COLERIDGE AND STEFFENS

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834), in both his philosophical and in his poetic work, has had a profound influence on the spiritual development of English poetry.  In his own time he was the Nestor, the grand old man, of the so-called “romantic”(they were in fact realists) poets Keats, Byron, Shelley…Only recently is his interest in the work of Henrik Steffens known. This is due to the publication of the complete works of Coleridge by the Princeton Bollingen edition. Thus we can read the passages of Steffens, which Coleridge carefully copied out. Coleridge had standing orders of both Schelling and Steffens with his bookseller. When Steffens published a book, Coleridge wanted to have that book. As one of the editors of the edition writes: “ Perhaps Steffens was the Naturphilosoph Coleridge held in highest regard during his later years—Certainly he is the one most praised in the Opus Maximum. There he is called “a still more Orphic mind” than Schelling.”

We bring some pages, from Coleridge’s posthumously published work.

from Opus Maximum

Let me not however, fail to declare that in the several works of H. Steffens, especially in his Beiträge  Zur Innern Naturgeschichte der Erde, the spirit with me bears witness to the same spirit within him—but that in him the line of its circumvolution was begun from a false center, with too short and undistended a compass, forced thereby usque ab initio [right from the beginning] to close too early on itself, and thus leaving his familiar genius imprisoned within the magic circle of its own describing.
   Still, among all the real or verbal definitions of Space and Time hitherto given, Steffens seems to me the clearest and simplest and that which most breathes the spirit of the old Ionic School [Anaximander, Parmenedes among others], viz. Space=the form by which the infinite is taken into the finite; Time= the form by which the finite is taken up into the infinite.”

…Like Orpheus, the command is that we keep our eye steadily toward the light that is to come, lest like Orpheus, looking backward on the phantom(atic) though prophetic semblance of life which is behind us, and endeavoring (to produce) the reality out of the phantom itself by an intensity of our own contemplation, we lose the one forever, and leave the other forever a phantom. Such, it appears to me has been the proceeding of Schelling and of a yet more Orphic mind, H. Steffens.

“MARGENALI” (Bollingen series) contains extensive notes on Coleridge’s reading of Steffens, published for the first time in 2000. Until then Coleridge’s connection to Steffens is virtually unknown. (see also references to Steffens in the Opus Maximum published first in 2002.)

Coleridge comments on a passage of Steffens.

the German passage reads:

Eine jede Sphäre des Totalorganismus hat ihre bestimmte Erregbarkeit[translated in the bollingen edition as „irritation“], ein jedes Organ der Sphäre ebenfalls; nur ist hierbei an nichts Graduelles zu denken. Das Graduelle ist nur für den Schein.
(Each sphere of the total organism has its characteristic way of being aroused. Each organ of the sphere, in any case; the idea here is not of a gradual process. That which is gradual takes place only in the realm of appearance. TCR translation)

Coleridge’s comment:

“It is in this and similar passages that I am stopped by my want of comprehension and my restless wish to place myself as Pupil with H. Steffens. It is the word, Schein, that most pozes me in the writings of Schellingians…But I feel convinced that I misconceive Steffens &c; and therefore, according to my own golden rule, not understanding their ignorance I conclude myself ignorant of their Understanding.”

From the editors [H.J.Jackson and George Whalley of the Bollingen series]:

“The earliest record of C’s acquaintance with the works of Henrik(or Henrich or Heinrich) Steffens is a notebook entry of 1814-15 introducing the “Compass of Nature” from Steffens Grundzüge der philosophischen Wissenschaft (Berlin 1806): Cniii 4226 in n. C probably went on to read Steffens Beyträge zur inner Naturgeschichte der Erde(Freiburg 1801), for he had the two works bound together (Grundzüge 2) and his own Theory of Life, composed Nov-Dec 1816, bears many signs of their influence, including verbatim(translated) extracts from Beyträge.(see the index in SW & F—CC.) In confirmation of C’s deep involvement with Steffens at this time, CRB I 200 records his praise of Steffens in Dec 1816. by June 1817, C had a standing order for works by Schelling and Steffens with his German book seller: CL iv 739.

   C. almost invariably coupled Steffens’s name with Schelling’s (Schelling’s coming first) as leaders in the school of Naturphilosophie, but at the height of his enthusiasm it was Steffens he would have chosen to study with: in Grundzüge he writes of “my restless wish to place myself as a Pupil with H. Steffens”…