Coleridge's Capable Negativity in 'Dejection: an ode' Andrew Keanie Throughout his career, Coleridge often indulged his negative emotions memorablyand minutely: It is a most instructive part of my life, that I have been always preyed on by some Dread, and perhaps all my faulty actions have been the consequence of some Dread or other on my mind / from fear of Pain, or Shame, not from the prospect of Pleasure / – So in my childhood & Boyhood … imaginary fears of having the Itch in my Blood – then a short-lived Fit of Fears from Sex – then horror of DUNS, & a state of struggling with madness from an incapability of hoping that I should be able to marry Mary Evans (and this strange passion of fervent tho' wholly imaginative and imaginary Love uncombinable by my utmost efforts with <any regular> Hope – / possibly from deficiency of bodily feeling, of tactual ideas connected with the image) had all the effects of direct Fear, and I have lain for hours together awake at night, groaning and praying – then came that stormy time / and for a few months America really inspired Hope, & I became an exalted Being – then came Rob. Southey's alienation / my marriage – constant dread in my mind respecting Mrs Coleridge's Temper, &c – and finally stimulants in the fear and prevention of violent Bowel-attacks from mental agitation / then <almost epileptic> night-horrors in my sleep / & since then every error I have committed, has been the immediate effect of the Dread of these bad most shocking Dreams – any thing to prevent them / – all this interwoven withits minor consequences, that fill up the interspaces – the cherry juice running in between the cherries in a cherry pie / procrastination in dread of this – & something else in consequence of that procrast. &c … 1 The above notebook entry illustrates atypically choking efflorescence of Coleridgean unhappiness. Taken at its face value, Coleridge's 'procrastination … & something else in consequence of that procrast. &c' meant that the poet considered himself incapable of producing great poetry. The point presents itself as a question: how should Coleridge's wealth of poetic activity in later years be regarded, given that he pronounced 'The Poet … dead in [him]'2 in 1801? I do not wish to state categorically whether or not the composition of 'Dejection: an ode' should be thought of as marking a decisive turning-point in Coleridge's career, shaping all his future activity (or inactivity); nor do I wish to decide whether or not the poem should be thought of simply as an important episode, only partially related to what came before or [End Page 281] after. To do either would impose on me a heavier burden of proof than I am able to assume in the space available to me here.But it is worth observing that in 'Dejection', Coleridge's thinking revolved around a prodigious paradox: the fact that even as he pronounced himself dead as a poet he was at the same time exhibiting his continuing poetic life by his verbal facility and imaginative play. With J.C.C. Mays's argument in mind, that Coleridge was capable of making his negative emotions poetically 'viable',3 I will argue that 'Dejection' involves the first conscious, explicit and formal enactment of what I will call Coleridge's capable negativity, which shouldbe compared, but not confused, with Keats's negative capability.4 I will concentrate on the version of the poem published in the Morning Post, 4 October 1802,5 because, in my view,it marks how Coleridge ceremonially discontinued competing with Wordsworthas a poet,6 by displaying publicly his essential difference from (and possibly his superiority to) Wordsworth, despite the latter's productiveness. 'Dejection' is not simply the gesturing of a poet who is really dead. What, if anything, died? One may be inclined to answer that question with a shade of decadent humour if one recalls J.K. Huysmans' character, des Esseintes, hosting a sombre, formal 'dinner in pious memory of the host's (temporarily) lost virility'. Like Huysmans' knowingly 'regulation phraseology [in des Esseintes'] letters summoning relatives to attend the obsequies of a defunct kinsman',7 'Dejection' has an oddly persuasive life of its own. The paradox...