and the shaping spirit or vitality that
results from their union.

Scent, sound, and sight all

blend into one accurate representative of:

. . . the one Life within us and abroad.
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light.
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where, (p. 101)
The reconciliation of subject and form into organic
unity is itself an organic representation of a prior union,
that of God and man.

This reconciliation of God and poet

which produces poetic inspiration is a topic which finds

39
expression in several of Coleridge's poems.

When the poet

is joined with God, his imagination is then capable of

reproducing, on a small scale, the creativity of God.

The

imagination is ". . . a repetition in the finite mind of

the external act of creation in the infinite I AM."^
The poet-persona of "Kubla Khan" longs for the ability
to repeat that "infinite I AM" which constitutes poetry:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played.
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight 'twould win me.
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air. (p. 298)
In "reviving" that "symphony and song," the poet would be
imitating the creative power of something greater than himself, in this instance, the damsel.

The damsel is the voice

of inspiration and it is significant that she is seen in a

vision.

It has already been established that, for Coleridge,

the truth of the poet is not perceived through sense impressions.

And in the vision she is celebrating a mountain-top

experience.

It is at the top of a mountain, between heaven

and earth, that the physical and spiritual realities of man

and God are joined.

If the poet can,as a result of a vision,

imitate this song which celebrates the union of God and man,
he can "build that dome in air," the poem, which is the
physical evidence of the union.

40
The ancient mariner cuts himself off from this glorious
union of man and God, or nature, and must re-establish this
union before he can even glimpse a vision of the imagination
According to Robert Penn Warren, killing the albatross is
not only a crime against nature, but also a crime against
7
the imagination.
By alienating himself from nature in the
purposeless killing of one of her creatures, the mariner
eliminates the opportunity for imitating that greater imaginative power of the force behind nature.

But he realizes

his error and becomes capable of at least fleeting moments

of unity in which he can perceive true creative power.
These moments of awareness do not come through sense impressions; it is while he is in a swoon that he understands
what is truly going on.

While in the swoon, he hears the

dialogue between the two spirits which puts his crime in

perspective and which announces the necessity for penance
in order that he may regain his unity with nature.

While

the mariner is still in this trance, the ship moves forward

by a mysterious power at a speed which is too swift for a
human to endure.

As the gloss relates:

The mariner hath been cast

into a trance; for the
angelic power causeth the
vessel to drive northward
faster than human life can endure, (p. 203)
And this mysterious power beyond human control is very much
like the intuitive glimpse of divinity that Coleridge

41
associates with poetic inspiration.

A boat powered by oars

or sails would be analogous to a product of the fancy, while

this boat powered by angelic powers at a speed beyond physical ability is like a product of the imagination which is
not limited to human consciousness.
Just as there is an absence of external stimuli when
the mariner has his perceptive insight, so the frost in
"Frost at Midnight" works "unhelped by any wind."

The

poetic inspiration does not come from sense stimuli; it

relies on a union of man and God.

The persona of the poem

hopes that his child will enter into that unified world
represented by the "ancient mountain" which here, as in
"Kubla Khan," represents the point of unity between man and
God, or of poetic inspiration:
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds.
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself, (p. 247)
In participating in the union of man and God, the child,
here a symbol of the poet, is like the breeze which unifies,
a breeze that is similar to the spirit of God.

This type of

unifying breeze is also clearly depicted in "The Eolian

Harp":
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd.

42
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze.
At once the Soul of each and God of all. (p. 102)
The reconciliation of poet and God not only results in
a unified poem, but also provides an opportunity for the
reconciliation of the reader and God.

Just as there must

be a reciprocal action between the harp and wind for there

to be music, so there must be a reciprocal action between
the poet and the reader for the poem to be a vital, living
thing.

Creed, in a discussion of Coleridge's Shakespearean

criticism, says that Coleridge believed that the reader

obtained two kinds of pleasure from a poem:

a pleasure in

the internal unity of the poem, and a pleasure in the harmo8

nious and creative nature of the universe.
If the reader
perceives the true nature of the universe, he will come into
union with that same creative energy of God that the poet
experienced before writing the poem.

Ideally, the reader

should experience what the persona of "This Lime-Tree Bower

My Prison" desires for his friend Charles:
. . . So my friend
Struck with deep joy you may stand, as I have stood
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence, (p. 180)
The purpose of the poem is to enable the reader to
"stand" where the poet has "stood."

