Phenomenality and Dissatisfaction in Coleridge's Notebooks (Critical Essay‪)‬

THE LAST THING COLERIDGE WANTED TO BE CALLED WAS AN EMPIRICIST, yet he devoted hours of his life to minute descriptions of optical illusions, hallucinations, and sensory oddities--"spectra," as he calls them. He records occurrences as ordinary as after-images of colors, (1) double vision (N 1863, 2632), double take (N 2212), and reflections taken as objects (N 1844, 2557, 3159), and as dramatic as flowers on the curtain that turn into faces (N 2082); "a spectrum, of a Pheasant's Tail, that altered thro' various degredations into round wrinkly shapes" (N 1681); a "spectrum" of his own thigh that registered touches as luminous white trails (N 1108); and the apparition of an acquaintance whom he knows not to be in the room. On the occasion of this last hallucination Coleridge recalls, "I once told a Lady, the reason why I did not believe in the existence of Ghosts &c was that I had seen too many of them myself" (N 2583). The meticulousness of his notebook entries indicates that Coleridge thought of them as a kind of research. (2) It is because Coleridge isn't an empiricist that he is interested in evidently illusory appearances, gathering evidence against phenomenality by noting every time it misleads. He is concerned that phenomenality be recognized as merely phenomenal. "Often and often I have had similar Experiences," he explains, "and therefore resolved to write down the Particulars whenever [begin strikethrough]they[end strikethrough] any new instance should occur/as a weapon against Superstition" (N 2583). Still, Coleridge often sounds as though he doesn't quite know why he finds spectra so fascinating--for he is not only intrigued, but moved. He could fear and love for their own sake images that he knew to be unreal; complementarily, he could not always summon fear and love for things that he thought real, pressing, fearsome, and lovable. His exclamation about the stars and moon in "Dejection: An Ode"--"I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!"(3)--is exemplary of the state of mind in question, one long contemplated in the secondary literature and considered utterly characteristic of Coleridge.