Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 1, April 2004
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Kooy,
Michael John, Coleridge, Schiller
and Aesthetic Education, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2002.
256p., 0-333-74936-7, $65.00
Reviewed by
Michael
Kooy presents us with an elegantly and clearly written elaboration not only on
the literary-historical influences that Schiller's work exerted on Coleridge,
but also with a theoretical analysis of the similarities of the notion of Bildung
in both. More precisely, Kooy offers an interpretation of Coleridge's aesthetics
in relation to Schiller's "ästhetische Erziehung", as well as a
comparison of both notions of history as Bildung.
Thus, he maintains that Coleridge
was influenced by Schiller to a larger degree than previously thought. In fact,
the absence of explicit references in Coleridge's published work, and only bare
hints in his letters, had ever since 1922 led to the assumption that Coleridge
knew little about Schiller, much less than about Schelling, the Schlegels, or
even Solger. Another consequence of Kooy's study is a re-evaluation of
Coleridge's aesthetics in moral terms (not in epistemological or ontological
ones) and this is one aspect of the significance
of his contribution.
The method of the book is
comparative: Coleridge's intellectual development is seen through some of the
key ideas of Schiller and their development, and thus Coleridge stands among few
intellectuals ("obscure minority quite in his (Schiller's) favour",
47) in England who continued to engage with Schiller after the failed Peace of
Amiens in 1803. Kooy is convincing in his portrayal of Coleridge's unceasing
Schiller reception (he translated poems in his notebooks, comment on the new
dramas and continues citing from Schiller's essays).
The sound historical establishment
of Coleridge's contact with and response to Schiller is a crucial and
interesting step on the way to a comparison of the ideas. Laudable is Kooy's
attempt to embed the reception history in biographical and historical details
that not only shaped Schiller's writings but also his reception in England.
Thomas Beddoes, William Taylor of Norwich and Henry Crabb Robinson (the only one
who had spoken to Schiller in Weimar, Coleridge never made it there on his
travels in Germany) emerge as critical key-figures in the transmission process
of Schiller into England. The Schiller-figure presented though Coleridge's eyes,
and the specificities of his sensibility that allowed Coleridge to relate to
Schiller in the first place and then to continue his interests, is an good piece
of early Romantic British-German imagology.
It is a concern of Kooy to
emphasize but not to overstress the "semblance" of Coleridge's mature
criticism with Schiller's aesthetic education. He bases his comparison on the
notion of "fundamental agreement" since "it seems we can no
longer speak only of affinities and coincidences". If that is so, we have
to believe that there are reasons for Coleridge's intense involvement with
Schiller's ideas and yet his resistance to relate explicitly to him.
Kooy argues that Coleridge's method and the timing of his first Schiller
reception are crucial factors here. Coleridge engaged with Schiller's early
plays already in the 90s, and by 1800 he had translated Wallenstein.
Therefore, Schiller is supposed to
have exerted a much more thorough influence on Coleridge's thinking than the
idealist whom he studied consciously at a later point in time; his method of
quotation plays a role here as well. Coleridge adapted thoughts, especially
those of Schiller and the moral philosopher Butler out of self-recognition; he
did not quote them as he did the idealists in order to support his
transcendental deduction of the imagination. These assertions raise salient
questions about the nature of creativity and its sources, about influence and
its theory. It would have been extremely interesting to learn more about the
theoretical perspective adapted or expounded in this context. What are the
assumptions of influence then and with which notions are we operating now? How
do we distinguish agreement (without reference) distinguish from a
contemporaneous development?
If
one beliefs in the notion of agreement, the following explanations of the role
of aesthetic autonomy in Coleridge are interesting; especially the claim that
Coleridge developed and improved the flaws in Schiller's system, concerning the
identity of the educating elite and its dilemma. Coleridge put the
"clerisy" in charge. The theory of aesthetic education, deriving its
power from the abstraction of life, does find practical fulfilment, but only
indirectly.
Kooy attempts to rescue Coleridge
with the help of Schiller from an aestheticism, in which the realm of
beauty is nothing but self-consciousness, be it as moral as it may.
Reading his book, one will find a discussion of the aesthetic theories of
Coleridge and Schiller, and their similarities in responding to Kant, in which
the heuristic assumption of agreement, as difficult as it is to clearly
distinguish from affinity, might in fact play a minor role. It should also be
mentioned that Michael Kooy dedicated a sub-chapter to "Women in the
'Aesthetic State'", and takes issue here with the theoretical exclusion,
but the dramatic inclusion of the feminine in Bildung. Given the
centrality of the concept and its including the explanation of historical
development, or better, "history… as a process of 'cultivation', mediated
by the figure of the Logos", a more analytical tackling of this tendency in
both theorists would have been helpful.