‘A LIGHT IN SOUND, A SOUND-LIKE POWER IN LIGHT’: COLERIDGE’S PHENOMENAL INVISIBLE

In a reading of ‘The Eolian Harp’ that draws briefly on ‘Frost at Midnight’, this article discusses Coleridge’s quest to do justice to the epiphanic potentialities of visual experience. In response to critical accounts of his metaphysics as imposed heavy-handedly upon reality, I reread Coleridge’s speculative reflections as both heuristic and responsive to something unequivocally real. Across these two poems, Coleridge transcribes his wonderstruck attunement to the visible world as replete with intimations of God. In doing so, the poet seeks a way of speaking about God that neither synonymises him with the world nor places him beyond the realm of phenomenal experience altogether.

Duke Scholars

Author Abigail Rogers