"A Poet's Heart & Intellect should be combined, intimately combined & unified, with the great appearances in Nature -- & not merely held in solution & loose mixture with them, in the shape of formal Similies."
— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
Date
September 10, 1802
Metaphor
"A Poet's Heart & Intellect should be combined, intimately combined & unified, with the great appearances in Nature -- & not merely held in solution & loose mixture with them, in the shape of formal Similies."
Metaphor in Context
[...] This would not disturb me a tittle, if I thought well of the work myself -- I should feel a confidence, that it would win it's way at last / but this is not the case with Gesner's Der erste Schiffer. -- It may as well lie here, till Tomkins wants it -- let him only give me a week's notice, and I will transmit it to you with a large margin. -- Bowles's Stanzas on Navigation are among the best in that second Volume / but the whole volume is woefully inferior to it's Predecessor. There reigns thro' all the blank verse poems such a perpetual trick of moralizing every thing -- which is very well, occasionally -- but never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & feels, that every Thing has a Life of it's own, & that we are all one Life. A Poet's Heart & Intellect should be combined, intimately combined & unified, with the great appearances in Nature -- & not merely held in solution & loose mixture with them, in the shape of formal Similies. I do not mean to exclude these formal Similies -- there are moods of mind, in which they are natural -- pleasing moods of mind, & such as a Poet will often have, & sometimes express; but they are not his highest, & most appropriate moods, They are 'Sermoni propiora' which I once translated -- ' Properer for a Sermon.' The truth is -- Bowles has indeed the sensibility of a poet; but he has not the Passion of a great Poet. His latter Writings all want native Passion -- Milton here & there supplies him with an appearance of it -- but he has no native Passion, because he is not a Thinker & has probably weakened his Intellect by the haunting Fear of becoming extravagant. [...]
(pp. 862-3)
(pp. 862-3)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Earl Wasserman, "The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge," Studies in Romanticism 4:1 (Autumn, 1964): 17-34, 21.
Citation
Text from http://inamidst.com
Date of Entry
01/18/2017
