Coleridge's Poetry in "Conversation"Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Nothing in Samuel Coleridge's "conversation" poems is conventionally conversational. These poems do not create dialogue between two characters, but rather focus on an internal dialogue that Coleridge's characters have with themselves. For Coleridge, conversation is a personal and individual action. In “Sonnet to the River Otter” and “Frost at Midnight,” characters philosophize about themselves, but their physically present human counterparts are not necessary for the thoughtful commentary. As the river and the baby exist in these poems, they are merely objects that initiate the character's internal dialogues. Both poems include an evocation of the object which quickly gives way to personal reflections: “Dear native stream! Wild West Stream! (Coleridge, “Sonnet to the River Otter,” 1) and “My baby so fair!” it makes my heart vibrate / With tender joy, to look at you like this” (“Frost at Midnight,” 48-49). The lines that follow mark a turning point within the character towards his own thoughts which have nothing to do with the subject invoked. In "Frost at Midnight", the character considers his own cloistered childhood, and in "River Otter", the focus is on the character's experiences at the river and his own loss of childhood innocence and its ramifications . None of these "conversations" depart completely from a conversational form, nor do they maintain a conventional, back-and-forth, person-to-subject quality that leaves the reader in the position of a listener to the speaker's thoughts. We become part of the poem, an aspect of Coleridge's thought process, and are thus immersed in the worlds he laments. As the speaker uses the word "tone" (lines 4, 8, 9, 11), four times in the short "River Otter" the reader becomes the second person the speaker is referring to. Coleridge asks us to become the river and hear the character's thoughts as the river would, if it were capable of hearing. The river then replaces a human subject, which forces us to play its role. Once the reader becomes the river, Coleridge is able to “converse” with us as if we were the conversational counterparts. He is then able to have a continuous, timeless debate with the reader beyond the limits of conventional conversation. He broke the rules of interpersonal communication to make something mystical. And with the freedom to speak one-on-one with all the readers, he then contemplates lost childhood, aging and emotion. This contemplation appears in the following passage: What happy hours and what sad hours since I last touched the fine, smooth stone along your chest, numbering its light jumps! and yet such a deep impression flows from the sweet scenes of childhood... (3-6). Once again, the “tone” of the fourth line calls the reader to be the river, placing us in the position of direct listener to the character’s laments. Once in this position, the reader is presented with lines five and six in which the speaker views the loss of childhood innocence as a reward for growing up. The diction evokes this payment through the word “advance”, which is defined as “to advance or lend” (Oxford English Dictionary). This definition would have been common in Coleridge's time, since references appear in the OED for the 1780s and 1810s. Considering childhood as a borrowing, thecharacter raises the argument that innocence must be returned to nature in a transactional manner. All losses of innocence are then something contractual that we must both expect and honor as we age. These last two lines become advice from the speaker to the reader, warning us that we are going to lose our innocence and that we should expect it as we would expect to repay a loan. Despite this conversational warning to the reader, the speaker then laments. ceperte, apparently in spite of himself: “Visions of childhood! You have often been seduced / The cares of solitary manhood, but you awaken the most affectionate sighs:” (12-13). This sad consideration of loss affirms the conversational quality of the poem by humanizing the speaker. This makes him not only a competent advisor to the reader, but also a lively, sensitive human being who understands the complexity of abandoning innocence for the responsibilities of adulthood. “The worries of solitary virility” above all affirms its humanity by returning to the use of “advances”. The speaker recognizes that not only must a man pay for his childhood to gain age and responsibilities; he must also continue to pay life for everything he earns, whether in work or finance. Coleridge's personal financial situation comes directly into play here: he wandered around Europe, living in hostels, earning very little from the sales of his poems, and living in poverty, which made his early adulthood auspicious. better trying. He speaks to readers through his character about a personal aspect of his life, which breaks the boundary between poet and reader constructed by previous poets. There is a one-on-one conversation between Coleridge and his reader, an emotional outburst. For Coleridge, the conversation within the poem extends beyond the words on the page. Instead, it speaks even more to the reader, creating a conversation with its content. “Frost at Midnight” opens with a similar conversational quality that inadvertently calls the reader once again to be the external listener to the speaker's thoughts: secret ministry, unaided by any wind. The owl's cry sounds loud and listen again! noisy like before. The inhabitants of my cottage, all at rest, left me to this solitude, which suits the reflections of Abtruser: ("Frost at Midnight", 1-6). As the speaker states in the third line, "and listen, once more", it seems to attract the attention of someone who is not present to hear the cry of the owls outside. He also clearly states that all "the inhabitants of my cottage are all at rest" (3), which raises the question of why he is trying to draw anyone's attention to the calling of the owls. The speaker asks the reader, instead of the inhabitants of the cottage, to hear the owl with him. “Listening” is a call to the reader to join in the conversation that unfolds in the following lines in the form of “abstruse reflections” (6). Other dialect phrases appear throughout the first two sections of the poem and indicate the speaker's attempt to connect with the reader in conversation. In line 17, "Methinks" calls particular attention to the character's thinking, which would be unnecessary if he did not expect the reader to also think independently of himself. “But oh!” (24, pause) also draws readers' attention to the character's voice. It would be superfluous to call one's own attention to one's own thoughts, and as no other listener has stated at this early stage of "Frost," it must be an evocation of the reader to enter into the poetic discourse. Coleridge wants once more, 2003. 522.