i wrote this for my british literature class; it's a journal entry on a writer from the Romantic period. my teacher, professor Agosta, the most literary-passionate man i've even come across, (he literally leaps around the classroom sometimes reciting lines) liked it so well he wants to use it as an example in future semesters. I was kinda proud of that, so i'm posting it here. by the way, if he really does use it as a model that's totally embarrassing because i wrote it almost as personal as a real journal entry. but oh well, we are human, we need to glimpse inside each other sometimes even in school."A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where –
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill’d;"
These lines from Coleridge’s poem "The Eolian Harp" make my heart sing with joy when I read them with the thoughtfulness and attention they deserve. When I allow the words of this poem enter my brain and take hold, especially if I am out on my deck overlooking the valley of pine trees and oak, I feel more alive, more connected to everything around me, and more in love with this world. My favorite feeling, that sense of true bliss that fills me up sometimes with a nearly-impossible glory. The first time I ever remember feeling this I was driving my dad’s beat-up Toyota truck through Placerville listening to Cat Stevens sing "Peace Train" and heading for the metaphysical bookstore to buy myself some candles. I was seventeen years old and had money in my pocket from my job at the record store and was driving on an autumn day and the song was filling my heart and lungs as I sang along, loudly; I felt free and alive. These moments hit me seemingly randomly but their common denominator is they always have to do with freedom. It is the gladness to be alive and be able to make choices to move forward, to turn here, to start running down the street, to eat something, whatever I want, to look at whatever I want, to spend as much time pondering it as I feel necessary.
In my various readings of Romantic literature, I feel the glory of the Romantic vision has to do with this freedom. Coleridge’s passage above really intensifies this sense of freedom by merging sensual perceptions of light and sound. He imbues the "doors of perception" with the freedom to switch around on us, suddenly human beings can perceive light and sound in interwoven form, reality as we know it shifts, and the world becomes more open and yielding to possibility. Thoughts have rhythm, a phrase I immediately resonate with but cannot fully explain in a literal sense. It’s when your thoughts, well, your thoughts have rhythm. They fit together like a song, they carry you, your feet move, your heart beats, your voice sounds out, and all life around you moves in tune as well. I know these moments, I’m sure we all do, but they remain so elusive and difficult to articulate. This is where Coleridge comes in. His description of bliss in this poem leaves the reader breathless, and so aware of that feeling. From the glimpses of a faery-world to the noontime nap on a sunny hillside, we feel his joy. We understand completely why it is impossible not to love everything in a world filled with this kind of freedom.
My sister and I were in Forestville picking blackberries for the homemade jelly we planned to make. It was mid-September, the sun was shining, we wore soft cotton dresses and carried colored baskets we bought at the local thrift store. It could be any time, any place, as long as there were sweet blackberries, and richly stained fingers, and our own laughter. We felt the fullness of our own joy, as young women alive in a world with so many gentle and sweet luxuries. Bike paths where wild blackberries grow free. Caterpillars and white herons and butterflies and spiderwebs. We are connected to all of it, with freedom to move within it, a car to carry us there, jobs waiting for us at home, books and music in our backpacks, the world at our fingertips. We recognized our own complete freedom really, and let the joy of that fill our afternoon. She turned to me and said, "it’s impossible not to love everything!" I read this poem two or three days later. How perfect life feels sometimes. This is what Coleridge taps into, this is the rhythm of life’s interconnectedness that comes alive in this passage. This is why I love to study literature in school! To pay more attention to these glorious words that keep us all connected and alert to the idiosyncratic joys of all our lives.
I know Wordsworth and Coleridge and especially Keats were not all "sweetness and light." I, too, have to "come down" from moments of pure bliss and re-enter reality. Night falls, fingers chill, cotton stains, cars run out of gas, you can’t find parking in San Francisco, you go home, you have homework to do and dishes to wash and bills to pay. And these, of course, are just simple annoyances. We are haunted by a deeper darkness, by the "still sad music of humanity." This return to reality reminds us that we are never free, just as clearly as we are always free, because we are indeed connected to others and that means responsibility. Coleridge remembers in the last part of this poem, in which he responds to his wife’s disapproval and attempts to appease his Christian society. He passes off his own fanciful meditations as "bubbles." We are left aching for the loss of his joy. But once we have experienced the bliss of freedom, we never forget and we hope to access that deep sense of connection and benevolence and pure love again and again.
