Immaginazione secondo Coleridge: tra poesia e filosofia

Coleridge and how he perceived imagination

Coleridge considered two kinds of imagination: the primary imagination is part of unconscious, was the ability to perceive reality giving chaos a certain order and the material of perception a certain shape. The secondary imagination was voluntary, this is an act that can only do the poet, in fact he dissolves, dissipates, in order to recreate. The artistic principle isn’t “art as mimesis” but the artists have to recreate it.

Primary and Secondary imagination

Primary imagination is equivalent to Wordsworth’s spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, while Wordsworth’s emotion-copy, which is produced after tranquil contemplation, is parallel to Coleridge’s secondary imagination. The idea of primary and secondary imagination on fancy is contain in the Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.

How fantasy can be used

Fancy is mechanical ability the poet have to use metaphor, alliteration. Fancy is used in The Rime of the ancient mariner. He wrote facts, which read but he changed the whole story. Coleridge added the power of associating them into a new striking unity. Fancy is a new way to talk about something that already exists.

Coleridge and the nature

Coleridge did not view nature as a normal guide. He saw nature and the material world in a sort of neo Platonic interpretation: the material world is nothing but the projection of the real world of the Ideas on the flux time.

Coleridge: the biography

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21 October 1772 at Ottery St Mary, in England. His father was the reverend John Coleridge and Anne Bowden was his mother.
Since he was young, he was attracted by literature that became his passion and his comfort. His father also testified that his son was able to read constantly all the day.

In 1782, he was able to study at Christ’s Hospital where he was taught by Boyer about Greek and Latin literary works. He, then, appreciated also Voltaire, the Neoplatonists and medical essays. In this period, Coleridge started to write some verses.

In 1791 he was enrolled at Jesus College, at Cambridge. He felt like hi did not fit in the academic scenario so two years later he decided to join the army but then he came back although he never graduated.

In the meantime, he met Robert Southey with whom he planned to establish a pantisocracy in England and in Wales. They also organized meetings and conferences and Coleridge also wrote some sonnets for the Morning Chronicle but, at the end, Southey renounced and all their efforts became vain while their friendship was over.
Nevertheless, in 1795 Coleridge got married with Southey’s sister in law, Sarah Fricker.

After some disappointments, Coleridge and his wife moved to Nether Stowey.
In 1797 he met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy who moved only 5 kilometres far from him. As a matter of fact, they had the chance to see each other in person everyday and that allowed them to reach their poetic maturity.
From this partnership Lyrical Ballads was conceived and written in 1798.
In this first edition, Wordsworth contributed for most of the ballads but Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which had a really wide inheritance in lots of writers.

A couple of month later, the two poets went to Germany where they took different paths. In particular, Coleridge started to study Lessing and Kant. He met again Wordsworth in London but he started to be addicted to opium since he also got some rheumatic pain.

From 1810 to 1820 Coleridge gave lectures about Shakespeare and Milton that made him an authoritative intellectual. He was especially known for his conference about the Hamlet because he was the first modern author to revaluate this play.

Coleridge died on the 25th July 1834 at Highgate because of an heart attack.