Abstract
The idea of the ‘organic’ contained for the Romantic period in Britain both notions of completeness and the impossibility of completeness, of a state of true being (the ‘organic whole’) and of a state of truth which was eternal becoming (the ‘infinity’ of the organic). In the first lies a tendency towards the elaborately formal, indeed even the mechanical. In the second lies the temptation of the abandonment of form. I shall look at some of the rhetoric of literary theory in Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry to examine how the contradictions are fused and confused.1
My thanks to the Gesellschaft für Englische Romantik at whose 1984 Conference some of these ideas were first sketched. The proceedings are to be found in R. Brener, W. Huber, and R. Schöwerling (eds.), English Romanticism: The Paderborn Symposium, Essen, Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1985.
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Notes
A useful summary introduction into organic theory in romantic poetry is provided by the Introduction to Inger Christensen, The Shadow of the Dome: Organicism and Romantic Poetry, Studia Anglistica Norwegica 3, University of Bergen, Bergen 1985. The bibliography of general criticism in this volume is also useful. At the time of writing the state of the A Defence of Poetry text is still unsatisfactory. For convenience alone I have referred to the page numbers of the text in David Lee Clark, ed., Shelley’s Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1966.
cf. Richard Cronin, Shelley’s Poetic Thoughts, London, Macmillan, 1981, p. 33: ‘A Defence of Poetry has usually been regarded as confused. That it is inconsistent is I think difficult to deny, but it seems likely that its inconsistencies are controlled … expressed by a man whose philosophical allegiances led him to distrust the impression of inconsistency transcended that paradox is designed to give, and to prefer the dialogue …’.
Etymological information from OED. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France provides particularly interesting examples of ‘organic’, ‘organization’, etc: They [the British nation] acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of their old organization, and not by the organic moleculae of a disbanded people’; The Assembly, their [the French people’s] organ, acts before them the farce of deliberation’ (Conor Cruise O’Brien, ed., Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1968, p. 106, p. 161).
Conor Cruise O’Brien, ed., Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1968, p. 161, )But the locus classicus for our period is Coleridge’s note towards a lecture on Shakespeare: ‘Imagine not I am about to oppose genius to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules is the very cause to be tried. The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is of necessity an organized one, — and what is organization, but the connection of parts to a whole, so that each part is at once end and means! … For it is even this that constitutes it genius — the power of acting creatively under the laws of its own origination. — The true ground of the mistake [opposing genius to rules], … lies in the confounding of mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanical when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material.… The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes as it develops from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such is the life, such the form.’
(From B. M. Egerton MS. 2800, f. 24, as printed by T. M. Raysor, Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, London, Constable, 1930, p. 223). Coleridge is very close to August Wilhelm Schlegel verbally (and in spirit to his brother Friedrich). But whereas Schlegel uses the term ‘organisch’ in contradistinction to ‘mechanisch’ in the passage which is the source for Coleridge’s The form is mechanical.…The organic form … outward form’ he avoids the complexity of ‘what is organization …’ by not introducing the organic metaphor in that section dealing with limitation (‘Umgränzung’). This metaphor is kept apart from ideas of limit and bound into images only of growth: ‘von der Kristallisation der Salze und Mineralien an bis zur Planze und Blume und von dieser bis zur menschlichen Gesichtsbildung hinauf
(Eduard Böcking, ed., August Wilhelm SchlegeVs Sämmtliche Werke, VI. 157, Leipzig, Weidmann’sche, 1846). Shelley would have known Coleridge’s general position, but it is difficult to be certain of the precise state of his knowledge. Whatever, the sense of this passage should be borne in mind throughout the following discussion.
Shelley’s use of the word ‘form’ is not consistent in A Defence. It can mean Platonic form, or outward shape, or someway between the two ‘literary form’. See above, p. 207, and Richard Cronin, Shelley’s Poetic Thoughts, London, Macmillan, 1981, p. 33: cf. Cronin, op. cit., pp. 34–5. But one must not forget that translation from Greek immediately poses problems of interpretation. It is partly these which are reflected in this ambiguity. Given Peacock’s drift in Four Ages of Poetry it is surprising however that Shelley can calmly ignore some of the implications of the Platonic texts which he raids. See note 8 below.
cf. Mont Blanc, II.53–7.
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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Bone, J.D. (1987). Organicism and Shelley’s a Defence of Poetry . In: Burwick, F. (eds) Approaches to Organic Form. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3917-2_7
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