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

Angela Holzer

 

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.