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    Romantic Ideology Part 3

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    18 views38 pages

    McGann pt3

    Uploaded by

    S Robinson
    Romantic Ideology Part 3

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    9 Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn," and the Later Poetry Heine's approach 10 Romantic works isa criticism which began to set thowe works free of their own inherent limitations, on the ‘one hand, and from their openness to a subsequent ideological appropriation on the other. Heine's criticism, that is 10 ay, represents an alternative to Romantic sefrepresenation or repetition (cg, Coleridge's criticism, or Harold Bloom's) and Hegelian posission (which dominates, in various forms, the present scholarly community). Heine's criticism is therefore a ‘weful model, particularly a this historical juncture. ‘The distinctive advance represented by this criticism. how- ‘ever, does not lie so much in the exposure of the limits of ‘Romanticism as it does in the capacity for self'citicism. Heine's ‘uneasy relation to various European cultural and political insti- tutions parallels his Lifelong pursuit of ideological independence. He was a man who was well aware of the various sates he passed through, some of which have distinct names: Germany, France, Romanticism, Christianity, Judaism. What we need 10 ‘recall, at this point, is that Heine learned his entical procedures arly from studying the works of the Romantic authors, where Ihe observed various heroic acts of selfrticism. Heine learned self-criticism party from the very writers and works he came 10 place under judgment. ‘What Heine discovered in writes like Ubland, Hoffmann, Chamiso, and Tieck, students of English Romanticism may ‘observe as well in the writers they study. Few experiences are ‘more moving than to read some of Coleridge's later poems, pat= ‘iculariy if one does 80 in the context of his later works in prose. The Siatesman’s Manual appeared in 1816, Aids to Reflection in * 1825, and On she Consiution of Church and State in 1830, but ts the Sage of Highgate delivered these works of spiritual and Social ideology to the clerisy he helped 10 create, be was also writing a number of brief but disturbing postical works, Between 1825 and 1830 Coleridge drafted such poems and fragments as “The Pang More Sharp ‘Than AIL" "Phantom or Fact” "Self Knowledge," and "Love's Apparition and Fvanishment." The fact that these works are all structurally related 10. what Coleridge spicy called! the first and last of them—that i 10 allegory—underscores Coleridge's sense of the desperate subjects tnd attitudes they were dealing with. To Coleridge. allegory was & poetical form which he associated! with a divided or alienated consciousness, and he himself sored to it—most memorably, in his prose piece n"—10 open aerial and sel-conseious view of tions. Allegory was not, for Coleridge, a poetic form appropriate to the One Life; rather, it was peculiarly adapted 10 expose and explore critically the word of illusions, divisions, and false-conseiousness. Thus E. H, Colendge observes fof the "shapesshiing appearances of Coleridge's orginal "Allegoric Vision: The ‘A Yr on Av 8 al i, acd Earn cas See Se ae Sait Lact ba! Re I Lance Sona Pt Sie er uaa Stn © Frnt Sits ete aS eta eee se Brad seat Deen ee Teese Seca Ls oe re a lt He Cn ial Sue a sce api Hao Aa. te ee te Se Aaa wits choc Rone Me GR a 2 a ee ds eT ee a te meee nic te att Gauri aed od scans Sete aye Sona an cae Wares COLIIIDGE, LURLA KHUN. LATER POETRY 1 saw engraved the words ‘To Dominic holy and merci= fal, the preventer and avenger of Soul-murder’s The vision was tured into a politeal jeu d'sprit levelled at the aiders and abetlors of Catholic Emancipation... A third adaptation of the “Alleporical Vision” was alined {o the Introduction to 4 Lay: Sermon «which was published in 817. The fst iy-s lines, which contain 2 description of Malian mountain scenery. were entirely ‘new, but the rest of the "Vision" 1s an emended and softened reproduction to the preface 10 the Lecture of 1798. The. moral he desires to point isthe Nalsehood of 'A most disturbing aspect of Coleridge's later “allegorical visions” isthe fact tat they ate al seifabsorbed and inrospectve works. In these poems Coleridge isnot exploring polities, society. ot the apparatuses and ideologies of the state, he i applying an allegor- ‘eal deconstruction to what he himsif saw as the most funda- mental objects of the mind, the hear, and che soul ise ‘Walter J. Bate has shrewdly asked us to reall, when reading these poems, that "Coleridge was familiar with such states" of spintual desolation all his lif.’ Two of Coleridge's best known poems of spiritual ardity—"Limbo" and "Ne Plus Ultra'—were born and buried in his Novebooks in 1817, while pethaps the ‘most impressive of all these picces—'Constancy to an Kat Object'—may have existed im some form as carly as 1808, though it more probably belongs to 1817 oF shortly thereafter, ‘These dates ate to be noted only because they emphasize an important pair of facts shout Coleridge's poetry: firs. that i was lays subject 10 a negative dialectic of "apparition and evanish- ment"; and second, that this negative pattern grew more firmly rooted in the poetry even as Coleridge's prose developed a more ‘confident and develope idcological focus. Bate has well said of the later poems "To Nature and "Sei: Knowledye": Coleridge here Lin "To. Heaven'] abandons soniidebee that the constructions of imagin ‘evelations of truth, and be aso posits a posible separa- tion of nature from God. similar symbolic gesture is located in "Seif Knowledge." Here again the Syabotie gesture lcs in the surrender—a giving up to God—ot “a jevel of Coleridge's intellectual crown, ‘namely, his cherished maxim ... Know Thyse* The felings of desperation and bewilderment that emerge with these sors of ideological loses and surrenders are powerful And temnbly moving predsely becouse thei vehicular form) a poetic one, Coleridae shared with Wordswonh the conviction that poetry would be the means for seeing into the life of thin in-a'secular age, The “Idea” 80 chenshed by Coleridge was a ‘categorical imperative of what he called the Reason, but it was an upprchendable realty of what he called the poetic Imagina- tion. Furthermore, and again the parallel with Wordsworth is eat, Coleridge's commitment to this kdea was always recipro= cally related 10 his sense of the world as afield of los, division, beayal The Romantic subject of a poem like “Kubla wan" i loss and the threat of loss. The stately pleasure dome is as all commentators have poioted out, the most precarious of structures. Indeed, we only see it obliquely, andthe closest thing ‘we have toa direct view is of ts shadow trembling on the (sym- bolic) river which flows through the Khan's equally precarious domain. The poem's central image of a civilization constracted fom the pleasure principle is a. gsture defying those “ancestral ‘voices prophesying war." This Jerusalem of the Khan isa poetic ream, am Idea of the Reason imaginatively raised. up against the barbarism of history along the steam of time, which ‘threatens to cary all things "own to a suns se.” The prec fousoess of the dream of a truly buman civilization emphasized by the fact tha it is associated here with Kubla Khan. the notorious Tartar who brousht the whole of China ‘under his absolute control by military foree Coleridge explicily relates the story of Kubla Khan to the poetic princple—fint, in the prose preface t0 the pocm. where the subject of lows i also treated, and again in the second part of | the lyric proper, where Coleridge calls up the possiblity of a renewed imaginative vision. Like “Dejection: An Ode," “Kubla Khan" is most centrally theatened with the lass of the poetic faculty ise, which emerges as the poem's ultimate defense against the ancestral voices and the Khan as well Tn later poems like "To Nature" Coleridge dramatizes the caxtinction of his shaping. imaginative spirit, his inability 10 revive in himself the song ofthe Abyssinian maid: ” In vain we supplicate the Powers above: ‘There is no resurrection forthe Love ‘That, nursed in tenderest care, yet fades away In the child heart by gradual selcdecay. (29-32) This isthe poetry of a fearful conclusiveness, a statement postty which transforms its poetic images from generative symbol ino critical allegories. OF course, Coleride's later poetry shows litle loss in poetical power, what it demonstrates is the loss of his Poetic belies. Coleridge's late imagination shapes the spirits of| his nightmares: thatthe love, the knowledge, and the imaging tion which he has believed in are chimeras, at best momentary defenses agains the works ancestral violence and darkness. To judge the value of poems like “Constancy 10 an Ideal Object” land "Love's Apparition and Evanishment” we might well reall Wordsworth’s similar revisionary poems. “Peele Castle has been ‘ighly called "a palinode™ to Wordsworth’s earlier poctc faith, yet