Cite this article:
Chougule (1988). The Theme Of Loneliness As Reflected In S.T. Coleridge's Poem's. Journal of Ravishankar University (Part-A: SOCIAL-SCIENCE), 1(1), pp. 111-121.
Journal
of Ravishankar University
Vol. 01 No. A (Science)
1988 pp. 111-121 ISSN
0970 5910
The Theme Of Loneliness As Reflected In S.T. Coleridge's Poem's
S
Chougule
Department of English,
Night
College of Arts
ard Commerc;e, Kolhapur
MS received: 8 May 88
Abstract:
Coleridge was born
in the age
whieh was clamouring for change in social, political and religious fields. In the last decades of the eighteenth
century the idea of personal morality
and social solidarity underwent a drastic change and they came to be replaced
by individual freedom and dignity of man: This shift of attitude to a new set
of values was popularized by the French
Revolution, and poetised by the Romantics. Coleridge Jived and fought for these
new values and novel ideas; moreover, in his personal and public life he valued
friendship, love, sympathy and freedom more than anything else.Coleridge was a
favourite of both the parems.But was more attached to his father By whom he was presumably more loved. This·parental love resulted in
envy and jealousy of the other children
in the family.
Sometimes he was bullied and sallied by his brother. Franck and also received several bad names and
thumps too from Molly the nurse. It was not surprising then
that he kept aloof
from them, and
suffered the acute pangs of alienation
in his childhood itself. The story of his life in the
later years is
the story of painful isolation. of
aching solir.ariness, of a lonely mind talking to itself in verse or the
obverse of it,
of a mind suffering, explaining and justifying. Coleridge seems to have .grown the feeling of insecurity and
emotional precariousness since his childhood. Later he disconcertingly felt that he did not belong to the
family where.
he was born. felt a strong sense of
repulsion for il
When he
left his home
for school education, he was so much disappointed and disgusted with bis parental home that
he returned to
it. only on holidays and wrote to his people
very rmely : very strangely and
surprisingly enough, he did not even go ro attend his mother's funeial
in 1810. At
Christ's Hospital he lived in poverty, went hungry on
many occasions,
suffered the
pains of
loneliness, and yet he made the most of the moments in solilUde and ttanquility to
which he dedicated " the feeling
heart, the searching soul" 1 and kept the poet in him alive. Thus as a child,
boy and youth he
lived a lonely
life.Coleridge married Sara fricker on the ,advice of the fellow-poet Roben Southey, Sara’s
brother-in law. His premature marriage to her meant the abandonment of Evans, whom
he sincerely loved and presumably wanted to marry.As husband and wife
they were two
poles apart and gave each other nothing but pains and misunderstandings, which cast a deep
shadaw on thai their life and resulted
eventually their separation and . isolation. He was
avid for
company. made friend with
many men and women. Loved them from the bottom
of his heart but
got in return nothing but despair and disappointment which
are evidences by his poetic question. “why was I made for love and love denied
to me.”2 His relationships with others always remained inconstant.
NOTE:
Full version of this manuscript is available in PDF.