When Coleridge was in his teens, he was fond of the poetry of William Bowles. Bowles was ten years older than Coleridge. Coleridge could relate to Bowles in a way that he couldn’t relate to Shakespeare and Milton. I had a similar feeling when I read Salinger; I felt that Salinger was describing my world, in my language. I could relate to Salinger in a way that I couldn’t relate to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
Coleridge seemed to feel that if he could understand and appreciate Bowles’ poetry, then perhaps he could write such poetry. Coleridge wrote, “admiration is the wind which fans and feeds [the young writer’s] hope.”1 I had a similar feeling when I read Nietzsche; I felt that if I could understand and appreciate Nietzsche, perhaps I could write something in that style. Many young writers begin as readers, begin by admiring a writer, understanding him, then writing something in his style. Admiration leads to imitation, and imitation eventually becomes independent creativity. Leopardi said, “There is little or no difference between appreciation and accomplishment.”2
But there’s a problem: once you write something, no one will appreciate it except those who could write something similar (since appreciation and accomplishment are closely related). So writing might flow easily from admiration, but finding an audience for your work — hoc opus, hic labor est. The more original the work, the harder it is to publish. “It was so easy to write my novel,” Proust said, “but how difficult it will be to publish it!”3
If no one appreciates your work, you can’t get published or make money. Worse, the people around you, the people you see every day — relatives, neighbors, friends — regard you as a total failure, a person who has ruined their own life, and threatens to ruin the life of anyone close to them. This is an almost unendurable situation, so the main goal becomes to endure, to survive. And when you look back at the decades, your proudest boast is, I survived, I endured.
Coleridge’s career as a literary critic began in high school, discussing poets like Bowles with his classmates. He even made hand-written books of Bowles’ poetry, and sold them to his friends. His discussions about poetry with his classmates, and his later discussions with Wordsworth, helped him to hone his critical theories.
Coleridge felt that the older poets, like Donne, were too philosophical, too intellectual, they sacrificed the heart to the head (some of these poets are now classified as Metaphysical Poets). Coleridge felt that modern poets were worse, they lost both heart and head in their pursuit of verbal fireworks.
In the older poets, Coleridge says, “We find the most fantastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but in the most pure and genuine mother English.” In modern poets, on the other hand, we find “the most obvious thoughts, in language the most fantastic and arbitrary.”4 Schopenhauer makes the same point about prose; he says, “Authors should use common words to say uncommon things. But they do just the opposite.”5
In an earlier issue, I argued that Muslim fanatics weren’t really certain about their religion; they acted boldly, they pretended certainty, but at the bottom of their soul was probably uncertainty. I wrote, “Jung thought that fanaticism is related to skepticism: ‘Fanaticism is nothing but over-compensated doubt.’” I wrote about groups like Al Qaeda,
| Are they as deeply religious as they seem? Or is their fundamentalism a desperate attempt to establish an identity distinct from the West? Is their fanaticism an effort to suppress their own doubts? Are they afraid that, if they begin to question the Koran, their questioning will acquire momentum, and sweep away their ancient faith, leaving them without a religion, and without an identity? |
If they were really certain about their religion, they would be more content, serene, peaceful.
Coleridge was a student of fanaticism, of spurious certainty, perhaps because he observed the French Revolutionaries. Coleridge makes a “frequent distinction between genuine certainty and pretended positiveness.” Coleridge said, “Feverish positiveness... deludes minds under the best impulses into the worst actions.”8
I’m reminded of Yeats’ lines:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Coleridge was also a student of literary critics, who often targeted him and his friends (such as Wordsworth and Southey). Coleridge argued that many critics, like fanatics, harbored doubts; critics weren’t at peace with themselves, they were “irritable.” Coleridge “diagnoses the state of irritability as belonging to the class of people who, unlike true geniuses, are uncertain about their powers and hence experience fear that gets vented in anger.” Coleridge speaks of, “an unquiet state of mind, which seeks alleviation by quarreling with the occasion of it.” The unquiet mind of the critic might be compared to the unquiet mind of the terrorist, the terrorist who tries to suppress his doubts with a show of certainty, positiveness, decisiveness.
We might suppose that Coleridge and Wordsworth were indifferent to the barrage of criticism they received, we might suppose that they were confident of the merit of their work. After all, they were well-known while still young, and by the time they were forty, they had a kind of celebrity. But they were stung by the criticism, perhaps because every writer, even the most confident, has some doubt about their own work, perhaps because they knew that at least some of the criticisms had some justification. At any rate, they were stung, and they hit back. Coleridge blasted “the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism.” Coleridge quoted Pliny the Younger:
| Let it not be any prejudice to his merit that he is a contemporary writer. Had he flourished in some distant age, not only his works, but the very pictures and statues of him would have been passionately inquired after. Shall we then, from a sort of satiety, and merely because he is present among us, suffer his talents to languish and fade away unhonored and unadmired? It is surely a very perverse and envious disposition, to look with indifference upon a man worthy of the highest approbation, for no other reason but because we have it in our power to see him, and to converse familiarly with him, and not only to give him our applause, but to receive him into our friendship.9 (Neque enim debet operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos nunquam vidimus, floruis set, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquire remus, ejusdem nunc honor praesentis, et gratia quasi satie tate languescit? At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari hominem admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare contingit.) |
Coleridge knew that personal attacks are popular; there’s a market for slander. Coleridge wrote, “As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.”
