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Coleridge and the Contemporaneity of Authorship 10.3726/85611_73 Coleridge and the Contemporaneity of Authorship Florian Bissig In the Preface to the second edition of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads of 18001, poetry in its projected new conception is sharply contrasted with daily news- paper journalism. The Preface insists that “the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and vio- lent stimulants” and claims that “to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged”.2 The service is especially neces- sary at this moment when a number of causes such as wars and industrialization “blunt the discriminating powers of the mind” and reduce it to a “state of almost savage torpor”. These ills result in a “craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communi- cation of intelligence hourly gratifies” (LB, 9), that is, news jour- nalism. The poet has the power to positively influence the human mind, so as to keep it agile and independent, and to counteract or even prevent the “degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation” (LB, 10), which journalism exploits and fosters. Poetry thus repre- sents a mode of communication which essentially refrains from exploiting the wish for communication of current events and is, indeed, characterized by aloofness from them. News journalism, on the other hand, being the author’s immediate and ceaseless communication of current events to his contemporaries, exempli- fies the extreme of contemporaneous writing. Coleridge had been ambivalent toward such contempora- neous writing throughout his life, and the reconstruction of his strategies in reaction to these reservations sheds light on diverse aspects of his multiform legacy. For Coleridge, the poetry of genius functioned as an ideal, which is partly defined and characterized 1 The Preface was written and signed by Wordsworth, but its ideas are equally owing to Coleridge. See the editors’ introduction to William WORDSWORTH, Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797-1800, eds. James Butler and Karen Green, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, 28. 2 William WORDSWORTH and Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, ed. Martin Scofield, Ware: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2003, 9 [= LB]. Variations 19 (2011) 74 Florian Bissig by its opposition to contemporaneous writing. I argue that, while maintaining a strict difference between imaginative poetry of genius and lesser kinds of contemporaneous and casual production, Coleridge achieved a reconciliation of his intellectual ideals with contemporaneous writing in his prose. In the Biographia Literaria, which champions this ambitious notion of poetry, Coleridge also faces the question of how his long-standing engagement with such an ephemeral mode of writing as political journalism fits into his self-image as a genius and writer of permanent interest. His actual autobiographical account in chapter 10 stages his alleged retirement from contemporaneous debates and engagements into the life of the solitary poet of genius. From this very point of detachedness, he subsequently stages his re-entrance into contemporanous writing, namely journalism, yet in a scheme which sublates journalism from its ephemerality and substantiates and invests it with principled reflection and warrants its permanence. In doing so, Coleridge enacts and presents a shift in his attitude and approach to his journalistic work and accomplishes a reconciliation in his self- representation with the contemporaneity of his own authorship. This article offers a qualifying comment on several concep- tions of Coleridge’s use of journalism in relation to other communi- cative modes. Zachary Leader argues that Coleridge employed journalism as an outlet for worthless work that allowed him to produce at least something without stifling inhibitions.3 In contrast, I argue that Coleridge’s daily journalism stands in a similar rela- tionship to his inhibiting ambitions of philosophical writing as his casual conversation poems or political newspaper verses do to his most accomplished imaginative pieces.4 This entails, at the same time, a contradiction to Deirdre Coleman’s claim that the Courier newspaper simply served as Coleridge’s catch basin for writing “which did not pass the test of holding itself aloof from current affairs” and therefore did not make it into the Friend.5 3 Zachary LEADER, “Coleridge and the Uses of Journalism”, in: Jeremy Treglown and Bridget Bennet (eds.), Grub Street and the Ivory Tower, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, 22–40. 