| By 1800, Coleridge had completed Part I,
its Conclusion, and a portion or all of Part II of "Christabel."
The composition of the two Parts is divided by Coleridge's trip to
Germany, where he planned to study the philosopher Kant, to improve
his spoken and written German, to begin his translation of Friedrich
Schiller's The Death of Wallenstein,
and to research his proposed biography of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.(1)
With Part I and its Conclusion completed by the summer of 1798,
Coleridge departed for Germany on 16 September 1798 and returned on 28
July 1799. He did not work on "Christabel," although an
account of a recitation of the poem during Coleridge's stay in Germany
is recorded by Clement Carlyon: |
[Coleridge] frequently recited his own poetry, and
not unfrequently led us further into the labyrinth of his
metaphysical elucidations, either of particular passages, or of the
original conception of any of his productions, than we were able to
follow... At the conclusion... of the first stanza... he would
perhaps comment at full length upon such a line as--Tu
whit!--Tu whoo
That we might not fall
into the mistake of supposing originality to be its sole merit. In
fact he seldom went right on to the end of any piece--to pause and
analyse was his delight. What he told us fellow travellers
respecting Christabel, he has since repeated in print, in
words, which, if not the same, are equally
Coleridgean.(2) |
| Carlyon's account reveals Coleridge's concern for the reception
of the "poetic merit" of his poetry. It also evinces "Christabel"
as a literary work that is comprised of more than the words Coleridge
speaks. A recitation supplements the poem, reshaping readers' horizon
of expectations. Coleridge claims as much in Biographia Literaria,
when he refers to |
the excitement and temporary sympathy of feeling,
which the recitation of the poem by an admirer, especially if he be
at once a warm admirer and a man of acknowledged celebrity calls
forth in the audience. For this is really a species of Animal
Magnetism, in which the enkindling Reciter, by perpetual comment of
looks and tones, lends his own will and apprehensive faculty to his
Auditors. |
| A recited "Christabel" includes the medium of its
transmission, leading Coleridge to the following cautionary note in
Biographia Literaria: |
This may serve as a warning to authors, that in
their calculations on the probable reception of a poem, they must
subtract to a large amount from the panegyric, which may have caused
them to publish it, however unsuspicious and
however various the sources of this panegyric may have been.(3) |
| Although Coleridge has in mind here the experiences, first, of
other people's admiring recitations of "Christabel," and,
second, of his own recitations of the poem (that lead him to think
that the poem would be favorably received if printed), his comments
are also reveling of the nature of the poetic entity "Christabel"
recited. It contains supplementary body language, the cadence, volume,
and tone of the reciter, and, as is the case with Coleridge, any
explication of the poem. Moreover, each recitation of "Christabel"
by, say, Coleridge figures a unique performative entity--presuming
that the cadence, volume, and tone of his voice, that his bodily and
facial gestures, and that his interpretive asides, are not identical
with every recitation. |
