Though extraordinary, it makes sense when you think of these five
poems as aspects of the same protean forge. They are sparks thrown out
of the cauldron, captured by Coleridge and carefully machined into
beautiful pieces. This process was captured admirably by John
Livingston Lowes in his Road to Xanadu, one of the most interesting
books ever written.

What I am interested in is this pasture that Coleridge garnered from.
I've immersed myself in it, and it's contributed to my own states of
mind when making fun things, essays, stories, poems, notes,
conversations, articles, photographs. This has allowed me to look at
what goes on in these cauldrons more introspectively.

One characteristic which fascinates me is the idea the ancients had of
the Pierian Spring, the source of knowledge of art and science, or
what passed for art and science back then. The modern idea is perhaps
the glamour or effascination of what was called by the Orfeo poet
fayré. Modern theory tends to concentrate on the sources of creative
works. I am interested in those too, but I prefer to look at the
transformations applied, and the mysterious substance which appears to
come from nowhere.

Unfortunately, this is far beyond modernity. I will have a hard time
convincing anybody that creativity is real, because in the physical
sciences forms from matter are only created from other forms of
matter, or precipitated from energy. This is used as a metaphor in
æsthetics too, which is an intolerable muddying of the disciplines.
But even some Greeks believed that art was merely a feeble imitation
of nature.

So the idea that one can create something from nothing will appear to
such people as magic. If this notion is a folkloric motif of the poet,
then that's fine by me. This is a bit of folklore that I would prefer
to hang on to. I think, in fact, it is scientific but you know what
the size of Fermat's margin is like. At any rate, I think that our
creative faculties are certainly imperfect. A religious poet like
Chesterton might say that they are in a fallen state.

One reason to prefer Christabel over the Ancient Mariner and Kubla
Khan is that Christabel has no obvious source, despite very concerted
efforts to track these down. Coleridge himself did not know the
source, if we can infer that from his Table Talk note on the subject.
Christabel shows what might be something closer to the core, if there
is one, of his Quantock demi-annus mirabilis, and should be read
carefully by the interested student of literature.

These springs, pastures, or forges are very rarely transformative of
the author, unlike religion. They are more like gifts or glimpses. I
am inclined to treat the fayré idiom as being somewhat orthogonal to
the metaphors that I use. Fayré is more important. The general mode of
creativity is not especially a walk within at least the margins of a
perilous land, it is simply making stuff up. The perilous land is
more, if you like, archetypal than creativity itself, and more widely
encompassing.

I have been wondering lately what the effect is of mixing two
metatropes that can't otherwise be mixed. Metatropes are ambiences or
atmospheres which are to pure sublimity as sublimity is to beauty. For
example, I have a vision of a metatropical Britain. As I was
developing this, I was thinking of a very tropical metatrope too. Each
of them seems to be unmixed within itself, but what if you put them
together? Does that spoil them both?

This is pertinent with respect to fayré in that my view of a
metatropical Britain does not seem to be quite fayré, but I cannot
tell exactly what relation it bears to it. Of course the poets have
described many fayré domains, and perhaps I have received one of these
refractions.

The centres of compassion in a person are orthogonal to the logical,
and so are those which are connected with dreams, or they have their
own forms of logic. The springs, pastures, or forges most commonly
dwell in those centres orthogonal to the logical, and so encompass the
compleat person. Perhaps this is why the great old mediæval tales are
called romances.

Science was merely one product of the great metaphysical
investigations of the 17th century. So I have often said that in a
sense, those disquisitions were more important or more exciting than
science itself, because science was just one product of them. Were
there other products, now suppressed? Were there other potential
products, perhaps better than the scientific method, which didn't get
exfigured?

Similarly, Coleridge's poems are excellent, but the fact that he dwelt
in possibility, to borrow a phrase from Dickinson, is more fascinating
because it encompasses all of those poems and much more. The
Wanderings of Cain are excellent in this regard, because this is a
poem that Coleridge only ever wrote the hints of, in various states.
It only exists in what contemporary critics call a plural text which
points to an absent text, the putative poem. This is useful to the
scholar of Coleridge's forge because it forces some measure of
imagination in reconstructing what Coleridge intended.

Kubla Khan was famously incomplete too, but there are fewer hints of
how that was to continue. A more interesting case is, again,
Christabel, for which there are not a great many hints as to its
completion, but what hints there are are rich and mysterious. The mode
of investigation here should be quite different to normal literary
historical research. Instead of finding sources, discussing social
implications, and all those other obsessions of modern research, we
should be opening up creative landscapes. We should be working
backwards from the poems, considering the poems not as poems but as
hints, to magical purviews.

