passion was obscured unless the poet spoke in his own voice.
Coleridge approaches the balladic tradition and takes what he needs in order to
experiment with his own voice. The voice speaks out of generations of voices.
At the time when he met Sara, Coleridge’s notebooks teem with jagged shards
of life, to use a McFarland turn of phrase. Not only are the entries for
November 1799 about as long as all the entries for the preceding six months,
but the mental leaps of imagination, excitement and wonder as revealed in the
entries is disorienting:[23]
576 — O God! when I now think how perishable Things, how
imperishable ideas — what a proof of My Immortality — What is
Forgetfulness? —
577 May not Time in Association be made serviceable & evidence
Likeness/.
578 The Long Entrancement of a True-Love’s Kiss.
579 In the North every Brook, every Crag, almost every Field has a
name — a proof of greater Independence & a Society more
approaching in their Laws & Habits to Nature –
Less than a month after these entries, “Love” was published in the Morning
Post, on 21 December 1799, as “Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie.” It
was considerably edited and newly titled “Love” for the 1800 edition of the
Lyrical Ballads.[24] It appears on the page as a controlled, completed,
twenty-five stanza poem; evidence of romantic fragmentation here will certainly
not come from the format of the verse. The ballad structure is rigid; every
stanza is four lines long, the first three of eight syllables, and the last of six
syllables. Coleridge dots the poem with the obligatory archaisms of the “ancient
tradition”: for instance, “ladie,” “lay,” and “minstrel.” The story within the poem
is recognizably of the antiquarian tradition, too: the wooing of a Lady by a
Knight, “that wore / Upon his shield a burning brand.” This story is told by a
minstrel, who himself is wooing a woman. When it first appeared, the poem
was prefaced by a letter which Coleridge wrote to the editor of the newspaper,
and the letter makes a case for his modern balladeering. Coleridge’s list of
excuses makes interesting reading in the light of our discussion today:[25]
[A]s it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that ‘the affectionate
lovers of venerable antiquity’ (as Camden says) will grant me their
pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in
it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the Author, that in these
times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode [Coleridge's
emphasis] around us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the
public a silly tale of old fashioned love; and, five years ago, I own, I
should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But, alas!
explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly, that novelty itself ceases
to appear new; and it is possible that now, even a simple story, wholly
unspired [sic] with politics and personality, may find some attention
amid the hubbub of Revolutions, as to those who have resided a long
time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whispering becomes distinctly
audible.
Coleridge is coy in this letter. We should not believe that he, of anyone, has not
been affected by the explosion of “novelties” in “these times of fear and
expectations.” “Personality,” or the individual person, is actually deeply
involved in this poem; we do not need, in this case, the benefit of Holmes’ and
other modern biographical scholarship, for E.H. Coleridge glosses the history of
this poem in the Poetical Works, and he points out a clear connection between
this pseudo-medieval fable and Coleridge’s personal life. He details the visit to
Sockburn, and goes on to show direct links between the poem and this visit; for
instance, he says that lines 13-16 describe scenes from Sockburn church and the
“field near the farm-house.”[26]
More than plain biographical and topographical links, an individual personality
or voice emerges from the story of the minstrel singing to his princess, the story
which frames the Knight’s tale. Because the minstrel/poet is the real subject of
the poem, the ballad form is taken from historical fragment to personal,
romantic song. The poem becomes less of an ancient imitation, less of a “simple
song,” than an expression of love, and at the same time, a statement of personal
poetic ambition. The poet’s love for Genevieve seems more concrete, more real,
than the Knight’s story, which is transparent by comparison. The Knight’s story
is constantly interrupted by the poet observing Genevieve react to him; her
blushing, and finally, their embrace. “Love” does not end with the Knight, but
with the minstrel: “And so I won my Genevieve, / My bright and beauteous
bride.” The poem foregrounds the minstrel’s vocation as a poet, a singer and a
teller, by repeating verbs which emphasize such a role: “I told her of the
Knight” . . . “I told her how he pined” . . . “I sang an old and moving story.”
From this, the reader is encouraged, I think, to realize the triple relationship
occurring; at the same time, three sets of voices compete for love’s sake; Knight
and Ladie, Minstrel and Genevieve; Coleridge and Sara. The ninth stanza in
particular seems to indicate the importance of finding your way through a
poem’s voices: