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Coleridge #2
Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804-1834
Richard Holmes's Early Visions won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Prize. Darker Reflections , the long-awaited second volume, chronicles the last thirty years of his career (1804-1834), a period of domestic and professional turmoil. His marriage foundered, his opium addiction increased, he quarreled bitterly with Wordsworth, and his son, Hartley (a gifted poet himself), became an alcoholic. But after a desperate time of transition, Coleridge reemerged as a new kind of philosophical and meditative author, a great and daring poet, and a lecturer of genius.
Holmes traces the development of Coleridge into a legend among the younger generation of Romantic writers--the "hooded eagle amongst blinking owls"--and the influence he had on Hazlitt, De Quincey, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Walter Scott, Carlyle, and J. S. Mill, among others. And he rediscovers Coleridge's power as a conversationalist and a ceaseless generator of ideas. As Charles Lamb noted, "his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged."
Although Coleridge's later life was not a happy one, it is continually fascinating. As Holmes brings it vividly to life in these pages, we feel his hopeless heartaches, his moments of elation, his electrifying creativity and boundless energy, his unfailing ability to rescue himself from the darkest abyss. The result is a brilliantly animated, superbly detailed, wondrously provocative portrait of an extraordinary artist and an even more extraordinary human being.
Holmes traces the development of Coleridge into a legend among the younger generation of Romantic writers--the "hooded eagle amongst blinking owls"--and the influence he had on Hazlitt, De Quincey, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Walter Scott, Carlyle, and J. S. Mill, among others. And he rediscovers Coleridge's power as a conversationalist and a ceaseless generator of ideas. As Charles Lamb noted, "his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged."
Although Coleridge's later life was not a happy one, it is continually fascinating. As Holmes brings it vividly to life in these pages, we feel his hopeless heartaches, his moments of elation, his electrifying creativity and boundless energy, his unfailing ability to rescue himself from the darkest abyss. The result is a brilliantly animated, superbly detailed, wondrously provocative portrait of an extraordinary artist and an even more extraordinary human being.
656 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
23 people are currently reading
482 people want to read
About the author
Richard Holmes
31 books238 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.
Biographer Richard Holmes was born in London, England on 5 November 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge. His first book, Shelley:The Pursuit, was published in 1974 and won a Somerset Maugham Award. The first volume of his biography of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge: Early Visions, was published in 1989 and won the Whitbread Book of the Year award. Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (1993), an account of Johnson's undocumented friendship with the notorious poet Richard Savage, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) in 1993. The second volume of his study of Coleridge, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, was published in 1998. It won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Heinemann Award and was shortlisted for the first Samuel Johnson Prize awarded in 1999.
Richard Holmes writes and reviews regularly for various journals and newspapers, including the New York Review of Books. His most recent book, Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer (2000), continues the exploration of his own highly original biographical method that he first wrote about in Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985). He is also editor of a new series of editions of classic English biographies that includes work by Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and William Godwin.
His latest book, The Age of Wonder (2008), is an examination of the life and work of the scientists of the Romantic age who laid the foundations of modern science. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded an OBE in 1992. He was awarded an honorary Litt.D. in 2000 by the University of East Anglia, where he was appointed Professor of Biographical Studies in September 2001.
See this thread for more information.
Biographer Richard Holmes was born in London, England on 5 November 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge. His first book, Shelley:The Pursuit, was published in 1974 and won a Somerset Maugham Award. The first volume of his biography of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge: Early Visions, was published in 1989 and won the Whitbread Book of the Year award. Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (1993), an account of Johnson's undocumented friendship with the notorious poet Richard Savage, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) in 1993. The second volume of his study of Coleridge, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, was published in 1998. It won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Heinemann Award and was shortlisted for the first Samuel Johnson Prize awarded in 1999.
Richard Holmes writes and reviews regularly for various journals and newspapers, including the New York Review of Books. His most recent book, Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer (2000), continues the exploration of his own highly original biographical method that he first wrote about in Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985). He is also editor of a new series of editions of classic English biographies that includes work by Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and William Godwin.
His latest book, The Age of Wonder (2008), is an examination of the life and work of the scientists of the Romantic age who laid the foundations of modern science. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded an OBE in 1992. He was awarded an honorary Litt.D. in 2000 by the University of East Anglia, where he was appointed Professor of Biographical Studies in September 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 15, 2014
When one speaks of magisterial works, Richard Holmes's two-volume biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is what I think of. I just completed volume II, Darker Reflections, and it is amazing. Just amazing.
The second volume begins as Coleridge leaves England for Malta. Coleridge's opium addiction is well documented, and Holmes is able to move Coleridge's addiction beyond the sparkling creativity of "Kubla Khan" to the often desperate, agonizing, embarrassing, and hellish addiction it was. All the signs we think of regarding modern addiction are there: the dissembling, the hiding, the borrowing, the broken promises, the desire to escape the addiction but caught in its throes. Holmes makes no case that the addiction hindered Coleridge's later career, but one can infer that.
We learn a great deal about Coleridge's lectures, about the break with Wordsworth (who comes off as cold and holier-than-thou), and his generosity despite his own hardships. Holmes gives us all the familiar stories (the meeting with John Keats) and much else. Holmes is also a careful reader of the notes, letters, fragments, and lectures. He never pushes their interpretation, but he skillfully quotes them to be a part of the narrative.