Wordsworth never wrote a greater lytic piece. That itis ‘oem of despair is not a measure ofits poetic value but of is special ideological focus. ‘The major poetic difference between a poem like "Kubla Khun" and works such as "Constancy 10 an Ideal Object” is Sylitic. The former is dominated by that typical Romantic dev- fe which has been called “surmise. When we read toward the nd of the poem: Could I revive within me Her sympathy and song. To such a deep delight ‘would win me, ‘That with music loud and long, would build that dome in air, (42-46) ‘we do s0 in the conte of lines 1-41 where the dome was raised ‘up for vs in the medium of verse and vision. Furthermore, we recall as well the poctic injunction imbedded in Coleridge's imtroductory prose nurative of loss: “Say awhile)... soon/ The visions will return." Coleridge's poem works at all points to sus- tain its own generative energy at the ideological level, and to ‘rive out the fears which beset the mind of his poem. The sur- Imise executed in lines 41-6 concludes, therefore, in an oblique Falfilment. We do aot leave the poem with a vision of the » pleasure dome, but we do leave it with an image which equally confirms the belief that visionary power has returned and will conte 4 do 3, | would build that dome in ir, ‘That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, ‘And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His lashing eyes, his floating hat! Weave a dice round hie thes, ‘And close your eyes with holy dread, For be on honey-dew bath fed, ‘And drunk the milk of Paradise. (45-53) ‘The subjunctive ‘Could . would... shoul” has succeeded to 8 poetry a presence. Those who “should” hear the song and see the dome appear suddenly and address the reader with exclama- tions and a series of present imperatives. Thus the poem ends in 1 dramatic representation of imapination’s own slf-renovating powers The poem is, a8 everyone agrees, about the poetical faculty itself, and the poem’s central problem—that this faulty may lose its potency—is finally set aside in a set of gestures hich show its continuous operation to the poem’s end. 'AL tis point we might pause to be certain that we are clear to what is involved in a resolution of this sort. The poem's Poetic excellence lies in the careful adaptation of ite sylistic ‘means to its ideological commitments and presuppositions. I is | poem about poetry. te. but more particularly it is a poem bout a specal ideology (Romantic) of poetic work. Ifyou Took atthe poem ftom an aesthetic vantage you see the congruence ofits operations. (the balance and reconciliation of opposite and slscordant gualies) while from the conceptual side you observe the conclusive emotional aflrmation of the ideology it sts out {0 reveal, interrogate, and finally confirm ("The visions will return) The poem is not so much about poetry, then, as it bout Romantic poetry, andthe special features of certain Romantic ideological pursuits (both stylistic and conceptual ‘One imporant feature of Romantic ideology, a8 we have aleady seen, i the belief that poetical works can transcend hie torical divisions by virtue of their links with Imagination, ‘through which we se into the permanent life of things. Central to this Romantic view is the idea that poetic vision i the cor curd, the epipsyche, the final ground on which all other con- xptual formations must depend, at least so far as human per- ceptions are concerned. In the case of a Romantic poem, then, to say that iti “about poetry" is tantamount to saying that it ‘about the ultimate grounds of knowledge and being. Horace's ‘Ars Poetica” is a preat work, and it 100 is ‘about poetry, but eary it has engaged with its subject from a ery diferent vane tage. Coleride's poem is at once more desperate and more gran- ose, Similarly, if we set “Kubla Khan" beside, say, The Du ‘iad, the ditfeence is equally clear. No less passionate a work than “Kubla Khan," The Duca struggles against the threat of cultural degeneracy, unlike Pope, however, Coleridge's struggle is carried out in purely conceptual space. Pope is able 10 sce is enemies, where Coleridge is forced to imagine them. Those Prose persons from Porlock become, in the verse of the poem Proper, the unnamed but fearful antagonists who have waged ancestral war against the equally fearful Khan. They are ‘unnameable because they are legion: they are everthing that works to destroy vision, at any time and in all places, and they include the Khai himsei ‘Ultimately. then, a. poem like “Kubla Khan* operates Uhrough symbols