Highlights Coleridge's views on poetic activity, the difference between fancy and imagination, primary imagination, secondary imagination and philosophic imagination. includes German Transcendentalism and Neoplatonism in Coleridge's Poetry as well.
For Coleridge poetic composition is the result of the complete
suspension of senses. Introspection and consciousness impede poetic
faculty. The creation of poetry is a fragile and unpredictable process in
which consciousness is an impediment. For him , unlike Wordsworth,
nature can’t console you, real joy has to come from within you. He
distinguishes between fancy and imagination. Fancy is present in all and
it is merely associative. It can just aggregate the perceptions stored in
the mind. Imagination is transforming, organising and unifying.
Imagination has two categories – Primary and Secondary. Primary
imagination which is present in all is involved with the sensory
perceptions of the world. The secondary imagination or the poetic
imagination is exclusively found in the poets which can “dissolve,
diffuse and dissipate” perceptions to create poetry. Organic unity and
coherence are the hallmarks of secondary imagination. It is with the
secondary imagination Coleridge familiarises the unfamiliar. Coleridge
believes in psychological exploitation. He takes opium to induce a
psychological and pharmacological state to create poetry. His
philosophy changes in the later years and there is a move from passive
materialism to transcendence.
In contrast to Wordsworth, Coleridge believes that whatever we
attribute to nature is a reflection of our self itself. Influenced by
German transcendentalism, he critiques associationism. The outer
world is perceived according to our minds. The mind colours your
perception of the world because you are already embedded in a
symbolic structure. This later influenced American transcendentalism.
Coleridge uses a certain neo-platonic understanding of knowledge tied
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