Thus the circular dome

of "Kubla Khan" is an apt symbol for poetry which brings the

43
reader back full circle to the experience from which the
poem was created.

The poet himself is a mystic who, like

God, commands both awe and fear.

His powers represented by

"his flashing eyes" and "floating hair," set him apart from
the rest of humanity.

Yet if the reader will close his

eyes to external reality "with holy dread," he can feast on

the same honey-dew and milk of paradise on which the poet
has fed.
The "dread" one experiences in encountering the poet's
world is a result of letting go of the tangible, physical
world.

But this release of external reality is necessary

before one can experience the "holy" quality of the spiritual experience.

Four times the wedding-guest in "The Rime

of the Ancient Mariner," a symbol of the reader, expresses

his fear of the ancient mariner, a symbol of the poet, who
caused him to leave his kinsman's wedding feast to partake
of the metaphorical "milk of paradise" of the mariner's own
experience.

The wedding-guest is afraid of the mariner's

"glittering eye" and "skinny hand" which are indications of

a supernatural power; "The Wedding Guest feareth that a
Spirit is talking to him" (p. 196). Yet, despite his fear,
the guest "cannot choose but hear."

He intuits that there

is a closer identity to the mariner than to his own next of

kin.

The encounter between the mariner and wedding-guest

is parallel to a religious experience.

The wedding-guest

44
is a minority, "one of three," who becomes as a little child
and allows the mariner to have his will:
He holds him with his glittering eye The Wedding-Guest stood still.
And listens like a three years child;
The Mariner hath his will. (p. 187)
Because the wedding-guest submits himself to the mariner
as traditional Christianity teaches that one must submit himself to God, he partakes of the mariner's own experience
although he never literally experiences it.

Because the

wedding-guest partook of the mariner's experience he:

. . . went like one that had been stirred.
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man.
He rose the following morn. (p. 209)
The wedding-guest experienced the same things as the mariner;
yet the guest's response is entirely his own.
purpose of poetry as Coleridge sees it:

This is the

to allow the reader

to experience the spiritual encounter of the poet and to

bring to that encounter his own unique response.

Thus, the

poem never ceases to have new meanings and to elicit new

responses.
B.

Poe

Whereas the bulk of the discussion of Coleridge's

poetry is centered on the ideas in the poems, most of the
commentary on Poe's poetry will be centered on structural
aspects of the poems.

Because Poe's unity is architectural

45
rather than organic, the form itself is more important than
the meaning which the form reflects.

Structure performs

two important functions in Poe's poetry:

it reflects the

universe as Poe describes it in Eureka, and the different

aspects of the structure work together to create beauty,
which Poe sees as the ultimate end of art.
Coleridge thought that the reconciliation of opposites
resulted in a third force which is greater than the two
parent forces.

Poe thought that the reconciliation of oppo-

sites resulted in a unity so complete that the opposite

forces ceased to function individually.

The pattern of

opposites canceling each out occurs several times in Poe's

poetry.

In "The City in the Sea," good and bad, water and

fire, earth and sea, death and life have all " . . . gone to
their eternal rest."

The city and its reflection are anal-

ogous to the two forces in Poe's universe and they close in

on each other until they become "matter no more."

When

there ceases to be two forces, when death gives "his undivided time," all is resolved in the nothingness of death:
And when, amid no earthly moan,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones.
Shall do it reverence.^
The emphasis on death as a resolution of opposites is a
predominant feature in Poe's poetry.

Death also unifies

most of the opposites in "Annabel Lee."

Past and present.

46
heaven and earth, age and youth, male and female, living
and dead are all resolved in:
. . . her sepulchre there by the s e a
In her tomb by the sounding sea. (p. 221)
The opposites join each other much as Poe conceives of
attraction and expansion uniting to form nothingness.
Annabel Lee herself has also been joined, through death, to
the life forces of the universe which Poe conceives of as
God.

This is why the persona says:

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: (p. 221)

God, for Poe, is only the sum total of life; therefore, in

her death, Annabel Lee is joined to the stars and moon.

living force behind the totality of life is absent from

Poe's thought, and hence from his poetry.

Poe's world is

basically one of natura naturata without the guiding principle of natura naturans.
The tomb is also the place of reconciled opposites in
"Ulalume."

As in "Annabel Lee," living and dead, and male

and female are joined at the grave.

"Ulalume" is about a

journey towards death, which is unity.

There are two major

conflicts, that between appearance and reality and that

between body and soul, which must be resolved before unity
can be achieved.

First of all, there is a discrepancy be-

tween what the body and soul perceive and what truly is:

47
For we knew not the month was October,
And we knew not the night of the year. (p. 102)
There is also a conflict between Psyche and the persona, or
spirit and body.

Psyche is afraid and does not wish to pur-

sue the journey; she is aware of some spiritual reality

that the body cannot perceive:
But Psyche, uplifting her finger.
Said - "Sadly this star I mistrust
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten!--oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! let us fly! for we must." (p. 103)
But the body discounts Psyche's fears and determines to
continue the journey:
I replied "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light! (p. 104)
Both of these conflicts are resolved at the tomb.

The per-

sona "pacified Psyche and kissed her, / And tempted her out
of her gloom," and they were able to recognize things as
they truly were, that "it was surely October / On this very
night of last year" (pp. 104-105).

Finite life must end in

the nothingness of the grave just as Poe's two forces which

exist "only to a certain epoch" eventually cease to produce
life.

The reconciliations at the grave in "The City in the

Sea," "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" are far removed from the
reconciliations which give birth to the vibrant, infinite
life-force in "The Eolian Harp and "Kubla Khan."
For Poe, reconciliation causes finite limitations of
life; for Coleridge reconciliation opens up infinite

48
possibilities of life.

Although Poe recognizes that the

realm of poetry is that of intuition rather than factual

knowledge which "preyest thus upon the poet's heart /
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities" (p. 22), the creativity that results from this intuition is limited.
Whereas Coleridge invites the reader to participate in
spiritual experiences, Poe gives the reader a picture only
of what he believes that spiritual experience to be like.
In giving a picture of a spiritual reality, the poet is
creating beauty which is the "sole legitimate province of
.
.V, poem."
-.10
the
Buranelli says that Poe had a platonic view of beauty
and believed that the poet could only give glimpses of this
beauty by indirection.

The poet goes about giving these

indirect "glimpses" of beauty in a conscious manner.-^-^ In

speaking of his own composition of "The Raven" in "The
Philosophy of Composition," Poe says:
It is my design to render it manifest that no point
in its composition is referable either to accident
or intuition--that the work proceeded, step by step,
to its completion with the precision and rigid consequences of a mathematical problem.i2
This method of composition is very different from Coleridge's
idea that poetry is divinely inspired.

While Coleridge did

affirm a conscious craftsmanship in the writing of a poem,

he felt that this craftsmanship should be subjugated to the
poet's intuitive perceptions.

In other words, fancy should

49
always be controlled by the imagination which is the greater
power.

In the passage quoted above, Poe again shows his

inability to distinguish between fancy and imagination.

A major way the poet consciously portrays beauty in his
poetry is by effecting unity.

The reconciliation of oppo-

sites which reflects the universe of Eureka, discussed

above, is one way that unity is effected in Poe's poetry.
Another type of unity in Poe's poetry is the interdependence
of parts.

As he says in Eureka, the poet should "aim at so

arranging the incidents that we shall not be able to determine of any of them, whether it depends on any other or
upholds it."13 The effect that a poem will have on a reader
depends heavily on this unity.

As Poe says in a review of

Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems:

. . . its effect will depend, in great measure upon
the perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, upon
what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity or totality of interest. -'^
Besides dependence of parts upon each other, another
aspect of unity that affects the reader is length.

Poe says

that:
All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus
a long poem is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be brought
about. -^^
In keeping with this statement, all of Poe's poems are
fairly short.

"Al Aaraaf" is his only poem of any great

50
length and it can easily be read at one sitting.

It is

essential for Poe that a poem be read at one sitting so that

"worldly affairs" do not enter in and disturb the reader's
16
concentration.
Because the reader can only concentrate
on beauty for a short time, the poet has a limited amount
of time in which to work his magic.

The poet must be care-

ful not to depend on more concentration than the reader has

to give or he will destroy the effect of the poem.
Coleridge's ideas on poetry, however, do not limit poetry
to periods of time.

Although Coleridge himself wrote

mostly short poems, and he does say that "a poem of any
length, neither can, nor ought to be, all poetry, "^'^ he
does not limit poetry to a span of time.

Coleridge in his

poetry is speaking to the reason and imagination of the

reader which are outside the confines of time and space.
Poe, however, is directing his mathematically composed
poetry at the fancy and understanding; therefore, time has
a great deal to do with how the reader will perceive the
poetry.
Another means of effecting unity, and thus creating
beauty, besides unity of length is the use of a refrain.
The refrain is a major structural device in Poe's poetry
and he refers to it as "the pivot upon which the whole
Structure might turn." 18 The "monotony of sound" helps to
unify the poem, making it a whole.

Perhaps the most famous

51
refrain in all of Poe's poetry is the one word refrain of
"The Raven."

Although Poe varies the meaning with three

different words, the sound is the same for all three and
with "more."

Poe closes the seventeen stanzas of "The Raven"

with one "evermore," six "nothing mores" and ten

"nevermores."
Poe also uses repetition of sound effectively in the
refrain of "The Bells."

Repetition occurs on two levels in

this poem, for the word "bells" is repeated within each

stanza as well as being repeated from stanza to stanza.
Although the last line of each stanza is different, the two
preceding lines are always the same:
For the bells, bells, bells, bells,
bells, bells, bells
Although Poe does not employ a refrain in "Annabel
Lee" and "Ulalume," he does use repetition of words to
unify these poems.

The phrase "In this kingdom by the sea"

is repeated four times in "Annabel Lee."

The last two

lines of the poem refer back to this repeated phrase, making

it clear that this "kingdom" is the kingdom of death:
In her sepulchre there by the s e a
In her tomb by the sounding sea. Cp. 118)
The name "Annabel Lee" is repeated seven times; this frequent repetition makes it clear that the dead woman in
question is the center of the persona's thoughts and of the
poem itself.

52
Repetition also works to unify the poem "Ulalume."
The repeated use of the mysterious sounding names "Auber,"
"Weir," and "Ulalume" intensify the eerie effect of the
poem.

The repetition of the adjectives "sober" and "sere"

also add to the mysterious and melancholy atmosphere in

the poem.
Another purpose of the repetition of the words "sere"
and "sober" is to produce a feeling of sadness which Poe
considers the most appropriate tone for a poem:
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development
invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Melancholy is the most legitimate of all poetical
tones. -'^
And the topic that Poe considers the "most melancholy" and
therefore the most poetical is the death of a beautiful
woman.

Grief for a dead woman is a major theme in many of

Poe's poems; among them are "Annabel Lee," "To Helen," "The
Raven" and "Ulalume."
Part of the reason for grieving for the dead women is
that they have gone on to a world that is incomprehensible
to the personas of the "dead lady" poems.

The personas

experience frustration and grief at being unable to understand the spiritual world of their dead lovers.

This in-

ability to perceive the spiritual world is a cause for

53
sadness.

The same thing is true of these sad poems that

is true for music as Poe explains it:

When music affects us to tears, seemingly causeless,
we weep not, as Gravina supposes, from "excess of
pleasure"; but through excess of an impatient,
petulant sorrow that, as mere mortals, we are as
yet in no condition to banquet upon those supernal
ecstasies of which the music affords us merely a
suggestive and indefinite glimpse.^0
Just as the lovers can perceive only an "indefinite glimpse"
of their dead women's new existence, so the poet can see
only vague glimmerings of the spiritual world.

Because the

poet has no concrete and total knowledge of the "supernal

ecstasies," he can only hint at what those ecstasies must
be like.

It is therefore appropriate for poetry to be some-

what vague.

In Marginalia, speaking of Tennyson, Poe says:

There are passages in his works which rivet a conviction I had long ago entertained, that the indefinite
is an element in the true TTO [ "no [ z,.
The indefinite plays an important part in Poe's poetry.

In

the shorter "To Helen," the Helen of the poem is a symbol

for the vague and intangible qualities of the spiritual
realm.

The persona describes her in classical terms because

she does not belong in this world.

Finally, the poem ends

with a description in nebulous spiritual language.

Helen is

. . . Psyche, from regions which

Are Holy Land! (p. 46)
The city in "The City in the Sea" likewise belongs to
a world that is far removed from the world of physical

54
reality.

This "strange city lying alone" is described as

being not like the material world:

There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours. (p. 49)
Although the reader knows what the city is not like he can
only guess as to the true nature of that mysterious city.
The world of "Ulalume" is just as mysterious as the
city under the water.

The best hints as to the nature of

the spiritual world the poet is talking about are the adjectives "sober" and "sere" and the sound of the names in the
poem.

"Sober" and "sere" give some rather precise informa-

tion about the world of spiritual reality; "Ulalume,"

"Auber" and "Weir" merely hint at certain qualities in that
spiritual world.

The names in themselves mean nothing; it

is their sound that hints at a meaning.

The sounds of the

names suggest an eerie, frightening, mysterious experience.

It would be impossible to translate these names into a definite meaning; they can only suggest a possible meaning.
The Raven, in the poem of the same name, is a spokesman
for the spiritual world.

The persona tries desperately to

get the bird to give him some concrete answers concerning

life after death, but the bird merely replies "nevermore"
to all his questions.

Perhaps the bird is implying that

there is no life after death, but it is more probable that

he is saying that the spiritual world in no way resembles.

55
and never will resemble, the persona's conceptions of it,
which are based on his experience in the material world.
All the bird can do is give the persona hints of the spiritual world and leave him.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to
dream before; (p. 95)
And the persona is incapable of seeing the spiritual world
in its totality, no matter how hard he tries.

He says:

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there

wondering, fearing, (p. 95)
Ultimately, the spiritual world remains impenetrable.
Because the spiritual world is impenetrable the poet
himself cannot experience it.

Even when he receives a few

glimpses of the spiritual world, his own language is inadequate to express it; he has as difficult a time expressing
a spiritual experience in material language as a raven does
communicating with a man.
he means.

The poet can only suggest what

Because he can only suggest, the reader can

receive only an indefinite idea of what the poet is speaking

about.

In his definition of poetry, Poe says that it has

for its " . . . object an indefinite instead of definite

pleasure . . . ."22
spiritual world.

Poe's poetry stops at suggesting the

Coleridge's poetry, on the other hand, is

a gateway to a vital experience with spiritual realities.

Coleridge's poetry does not merely suggest another world;
it is the link between two worlds.

56
The differences between poetry that merely suggests a
spiritual reality and poetry that participates in spiritual
experience is the subject of Poe's poem "Israfel."

The

angel Israfel is analogous to the poet as Coleridge sees him

The angel's heart is a lute which is similar to Coleridge's
Eolian harp.

The lute responds to and is one with all of

nature:
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings, (p. 47)
Whereas Coleridge believed that that kind of divine creativity of Israfel's was what the poet experienced and what the
reader was invited to participate in, Poe believed that
Israfel's world was no more than a fantasy.

Israfel's

experience is one which is beyond the poet, and therefore

beyond the reader:
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweet and sours;
Our flowers are merelyflowers.
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine in ours. (p. 49)
What is to Coleridge a vital experience is to Poe only a
Platonic ideal that one can merely hope to glimpse.

Because

Coleridge felt that the poet had experience with spiritual

realities, he felt that the poet could allow that experience
to shape his poetry from within.

Poe, on the other hand,

57
denied those spiritaul experiences; therefore he deemed it
necessary for the poet to shape his poetry from without.
Hence, Poe's poetry functions primarily on a structural
level.

NOTES
Ernest Harley Coleridge, ed., The Complete Poetical
Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1912), I, 297. All citations of the poetry are to
this volume. Hereafter, only page numbers will be provided in parentheses.
2
G. Wilson Knight, The Starlit Dome (London: Methuen
and Co., Ltd., 1941), p. 97.
3 .
Virginia L. Radley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966), p. 65.
4
John Beer, Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence (London:
The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1977), p. 169.
John Beer, Coleridge the Visionary (London: Chatto
and Windus, 1959), p. 144.
g
Beer, Coleridge the Visionary, p. 64.
7
Robert Penn Warren, "A Poem of Pure Imagination: An
Experiment in Reading," in Twentieth Century Interpretations
of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," ed. James D. Boulger
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), p. 33.
g
Howard Creed, "Coleridge's Metacriticism," PMLA, 69
(1954), 1169.
9
James A. Harrison, ed., The Complete Works of Edgar
Allan Poe (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965), VII, 177.
All citations of the poetry are to this volume. Hereafter,
only page numbers will be provided in parentheses.
^^Poe, Works, XIV, 197.
Vincent Buranelli, Edgar Allan Poe (New York:
Publishers, Inc., 1966), p. 90.
^^Poe, Works, XIV, 195.
^^Poe, Works, XVI, 297.
^^Poe, Works, XV, 79.
-^^Poe, Works, XI, 107.
58

Twayne

59
16
Poe, Works, XIV, 196.
17
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed.,
J. Shawcross (London: Oxford University Press, 1907),
II, 11.
^Poe, Works, XIV, 199.
^^Poe,
20
Poe,
21
Poe,
22
Poe,

Works, XIV, 195.

Works, XVI, 6.
Works, XVI, 28.
Works, XI, 12.

CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
The concept of two opposite forces which are responsible for life is a predominant feature in the works of
Coleridge and Poe.

As Stovall has established, Poe was

definitely influenced by Coleridge,^ and Poe's idea of two

forces operating in the universe may well have originated
with his reading of Coleridge.

But Poe either failed to

understand Coleridge's concept or he disagreed with them.

Whereas Coleridge conceived of a reconciliation of opposite
forces which resulted in a higher third force, Poe believed
in a union of opposites which was so complete that it
absorbed the two forces.

Coleridge's two forces operated

in all areas of thought and existence:

nature, theology,

cosmology, intelligence, and creativity, to name a few.

Poe's two forces do not appear in as many areas of thought
as do Coleridge's.

Although Poe recognizes the dialectical

pair of expansion and contraction and opposites which are

the equivalents of Coleridge's reason

and understanding,

Poe fails to distinguish between fancy and imagination, and

his distinction between man and God is a subtle one.
Because Poe failed to understand that there is a creative power greater than fancy, he could not comprehend a
poetry which could unite man to something greater than
60

61
himself, God.

Bate says that one of the most important

features of Coleridge's poetry is that it initiates a pro2

cess.

The poem suggests a reality which is non-material

and invites the reader to progress towards that reality.

For Poe, however, the poem is not an active process.

As

Fogle states, "For Poe, suggestiveness itself is the abso3

lutewithout reference to what is suggested."
Poe's poetry is limited to the poem and reader; the
poem is an end in itself.

This finite concept is in keep-

ing with a universe where God is simply the conglomerate of

all life.

Because Poe believes that man himself is God,

Halliburton says that through Poe's poetry, the poet "speaks

4
to himself."
periences God.

In Coleridge's poetry, however, the poet exPoetry's function is identified with the

function of religion:

to bring into reconciliation the two

fundamental opposites of the universe, man and God.

In

speaking of what poets do, Coleridge says in his Shakespearean Criticism:

They bid us, while we are sitting in the dark at our
little fire, look at the mountain tops, struggling
with darkness, and announcing that light which shall
be common to all, in which individual interests shall
resolve into one common good, and every^man shall
find in his fellow more than a brother.
Coleridge, in moving towards the moral purpose of art
expressed in the passage above, consistently chose to avail
himself of the higher of two powers.

He believed that he

62
should learn through reason more than through understanding,
that he should create through imagination rather than fancy,
and that he should seek to know God before communing with
man.

Poe chose only reason over understanding.

In the

realm of creativity and spirituality, Poe's world is one of

fancy and humanity.
Foerster says that "Poe habitually disregarded the
romantic doctrine of the union of opposites that lay ready
at his hands."

Because he failed to recognize God as

man's opposite and imagination as fancy's opposite, his

poetry cannot be a creative process of movement towards God.
Poe's poetry lacks the growth and vitality which results
from the union of opposites in Coleridge's theory and which
makes his poetry "inexhaustibly re-ebullient."

NOTES
Floyd Stovall, "Poe's Debt to Coleridge," Studies in
English, 10 (1930), 70-127.
2
Walter Jackson Bate, "Coleridge on the Function of
Art," in Perspectives of Criticism, ed. Harry Levin
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 135.
3
Richard H. Fogle, "Organic Form in American Criticism
1840-1870," in The Development of American Criticism, ed.
Floyd Stovall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1955), p. 98.
4
David Halliburton, Edgar Allan Poe: A Phenomenological View (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973),
p. 412.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, ed.
Thomas Middleton Raysor (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.,
1960), II, 147-48.
g
Norman Foerster, American Criticism: A Study in
Literary Theory from Poe to the Present (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1928), p. 20.

63

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