'Constancy to an Ideal Object' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
ST Coleridge has bounded into life for me these past few weeks, released from the pages of 'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science"by Richard Holmes.
Holmes has written two other books on the man but there is enough material here to produce a luminous and lively impression of the extraordinary man that Coleridge was. And that age he lived in. We see him in his place at the Royal Society and the Royal Institution as well as with Humphrey Davy, Walter Scott and Wordsworth out for a blow on Helvellyn. When poets, writers and scientists were intensely interested in what each had to think and say and had no difficulties in accommodating the complementarity of different imaginative processes.
Coleridge was never limited in his ambition:"The Poet", he once said "is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe". I am not sure that is true - both poetic and scientific creativity rely on the alchemy of the unconscious to bring together outer and inner worlds - cosmos and microcosmos.
For Coleridge, poetry was this continual awakening into the mystery of the world that surrounds us.
Last week I downloaded the 'Selected Poems' (Penguin Classics). This poem was the first one I spotted. What delights me about it is that how clearly he has understood the nature of the unconscious, psychological projection, here in the specific circumstances of erotic love.
Coleridge clearly understands (as did Proust's Narrator, Goethe's 'Faust';multiple poems of Robert Graves as well as the monumental 'The White Goddess'; the solution that released the suffering prisoners in 'Plato's Cave; poor addled Quixote on the last day of his life when he realizes the catastrophe of his delusions etc etc) how when a person becomes an 'object' of love, that light shone upon them comes from a source within - eg Anima or Animus as Jung would have it.
Finding- and loving - the real person covered in stardust is the challenge (and excitement) of successful marriage or partnership which necessarily involves the withdrawal of the blinding illusions, the capacity to change oneself, adapt to, to suffer both disappointments and delights in another. Who described marriage as the 'best - and last - chance of growing up'.?
Constancy to an Ideal Object
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why shoulds't thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
Oh yearning Thought! that though livs't but in the brain?
Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day-
Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till, when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me: and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say - "Ah! loveliest friend!
That this 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'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmed bark,
Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheeptrack's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows the he makes the shadow, he pursues!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Holmes has written two other books on the man but there is enough material here to produce a luminous and lively impression of the extraordinary man that Coleridge was. And that age he lived in. We see him in his place at the Royal Society and the Royal Institution as well as with Humphrey Davy, Walter Scott and Wordsworth out for a blow on Helvellyn. When poets, writers and scientists were intensely interested in what each had to think and say and had no difficulties in accommodating the complementarity of different imaginative processes.
Coleridge was never limited in his ambition:"The Poet", he once said "is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe". I am not sure that is true - both poetic and scientific creativity rely on the alchemy of the unconscious to bring together outer and inner worlds - cosmos and microcosmos.
For Coleridge, poetry was this continual awakening into the mystery of the world that surrounds us.
Last week I downloaded the 'Selected Poems' (Penguin Classics). This poem was the first one I spotted. What delights me about it is that how clearly he has understood the nature of the unconscious, psychological projection, here in the specific circumstances of erotic love.
Coleridge clearly understands (as did Proust's Narrator, Goethe's 'Faust';multiple poems of Robert Graves as well as the monumental 'The White Goddess'; the solution that released the suffering prisoners in 'Plato's Cave; poor addled Quixote on the last day of his life when he realizes the catastrophe of his delusions etc etc) how when a person becomes an 'object' of love, that light shone upon them comes from a source within - eg Anima or Animus as Jung would have it.
Finding- and loving - the real person covered in stardust is the challenge (and excitement) of successful marriage or partnership which necessarily involves the withdrawal of the blinding illusions, the capacity to change oneself, adapt to, to suffer both disappointments and delights in another. Who described marriage as the 'best - and last - chance of growing up'.?
Constancy to an Ideal Object
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why shoulds't thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
Oh yearning Thought! that though livs't but in the brain?
Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day-
Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till, when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me: and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say - "Ah! loveliest friend!
That this 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'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmed bark,
Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheeptrack's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows the he makes the shadow, he pursues!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 |
| ST Coleridge |
Comments
Post a Comment