What does this all amount to though? A good biography gives the reader a good narrative with excellent detail. We see the subject of the biography from the perspective of a movie. Roderick Beaton's George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel is such a biography. This is not a criticism of Beaton's biography, which I found expertly done, well written, and with valuable insights to Seferis (one of my favorite poets). Additionally, Beaton's biography places Seferis in context to his time, his culture, his world. But I said earlier that Holme's biography of Coleridge is not just amazing but magisterial. What sets it apart from nearly every biography I have read is that we don't see Coleridge from the perspective of a movie, but we feel as if we're next to him, eavesdropping on conversations.
Coleridge is one of those that if you could go back in time and have dinner with would be on my list. I knew he was a great talker, but Holmes makes him into an amazing talker and able to enchant us in a paradoxically fluid but disjointed tale that touches on German metaphyics, elucidations of Shakespeare, the politics of power, and so on.
What a read this biography is.
The second volume begins as Coleridge leaves England for Malta. Coleridge's opium addiction is well documented, and Holmes is able to move Coleridge's addiction beyond the sparkling creativity of "Kubla Khan" to the often desperate, agonizing, embarrassing, and hellish addiction it was. All the signs we think of regarding modern addiction are there: the dissembling, the hiding, the borrowing, the broken promises, the desire to escape the addiction but caught in its throes. Holmes makes no case that the addiction hindered Coleridge's later career, but one can infer that.
We learn a great deal about Coleridge's lectures, about the break with Wordsworth (who comes off as cold and holier-than-thou), and his generosity despite his own hardships. Holmes gives us all the familiar stories (the meeting with John Keats) and much else. Holmes is also a careful reader of the notes, letters, fragments, and lectures. He never pushes their interpretation, but he skillfully quotes them to be a part of the narrative.
What does this all amount to though? A good biography gives the reader a good narrative with excellent detail. We see the subject of the biography from the perspective of a movie. Roderick Beaton's George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel is such a biography. This is not a criticism of Beaton's biography, which I found expertly done, well written, and with valuable insights to Seferis (one of my favorite poets). Additionally, Beaton's biography places Seferis in context to his time, his culture, his world. But I said earlier that Holme's biography of Coleridge is not just amazing but magisterial. What sets it apart from nearly every biography I have read is that we don't see Coleridge from the perspective of a movie, but we feel as if we're next to him, eavesdropping on conversations.
Coleridge is one of those that if you could go back in time and have dinner with would be on my list. I knew he was a great talker, but Holmes makes him into an amazing talker and able to enchant us in a paradoxically fluid but disjointed tale that touches on German metaphyics, elucidations of Shakespeare, the politics of power, and so on.
What a read this biography is.
Want to read
March 1, 2017
"For in this bleak World of Mutabilities, & where what is not changed, is chilled, and in this winter-time of my own Being, I resemble a Bottle of Brandy in Spitzbergen -- a Dram of alcoholic Fire in the centre of a Cake of Ice."
November 12, 2022
I would’ve given this book 7 stars if I could. As I said with the first part of Richard Home’s biography, this is an astonishing work, beautifully blending research, poetry prose, anecdotes, history, philosophy, analysis and interpretation. I dare you not to be profoundly moved and awe-inspired by his portrayal of Coleridge and his genius.
December 19, 2018
One day in 2007, while living in England, I embarked on a pilgrimage. Within the previous few months, with the help of a great friend, I visited Nether Stowey and Coleridge Cottage. This voyage to Nether Stowey was not an easy task. It is not near a railway and takes some time to get to by car. There I experienced the atmosphere I read of in Volume 1 of Holmes's biography, the "famous" Coleridge, the site of the composition of "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Frost at Midnight", one of my all time favorite poems. The clock positioned on the wall when he lived there tick tocks still, and one can actually experience the sensation of a sound Coleridge knew well.
In 2007, I was in need of a break. I had re-read this second volume for the second time. This time, London beckoned. It was crisp and frigid day, I had a miserable fever, and it was drizzling. But I was determined. I took the Tube to the Highgate destination and walked up the hill, armed with the knowledge Holmes shares here: the final home of Coleridge, the home prior to that down the street, and, because the building still exists despite now being a real estate office, the location where he surreptitiously maintained his illicit laudanum habit. The latter two aren't overly impressive, but, like Holmes, I'm an enthusiast for "going there" to the actual locus that my favorite authors knew so well. I imagined Coleridge in his middle age, walking around Highgate, and living essentially in retirement. I located the house (and window) where Coleridge lived and died. I walked across the street to St. Michael's Church, determined to "meet" Coleridge the only I could, by standing at his grave and paying my brief respects.
St. Michael's was not open to the public, but nonetheless, I knocked on the thick church door and received an answer. I told the minister that I was a scholar interested in visiting the grave. He lies in the transept with a sadly decaying stone in a place of honor. I had "private time" with the poet, donated money to the church, and bought an engraving of the stone. Then I obviously retreated into the cozy warm confines of a local pub to assuage my fever and aches, to take shelter from the elements, and to enjoy my experience encountering Coleridge.