A. The Go-Between (1971) is a first-rate movie, based on a novel by L. P. Hartley. Set on an English estate around 1900, it depicts a young boy who carries messages between an attractive young woman and the men who are interested in her. The movie includes a time-shift that may confuse some viewers, a time-shift fifty years ahead (I needed to re-watch certain parts).
The director, Joseph Losey, was born and raised in the U.S., but spent much of his career in Britain (his Communist sympathies made him a persona non grata in the U.S.). Losey persuaded the British playwright Harold Pinter to try his hand at film scripts. The Losey-Pinter collaboration produced three films that Wikipedia calls “enduring classics”: The Servant, Accident, and The Go-Between.
B. I was disappointed by The Servant (1963), which is based on a novella by Robin Maugham (nephew of Somerset Maugham). It’s rather dark and dismal, as if Losey and Pinter despised sunny Hollywood movies, and wanted to go to the other extreme. The Servant has high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, which says that it “strikes at class divisions.” The Servant was made at a time when British society was becoming more egalitarian, when the aristocracy was losing the last vestiges of their ancient power; some people still had servants, but it was regarded as an old-fashioned, degrading custom, a custom that deserved to die.
The Servant depicts both employer and employed in a negative way, there are no admirable characters. The servant may be even less admirable than his boss; the servant plays a corrupting, malevolent role.
C. Accident (1967) isn’t as painful to watch as The Servant, but it has the same dark, perverse character. It hasn’t resonated with critics or the public, and its RottenTomatoes ratings are mediocre; I don’t recommend it.
One of its redeeming features is that it has attractive scenes of the English countryside, and the Oxford campus. Pinter’s writing is skillful, and he persuades you that these are real people, you suspend your disbelief. Like The Go-Between, Accident has a time-shift (the beginning of the movie is the end of the story), but this time-shift isn’t confusing, it might even add to the movie. Accident is based on a novel by Nicholas Mosley.
D. Beyond Utopia (2023) is a brutal documentary about attempting to escape from North Korea. It describes the work of “Pastor Kim,” a South Korean pastor who has developed a network of “brokers,” who guide people from North Korea to China to various other countries, and finally to freedom in South Korea. Pastor Kim often travels with the escapers himself, and he has sustained numerous injuries.
Perhaps young people should see Beyond Utopia, it shows how hard life can be under a tyrannical regime; North Korea is one big prison, and a harsh prison at that. On the other hand, Beyond Utopia raises the question, “How much brutality should a film-viewer subject himself to?” I don’t doubt that the film is authentic, educational, and moving, but how can I recommend a film that’s painful to watch?
© L. James Hammond 2023
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| Footnotes | |
| 1. | Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch. 1 back |
| 2. | Leopardi, Parini’s Discourse on Glory. Project Gutenberg has an 1882 translation of Leopardi. It contains these two sentences: “In order to distinctly recognize the value of a perfect or nearly perfect work, deserving of immortality, it is not enough merely to be accustomed to write. You yourself must be able to accomplish the work in question almost as perfectly as the writer himself.” I don’t recall which translation of Leopardi I read, probably a more modern one. I haven’t been able to trace the original Italian.
Coleridge would have readily understood Leopardi’s view. In fact, Coleridge made a similar point, Coleridge said that appreciation leads to imitation, which leads to creative power: “In energetic minds, truth soon changes by domestication into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product [i.e., from being able to appraise someone else’s work], becomes influencive in the production [i.e., enables one to produce one’s own work]. To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.”(Biographia Literaria, Ch. 4) back |
| 3. | George Painter, Marcel Proust: A Biography, Vol. 2, Ch. 9 back |
| 4. | Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch. 1 back |
| 5. | The Art of Literature, “On Style” back |
| 6. | Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions: 1772-1804, Ch. 1, #3 back |
| 7. | Coleridge’s Variety, edited by John Beer, Ch. 6, “Coleridge’s Anxiety,” by Thomas McFarland, p. 148. The next five or ten quotes are from this essay. McFarland says that the coolness between Coleridge and his mother is comparable to that between Samuel Johnson and his mother. back |
| 8. | Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition), p. 409, footnote 4, and p. 408. The American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote a study of fanaticism called The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements. Did Hoffer view fanaticism as repressed doubt? back |
| 9. | Biographia Literaria, Ch. 1 back |