コウルリッジの形而上詩批判 : その覚え書

抄録

In The Revival of Metaphysical Poetry (1959), Prof. Duncan deals with some problems as to what is called modern metaphysical poetry. But what interests us most in it consists in this point: how far back the germ of the revival of metaphysical poetry can be traced. The author of this book declares that the germ is to be found in 'the Elizabethan revival of the earlier 19th century'. Thus the germ being traced to the current of Romanticism, we may well feel inclined to inquire into the criticisms of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Though Wordsworth referred several times to Donne in his various writings, praising 'Death, be not proud' at one time, his criticisms were directed against the characteristics of the 17th-century poetry. Coleridge, on the other hand, took some considerable interest in Donne and George Herbert, and was one of the few who could appreciate metaphysical poems at that period. So the present writer wants to focus on his understanding of metaphysical poetry. Thus, in this essay, a 'play within a play' beigns. Biographia Literaria can be said to be a synthetic collection of fragmentary writings, in which plenty of references to 17th-century poets can be found. He finds from Donne to Cowley 'the most fantastic out-of-way thoughts, but in the most genuine mother English'. In various places not only in Biographia Literaria but in other writings of his, he refers to Donne, and other metaphysical poets, and admits their characteristics. But his poem, 'On Donne's Poetry', it might be asid, can be considered as a concentration of his criticisms on Donne. He finds in Donne's poems, 'fancy's maze and clue,/Wit's forge and fireblast, meaning's press and screw'. His notions of wit, though he did not actually use the term 'wit' in the sense of metaphysical wit, is much closer to that of Dryden than to that of Dr. Johnson, but his sympathy with it is as little as that of Johnson. Poems directed by wit, in his estimation, may be included in the category of Fancy in his Imagination-Fancy theory. For instance, he says that Cowley had a very fanciful mind. But it is possible that the highest state of metaphysical poetry should quite resemble or be indentified with what he aimed at in his definition of Imagination. In fact, he highly estimates several aspects of the characteristics of Donne's technique. In spite of that, he was unable to hold the metaphorical expressions used by metaphysical poets in the category of Imagination, though there are said to be remarkable parallels between Coleridge's aesthetics and Donne's poetry, and Coleridge from time to time recognizes the merits of metaphysical metaphors. His Imagination-Fnacy theory is based upon his intuitive evaluation, the distinction between Imagination and Fancy lying in the degree of intensity, as Prof. Lowes has pointed out. The degree of his sympathy with metaphysical poetry in general has made him place it in the lower class. At any rate, Coleridge, who in his life had had fine experiences of composition of excellent and Romantic verse-making, was unable to possess such sympathetic attitudes towards metaphysical poems as we would now expect. His estimation might be influenced by that of Dr. Johnson; his power of understanding metaphysical poetry has not reached to the level of Dryden's understanding. After all, for one thing, Coleridge could fairly appreciate Donne and Herbert, and, for another, he had a poetics admitting the merits of metaphysical poetry. It was not, however, in his power that those two should be able to lead to one notion that in its highest state metaphysical poetry should go through his Imagination. This was a limit to his understanding of metaphysical poetry-a limit to the understanding of one who lived in the earlier 19th century. Here ends the 'play within the play'. In

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)