This book is one of my very favorite biographies of all time. Having now read it a third time, I didn't want it to end again. It reads like Coleridge's legendary capability of talking mesmerically about philosophy, literature, and the metaphysical. But what places it in the literary biography pantheon personally is that it takes the second act of Coleridge's life, when he was considered a washed up "drug addict" who had little to offer poetry (at least in print) and who had been discarded by Wordsworth (who I would assert steals too much of Coleridge's thunder), and makes a vibrant life become reality, who in Coleridgean terms takes primary imagination of the mind and makes it the active secondary imagination of composition. Despite all the reasons we should probably disregard these years - the neo-puritan disregard of Wordsworth, the snickering of his closest associates, the public mockery of a "washed up" poet - we find Coleridge alive and well in his private writings, constantly exploring new avenues of thought.
I won't apologize for Coleridge's failings, but Holmes NAILS it here with an incisive look into his mind, writing with sympathy and personal care, almost as if he were Mr. Gilman (read the book) care-taking for Coleridge. It's a true story, and a deeply affecting one. Coleridge gets far too little credit for his deep influence on Romanticism (Wordsworth gets far too much despite his achievements), but I personally prefer Coleridge's work (when focused enough to write poetry) over Wordsworth's in their maturity. To read this book is to enter Coleridge's mind based on his private life. I'm sure I will visit it - and the cultural sites - again. But this book is exactly the same thing, where my mind can revisit them in my imagination, a thought which would have made Coleridge smile. This should also please Richard Holmes, and the highest possible praise I can dedicate to this all time great book.
In 2007, I was in need of a break. I had re-read this second volume for the second time. This time, London beckoned. It was crisp and frigid day, I had a miserable fever, and it was drizzling. But I was determined. I took the Tube to the Highgate destination and walked up the hill, armed with the knowledge Holmes shares here: the final home of Coleridge, the home prior to that down the street, and, because the building still exists despite now being a real estate office, the location where he surreptitiously maintained his illicit laudanum habit. The latter two aren't overly impressive, but, like Holmes, I'm an enthusiast for "going there" to the actual locus that my favorite authors knew so well. I imagined Coleridge in his middle age, walking around Highgate, and living essentially in retirement. I located the house (and window) where Coleridge lived and died. I walked across the street to St. Michael's Church, determined to "meet" Coleridge the only I could, by standing at his grave and paying my brief respects.
St. Michael's was not open to the public, but nonetheless, I knocked on the thick church door and received an answer. I told the minister that I was a scholar interested in visiting the grave. He lies in the transept with a sadly decaying stone in a place of honor. I had "private time" with the poet, donated money to the church, and bought an engraving of the stone. Then I obviously retreated into the cozy warm confines of a local pub to assuage my fever and aches, to take shelter from the elements, and to enjoy my experience encountering Coleridge.
This book is one of my very favorite biographies of all time. Having now read it a third time, I didn't want it to end again. It reads like Coleridge's legendary capability of talking mesmerically about philosophy, literature, and the metaphysical. But what places it in the literary biography pantheon personally is that it takes the second act of Coleridge's life, when he was considered a washed up "drug addict" who had little to offer poetry (at least in print) and who had been discarded by Wordsworth (who I would assert steals too much of Coleridge's thunder), and makes a vibrant life become reality, who in Coleridgean terms takes primary imagination of the mind and makes it the active secondary imagination of composition. Despite all the reasons we should probably disregard these years - the neo-puritan disregard of Wordsworth, the snickering of his closest associates, the public mockery of a "washed up" poet - we find Coleridge alive and well in his private writings, constantly exploring new avenues of thought.
I won't apologize for Coleridge's failings, but Holmes NAILS it here with an incisive look into his mind, writing with sympathy and personal care, almost as if he were Mr. Gilman (read the book) care-taking for Coleridge. It's a true story, and a deeply affecting one. Coleridge gets far too little credit for his deep influence on Romanticism (Wordsworth gets far too much despite his achievements), but I personally prefer Coleridge's work (when focused enough to write poetry) over Wordsworth's in their maturity. To read this book is to enter Coleridge's mind based on his private life. I'm sure I will visit it - and the cultural sites - again. But this book is exactly the same thing, where my mind can revisit them in my imagination, a thought which would have made Coleridge smile. This should also please Richard Holmes, and the highest possible praise I can dedicate to this all time great book.
Read
August 8, 2023Finally done! What a fantastic biography this and its precursor were. Regardless of how despicable I think Mr. Coleridge's abandonment of his wife and children was, at the end of this I can't help but feel some kind of kinship. You know. As a tortured artist.
Coleridge actually appeared in a dream to me shortly before I started reading the first of this biography duo. I was visiting a house by the sea, and there were tons of tourists milling around, because it had been preserved for its relationship to Coleridge. Ghost Coleridge was there looking extremely cranky, and I asked him whether he was bugged by all these people walking around in his house all the time. I can't remember what he said in response.
The house was FILLED with garbage knick-knacks from TJ Maxx and similar stores, and it was summer but the Christmas tree hadn't been taken down yet. I remember finding that quaint.
Coleridge actually appeared in a dream to me shortly before I started reading the first of this biography duo. I was visiting a house by the sea, and there were tons of tourists milling around, because it had been preserved for its relationship to Coleridge. Ghost Coleridge was there looking extremely cranky, and I asked him whether he was bugged by all these people walking around in his house all the time. I can't remember what he said in response.
The house was FILLED with garbage knick-knacks from TJ Maxx and similar stores, and it was summer but the Christmas tree hadn't been taken down yet. I remember finding that quaint.
March 15, 2012
One of the best of all literary biographies, according to me. Two fat volumes, a thousand pages in all, written by a man who loves his subject and produces the same feeling in sympathetic readers, in this one anyway. I knew nothing much beyond The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan when I set out, and of course the opium addiction. Despite his long struggle with the drug, which drove him close to despair and suicide, STC turns out to be a wonderfully kind and generous and deeply intelligent man, interested in virtually everything, a hypnotic talker, a better poet than Wordsworth - I mean, more sensitive and daring and much less conscious of his own greatness. Critics of the time, especially Hazlitt, attacked and belittled him, partly because he found it so hard to finish things ... but his daughter understood why: 'He could not bear to complete incompletely, which everyone else does'. Yes indeed!
September 23, 2010
This is the 2d volume of the huge biography by Richard Holmes. It's an exhaustive look at the man and poet. At the end of the day there's much more information about Coleridge here than I want. But Holmes kept me interested, especially in his accounts of relationships with other poets, such as Byron and Wordsworth, who he considered a rival. So many poets seclude themselves with what gives them solace, whether it be nature or religion or love or whatever. Not Coleridge. He was always in some kind of a dependent relationship, always getting help from someone. For me, this is where Holmes's biography shines because he writes so well about those different locales in which Coleridge found himself relying on the kindness of others, particularly in helping with his dependence on opiates. Holmes's pictures of Coleridge and of such places as the Mediterranesn during the Napoleonic Wars or Highgate near London make for fascinating reading. And Holmes literally brings to life the people swirling around and through the life of Coleridge in each of those locales. I found myself looking forward to when I could return to this book each day. It's "Rich, ornate, populous,--all pleasures thine," and mine.
July 18, 2013
You know the biographer has done something extraordinary when you reach the last pages, the scenes of the protagonist's death, and find yourself in tears for a man you KNEW had been a dead poet for 200 years before you picked up his biography. Oh, Coleridge--to have been a fly on the wall. Or a dinner guest. To judge the biographer's art--Holmes' work seems to me impeccable, though perhaps, because he did make me fall headlong for his subject, he is too much an advocate. I don't think so, but maybe someone would.
April 14, 2009
As Doris Lessing wrote in her review of this book, we should be grateful that we live in a golden age of biography. Richard Holmes is surely one of the luminaries of the age.
An absolutely splendid biography that opens up Coleridge's mind, heart and body for inspection and sympathetic consideration. Among the best of the hundreds of biographies of literary figures that I have read. Only Ann Wroe's recent biography of Shelly stands in comparison.
An absolutely splendid biography that opens up Coleridge's mind, heart and body for inspection and sympathetic consideration. Among the best of the hundreds of biographies of literary figures that I have read. Only Ann Wroe's recent biography of Shelly stands in comparison.
December 7, 2020
Part one of Holmes' Coleridge ends with a bold promise about the second volume:
"The next thirty-two years are more fascinating than anything that has gone before. Not only does he emerge as a controversial public figure - the legendary poet, the lecturer, the critic, the enigmatic metaphysician - but the inner man, the spiritual voyager, enters far wilder and deeper seas. As a true Romantic figure, Coleridge has scarcely yet set sail."
This second volume takes up with Coleridge sailing towards the Mediterranean at the age of 31. He has obtained a post to work as a private secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the British Governor in Malta. All of the poems for which he is now famous have already been written, and the active, vivacious Romantic explorer has become an obese, opium-addicted bureaucrat. How could this second, washed-up version of Coleridge possibly outdo the famous Romantic hero? Well, I can assure you, he does. From his dalliances in northern Italy in the middle of a French invasion, to his darkest moments near suicide, to his troubled but captivating lectures in London and Bristol, to his near apotheosis as the sage of Highgate Hill, the driving force of his wild imagination never stops soaring, whether in spurts or, rarely, in sustained periods.
The highlights of the book are the quotations that Holmes selects from Coleridge's notebooks, letters, lectures, articles, journals, and those of his contemporaries. Through these quotes, he puts Coleridge's frustrating genius clearly before his reader, in a way that Coleridge himself never could. The quotations nicely punctuate Holmes' engaging prose. Like the following, in which Coleridge devastatingly contemplates his opium addiction. Many of the finest poetic moments of his middle years come as he reflects on his perceived inadequacies or loss of poetic feeling.
"Chained by a darling passion or tyrannic Vice, Opium in Hell, yet with the Telescope of an unperverted Understanding descrying and describing Heaven and the Road thereto to my companions, the Damn'd! O fearful fate!"
He began to take on a mature, more relaxed and comfortable genius in his final years living with Dr. James Gillman on Highgate. An admirer muses as follows:
"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. … to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon."
Even hours before his death, with his nephew dutifully recording his words at bedside, his genius was undimmed:
"I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope - those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love - for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream…"
And so ends the incredible life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a man who lived his final years already "on the confines of the next world", who soared briefly but brilliantly on this Earth, like the flash of a collapsing star until his very last breath.
