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He was still haunted
by his failure to break free from opium, however, and to this end he moved
into the house of an apothecary named James Gillman, asking Gillman to help
cut back his opium dose. Like all addicts, though, Coleridge quickly had an
alternate supply arranged. He had apparently separated from his children as
well; his friends and relatives had to take up a collection to send his
children to school, and at one point, he went 8 years without seeing his
children. His London friends, though, loved his conversational skills and
continually sought him out. His nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, published a
collection of Coleridge’s conversation called Table Talk, and
Coleridge himself was not only publishing new works, like Aids to
Reflection (1825), but was reprinting the old in hopes of finally making
a real financial contribution to his family. By 1830, the reviews of his
work were becoming more and more positive, and he was generally hailed as
the finest critic of his day. However, he still could not reach financial
security. He died, surprisingly peacefully, on 25 July 1834, leaving only
books and manuscripts behind.
His Major Poems
Kubla Khan was
probably written around 1797. There was a famous episode about it that
Coleridge was unable to finish the poem, because he was interrupted by a
“person from Porlock”, who would not leave. It was probably not true but he
just could not keep his concentration. No matter it is true or not, Kubla
Khan, a dream poem, is unfinished but leaving only 54 lines. The poem
can be divided into two parts. Part one has some connections with Kubla
Khan:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure—dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
But part two has nothing to do with Kubla. It is about a dream within dream:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
But the dream is still not complete. In fact the whole version is not for
story, but for stressing the effect of inspiration and imagination. The
shift change of scenes shows the intangible of imagination. One of the
characteristics of English Romanism is reflect: mystery. And its way of
stress on musical and visional beauty without concerning meaning and
morality becomes the forerunner of modern abstract poetry and absolute poem.
The Rime of Ancient Mariner was the only
complete poem that Coleridge left. It is a long poem telling an odd story in
the dress of ballads. Three guests were on their way to a wedding party, but
an unexpected ancient mariner detained one of guests. This old sailor
insisted on telling him of his adventures at sea, although at the beginning
the young man was unwilling but gradually being calm down by “his glittering
eye”. The story the old mariner told was
Gothic, full of horrors. The sea
journey began with peace:
“The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.”
But as the ship sailed towards the South Pole, the snow-fog comes. Then an
albatross:
“Thorough the fog it came;
As is it had been a Christian soul,”
As an omen of luck, it was received with joy and the ship sailed peaceful
again. But the old sailor without thinking a reason shot the lucky down.
Then the misfortune felt on the ship. The whole crew except the old man died
of thirst. This exception was not a lucky but suffering, because he must
face the denounce eyes of the dead.
“Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!”
The spell broke only when the old man repented his guilty sincerely. Alive
creature came up, and then the ship safety driven back to England.
The poem presents a supernatural realm towards the reader, but it at the
same time successfully creates a sense of reality: the sea, fog, etc. This
perfect combination of nature and supernature makes the poem become one of
the representative works of English Romanticism. The whole poem owns a
careful and refined structure, each part due links to others. The language
is simple but full of beauty. And the theme, which greatly violates the
principles of Enlightenment, is profound: sin cannot be explained by reason;
the punishment by law is not the harshest, but by conscience is; and the
only way that can solve all is love. Here, the power of love that
Romanticism stressed appears.
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