Dejection An Ode Flashcards
A03 context
Poem is written during the period when Coleridge had temporarily separated from his wife and was a houseguest of the Wordsworths for 18 months
Coleridge marital problems, nightmares, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers fuelled the composition of dejection an ode
The poem has similarities to ‘a letter to Sara Hutchinson’ a poem written to a women who was not his wife, which discusses feelings of love for her. However Objection removes his personal feelings m, instead focusing on his inability to find inspiration and struggle to write
Dejection takes the form of a long confessional lyric poem (intense emotions) using a combination of couplet and quatrain rhyme schemes .
Stanza 1
What sound irritates him
State of moon reminds him of ancient ballad in which stormy weather is foretold from such a phenomenon. The sound of the Eolian Harp irritates him, and appears to express his own dull feelings. He wants the storm to wake his creativity up
‘Eolian lute, which better far were mute’
Stanza 2
How does he feel about the stars
Specifies his unimpassioned mood. ‘Void’
Though ‘wooed’ by the thrush, he has gazed blankly on the beautiful appearance of sky and cloud and stars. They only increase his own despair
‘I see not feel how beautiful they are’
‘Cloudless starless lake of blue’
Stanza 3
How is his state of mind
Reflects on his state of mind
If his own ‘genial spirits’ fail, what can mere appearance to do cheer him?
He could watch for ever, but the outer light will not unless he also had within himself ‘passion’ and ‘life’
Stanza 4
Moon
Nature ‘lives’ only because man bestows beauty life and meaning upon it.
The transforming light of the moon is only an image for the beautifying light that the ‘soulM sheds on what it loves
(We feel that moonlight is beautiful only if we are spiritual enough to see the moonlight’s/likeliness to spirit)
Stanza 5
Joy
For the activity of the creative, Coleridge uses the term ‘light’, ‘luminous mist’ and ‘music’ all suggesting its ‘beauty making power’ But in the 5th strophe he chooses 1 term - Joy
In the Romantic period m- Joy was used to renovate a state of being in which there is such internal harmony of spiritual that it overflows from the pure soil to beautify the world around
In a state of Joy we are ‘wedded’ to nature, and the ‘dowry’ of this wedding is a ‘new Earth and a new Heaven’
Whatever charms us- all colours or melodies, appealing to eye or ear is a reflecting of our own joy
‘Though my path was rough/ This joy within me
Stanza 6
Coleridge looking back on life
Coleridge looks back on his life, seeing the waning of this joy
In the past, his inner joy made him able to ‘dally’ with distress. Sustained by hope, he felt he was creative
‘There was a time when, though my path was rough’
Now he wanders whether he was in fact sustained by inner strength of others, for now he has no inner resources to meet his afflictions
He appears to regret his investigative analytical pursuits: perhaps scientific detachment of ‘abtruse’ ‘research’ has so infected his whole being and now he is incapable of spontaneous joy
Unimpassioned grief
Stanza 7
Change of mood
Change of mood
Coleridge shakes off his ‘viperous thoughts’
Wind is raving and the scream of the lute makes Coleridge think of the mountain landscape all around - which is futter instrument for such a wind
From the passive lute, Coleridge turns his attention to the wind, which he likens to an actor, or a poet, expert in tragic art.
In the wind, he hears a tale of warriors in defeat and then a more tender song of a lost and frightened child
Stanza
Who does he mention and why
Coleridge returns to addressing the ‘lady’
The end of the poem is a prayer that she might be watched over by the brightest stars and that she, unlike the poet may be visited by healing sleep and athined joy
‘Dear Lady!… this mayest thou evermore rejoice.’
Coleridge uses line of varying line length
Why and eg
Flow of feeling
Shorter lines are used to isolate lines of particular emotional force
Short ‘I see now feel how beautiful they are’ —> strong emotion
Long - ‘there was a time when though my path was rough’ —> far away emotions
Theme
Emotional intensity
‘A grief without a pang’
‘I see not feel how beautiful they are’
Theme
Love
‘Dear Lady! Friend devoutest of my choice, Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice’
