Samuel Taylor Coleridge





Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 - July 25, 1834) was an English
poet, critic, and philosopher and one of the founders of the Romantic
Movement in England.

Biography

Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary, the son of a vicar. After the death
of his father, he was sent to Christ's Hospital, then in London, a boarding
school for orphans. From 1791 until 1794 he attended Jesus College at the
University of Cambridge, except for a short period when he entered the royal
dragoons. At the university he came into contact with political and
theological ideas then considered radical. He left Cambridge without a
degree and joined the poet Robert Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to
found a utopian communist-like society in the wilderness of Pennsylvania,
called pantisocracy. In 1795 the two friends married Sarah and Elizabeth
Fricker (who were sisters), but for Coleridge, the marriage proved unhappy.
Southey departed for Portugal, but Coleridge remained in England. In 1796 he
published Poems on Various Subjects.

In 1795 Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The
two men of letters published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads
(1798), which proved to be a foundation and manifesto of Romanticism. The
first version of Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appeared
in this volume.

The years 1797 and 1798, during which the friends lived in Nether Stowey,
Somersetshire, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. Besides the
Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan, written as a
result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie", and began the numinous
narrative poem Christabel, medieval in atmosphere. During this period he
also produced his much-praised "conversation" poems This Lime-Tree Bower My
Prison, Frost at Midnight, and The Nightingale.

In the autumn of 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a journey to
Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in
university towns. During this period he became more interested in German
philosophy, especially the 18th-century idealism of Immanuel Kant, and in
the literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Lessing.
Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the
dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the romantic poet Friedrich von Schiller
into English.

In roughly 1796, at 24 years of age, Coleridge started using opium for
medical purposes (toothache, facial neuralgia, etc.), and by this time he
might have been considered an addict. In 1800 he returned to England, and
shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at Keswick in the
Lake District of Cumberland. Between 1808 and 1819 this "giant among
dwarfs", as he was often considered by his contemporaries, had begun a
series of lectures in London and Bristol--those on Shakespeare can be, to an
extent, regarded as renewing cultural interest in the playwright.

From 1804 to 1806, Coleridge lived in Malta and travelled in Sicily and
Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his
health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. For a while
he had a civil-service job as the Public Secretary of the British
administration of Malta.

In 1816 Coleridge, following the worsening of his addiction, episodes of
severe depression, and alienation from family, took residence in the home of
the physician James Gillman, in Highgate, then a suburb of London. ln
Gillman's home he finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria
(1817), a volume composed of 25 chapters of autobiographical notes and
dissertations on various subjects, including some brilliantly perceptive
literary theory and criticism. The sections in which Coleridge's definitions
on the nature of poetry and the imagination - his famous distinction between
primary and secondary imagination on the one hand and fancy on the other -
are of special interest. Other writings were published while he was living
at the Gillman home, notably Sibylline Leaves (1817), Aids to Reflection
(1825), and Church and State (1830). He died in Highgate on July 25, 1834.

Poetry

Coleridge is probably best known for his hypnotic long poems, The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even people who have never read the Rime
have come under its influence: its words have given the English language the
metaphor of an albatross around one's neck, the (mis)quote of "water, water
everywhere, but not a drop to drink", and the phrase "a sadder but wiser
man". Christabel is known for its musical rhythm and language and its Gothic tale.

Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also
widely known and loved. It has strange, dreamy imagery and (like most good
poems) can be read on many levels. The name of Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu
comes from the first line of Kubla Khan. Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have
additional "romantic" aura because they were never finished.

Coleridge's shorter, meditative "conversation poems" speak from the heart of
the man who wrote them. These include both quiet poems like This Lime-Tree
Bower My Prison and Frost at Midnight and also strongly emotional poems like
Dejection and The Pains of Sleep.

Other Interests

Although known today primarily for his poetry, Coleridge also published
essays and books on literary theory and criticism and on politics,
philosophy, and theology. He introduced England to Immanuel Kant in his
lectures and "Thursday-night seminars" at Highgate. He wrote both political
commentary and hack journalism for several newspapers, especially during the
Napoleonic wars. He translated two of Schiller's plays from German to
English and wrote several dramas himself (Zapolya had successful runs in
London and Bristol). He also worked as a teacher and tutor, gave public
lectures and sermons, and almost single-handedly wrote and published two
periodicals, the Watchman and the Friend. During his life, he was famous for
his conversation.

He also was (and is) famous as an opium addict. But we probably should
remember that 18th-century life was usually quite painful. Opium was freely
available, routinely taken (usually in the form of laudanum), and the only
effective pain reliever extant (aspirin didn't appear until 1897). There
appears to have been no stigma associated with merely taking opium then, but
also no understanding of the physiological or psychological aspects of
addiction. Many people in all classes of English society took opium, many of
them became addicted. But Coleridge (as well as Thomas de Quincey) was more
public than most about his addiction and his feelings of moral guilt at
being addicted.

His letters, Table Talk, and range of friends reflect the breadth of his
interests. In addition to literary people such as William Wordsworth and
Charles Lamb, his friends included Humphry Davy the chemist, industrialists
such as the tanner Thomas Poole and members of the Wedgwood family,
Alexander Ball the military governor of Malta, the American painter
Washington Allston, and the physician James Gillman.

It was in all probability Charles Lamb who introduced Coleridge to the
writings of Sir Thomas Browne. Browne's erudite learning, literary style and
personality impressed him and Thomas De Quincey and both were aware of
Browne's drowsy opiate imagery. Coleridge not only annotated Browne's major
literary works, but enthused in his correspondence, 'O to write a character
of this man!'