Posted by Erin on August 19, 1997 at 09:39:13:

In reply to Re: Coleridge really was a hippy! posted by Caroline on August 18, 1997 at 08:30:28

] ] If you want proof of his hippy-like habits, just read his poem Kubla Khan - written in an opium-dream, and boy, does it show.

] Agreed. Whoever heard of a river called Alf, anyway?

Coleridge, like Baudelaire, is one of the more intellectual 'junkies'. I believe laudnum was his monkey.

Next to Shelley, Coleridge was the most scholarly of the English Romantics. He traveled to Germany, and was highly influence by German Idealism --a school which believes that through reason, we apprehend what is real (noumena) over what is perceived (phenomena).

First promulgated by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, this epistomolgy (IMHO, a modern interpretation of Plato --the Plato of the Republic), was further articulated by Hegel and later Marx in the 19th c..

In essence, German Idealism negates what is preceived by the human senses by stating that it (preceived-reality) is not real or as Kant would say, "the thing itself". A conclusion of this concept can cause a 'yearning' for the Real. I can see this in Kubla Khan, this longing for noumena. It's also possible that Coleridge felt that he could attain it through the use if opium-based substances. Something Kant, I'm sure would not recommend.;-)

Sorry --this has very little to do with S&S --but I couldn't resist talking about it.:-)

Erin