COLERIDGE AND ROMANTICISM

A poem in the narrower sense is "that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth, and from all other species it is discriminated  by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with the distinct gratification from it composed part".

Una poesia nel senso più stretto è quella specie di composizione che si oppone alle opera della scienza, si propone come suo immediate obiettivo il piacere, non la verità, e da tutte le altre specie si distingue perché il piacere che si propone deriva dalla totalità della composizione, come è compatibile con la distinta gratificazione delle parti da cui è composta.

→ armonia della parti (poesia di Coleridge)

A legitimate poem  s one "the parts of which mutually supported explain each other": all in their proportions harmonising with, and supporting the propose and the none influence of metrical arrangements.

A poem is always the work of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities (notion of organic unity) imagination and fancy: this distinction is tied to the nature of organic unity. Imagination is fitted to achieving true unity of expressions.

Fancy constructs surface decoration out of a new combinations of memories and perceptions.

POETRY AND IMAGINATION

The extract by Coleridge says that during the years where Wordsworth and Coleridge were neighbours they often discuss about poetry.

They agreed that the two cardinals points of poetry where:

• 1) its power of exciting the sympathy of the reader
• 2) its power of giving the interesting of nobility.

The first power could obtained by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, the second by the modifying colours of imagination.  

There also come into their mind the idea of composing two source of poem:

• a) poems where the incidents and agents where to be, in part at least, supernatural
• b) poems where subject were to be chosen from ordinary life

the first kind of poems should describe events which were supernatural as if they were real, the second kind should describe ordinary things and by the modifying colours of the "in word eye" (imagination) present them in unusual aspect.

This ideas were basic for the production of Lyrical Ballads where Coleridge's task was oriented towards people and characters supernatural while Wordsworth's was to give the charm of nobility to things of everyday.

To do this Coleridge was to elides a semblance of truth by a "willing suspension of this believing for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.

And Wordsworth had to awake the mind's attention to "the lethargy of customs" and direct it to the wonders of the word.

All that can only happened to people who "can see and feel".

The poet then describe as he/who "brings the whole soul of man into acrivity", and he diffuses a tone and spirit of unity.