Is it really possibly to share in an author's creativity? One might
consider that the creative function of an author is impossible to
share, no more than one can love for somebody else. But we are not
trying to be creative for the author, but to understand or have shared
with us that creativity. I think it is possible. What you have to do
is coördinate, in the linguistic sense as a metaphor, the conditions
that made the forge arise with the products which sparked out of it.

I'm sure that everybody reading this essay will be tugging at the
reins to try this out. I'd suggest starting out with Keats, because
Keats was a kind chap and very accessible. He was also entirely
passionate about his poetry, and his letters encode a lot of very
subtle nuances which are essential for this kind of thing. I certainly
don't advise trying this method out with Shakespeare, who is usually
inscrutable as a Sphinx in these terms. This might, however, work with
Ben Jonson.

--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

On 5 February 2011 13:58, Sean B. Palmer <s...@miscoranda.com> wrote:

> One characteristic which fascinates me is the idea the ancients had of
> the Pierian Spring, the source of knowledge of art and science, or
> what passed for art and science back then.

>

> Unfortunately, this is far beyond modernity. I will have a hard time
> convincing anybody that creativity is real, because in the physical
> sciences forms from matter are only created from other forms of
> matter, or precipitated from energy.

So why can't the energy of where you are, what you're doing,
how you're feeling be transformed into written output,
or ideas for written output?

Seems quite dully logical to me?

regards

--
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

On Feb 5, 2011, at 8:58, Sean B. Palmer wrote:

> Unfortunately, this is far beyond modernity. I will have a hard time
> convincing anybody that creativity is real, because in the physical
> sciences forms from matter are only created from other forms of
> matter, or precipitated from energy.

This is a dreadful confusion of levels on the part of anyone who would  
make that objection. Thoughts (that is, the direct products of  
creativity) are information, not matter; if they result in  
corresponding physical objects, well, that is causality, and the  
matter and energy to construct them was obtained from reasonably  
obvious sources.

If I knew more about information-theoretic physics I could say this  
more precisely and certainly.

If there is, in fact, a requirement to not get something from nothing,  
then it is thermodynamic in nature, and the energy input of the Sun  
accounts for getting ideas from 'nothing' just as it does all other  
activity on Earth.

--
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Dave Pawson wrote:

> So why can't the energy of where you are, what you're doing,
> how you're feeling be transformed into written output

This might give some better indication:

http://inamidst.com/stuff/witt/process

--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Kevin Reid wrote:

> This is a dreadful confusion of levels on the part of anyone who would
> make that objection.

And yet many do. Part of the problem is that æsthetic and
psychological theory are still in a primitive state with regard to
creativity.

Shakespeare gives no conclusion on the subject in Sonnet 59:

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,
Which labouring for invention bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O! that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Wh'r we are mended, or wh'r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
 O! sure I am the wits of former days,
 To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

On Feb 6, 2011, at 9:52, Sean B. Palmer wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Kevin Reid wrote:
>
>> This is a dreadful confusion of levels on the part of anyone who  
>> would make that objection.
>
> And yet many do. Part of the problem is that æsthetic and  
> psychological theory are still in a primitive state with regard to  
> creativity.

That seems irrelevant to me. As you said, "in the physical sciences";  
the problem is that many are confused about what physics does and does  
not say about how minds can operate.

--
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>

> problem is that many are confused about what physics does and
> does not say about how minds can operate.

Which can be partly influenced by the state of the other fields. For
example, if Freud had built massive and incorrect theories about
creativity that became as popular as his existing theories, people
would be less likely to even turn to physics as the fountain of
knowledge on the subject.

I think that the biases people are susceptible to here cross a broad spectrum.

This might be related to something I've been thinking about in regards
to the Cargo Cult. Since those peoples didn't have the scientific
method as part of their lore, what basis do we use for explaining
their actions? They must believe in some kind of totemic system, that
representations of things can summon or become active. What might that
be based in?

--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

On 7 February 2011 11:50, Sean B. Palmer <s...@miscoranda.com> wrote:

> This might be related to something I've been thinking about in regards
> to the Cargo Cult. Since those peoples didn't have the scientific
> method as part of their lore, what basis do we use for explaining
> their actions? They must believe in some kind of totemic system, that
> representations of things can summon or become active. What might that
> be based in?

Based on existing experience? I.e. no different from the general public
in Freuds era? Equally the same as we do today, except that
whereas a simpler society likely shares 'most' extant knowledge
that is near impossible today.

Doesn't stop you and I theorizing about these things, why should
those from Vanuatu be any different? Experience something,
draw conclusions.

"I can write poetry when I'm high on X"
thus ... X stimulates writing poetry.

Write or wrong it stands as a hypothesis until
disproven to me/I'm told not to think it by someone
with the power to direct my thinking?
  If it's the witchdoctor says 'hey this is good'
then I'm more likely to accept it?

regards

--
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk