Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

[KALKI]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (/ˈkoʊləˌrɪdʒ/; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence on Emerson, and American transcendentalism.

Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated by some that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition not identified during his lifetime. Coleridge suffered from poor health that may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.


Despite not enjoying the name recognition or popular acclaim that Wordsworth or Shelley have had, Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilising common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge’s originality. As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally important to poetry as a critic. Coleridge's philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A.O. Lovejoy and I.A. Richards

[KALKI]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.

Wordsworth's friend, collaborator, and "his spirit's brother," Coleridge was also guided by the same vision. Indeed he went a step further in dabbling with the supernatural, as is reflected in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Although Coleridge did not use Indian material, he was greatly attracted by the words and pictures of old tales, some of which must have come from India. His Eastern inspiration is to some extent attested to by the elusive yet arresting images in "Kublai Khan" (1797). This influence is also displayed in his Circassian love song, "Lewti."

Coleridge emphasized the Neoplatonic tradition and introduced into England the new idealism of Germany, which was influenced by Indian thought.

More than any other English Romantic, he was responsible for bringing about the literary revolution which regarded imagination as the most important creative facility.

His cardinal doctrine, reminiscent of the Vedanta, was the wholeness of, and continuity in, self-consciousness as the basis of mental experience which was all absorbed into a single dynamic force, the divine spark in each person, the "I" of every rational being, the free will which was the eventual source of religious faith as well as of genuine perception.

Coleridge was well aware of Indian literature, as is illustrated by his letter to John Thelwall (1764 - 1834) in which he said he often wished to sleep or die, or "like the Indian Vishnu, to float about along an infinte ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotus and wake once in a million years for a few minutes."

(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal p. 246).

India inspired the creative imagination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge through Coleridge's poetical relationship with the Hindu deity Vishnu the Preserver. The images of Vishnu in Coleridge's works are of two kinds. On the one hand there is the peaceful image of a Vishnu floating on a lotus leaf on the sea of Infinity:

The God, who floats upon a Lotos leaf,
Dreams for a thousand ages; then awakening,
Creates a world, and smiling at the bubble,
Relapses into bliss.

His letter to Thelwall gives an insight into the personal significance of the Hindu myth as one of creation for Coleridge.





Lord Vishnu on Ananta nag (a symbol of eternity) holding a lotus floating on the infinite ocean.

Pure Gold statue from Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala.

Refer to chapter on Hindu Art and Glimpses XXVIII

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("The Night Scene: A Dramatic Fragment") And on the other, there is Vishnu from the Bhagavad Gita representing the totality of the universe in one body "with many mouths and eyes; with many arms, and legs, and breasts; . . . touching the heavens, and shining with such glory. "

Coleridge's sources for the two images of Vishnu illustrate how important the Indie research done during the Oriental Renaissance of the eighteenth century was for the formation of his perception of the Hindu deity. The very fact that the image of Vishnu occurs at the end of a process which Coleridge describes as a "spiritualization of his intellect" expresses the deep significance of the image for him. When his mind yearned to know something "one and indivisible," he thought of the Indian Vishnu floating on the "infinite ocean," contemplating through an expanse of time composed of millions and millions of years. The contrast between the few waking moments of Vishnu with the limitless flow of time emphasizes the concept of timelessness even further. The solitary deity on the vast ocean symbolically expresses contemplation, withdrawal, silence, and awakening - all conditions congenial for poetical creation.

The Vishnu image recurs in Coleridge's dramatic fragment "The Night Scene" in an exchange between Sandoval and Earl Henry as the latter describes his farewell of Oropeza, Daughter of Don Manrique, the night before his departure for the army;

Life was in us:
We were all life, each atom of our frames
A living soul - I vow'd to die for her:
Oh! there is joy above the name of pleasure,
Deep self-possession, an intense repose.

Sandoval answers "with a sarcastic smile":

No other than as eastern sages paint,
The God, who floats upon a Lotus leaf,
Dreams for a thousand ages; then awakening,
Creates a world, and smiling at the bubble,
Relapses into bliss.

Sandoval offers the image of Vishnu on his lotus bed to Earl Henry as a symbol for the "intense repose" he desired. In "The Night Scene" Coleridge views the solitude on the "boundless ocean" as an atmosphere ideal for creation. The God is not asleep; he is in a realm of dreams, which is a state of bliss. He awakes to create a world which is only a bubble in comparison to all that can be created. Vishnu's smile is suggestive of the smile of the Buddha who has gained enlightenment. Vishnu who perceives his creation to be a bubble possesses an insight into the indefinable nature of Infinity.

(source: Coleridge, Vishnu, and the Infinite – By Aparajita Mazumder).

His poetry reveals the connections with the Hindu view of life. Coleridge's philosophical and spiritual itinerary; it originally contributes in showing the strong impact the first translations of some texts of Hinduism had on the authors psyche, philosophical approach and poetical inspiration.

In addition, Coleridge's unpublished manuscript notes found in one of the Abb J. A. Dubois seminal studies of India present a proof of the poets long standing interest in and frequentation of Hinduism. Inclined to investigate the complexities of the human condition, both poetically and philosophically, Coleridge tried to resolve the extremes of human existence through a synthesis of both Western and Oriental visions through which the universe ultimately emerges as an organic cosmos rhythmically unfolding through an intricate web of influxes, echoes and correspondences.

O! 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 –
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill’d;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

(source: The one life: Coleridge and Hinduism - By A Riem Natale, Antonella Riem).