because both its subject matter and its syle are ‘ideal The specific idea (historical) of such a poem is that poe- tty works atthe level of final Ideas. Its concrete symbols deli- ‘eraely forego any immediate social or cultural points of refer. fence in order to engage with its audience at a purely conceptual leva. Indeed, they engage specifically atthe level of tology, for ‘the conceptual aspects of the poem are delivered obliquely and unselconsciousy, through symbols. The work compels a non rational form of astent to latent structure of ideas in the end, it urges the reader to swear allegiance to the idea of non-rational ‘and unslfconscious forms of knowing “The excellence of Norman Rudich’s political interpretation ‘of “Kubla Khan’ lies in his sure grasp ofthe poem's method of (orhat' he calls) “mythopoeic™ ansformations. The work's immediate historical and social points of reference are all dis placed into symbolic forms and Rudich explains the mechanism ‘of these displacements very well Mythopoeia has another function, an aesthetic one, 0 raise the poet's vision to sublime heights heroic gran- ‘duct. This is Coleridge's Bight from the politcal realities of his day metamorphosed into an heroic assault on the bastions of human prejudice and delusion, with the inspired poet lading the vanguard of enlightened spirits. “The truth of history is that political revolutions betrayed by tyrants come and go, a bloody, repetitive sucession ‘of disappointments. The poet alone can truly lead ‘mankind out ofthe infernal cycle and to the happiness ‘of spritual peace in harmonious reconciliation with himself and God's nature. "Kubla Khan’ as all the markings of Coleridge's reactionary politics. Although itis directed against the two Tartar despots, Kubla and Napoleoe, Coleridge links Bonaparist imperialism and the French Revolu- tion in a single anathema. The poem is an exhortation to abandon political strugle for the sake of the highest ‘cultivation ofthe aesthetic, moral, ad relipous qualities ‘of the soul. It separates poetry fom hisioy, sublimating its meaning into the theological realms of absolute ‘Truth and eternal categories of Good and Evil?” ‘The commentary recapitulate the basic articles of Colerde’s esthetic and cultural beliefs, which "Kubla Khan" tests and finally affirms. The Khan is the conqueror and master of the ‘world, but in Colride's view he is really no more than a pass- ing historical representative cast up from the central “Romantic chasm’ atthe root ofthe steam of time. The master of this his- ‘torical potemtate is the Idea which be embodies, and. final mastery lies with those who create and maser the world of Ideas: God, ultimately, but in the mortal sphere the manipula tors of the creative imagination. “Kubla Khan” i a great Romantic poem which in the end «firms Coleridge's basic ideology of poetry and the power ofthe ‘ative imagination. He bebeved that one could “oot hope From ‘outward forms to win/ The passion and the life, whose fountains fare within in “Kubla Khan” that inward reative fountain isthe ‘center of the Khan's domain and the source of its richness, and the poem represents itself as the spootancous expression of ‘congrucat inner vision. But the entire project of Imagination in this poem is continually threatened and haunted by fearful 102 ‘COLERIDGE, KUL RIAN. LATER POETRY {images of evil and destruction. The Khan's civilization has been fashioned with the sword and is destined to a similarly violent tend. The deep Romantic chasm is at once holy and savage, the locus of the erative fountain but also a place associated with a ‘The poem's central ideas in other words, are as precarious as everthing else in the poem, which seems to have generated simultaneously the images ofits creation and the threat of its Sestruction. Ths conflict appears atthe surface of the poem —i its images—but because the poem's ideology holds that these surfaces represent the apparition and acstesis of the underlying ca, the work haunts its own precincts with a fear that its penius may be a demon or a tyrant, and its paradise an illusion (or worse), Consequently, the pocm maintains its afhrmative stance by forcing itself to live under the threat ofits own des traction, and in fear of the possibilty that is belief are rank ilusions. The idea of the creative imagination in “Kubla Khan” i therefore properly aswociated with a powerful tyrant, though be ia benevolent and well-meaning one “The poem's greatness does not, however, lie in its ideology as uch. The ideological affirmations