The spiritual is the word I think and not religious. It is too private a flight to be called religious in a sense of public discursivity. In both Wordsworth and Coleridge, the journey is towards a realization of the godhead through the phenomenal world of nature that opens onto the noumenal in being the most delightful creation of God, the creator. The omnipresence of God is thus a major theme in both the poets. This access is also a journey toward poetic eternity where the transcendental order is supposed to be glimpsed.
In Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and the long poem Prelude and even The Intimations of Immortality, this is the journey that we see. The maturation of this journey is also related to the development of the poetic faculty in Wordsworth.
In Coleridge's poems, much like Keats, there is a failure, more often than not, in this journey. There is a level at which the divinity remains incomprehensible. This is a pattern we locate in the Conversation Poems, Frost at Midnight and so on. Even the end of Kubla Khan is about the awe of this journey. It is forbidden in the final run, though there is a need to undergo it.
No comments:
Post a Comment