Page 10 - GALIET INSIGHT IN THE LIGHTNING: Coleridge IV
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Introduction.
Visionary Dreams & Forms. The universal essence participates in the particular, in simple and ordinary things, and, in reflective equilibrium, the humble participates in the eternal sublime Platonic forms, in Parmenides’s sphere, too, where every particular, every form on earth and every common sight are unified in the circular heaven of the romantic imagination: perfect beauty.
The Romantic Imagination becomes that which marvels: a mytho-magic, magic-realist Paradise, a ray of light that exalts the “glory of a dream” (IO, I, 5) that allows to “see into the life of things” (Tintern Abbey, 41) where the essence and splendour of things reveal their presence and truth. Yet, what is the glory and freshness of this dream? “Life is a dream and dreams are dreams,”3 says Calderon de la Barca, but this dream-vision becomes a reality in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s vibrant poetic imaginations: a manifestation of their spirit, the unseen,4 whose flash of creative power blends the unseen and the seen, poem and poet with poem and poesy.
This poesy and poetic dream, in awakening the visionary Maker, embraces poesy and poet, the made and its maker whose melodious paradise counterbalances, synthesizes dreams and forms, imagination and reality and conjugates from simple alphabets phusis, nomos and Olympian gods,
3 Calderón de la Barca. La Vida es un Sueño. México: Editorial Porrúa, 2001.
4 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Wordsworth, W. The Prelude, Book I, 602. New York: McMillan Publishing Co. 1973.
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