"The next thirty-two years are more fascinating than anything that has gone before. Not only does he emerge as a controversial public figure - the legendary poet, the lecturer, the critic, the enigmatic metaphysician - but the inner man, the spiritual voyager, enters far wilder and deeper seas. As a true Romantic figure, Coleridge has scarcely yet set sail."
This second volume takes up with Coleridge sailing towards the Mediterranean at the age of 31. He has obtained a post to work as a private secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the British Governor in Malta. All of the poems for which he is now famous have already been written, and the active, vivacious Romantic explorer has become an obese, opium-addicted bureaucrat. How could this second, washed-up version of Coleridge possibly outdo the famous Romantic hero? Well, I can assure you, he does. From his dalliances in northern Italy in the middle of a French invasion, to his darkest moments near suicide, to his troubled but captivating lectures in London and Bristol, to his near apotheosis as the sage of Highgate Hill, the driving force of his wild imagination never stops soaring, whether in spurts or, rarely, in sustained periods.
The highlights of the book are the quotations that Holmes selects from Coleridge's notebooks, letters, lectures, articles, journals, and those of his contemporaries. Through these quotes, he puts Coleridge's frustrating genius clearly before his reader, in a way that Coleridge himself never could. The quotations nicely punctuate Holmes' engaging prose. Like the following, in which Coleridge devastatingly contemplates his opium addiction. Many of the finest poetic moments of his middle years come as he reflects on his perceived inadequacies or loss of poetic feeling.
"Chained by a darling passion or tyrannic Vice, Opium in Hell, yet with the Telescope of an unperverted Understanding descrying and describing Heaven and the Road thereto to my companions, the Damn'd! O fearful fate!"
He began to take on a mature, more relaxed and comfortable genius in his final years living with Dr. James Gillman on Highgate. An admirer muses as follows:
"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. … to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon."
Even hours before his death, with his nephew dutifully recording his words at bedside, his genius was undimmed:
"I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope - those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love - for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream…"
And so ends the incredible life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a man who lived his final years already "on the confines of the next world", who soared briefly but brilliantly on this Earth, like the flash of a collapsing star until his very last breath.
December 30, 2023
Undoubtedly, Richard Holmes's monumental biography of Coleridge stood out as the highlight of my reading year. Delving into this sprawling tale, brimming with unexpected developments and filled with striking moments of poetry and captivating ideas, was a genuine delight.
For the longest time Coleridge has been known as a crackpot who squandered his poetic gifts for a raft of misguided, speculative ideas. He was also accused of financial mismanagement, political opportunism, plagiarism and a very cavalier conception of his role as husband and father of three children.
There will be more or less truth in all these accusations. But these less laudable facets of a life should not obscure a fascinating talent for embodying a quintessentially Romantic type of genius. Coleridge thrived in a force field at the intersection of two realms: a 'worldly' encompassing creative empirical observation and action, and a 'wordly' where poetic expression and metaphysical speculation bounce off each other “like two correspondent concave mirrors, having a common focus, while each reflects and magnifies the other” (to borrow an image here that Coleridge used to characterise the relationship between the lovers in 'Romeo and Juliet'). Imagination is the engine that drives this metabolism. It extracts its fuel from the generative processes that are deeply embedded in natura naturans.
It strikes me that this framework offers a lens through which to study the lives and works of a select group of other philosopher-poets in whom I have an abiding interest: Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Jünger, Walter Benjamin.
What connects all these writers, including Coleridge, is their unique style. Their work offers itself to the reader as a disorienting mix of fragments, paratactic shifts, and palimpsestic intertextuality. Very postmodern, in a way. But what lifts it out of the casually multi-perspectival is an ontological shift away from a dualist worldview that pits humans against the rest of the cosmos. These writers insert themselves into the creative matrix of life and allow themselves to experience it from the inside. Hence, technè makes way for poiesis. “Being alive” becomes a generative category of critical thought and artistic expression. A deeper empirical subjectivity gives way to poetic objectivity.
For the longest time Coleridge has been known as a crackpot who squandered his poetic gifts for a raft of misguided, speculative ideas. He was also accused of financial mismanagement, political opportunism, plagiarism and a very cavalier conception of his role as husband and father of three children.
There will be more or less truth in all these accusations. But these less laudable facets of a life should not obscure a fascinating talent for embodying a quintessentially Romantic type of genius. Coleridge thrived in a force field at the intersection of two realms: a 'worldly' encompassing creative empirical observation and action, and a 'wordly' where poetic expression and metaphysical speculation bounce off each other “like two correspondent concave mirrors, having a common focus, while each reflects and magnifies the other” (to borrow an image here that Coleridge used to characterise the relationship between the lovers in 'Romeo and Juliet'). Imagination is the engine that drives this metabolism. It extracts its fuel from the generative processes that are deeply embedded in natura naturans.
It strikes me that this framework offers a lens through which to study the lives and works of a select group of other philosopher-poets in whom I have an abiding interest: Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Jünger, Walter Benjamin.
What connects all these writers, including Coleridge, is their unique style. Their work offers itself to the reader as a disorienting mix of fragments, paratactic shifts, and palimpsestic intertextuality. Very postmodern, in a way. But what lifts it out of the casually multi-perspectival is an ontological shift away from a dualist worldview that pits humans against the rest of the cosmos. These writers insert themselves into the creative matrix of life and allow themselves to experience it from the inside. Hence, technè makes way for poiesis. “Being alive” becomes a generative category of critical thought and artistic expression. A deeper empirical subjectivity gives way to poetic objectivity.