4 The basic idea of the pattern of inhibition and its avoidance in Coleridge goes back to: Walter Jackson BATE, Coleridge, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969, 43f. 5 Deirdre COLEMAN, “The Journalist”, in: Lucy Newlyn (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, Cambridge: University Press, 2002, 137. Furthermore, my argument asks for a relativation of Nikki Hessell’s view that Coleridge employed journalism consciously and purposefully, yet remained focussed on the opposition to poetry. Nikki HESSELL, “‘Desultory Fragments’ or ‘Printed Works’? Coleridge’s Changing Attitude to Newspaper Journalism”, Papers on Language and Literature 43/1 (2007), 24–44. Coleridge and the Contemporaneity of Authorship 75 The Biographia Literaria6, which Coleridge composed in 1815, was originally conceived as a preface to his poetry publication Sibylline Leaves, though it grew to fill two volumes. The work is in part a critical response to William Wordsworth’s Poems of 1815, including the Preface, but claims to ground its criticism on a princi- pled basis. At the same time, as the title suggests, it displays the characteristics of an autobiographical account touching on and digressing into a variety of topics pertinent to the author’s intellec- tual and literary career – which has in the meantime come to include a vast amount of journalistic and periodical publications. The wish to forge a handsome image of his own literary life and achievements and the desire to be candid and instructive make for the unique mixture and texture of the Biographia and for its reveal- ing quality with regard to my question concerning Coleridge’s attitudes toward his diverse communicative modes and literary ambitions. In the discussion of poetry and poetics, which covers the first four chapters of the work, Coleridge presents himself as a literary critic and establisher of principles of criticism, but also as a poet of genius in his own right by more or less subtle implication.7 The second chapter betrays Coleridge’s anxiety of criticism and his concern for the respect of the poet in the face of unjust criticism. Suggesting that “readers in general take part against the author, in favor of the critic” (BL, 1: 30), he discusses the alleged prejudice of the general irritable nature of genial poets. Coleridge advocates the “creative and self-sufficing power of absolute Genius” (BL, 1: 31), which is essentially distinct from its complement, talent. Origi- nally, truly creative, and therefore self-sufficient in their work, men of genius display a “calm and tranquil temper”, not least because they have an “inward assurance of permanent fame” (BL, 1: 33), which is entirely different from craving for a shortlived reputation with the current public. It thus follows that the essential mark of the true genius is that his sensibility is not much excited by his own interests, as opposed to items concerned with his ideal, poetic, aesthetic world: 6 Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate, vol. 7 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton: University Press, 1983 [= BL]. 7 In “Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism” (1814), Coleridge had already intimated that the “genial critic”, i.e., the critic of genius, must be at least as much of a genius as the poet he judges. Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, Shorter Works and Fragments, eds. H.J. Jackson and J.R. de J. Jackson, vol. 11 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton: University Press, 1995, 1: 353–386, 360. 76 Florian Bissig But it is no less an essential mark of true genius, that its sensibility is excited by any other cause more powerfully, than by its own per- sonal interests; for this plain reason, that the man of genius lives most in the ideal world, in which the present is still constituted by the future or the past; and because his feelings have been habitually associated with thoughts and images, to the number, clearness, and vivacity of which the sensation of self is always in an inverse propor- tion. (BL, 1: 43f) The man of genius lives more in an ideal world of thoughts and images, which is not the world that surrounds him personally, not his own concrete daily living environment. This ideal world is a realm of abstraction, at least from personal concern, although not disengaged from the poet’s feelings. The ideal world is character- ized by a present constituted by past and future as well, which is to say that the present of the poet’s life, the contemporaneous, and the events of the day are not his main interest, but general and perma- nent matters are his concern. For himself, Coleridge claims that “the original sin of [his] character consists in a careless indifference to public opinion, and to the attacks of those who influence it”, and that he can hardly bring himself to “think with any interest even about the sale and profit of [his] works”, even though he really should do so due to his financial straits (BL, 1: 44f). That is to say, just like that of a true genius, Coleridge’s sensibility is not aroused by his own private circumstances of life, and he is not easily irritated by an unfavor- able reception either by the reading public or by reviewers. To be self-reliant enough not to be anxious about immediate reception and reputation was precisely what was shown to be the mark of the true genius, who is satisfied with the permanence of his fame.
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