Resolution and Independence - Imagination and Mortality
Uploaded by modernpoet on Nov 16, 2001
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, states that the secondary or poetic imagination is the power which, “Reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities…of…idea with the image” (Coleridge 482). In, Resolution and Independence, Wordsworth attempts to create an image of the poetic imagination in a decrepit old man. In so doing, Wordsworth attaches his own fears of mortality and aging, and thus oversteps Coleridge’s idea of the imagination with the imagery of his own fears.
Wordsworth’s description of the old man’s occupation gives the clearest image of the secondary imagination.
“At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned…” (Wordsworth 283).
The use of the words “stirred” and “conned” are important because they imply the coalescing and creative power of the poetic imagination. In the word “stirred” Wordsworth evokes the idea of disturbing the silt on the ponds bed to create a muddy mixture. “Conned” furthers the image by implying that the man is getting something out of this mixture much the way the poet uses his imagination to create something out of “Opposite or discordant qualities” (Coleridge 482).
The man as representative of the poetic imagination is also seen in the fact that he is gathering leeches.
“He told, that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches,…” (Wordsworth 283).
The leeches are what the man is conning out of the pond. Metaphorically, they are the poems of the old man. The leeches are the new thing created from the opposites, water and silt.
Wordsworth falls short of making this man a complete image of the secondary imagination when he describes the man himself.
“As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence…” (Wordsworth 282)
Using the image of a stone implies that the secondary imagination is something timeless and placing it on top of a cliff or mountain represents the fortitude and solidarity of the poetic imagination. This comparison fits well with Coleridge’s idea that the secondary imagination is exclusive to poets (Coleridge 477), but it is contrary to Wordsworth’s image of a decrepit old man.
“Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep--in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life’s pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had...