May 12, 2020
This must be the fullest, deepest biography I have read, and rereading not, under lockdown and having written a sort-of biography myself in the interim (of course, on a much lower level) I am in awe of Holmes’ capacity to synthesise his materials – vast notebooks and correspondence, along with others people’s writings – and to do it so lucidly and beautifully. More than this, he lets his subject speak for himself, allowing Coleridge to come alive in his pages while at the same time standing back, assessing him and seeing the patterns in his life: the unconscious trends, the obsessions hidden even from himself, the unwitting patterns and parallels.
And Coleridge himself, of course the real glory of the book: constantly reading, thinking, writing and above all talking; and all the time blundering through life dosed on opium, and veering from intense productivity to climactic emotional crises.
I’ve come to identify more with the Romantics over the years, and Coleridge is the necessary counterbalance to Wordsworth and the link with German naturphilosophie. His idealism is intense and the surprise of the book is that it doesn’t really diminish through his life, even as the poetry wanes. It bursts out as philosophy, literary criticism and political commentary, which is always tied to the deep currents of his own life and emotions. As every reader of the Biographia Literaria discovers, his thought is supremely ambitious, complex and brilliant but unresolved - and even chaotic; and the biography shows how closely these qualities in his writing are tied to his character and his life.
In these pages Coleridge enraptures and inspires countless friends, and for those like Wordsworth and Southey, who desire to create their own intellectual spheres, his chaotic genius becomes a force to constrain and finally expel. He is saved by a host of less ambitions supporters, who are able to avoid judging him. He repeatedly invites judgement and repeatedly defies it. Though Richard Holmes’ book Coleridge becomes the most brilliant, and infuriating friend you ever had.
And Coleridge himself, of course the real glory of the book: constantly reading, thinking, writing and above all talking; and all the time blundering through life dosed on opium, and veering from intense productivity to climactic emotional crises.
I’ve come to identify more with the Romantics over the years, and Coleridge is the necessary counterbalance to Wordsworth and the link with German naturphilosophie. His idealism is intense and the surprise of the book is that it doesn’t really diminish through his life, even as the poetry wanes. It bursts out as philosophy, literary criticism and political commentary, which is always tied to the deep currents of his own life and emotions. As every reader of the Biographia Literaria discovers, his thought is supremely ambitious, complex and brilliant but unresolved - and even chaotic; and the biography shows how closely these qualities in his writing are tied to his character and his life.
In these pages Coleridge enraptures and inspires countless friends, and for those like Wordsworth and Southey, who desire to create their own intellectual spheres, his chaotic genius becomes a force to constrain and finally expel. He is saved by a host of less ambitions supporters, who are able to avoid judging him. He repeatedly invites judgement and repeatedly defies it. Though Richard Holmes’ book Coleridge becomes the most brilliant, and infuriating friend you ever had.
May 14, 2021
I felt I took a deep dive into these two books, and I went under for a long time. Still reading "Biographia Literaria" and the Collected Poems in the Oxford edition (done by STC's grandson). It has been several months, and it has certainly affected my mood.
Coleridge had a difficult life. He was depressive, and that was certainly shaped by his opium addiction. At one time or another, he sacrificed his family, his friends, certainly any financial security he could hope for. Yet he kept doing the work. And it was often amazing.
Holmes is great at always returning to the work. He provides the context, and uses the life to illuminate the work when it can be helpful. But I really enjoyed his willingness to ride with the mystery that is central to so many of the poems. He doesn't try any easy interpretations of "Kubla Khan," for instance, even though at times I almost wished that he would. He suggests at one point that the way to read the "Biographia" is just to go with those incomprehensible sentences and then wait for a clear moment to rise out. That has been tremendously helpful.
So reading this biography felt a lot like work, but it is work that I enjoyed doing.
Coleridge had a difficult life. He was depressive, and that was certainly shaped by his opium addiction. At one time or another, he sacrificed his family, his friends, certainly any financial security he could hope for. Yet he kept doing the work. And it was often amazing.
Holmes is great at always returning to the work. He provides the context, and uses the life to illuminate the work when it can be helpful. But I really enjoyed his willingness to ride with the mystery that is central to so many of the poems. He doesn't try any easy interpretations of "Kubla Khan," for instance, even though at times I almost wished that he would. He suggests at one point that the way to read the "Biographia" is just to go with those incomprehensible sentences and then wait for a clear moment to rise out. That has been tremendously helpful.
So reading this biography felt a lot like work, but it is work that I enjoyed doing.
June 5, 2021
I just feel so much fondness for both Coleridge, with all his undoubtedly annoying unfinished ongoingness, and for Richard Holmes. I so appreciate Holmes deep, deep dive into Coleridge's life and times -- he brought both to life for me so vividly. This was a book that I read slowly but with great enjoyment, serving as my early morning 10-15 minutes with coffee reading, since the end of March. I feel so satisfied to be done and also so sad to be leaving this world behind.
