Coleridge had a radical youth, what with trying to start up an isolated society of pantisocratic government with his buddies out in the wilds of Pennsylvania. The pantisocracy is defined in the Norton as “a society ruled by equals” (580); though the Norton claims that the plans “collapsed,” I don’t think STC abandoned the ideology completely. In his text Biographia Literaria, he claims that “a legitimate poem…must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each other” (589). It may just be me, but those two definitions sound awfully similar. Based on this idea of unity, the concept of the pantisocratic commune would be one of “a spirit of unity,” a “harmonious whole…[with] the remaining parts…preserved in keeping with [it]” (590). That’s how STC describes the work of the ideal poet; good sense, he concludes, “forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole” (591). In the pantisocracy, every person would rule the commune equally, like harmonious parts of one great whole. This ideal society transmuted itself into STC’s concept of real or ideal poetry; so really, how much did he abandon his pantisocratic ideology?
Pax,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that his social projects got left behind as he got older and more drug dependent. If we accept that notion, then it does make sense that he would retreat into a poetic imagination.