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Bezig met laden... Coleridge: Poems and Prose Selected by Kathleen Rainedoor Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kathleen Raine (Redacteur)
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Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Penguin Poets (D35)
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There are certainly many famous lines in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of Coleridge's longer works:
“Water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”
I can't quite savor this poem though--probably bad associations from it being forced upon me in school, but it doesn't sing to me.
"Christabel," which was never finished was... interesting--because it seemed to have such an obvious erotic subtext between two women--and I'm not the kind that usually reads that sort of thing into literature:
"Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropped to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom and half her side-
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!”
That hasn't been lost on critics and looking it up I've seen "Christabel" described as a "Lesbian Vampire" tale. However, there's a quality of WTF to that given what I read of Coleridge's literary criticism. There's a lot in his prose works that made Coleridge sound like a rather priggish moralist to me. Two-thirds of this volume consists of prose writings by Coleridge, largely on the subject of poetry and drama, particularly Shakespeare. And Milton--of whom Coleridge said that in his Eve in Paradise Lost Milton had written the epitome of female characterizations. I read Paradise Lost a few months ago--and it was among the most misogynist works I've ever read. Coleridge's comments on Shakespeare's female characters also often made me think he was the opposite of a feminist. I find it impossible to believe Coleridge meant a lesbian or feminist context in "Christabel." And when you feel a poet is truly clueless about the meanings in his own poem, it's hard to respect him.
Then there's "Kubla Khan" and I do have to admit I find it resonant and enchanting--my favorite poem in the book despite that, like "Christabel," it's essentially a uncompleted fragment:
"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."
That poem for me was the best of it. Unlike with Donne, Shakespeare and Keats, I didn't discover here new and unfamiliar poems that delighted me. In fact, I might have rated this book even lower, were it not that I did find a lot of Coleridge's Shakespeare criticism of interest. ( )