localize a set of emotional tensions and contradictions which appear in the course of the Poem. ‘The affirmations are important for enticism not in themselves—not for their Truth-value—but because they are pan of the poem’s specific human content—for their truth- ‘value. Criticism cannot set the poem's idea aside as mere ena- ‘ing devices or peripheral matters. A pocm’s ideas are cri 40 tritici because the tensions im the poetry emerge when the ‘ideas are afirmed (or questioned oF even rejected). This is the case with all poetry. In a Romantic poem like “Kubla Khan,” however, an additional emphasis i placed upon the poem's con- ceptual investments, since the central Idea toward which the {imagination gestures is a place of ultimate resort. The fear which plays all about “Kubla Khan" is a displaced critical reaction toward the poem's ideological commitments and (unselfcons- ous) affirmations. As in so. much of Wordsworth's poetry, ‘Kubla Khan accepts a minatry offer as afr price to pay its imaginative resolutions. This acceptance is also part ofits ‘ideology. The emotional conflicts which are generated as consequence, however, form the structure of that more | ‘comprehensive emotional revelation which the poem finally achieves at the level of selfconsciousness: that i8 0 say, at the level ofa critical (rather than an ideological) response Coleridge's central ideas, then, are an integral part of a poem like “Kubla Khan," whose emotional structures are only Slaborated through the play and intertelationships between the oem’ surface images and its underying ideas. The polemic stbich it develops (symbolically and indirectly) for an ideology of poetry—for its assumed concepts of imagination, creative power, and the value of cultural reconciiation—draws its Imporiance not from the Trath-content of the ideas but from the human commitment with which they have been invested. "Kubla Khan’ i important as poetry not because it san obique presentation of certain abstract ideas, and not because itis a symbobe presentation of certain non-ratonal belies: ti impor lant asa direct representation, in emotional terms. of the fbuman conflicts which are necessarily involved in their relations. ‘The poem draws its authority from the weight of its elit in ive, which includes the willingness to face and to bear the consequences which are entailed in its commitments ‘Some of these consequences are apparent enough from ‘Kubla Khan” iself, whose concepts of poetic ceation and cub tural mastership areas we have seen, troubled and problematic. Some of the consequences woul not be elaborated, however, ‘nti laer circumstances made a critical view of the poem a pos: sibility. In fact, such view began to develop in Coleridge's lif time, among the latxr Romantics, and it even made a few bold {invasions into Coleridge's own work. Early in, his life Coleridge called the masters of culture “poets” but Inter they became what be called “the clrisy." that more widely distributed network of individuals and social inst- tutions which we now call “ideological state apparatuses The shit in Coleridge's emphasis reveals two important matirs about his intelectual belief. First, Coleridge never ceased 10 believe that ideas shaped historical events—that thought always preceded and determined action rather than the other way ‘ound. Second, even as Coleridge (ike Hegel) saw real hus history flow unslfeonscioudly out of the precedent Idea, he lost his conviction that this pattern could be surely grasped, even ‘unslfonsciousy, in the single inspired individual. The macro- osm was ely fixed in the realm of transcendent Ideas, and its hnstorcal continuance could be counied on through the (COLERIDGE. KUMLA KHAN, LATER ROEERY {nstutional forms. The more fundamental idea, however ofthe determining primacy of the creative person, collapsed wader the Dressures which Coleridge's own mental pursuits placed upon it. ‘This situation is what makes a work like “Constancy to an eal Object" so important in Coleridge's poetic corpus. The ‘Poem opens dramatically, with Coleridge beset by an abstract smalane ‘Since all uhat beat about in Nature's range, (Or veet or vanish why should'st thou remain The only constant in a world of change, 0 yearning Thought that liv'st but in the bean? a4) Nothing seems dependable or secure around him, but what is ‘most troubling, for Coleridge and for the reader, is Coleridge's inability to find any consolation in the ‘constancy" of his "yearn= fing thought” In’ the end Coleridge presents this heal ‘constancy—this ie defended against its vicissitudes by the firmness of its ideal attachments—as the ignocant pursuit of an usin, even a potential disaster, ‘And ant thou nothing? Such thou art, 3s when The woodman winding westward up the pen At wintry dawa, where o'er the shepetrack’s maze ‘The viewless stow-mist weaves a gst ning haze Sees full before him, gliding without tread, ‘An image with a glory mand its head: ‘The enamoured rustic worships its fai hues, [Nor Knows he makes the shadow, he purses! 