June 9, 2022
I'm knocked out by the writing in these books, not gonna lie. This volume has the unenviable challenge of making Coleridge's later years palatable and enjoyable, given his personal and public struggles during those years, but Holmes rises to the challenge without going to absurd lengths to paint Coleridge as a tragic figure. He's only as tragic as the reader wants him to be, and that allowance for discretion is a beautiful choice.
May 20, 2020
Complicated man
to-buy
June 5, 2020Mentioned in tristimania
September 7, 2020
I loved every minute of this book. Richard Holmes conveys such passion for his subject, Coleridge, an extraordinary genius.
May 20, 2023
Fantastic bio
November 8, 2016
The second part of this remarkable two-volume biography covers the last half of Coleridge’s life, from his self-exile to Malta to escape his unhappy marriage, debts and impossible love for Wordsworth’s sister “Asra”. Although much of the poetry for which he is now most remembered had already been written, and he sometimes mourned the loss of his ability in this area, often in lyrical terms which ironically belied this view, he still produced some striking verses, also writing a good deal of philosophical work, which was not fully appreciated in his lifetime.
Richard Holmes shows how Coleridge continually ricocheted between the depths of despair and degradation to moments of high achievement. On the downside, he had a dramatic falling out with Wordsworth which became the subject of London gossip, which also began to feast on his failures as a husband and father, and the squandering of his early great talent through his opium addiction, no longer a secret. His metaphysical writing was mocked by the critic Hazlitt, in terms with which one can sympathise judging by some of the quotations provided. Less acceptable were his cruel personal attacks, which seem particularly ungrateful since Coleridge had once smuggled him out of the Lake District to escape justice for having molested a local girl. The negative feedback naturally made publishers wary, so that Coleridge was forced to use a firm which went bankrupt, denying him much-needed earnings from several years of work which he had managed to sustain against the odds. To some extent reunited with his two grown-up sons, it was a bitter blow when the older boy Hartley proved too like his father in his intensely imaginative but addictive personality, so that he was deprived of his Oxford fellowship because of his drunken habits.
On the plus side, when in Malta, Coleridge proved a competent civil servant, although he had mixed feelings about a role which distracted him from his “true calling” of creative writing. On another occasion, he wrote a highly successful play for the London stage. He always seemed to have enough admirers to bale him out in his hour of need, such as the surgeon Morgan with his wife and sister, who became a kind of replacement copy of his intense relationship with Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and Sarah Hutchinson (Asra). For the last eighteen years of Coleridge's life, he lived with the family of a successful London doctor, Gillman, who understood how to regulate his opium addiction, receiving in return the reflected “kudos” of managing a man who, although always controversial, ended his life as a “national treasure”, visited by a succession of admirers of romantic poetry, of the glittering conversation which never faded, and writing, considerable despite all the stillborn and uncompleted plans.
Coleridge is at time maddening in his apparent “lack of will” in resisting opium. On the one hand able to analyse his failings with remarkable candour and insight in his calmer moments, he also believed that the addiction which induced nightmares, inertia, embarrassing outbursts and despair bordering on suicide was beyond his control, due to something in his personality or perhaps early experience. It seems likely that he was manic-depressive at a time when laudanum was the sole, over-used painkiller for both physical and mental ailments. Despite all this, it is hard not to share Richard Holmes’ admiration for his resilience and the fact that he never “gave up” for long. Many aspects of his thinking all seem remarkably modern, so that one can imagine him joining in some current intellectual debate.
Part Two is in some ways sadder and more sombre as Coleridge, no longer the energetic young man running down Lake District fell-sides, becomes heavy, shambling, and prematurely aged, often haunted by the destructive effects of his addiction. Yet, as his astute long-standing friend Charles Lamb observed, it was wrong to dismiss as “Poor Coleridge” a man who had in fact experienced and created so much. He even suggested that the addiction was in part necessary to Coleridge’s originality, and enhanced it. Following his death, Lamb wrote: “I feel how great a part he was of me, his great and dear Spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, cannot make a criticism of men and books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations….Never saw I his likeness, nor probably can the world see it again.” Richard Holmes’ lasting achievement is to enable us to understand and relate to these sentiments.
Richard Holmes shows how Coleridge continually ricocheted between the depths of despair and degradation to moments of high achievement. On the downside, he had a dramatic falling out with Wordsworth which became the subject of London gossip, which also began to feast on his failures as a husband and father, and the squandering of his early great talent through his opium addiction, no longer a secret. His metaphysical writing was mocked by the critic Hazlitt, in terms with which one can sympathise judging by some of the quotations provided. Less acceptable were his cruel personal attacks, which seem particularly ungrateful since Coleridge had once smuggled him out of the Lake District to escape justice for having molested a local girl. The negative feedback naturally made publishers wary, so that Coleridge was forced to use a firm which went bankrupt, denying him much-needed earnings from several years of work which he had managed to sustain against the odds. To some extent reunited with his two grown-up sons, it was a bitter blow when the older boy Hartley proved too like his father in his intensely imaginative but addictive personality, so that he was deprived of his Oxford fellowship because of his drunken habits.
