Re: more

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Thu, 02 Jul 1998 13:26:38 -0600 (MDT)

I wondered if Scottie knew he was punning on Geofrey Hartman by calling
critics "parasitic" since Hartman does a wonderful job of explaining that
relationship in positive ways and as creative writing...in any case, you
need to read and know something to dis it well...

Ok, digs aside, here's more...

In _Biographia Literaria XV_, Coleridge (an old albatross?) comes to our
discussion (entering the stage from the right) from England and in time to
give us his idea of just what a poet is and does--note how much humanity
writers (and implicitly readers) must bring to texts, as well as how
Coleridege sees the poet as subordinate to poetry, which I take to mean
that literature happens both with and beyond the vision of the writer.

"The poet, described in _ideal_ perfection, brings the whole soul of man
into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other,
according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and
spirtiy of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by
that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively
appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by
the will and understanding, and retained under thier irremissive, though
gentle and unnoticed, control (_laxis effertur habenis _) reveals itself
in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of
sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete;  the idea,
with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of
novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual
state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and
steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement;
and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the articificial, still
subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiratgion
of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry."

(I'm quoting punctuation exactly, so complain to Coleridge not me if the
grammar was a bit sticky)

Let it rip (i'm enjoying the strand!) will