A Single Wave
Wednesday, 11th April, 1804
"What a beautiful object a single wave is!" wrote Coleridge in his notebook. "I particularly watched the beautiful Surface of the Sea in this gentle Breeze! every form so transitory, so for the instant, and yet for that instant so substantial in all its sharp lines, steep surfaces, and hair-deep indentures, just as if it were cut glass, glass cut into ten thousand varieties, and then the network of wavelets, the rude circle hole network of the Foam."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, late 18th to early 19th century British poet, and beloved friend to William Wordsworth, wrote those words on board the Speedwell slipping down the Channel on a voyage to Malta. Coleridge had undertaken a sea-going journey in desperate spirits, a man who had "abandoned poetry," as he claimed to Wordsworth, and "being convinced," he bitterly added, "that I never had the essentials of poetic Genius, and that I mistook a strong desire for original power." (c.f. Alethea Hayter, "A Voyage in Vain: Coleridge's Journey to Malta in 1804," Faber & Faber, Ltd, 1973).
Hayter reflects on Coleridge's notes of his sojourn to the Mediterranean: "On his voyage to Malta he was never weary of watching the patterns of the waves as they lifted into crests of foam and sank in wrinkled slopes down to deep troughs, and swelled again in dimpling ripples to flash sun-glints from their summits." Coleridge, Hayter continues, tried to evoke the various surfaces of the sea "in phrases and notes scribbled into his notebook. Many of them were images of minerals - the waves had the sheen of soapstone, bright reflections such as he had seen on fireplaces of plumbago slate, the exquisite purple of tinted drinking glasses, shimmers of brass and polished steel and tin alloys."
In the Inland Northwest it is winter. The deep cold and the low gray skies lay a still hand on my pages. I find myself these last months in reflection; without "poetic Genius" as Coleridge put it, to create. To make something of nothing. The exquisite "nothings" of nature, the unseen part, possess undeniable splendor. Nature gives us all that we need - yet the silver frost and unmarred snow left me empty. Too much stillness, perhaps.
This week during my own sun-drenched sojourn here on the island of Maui, that "beautiful object a single wave" has also captured my attention. The rolling ocean has given me inspiration, encouragement the creative spark is not dead. Wave upon wave. Momentum and iridescence. Teals and mallard greens, pearls and garnets; colors that rise and curl and splinter white on the iron red of the broken shore. These waves sing, not unlike the whales spouting and breaching further out in Wailea Bay.
Waves carry the music of their endlessness and ceaselessness, an unchained melody not unlike breath and the unending breeze.
Coleridge set out in hope, yet "arrived in resignation" as Hayter observes, having failed to reclaim his younger energies, to recharge his creative vision or regain his idealistic self. Yet no voyage is in vain. Experience is our wage: we are paid in scribbles and phrases, sketches of somethings from endless nothings.
Fare thee well!
Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
And yet more often living within thyself,
And for thyself, so haply shall thy days
Be many, and a blessing to mankind
- from Wordsworth's "Prelude," thought to be a tribute to Coleridge
"What a beautiful object a single wave is!" wrote Coleridge in his notebook. "I particularly watched the beautiful Surface of the Sea in this gentle Breeze! every form so transitory, so for the instant, and yet for that instant so substantial in all its sharp lines, steep surfaces, and hair-deep indentures, just as if it were cut glass, glass cut into ten thousand varieties, and then the network of wavelets, the rude circle hole network of the Foam."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, late 18th to early 19th century British poet, and beloved friend to William Wordsworth, wrote those words on board the Speedwell slipping down the Channel on a voyage to Malta. Coleridge had undertaken a sea-going journey in desperate spirits, a man who had "abandoned poetry," as he claimed to Wordsworth, and "being convinced," he bitterly added, "that I never had the essentials of poetic Genius, and that I mistook a strong desire for original power." (c.f. Alethea Hayter, "A Voyage in Vain: Coleridge's Journey to Malta in 1804," Faber & Faber, Ltd, 1973).
Hayter reflects on Coleridge's notes of his sojourn to the Mediterranean: "On his voyage to Malta he was never weary of watching the patterns of the waves as they lifted into crests of foam and sank in wrinkled slopes down to deep troughs, and swelled again in dimpling ripples to flash sun-glints from their summits." Coleridge, Hayter continues, tried to evoke the various surfaces of the sea "in phrases and notes scribbled into his notebook. Many of them were images of minerals - the waves had the sheen of soapstone, bright reflections such as he had seen on fireplaces of plumbago slate, the exquisite purple of tinted drinking glasses, shimmers of brass and polished steel and tin alloys."
In the Inland Northwest it is winter. The deep cold and the low gray skies lay a still hand on my pages. I find myself these last months in reflection; without "poetic Genius" as Coleridge put it, to create. To make something of nothing. The exquisite "nothings" of nature, the unseen part, possess undeniable splendor. Nature gives us all that we need - yet the silver frost and unmarred snow left me empty. Too much stillness, perhaps.
This week during my own sun-drenched sojourn here on the island of Maui, that "beautiful object a single wave" has also captured my attention. The rolling ocean has given me inspiration, encouragement the creative spark is not dead. Wave upon wave. Momentum and iridescence. Teals and mallard greens, pearls and garnets; colors that rise and curl and splinter white on the iron red of the broken shore. These waves sing, not unlike the whales spouting and breaching further out in Wailea Bay.
Waves carry the music of their endlessness and ceaselessness, an unchained melody not unlike breath and the unending breeze.
Coleridge set out in hope, yet "arrived in resignation" as Hayter observes, having failed to reclaim his younger energies, to recharge his creative vision or regain his idealistic self. Yet no voyage is in vain. Experience is our wage: we are paid in scribbles and phrases, sketches of somethings from endless nothings.
Fare thee well!
Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
And yet more often living within thyself,
And for thyself, so haply shall thy days
Be many, and a blessing to mankind
- from Wordsworth's "Prelude," thought to be a tribute to Coleridge
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