Imagination in the Contemporary World and the Legacy of Romantic Literary Thought

ideals, imagination. Says Stillinger, who gives us a whole book of Coleridge’s revisions:

“If Coleridge had written each of his poems once and once only, there would be no problem. As it is, we think that he did, and hence arise many oversimplifications and errors in our approach to his poetry. Chiefly these are the idea that for each of the poems there is but a single definitive text; the idea that the single definitive text of each poem must necessarily be a late one (in practical terms because there is none other in sight, in theoretical terms because such has been the tendency of generalizations about textual authority for most of the present century); and then the conclusion from these that Coleridge produced his late texts early in his poetic career. (9-10).”

I have chosen these two quotations to illustrate two tendencies which we have, as human beings who happen to read: one, to identify a movement in literature as well-defined by its proponents and adherents during its existence, particularly at the hey-day or height of the manifestation of its existence, to those who follow (and who always have such remarkable hindsight), and secondly, that we tend to believe that the products of such a movement were created, for the most part, as if sculpted from stone.  But, as Stillinger makes clear, “In the theoretical framework of my study, (Coleridge) produced a new definitive version, the “final” text that he intended to stand at the moment, every time he revised a text (10).”

And why did Coleridge revise his work?

Many poets do so: I revise my own work because I change, and what I’ve written no longer weighs or feels or says quite what I meant, or I no longer wish it to say what I once wished it to say, or, perhaps,

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