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 | A Book I Value: |
This file is also available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format MARGINALIA 1801 Immanuel Kant, Critik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], Leipzig, 1799. The works of Kant were of the profoundest influence upon Coleridge, who memorably described them as having taken possession of him "as with a giant's hand" when he was a young man; he goes on to say, in Biographia Literaria, that "after fifteen years familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration." The following notes from Coleridge's first reading of the Critique of Pure Reason date from about 1801. An aeolian or eolian harp is a stringed box that is left out of doors or in a window to make music as the wind passes over the strings. "Linley" is a reference to Thomas Linley the Younger, a celebrated violinist; "mind's eye" is a phrase from Hamlet 1.2.185; Fichte was one of the two or three most important successors to Kant in the next generation. [# 1] Doubts during a first perusal--i.e. Struggles felt, not arguments objected. 1. How can that be called ein mannigfaltiges fold], which yet contains in itself the ground, why I apply one category to it rather than another? one mathematical form and not another? The mind does not resemble an Eolian Harp, nor even a barrel-organ turned by a stream of water, conceive as many tunes mechanized in it as you like--but rather, as far as Objects are concerned, a violin, or other instrument of few strings yet vast compass, played on by a musician of Genius. The Breeze that blows across the Eolian Harp, the streams that turned the handle of the Barrel Organ, might be called ein mannigfaltiges [a manifold], a mere sylva incondita [unformed matter], but who would call the muscles and purpose of Linley a confused Manifold? [# 2] The perpetual and unmoving Cloud of Darkness, that hangs over this Work to my "mind's eye", is the absence of any clear account of--was ist Erfahrung [what is experience]? What do you mean by a fact, an empiric Reality, which alone can give solidity (inhalt [content]) to our Conceptions?--It seems from many passages, that this indispensible Test is itself previously manufactured by this very conceptive Power--and that the whole not of our own making is the mere sensation of a mere Manifold--in short, mere influx of motion, to use a physical metaphor.--I apply the Categoric forms to a Tree--well! but first what is this tree? How do I come by this Tree?--Fichte I understand very well--only I cannot believe his System. But Kant I do not understand--i.e. I have not discovered what he proposes for my Belief.--Is it Dogmatism?--Why then make the opposition between Phaenomena and Things in themselves--~[things that really exist]? Is it Idealism? What Test then can I find in the different modifications of my Being to verify and substantiate each other? What other distinction between Schein and Erscheinung, Illusion and Appearance more than the old one of--in one I dream to myself, and in the other I dream in common: The Man in a fever is only outvoted by his Attendants--He does not see their Dream, and they do not see his. 1803 Robert Anderson, ed., The Works of the British Poets, Edinburgh and London, 1792-95. Coleridge wrote notes in three different sets of Anderson's popular anthology. This set is unusual in containing notes by William Wordsworth as well; in fact, in the example given, Coleridge's note begins as a comment on an earlier note by Wordsworth, written at the end of the section devoted to Shakespeare's sonnets. The book belonged to Coleridge, but he expected that his brother-in-law and housemate Robert Southey, whom he mentions, would be reading his notes, and that his own son Hartley, whom he addresses directly, would one day inherit the set. "Potter's Antiquities" was a common schoolbook, John Potter's Archaeologia Graeca: or the Antiquities of Greece; Coleridge mentions specifically a chapter about the Greeks'"Love of Boys" which maintains that there was nothing sexual about it. "Johnson" means the playwright Ben Jonson, whom Coleridge frequently uses, as here, along with Beaumont and Fletcher and Massinger, as a more or less contemporary point of comparison with Shakespeare. [#3.] [Wordsworth's note:] These sonnets, beginning at 127, to his Mistress, are worse than a puzzle-peg. They are abominably harsh obscure & worthless. The others are for the most part much better, have many fine lines very fine lines & passages. They are also in many places warm with passion. Their chief faults, and heavy ones they are, are sameness, tediousness, quaintness, & elaborate obscurity.-- With exception of the Sonnets to his Mistress (& even of these the expressions are unjustly harsh) I can by no means subscribe to the above pencil mark of W. Wordsworth; which however, it is my wish, should never be erased. It is his: & grievously am I mistaken, & deplorably will Englishmen have degenerated, if the being his will not, in times to come, give it a Value, as of a little reverential Relict--the rude mark of his Hand left by the Sweat of Haste in a St Veronica Handkerchief! And Robert Southey! My sweet Hartley! if thou livest, thou wilt not part with this Book without sad necessity & a pang at Heart. O be never weary of repe-rusing the four first Volumes of this Collection, my eldest born!--To day thou art to be christened, being more than 7 years of age, o with what reluctance & distaste have I permitted this unchristian, & in its spirit & consequences anti-christian, Foolery to be performed upon thee, Child of free Nature. On thy Brother Derwent, & thy Sister Sara, somewhat; but chiefly on thee. These Sonnets then, I trust, if God preserve thy Life, Hartley! thou wilt read with a deep Interest, having learnt to love the Plays of Shakespere, co-ordinate with Milton, and subordinate only to thy Bible. To thee, I trust, they will help to explain the mind of Shakespere, & if thou wouldst understand these Sonnets, thou must read the Chapter in Potter's Antiquities on the Greek Lovers--of whom were that Theban Band of Brothers, over whom Philip, their victor, stood weeping; & surveying their dead bodies, each with his Shield over the Body of his Friend, all dead in the place where they fought, solemnly cursed those, whose base, fleshly, & most calumnious Fancies had suspected their Love of Desires against Nature. This pure Love Shakespere appears to have felt--to have been no way ashamed of it--or even to have suspected that others could have suspected it/ yet at the same time he knew that so strong a Love would have been made more compleatly a Thing of Permanence & Reality, & have been blessed more by Nature & taken under her more especial protection, if this Object of his Love had been at the same Time a possible Object of Desire/ for Nature is not bad only--in this Feeling, he must have written the 20th Sonnet, but its possibility seems never to have entered even his Imagination. It is noticeable, that not even an Allusion to that very worst of all possible Vices (for it is wise to think of the Disposition, as a Vice, not of the absurd & despicable Act, as a crime) not even any allusion to it in all his numerous Plays--whereas Johnson, Beaumont & Fletcher, & Massinger are full of them. O my Son! I pray fervently that thou may'st know inwardly how impossible it was for a Shakespere not to have been in his heart's heart chaste. I see no elaborate obscurity & very little quaintness--nor do I know any Sonnets that will bear such frequent reperusal: so rich in metre, so full of Thought & exquisitest Diction. 1804 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The Emperor Marcus Antoninus His Conversation with Himself . . . To which is added The Mythological Picture of Cebes the Theban, trans. Jeremy Collier, London, 1701. The earliest notes in this volume appear to have been written aboard the ship Speedwell when Coleridge went to Malta in the spring of 1804, but he returned to the book later--in 1808, 1811, 1818-19, and 1826. [# 4]That Remedies were prescrib'd me in a Dream, against Giddiness, and Spitting of Blood; As I remember, it happen'd both at Cajeta, and Chrysa. . . . |