Alexandra Kulik
"The power of the poetic mind, the imaginative capacity to transcend falsely devised metaphysical perimeters and actually exist in a reality professedly pure and redintegrated, assumes that the poet's mode of being-in-the-world is quite distinct from the common (i.e. “passive” and “careless”) perceiver. Imagination is a form of vitally active creativity which is, if not in itself a direct work of God, as Blake sees it, then at least a similitude of divine creation." page 85
Harold Bloom writes, “[t]he visible body of Nature is more than an outer testimony of the Spirit of God to him; it is our only way to God. […] Ordinary perception is then a mode of salvation… provided that we are awake fully to what we see” (124). page 87
What distinguishes the poetic mind from ordinary consciousness is a matter of admitting a sort of transcendental continuity to otherwise disconnected objects in the world. The poet's vision sees every object in nature as a symbol of some spiritual truth, some representation of an aspect of universal humanity. page 87
Wordsworth's imagination, in retaining the spirit of childhood and the “spots of time” which engender a perpetually “blessed mood” (“Tintern” 37), is directed invariably at the recognition of Universal Being in all things. Ultimately, it is pointed toward the same Blakean apocalyptic vision which fuses all “discordant elements” (Prelude 1.343): the transcendental obliteration of all distinction and limitation into absolute unity. page 88
Coleridge - It is the same function which makes the poet conscious of universality-in-particularity, of infinity in apparent finitude, and of the underlying unity of opposites.
[That too is thou. Campbell]
We have seen that the poetic mind is not at all foremost involved in creating flights of clever verse, but in uncovering reality's equally immanent and transcendent poesy. page 89
Coleridge declares emphatically that the true poet will, once apprehending this higher reality, thereafter employ a language of symbolism—the poet's preeminent device—to convey what only the imagination can unlock: the “translucence of the eternal through and in the temporal” page 89
The imagination as active, transformative power is at bottom a reflection of the divinely creative constitution of Nature, transcending sensual bounds, reconciling apparent contraries, and penetrating the perceptual barriers that obscure intrinsic harmony. As such, the poetic mind not only acts to synthesize itself with Nature, Truth, and God—which are, we have seen, interchangeable signifiers—it simultaneously bridges the gap between art, philosophy, and religion. page 91
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