Coleridge "imagination and Fancy" - Literature Network Forums

A useful summary of Coleridge's theory of the imagination.

The distinction made by Coleridge between Fancy and the Imagination rested on the fact that Fancy was concerned with the mechanical operations of the mind, those which are responsible for the passive accumulation of data and the storage of such data in the memory. Imagination, on the other hand, described the "mysterious power," which extracted from such data, "hidden ideas and meaning." It also determined "the various operations of constructive and inventive genius."

Engell has demonstrated that Coleridge's division of the imagination into the "primary" and "secondary" draws a distinction between creative acts that are unconscious and those that are intentional and deliberate. "The Primary Imagination" was for Coleridge, the "necessary imagination" as it "automatically balances and fuses the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the mind receives through the senses." It represents man's ability to learn from nature. The over arching property of the primary imagination was that it was common to all people. The Secondary imagination, on the other hand, represents a superior faculty which could only be associated with artistic genius. It was this aspect of the imagination, one which could break down what was perceived in order to recreate by an autonomous willful act of the mind that has no analog in the natural world—which Coleridge associated with art and poetry. A key and defining attribute of the secondary imagination was a free and deliberate will; "superior voluntary controul. . .co-existing with the conscious will." The secondary imagination, once activated by the will, "dissolves, dissipates in order to recreate."

And...

Coleridge explained this property of the "Imagination" as "ESEMPLASTIC," to "shape into one" and to "convey a new sense." Coleridge in the tenth chapter of Biographia Literaria described this ability of the imagination as "Esemplastic." Noting that esemplastic was a word he borrowed from the Greek "to shape," Coleridge explained that it referred to the imagination's ability to "shape into one, having to convey a new sense." He felt such a term was necessary as "it would aid the recollection of my meaning and prevent it being confounded with the usual import of the word imagination." Biographia Literaria, vol. 1, p. 86 

If you really want to use a pretentious-sounding term, try esemplastic. Derived from Greek words meaning "into" and "one" and "mold," and coined by Coleridge in 1817, the word means "having the function of molding into unity; unifying." The picture derived from the word is of someone, probably a poet, taking images and words and feelings from a number of realms of human endeavor and thought and bringing them all together into a poem s/he writes. This requires a huge effort of the imagination, which we might call the "esemplastic power of the poetic imagination." A decade after its first appearance a writer could remark, "Nor I trust will Coleridge's favorite word esemplastic..ever become current."

Not only did the subject subsume the object it can also be argued that Imagination subsumed the role of Fancy within the creative work. Thus while Coleridge argued that the poet relied on both Fancy and Imagination when inventing a poem, and that the poet should seek a balance of these two faculties, (Coleridge, Biographia Literari, vol 1, p. 194) the "active" and "transformative" powers of the Imagination negated the contribution of, and representation of Fancy. In Coleridge's system, the Imagination is ultimately the only faculty which contributed to the creative process.

The Idea of the Writer: December 13, 2007 WGA Theater

Defining Imagination:

In the Biographia Literaria, which I commend to your attention --

He was a junky, Coleridge, and that was before they had Metamucil. He was afflicted with horrible constipation and the measures that he had to take were not pretty.

-- Coleridge made an effort to distinguish between "fancy" and "imagination" as a principle of association. Now, this is very, very important because if you give up the Outline, which is logic. If you take a step back and think of what we're doing here, you are watching me associate as a principle of organization in our communion with each other. I'm associating one experience with another experience. I'm reacting to you. 

An imaginative association, Coleridge would suggest, is what we are doing now which is that available to us on the basis of this shared experience is an understanding of the substance of the experience. That is, how the artist gains access to the imagination of his audience through the vision of, and the vitalizing of, the bringing to life of experiences to which the viewer can relate on the basis of the operations of the imagination of the storyteller. Not because there's a prior expectation that, "OK, at the end of the first act: judges chambers! dnn-dnn dnn-dnn!" But as a vital exchange of energy. That's the way the universe works. OK?

A fanciful association, and this is the danger, the burden of inauthenticity that those of us who work without Outlines must bear, in the achievement of the act of imagination and that is fancy.

Now I kinda tried to plant, just the way I did with the "urine" when we were talking about "principles of association" and this gentleman said, "Oh, I was thinking of Coleridge and you said,'Coleridge'." And I suggest that that is not an accident but that the substance of what I was suggesting was bringing to mind an imaginative association from this gentleman's past where had he encountered those ideas before. So that's not an accident, nor is it a fanciful connection. It is an imaginative connection. That's what art does. We are creating art together here. The audience is always a participant with the artist in the creation of the art by apprehending it in faith. Which is why I urge you not to watch Law and Order, which is an exercise in logic.

A fanciful association is a private association.

(Around the 15 minute mark of the linked video).

Kitsch Me If You Can

There are a lot of good ideas in this review of Roger Scruton's new book. Unfortunately because it's Scruton, those ideas can seem sort of musty and scolding. Moreover, the relationship between kitsch and beauty feels like a false dichotomy, and it's very easy to see how something that at face value seems kitschy can be transformed into something beautiful in the hands of right artist.

But I thought this was well expressed:

We miss the point if we think that beauty in art or literature or music has finished its job when it provides pleasure. Scruton argues, reasonably, that beauty also makes ethical demands on us. Its existence challenges us to "renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world."

Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please, a level requiring a minimum of mental effort.

Beauty, on the other hand, demands we consider its meaning. It implies a larger world than the one we deal with every day. Even for those with no religious belief, it suggests the possibility of transcendence. Faith has declined in much of the West, but "art bears enduring witness to the spiritual hunger and immortal longings of our species." As one reviewer has already pointed out, Scruton's "perspective is religious without belief."

At the other end of the scale, kitsch ("that peculiar disease that we can instantly recognise but never precisely define, and whose Austro-German name links it to the mass movements and crowd sentiments of the 20th century") degrades beauty through the Disneyfication of art. Kitsch trivializes human conflict and demotes feeling into bathos. It's a mould that forms, as Scruton says, over a living culture.

This all works well if you substitute kitsch with solipsism, beauty with imagination, and morality as an overcoming of the ego. Art, as this essay rightly recognizes, requires an imaginative leap of faith. Not in the religious sense, but in the sense that you open yourself up to the world without expecting any particular outcome or result. Art surprises and transforms.

What Scruton seems to miss is that it's always about context and the way that objects stand in relationship to one another and play on our imagination. In this way, an army of garden gnomes can be beautiful, while a magnetic reproduction of the Mona Lisa on your fridge can come off as the worst sort of bad taste.