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Poetry of Coleridge, Essay by Hughes |
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Only 160 pages |
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To the memories of Ted Hughes who died in October 1998 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who died in July 1834.
A Choice of Coleridge’s Verse edited and Introduced by Ted Hughes was published by Faber and Faber on March 18th 1996 and is available from most good book shops for £7.99.
There are two reasons why this book is so special, the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the introductory essay written by Ted
Hughes.
Hughes entitled his essay, 'The Snake in the Oak'. Ted Hughes held a belief in the presence of an inner force behind Coleridge’s and indeed his own writing, the Poetic Self.
In his essay, Hughes refers frequently to Old Norse mythology and the workings of image and symbol. Hughes suggests that Coleridge was fighting a losing battle between a 'Christian Self' and the 'unleavened Self '. Hughes states that it was whilst
Coleridge was in this 'unleavened Self' that his three visionary poems, 'Kubla Khan', 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', and 'Christabel' were written. Hughes dramatically presents Coleridge's career as a self-torturing flight from the possibility of a psychic wholeness, a state which he could only achieve by surrendering to the ‘unleavened self’. Coleridge, according to Hughes, usually resisted doing this by blocking his ‘unleavened self’ with religious orthodoxy. He suggests that some of Coleridge’s poems such as 'Dejection: An Ode' are best understood by applying this tenet. Hughes goes on to say that even in the three visionary poems, Coleridge struggles to deny his ‘unleavened self’. At the end of the poem, 'Kubla Khan', Coleridge’s 'Christian Self’ regains control warning 'Beware! Beware!' immediately after his ‘unleavened self's ecstatic imagining of 'That sunny dome! those caves of ice!'
Hughes draws his title for the essay from the Biblical story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, referring to Coleridge’s ‘Unleavened Self’’ as ‘the Cain within him’. Cain was possessed by irrational anger, the Lord reasoned with him and Cain, but ungoverned emotion prevailed and Cain killed his brother Abel.
Hughes unfolds Coleridge’s visionary
poetry with admiration and sensitivity. He particularly decribes ‘The Ancient Mariner’ with a full sense of the terrifying power of the poem. He writes with clarity and passion demonstrating so convincingly the reasons behind Coleridge's imagery. drama.
Hughes was born on 17th August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, a town in West Yorkshire. He had a distinguished career as a poet, awarded the OBE in 1977, created Poet Laureate in December 1984 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1998.
For this book, Hughes states that the Poems used were from a driven 'choice' rather than a more casual 'selection'.
The ‘Ancient Mariner'’ is a narrative poem written in lyrical ballad form It is told in the first-person, set in a third-person narrative about a wedding.
The poem does have a supernatural feel with a number of strange and macabre elements contained within it. The albatross was considered a bird of “good omen” and the mariner kills it; the spirit from “the land of mist and snow”; the two spirits the mariner hears in his trance; the angelic spirits which move the bodies of the dead men.
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
Hughes argument of the Coleridge’s struggle between his “Christian self” and “unleavened self” is clearest when the albatross first approaches the ship, “As if it had been a Christian soul". The ships crew initially took this as a good omen as the bird followed the ship faithfully. Then, weary of the bird's incessant and unnerving presence, the Ancient Mariner shot the albatross bringing the curse onto the ship. The mariner realized he had done "a hellish thing" and retribution would follow.
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
In Kubla Khan, Coleridge himself contributed to Hughes’ theory by adding this famous preface to it, in which he claimed to have composed it in an opium induced dream. Hughes believed that being in this state enabled the ‘unleavened self’ to take precedence over the ‘Christian self’. The poem can be interpreted as a battle between the two ‘selfs’
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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!
Christabel is a mystical narrative poem featuring supernatural imagery and symbolism. As with the other two poems, Christabel has a hypnotical attraction. The words, though somewhat archaic, draw you onward captivated.
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothéd knight ;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.
She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak
But moss and rarest misletoe :
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21st 1772 in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of ten children. He was educated at Cambridge where he became interested in philosophy and religion. Although Coleridge's poetic productivity was small in quantity, his visionary poems gained him a lasting reputation.
Shelley referred to him as a "hooded eagle among blinking owls."
I knew, or thought I knew, Coleridges’s poetry prior to reading the book. Who does not know the famous lines ‘Water, water everywhere/ Not any drop to drink?’. ‘a sadder but wiser man’ and ‘those stately pleasure domes’. I re-read the poems seeing them in with a different light illuminated now by Hughes vision.
I can’t say I am wholly convinced by Hughes argument about Coleridge’s struggle between a ‘Christian self’ and an ‘unleavened self. Many of his later poems were influenced by his opium addiction acquired as a relief to his various illnesses. His altered state of mind as a result of taking the drug long-term undoubtably impacted on his poetry but whether or not this released his ‘unleavened self’, I do not know.
Whichever why, you look at it, Coleridge’s poems are still fantastic filled with symbolism and allegory and the introductory essay by Hughes gives an insight into both Hughes’ and Coleridge’s poetic minds.