2533) ‘The pursuit of such illusions, called Brocken species in Ger- ‘man, occurs throughout the literature of the period, and itis @ pursuit fraught with perl. In an English context one perhaps Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)? ere in Coleridge's poem the threat is raised agains the spiritual and intellectual life only Once again the theme of loss appears dominant in (Coleridge's vers, but now what seems in greatest dange i indi vidual identity itself: Coleridpe's constancy 10 his ideal object, has thrust him into a hall of mirrors where personality, thought, and the objects of one's love and attention all bepin to lose themselves in a strange series of reflections and displacements Yer sil thou haunt'st me; and though well Ise, ‘Spe isnot thou, and only thou art she, Sul still s though some dear embodied Good, ‘Some living Love before my eyes there stood ‘With answering look a ready cat to led, mourn 10 thee and sy—"Ah! loveliest fiend! ‘That this the meed of all my toils might be, ‘To have a home, an English home, and thee! Vain repetition’ Home and Thou are one ‘The peacefull’ cot, the moon shall shine upon, Lule by the thrush and wakened by the lark, ‘Without thee were but a becalmed bark, ‘Whose Helmaman on an ocean waste and wide Sis mute and pale his mouléering helm beside. (1-24) ‘The poem never provides a distinct referent for the feminine proooun, though “sbe" seems most closely associated with the loved object ofthe “yearning thought But the ambiguous use of| pronouns, and the equally ambiguous syntaxes, prevent any cer Tainty the ohjrt of diect addres in lines U6eIR aroma st once the yearning thought Cthee") and the loved abject she"), but fven that identity #8 not certain. The final eight lines appear to be addresed 10 the "Thought." but because the entire poem 18 located in psychic space, the pronominal references are always liable to a process of transformation. "Thou! in ine 25 can just 4s easily be read as the "Coleridge" who is undergoing his own selfnterrogation, ‘The port finally pases « most devastating judgment upon | Coleridge's cherished belief thatthe realm of ideas provides a ‘round for realty. A constancy to an ideal objeet ends not so much in an ineoostancy such as one finds “in Nature's range it finishes in & permanence more fearfol shan all the veils of Maya. Elsewhere Coleridge named it “Limbo,” a state of “positive 108 | second, its si negation" rather than perfect emptiness: an aggressive condition ‘of vacancy where recognized identities undergo a process of dis solution, disappearance, and fragmentation. Coleridge—as it were the fool persisting in the folly of his own convitions—arrives at a terible wisdom in poems of this kind, Here the forms of worship implicit in such great poetic tales as "Kubla Khan” are removed: from their original (symbolic) ‘medium and immersed in a critical solution of allegory. The consequence is a new kind of poetic tale whose function is purely critical and disillusioning. 10 Phases of English Romanticism ‘The despair which characterizes works ofthis sort should not be read as a mark of artistic weakness, Ofcourse, ‘Constancy 10 an Ideal Object isa Secondary” workin Colende's corpus, i 160 senses: st is tctis and purpose ars defined in terms of pe: tedent and. therefore. rimary” works. ike "Kubla Khan’ al relaions within the Colendge canon do fot permit it an avenue for making or even anticipating new I afrmations. The signicnce ofa book hike rica! Bales es ini abt 1 ook before and aher, The ctque develope in that volume i dre toward precedent dco tal situs, but i eridgue wove func i 0 open Up few ways of thinking and fing about the human word 1 100 it's Secondary” work then, a ae all human work, uli secondariness Is not in the field of is own purposes Self eric io Lyrical Balls is subordinated to the avert of ‘exploring the limits ofa new eclpal progra, Diferences of these kinds remind’ ux thatthe Romantic Period is marked throughout by various sors of important

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