Page 21 - GALIET INSIGHT IN THE LIGHTNING: Coleridge IV

unpredictable, and their invisibility produce dramatic effects. Boreas abducts Oreithyia, the Athenian Princess, and carries her to his home in Thrace; Zephyrus brings the young Psyche to Eros. And there is a symbolic ecstasy in the Hebrew word ‘ruah’ that means “wind,” “spirit” and “breath,” the ever- present creative wind Coleridge eagerly awaits. Since the wind can neither be grasped nor cast, it carries the world. It is the beginning of all things and its two spirits tell of chaos and horror, but also proclaim tales and storms of creative delight (DO, VII, 119). For Wordsworth, too, creativity is likened the power of a storm: it is an “awful power” that arises from the “mind’s abyss” (The Prelude, VI, 603), a flash that “reveals the invisible world” (The Prelude, VI, 601-2) as it conquers the senses (The Prelude, VI, 458).
Moon & Resurrection. While for Coleridge poetic imagination is akin to Paz’s ‘resurrection of presences,’14 for Wordsworth, as aforementioned in page four, it predicates “truths that wake/To perish never” (IO, IX, 156-157). The silver threads of the Moon, personified as a female spirit (DO, II, 5), akin to fertility rites, pours her light on Coleridge’s imagination. The Moon’s phases and tides, too, influence the ebb and flow of his imagination; it waxes and wanes, inevitably returning to the same lunar form. As such, the Moon is a striking symbol of death and rebirth, and, hence of resurrection. This lunar beauty portends a storm of creativity as the poet awaits the gust to swell (DO, I, 15) so that his
14 This idea is beyond the scope of this essay and it requires in-depth study of Coleridge’s work. Excerpt from San Ildefonso Nocturno. .
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