On the plus side, when in Malta, Coleridge proved a competent civil servant, although he had mixed feelings about a role which distracted him from his “true calling” of creative writing. On another occasion, he wrote a highly successful play for the London stage. He always seemed to have enough admirers to bale him out in his hour of need, such as the surgeon Morgan with his wife and sister, who became a kind of replacement copy of his intense relationship with Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and Sarah Hutchinson (Asra). For the last eighteen years of Coleridge's life, he lived with the family of a successful London doctor, Gillman, who understood how to regulate his opium addiction, receiving in return the reflected “kudos” of managing a man who, although always controversial, ended his life as a “national treasure”, visited by a succession of admirers of romantic poetry, of the glittering conversation which never faded, and writing, considerable despite all the stillborn and uncompleted plans.
Coleridge is at time maddening in his apparent “lack of will” in resisting opium. On the one hand able to analyse his failings with remarkable candour and insight in his calmer moments, he also believed that the addiction which induced nightmares, inertia, embarrassing outbursts and despair bordering on suicide was beyond his control, due to something in his personality or perhaps early experience. It seems likely that he was manic-depressive at a time when laudanum was the sole, over-used painkiller for both physical and mental ailments. Despite all this, it is hard not to share Richard Holmes’ admiration for his resilience and the fact that he never “gave up” for long. Many aspects of his thinking all seem remarkably modern, so that one can imagine him joining in some current intellectual debate.
Part Two is in some ways sadder and more sombre as Coleridge, no longer the energetic young man running down Lake District fell-sides, becomes heavy, shambling, and prematurely aged, often haunted by the destructive effects of his addiction. Yet, as his astute long-standing friend Charles Lamb observed, it was wrong to dismiss as “Poor Coleridge” a man who had in fact experienced and created so much. He even suggested that the addiction was in part necessary to Coleridge’s originality, and enhanced it. Following his death, Lamb wrote: “I feel how great a part he was of me, his great and dear Spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, cannot make a criticism of men and books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations….Never saw I his likeness, nor probably can the world see it again.” Richard Holmes’ lasting achievement is to enable us to understand and relate to these sentiments.
October 20, 2020
I absolutely adored Holmes' first work delving into the amazing Coleridge's life and times. The second work finishing out Coleridge's life is equally engrossing. The problem I found was that I was so upset that Coleridge was heading downhill, I couldn't bear it. That is my fault that I didn't approach Coleridge whom I had gotten to love in Holmes' first work was falling apart in the second.
Holmes pulls no punches and does not enter this work lightly, but deals with Coleridge's life and his response to it with honesty without an interest in "prettying up" the man and his emotions. I do plan to continue reading...I think I followed half way through. Frankly, at the time, I was having my own issues with my writing and the political situation in the US which has confounded and upset me was my escape mechanism which ironically provided me NO escape. It was during the pandemic, that I began to regain my footing because I took the time to reflect.
Thus, for those who adore Coleridge and Holmes' first work, you will definitely enjoy the second which takes a turn into the abyss that Coleridge faced as a writer and human being. Indeed, Holmes has managed to be enthralling and incisive emotionally with the man to provide an unflinching look into what drives the writer into the heart of his own soul and matter.
Holmes pulls no punches and does not enter this work lightly, but deals with Coleridge's life and his response to it with honesty without an interest in "prettying up" the man and his emotions. I do plan to continue reading...I think I followed half way through. Frankly, at the time, I was having my own issues with my writing and the political situation in the US which has confounded and upset me was my escape mechanism which ironically provided me NO escape. It was during the pandemic, that I began to regain my footing because I took the time to reflect.
Thus, for those who adore Coleridge and Holmes' first work, you will definitely enjoy the second which takes a turn into the abyss that Coleridge faced as a writer and human being. Indeed, Holmes has managed to be enthralling and incisive emotionally with the man to provide an unflinching look into what drives the writer into the heart of his own soul and matter.
July 22, 2014
Obviously it helps a biographer when his subject is such a fascinating character, surrounded by other fascinating characters and at the centre of a period of social and cultural ferment, but Richard Holmes does a very good job of riding the flow of Coleridge's life and presenting him to the reader as a living, breathing, brilliant, passionate, ridiculous, selfish, selfless, driven, lazy, complicated man. He doesn't stint with the character flaws but, nevertheless, by the end of the book I was a total Coleridge fanboy.
July 13, 2020
Reading this out of order because the library doesn't have the first volume and this is the only book by Holmes they have other than the fantastic "The Age of Wonder" which I read a little while back.
Update: couldn't finish it. Nothing against the author, it was fantastically written. I just couldn't put up with more wasted opportunities by Coleridge. So frustrating.
Update: couldn't finish it. Nothing against the author, it was fantastically written. I just couldn't put up with more wasted opportunities by Coleridge. So frustrating.
February 7, 2008
The second part, and the true start of a falling life truly gaining momentum.
Both parts of this biography are a delight to read (and I did so in the week between Boxing Day and New Year) both as a study of Coleridge and as a story.
I devoured with delight.
Both parts of this biography are a delight to read (and I did so in the week between Boxing Day and New Year) both as a study of Coleridge and as a story.
I devoured with delight.
July 5, 2009
I read this book a number of years ago--maybe 2000. Now I'm dipping into it again in conjunction with some fiction I've been working on featuring Coleridge. A vast amount of information is here.
April 9, 2010
The second half of an entertaining, comprehensive biography. I think it would be indispensable if you have any love or fascination for Coleridge.
December 11, 2015
my gosh. how I would have loved to have had dinner with Coleridge just once and heard the Great Talker in full spate!
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