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| 1st edition title page |
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Christabel was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 and 1800, in the Quantocks and the Lake District respectively. The first part created a poem close to his other visionary poems, but as he thought about it more, and overlaid the Lake District section, the complexity hinted at by the original became manifest.
Coleridge planned to expand Christabel to five books, but he only ever published two, for various reasons. Christabel is usually read as a kind of absent text through its plural versions, in modern critical terms, but something close to the original vision extractable from the textual history of Book One shows the poem to have started from a very compact and vivid original gem.
In his epic study of the textual story of Coleridgean manuscripts, Stillinger identifies two very early documents of Christabel that he labels H and T1. The former is a holograph copy from “the last three months of 1800 or from 1801” (p.80), which he also labels Version 1 or CoS 52. The latter is a text transcript in a notebook by Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson, written “probably between November 1801 and January 1802” (p.81), also labelled Version 2 or CoS 51. There are many differences between the two, which Stillinger mainly ascribes to “simple copying errors”, while pointing out that others are not so easily explained.
Analysis of the textual variations shows, however, that T1 is likely to have come first and that H represents a slightly later variation. Whether T1 is misdated or was copied from some earlier manuscript I do not know. What is clear is that most of the material which is changed in H is, in this view, additional.
| T1 | Combined | H |
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The night is chill; the forest bare; |
The night is chill; the forest bare; |
The night is chill; the forest bare; |
There are two reasons to believe addition over omission here. The first is that the changed section was included in all subsequent versions of the poems. If it was good enough to be kept, why would it be omitted from T1? Secondly, T1 shows here a strange state of composition. The word air had rhymed with bare, and was changed to twirl as a verb. This provides evidence that the lines were not simply miscopied: if they were miscopied, there would not have been such attention paid to go back and correct the ending to a stronger verb. But since the original didn't work grammatically, why was it there?
It is hard to explain, either way, why Dorothy should have to change the section. Was Coleridge dictating it? This would imply that Stillinger's date is incorrect. Note that “looks out at the sky” is only attested in one other manuscript, also an early one: T2.
| T1 | Combined | H |
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She folded her arms beneath her cloak, A damsel bright, |
She folded her arms beneath her cloak, There she sees a damsel bright, |
She folded her arms beneath her cloak, There she sees a damsel bright, |
The change from Clad to Drest is the one that Stillinger specifically highlights as being unlikely as a simple copying error. It is a unique difference in the whole textual history of the poem. Again, the argument that all other versions of the poem would not find a variant like this unless revised, especially in a transcript by others at such an early and uncertain date, holds weight.
Moreover, though, the change to the repetition of "There she sees a damsel bright" has an interesting æsthetic effect. Clearly the original version of what spans two lines T1 was to read as a single line followed by the Clad line, "What sees she there? A damsel bright, / Clad in a silken robe of white", and there is no reason why two lines would be pared down into one, or that such a process could be so neatly obtained. The change actually makes the section unmetrical, but this is fine since a gap is introduced between two stanzas. In fact the change is an improvement, I believe, because the repetition of the sentiment is more trance-like, in keeping with the unique feel of the poem overall.
| T1 | Combined | H |
|---|---|---|
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But soon, with altered voice, said she— |
But soon, with altered voice, said she— |
But soon, with altered voice, said she— Then Christabel knelt by the lady’s side, |
This addition explains a puzzling feature of the poem. Christabel talks about her deceased mother, wanting her to be there, and immediately thereafter Geraldine, in the received text of the poem, starts talking about a “wandering mother” and “guardian spirit”. Yet Christabel has no idea what Geraldine is talking about. To the reader it is obvious, and perhaps it ought to be to Christabel too.
We could excuse this by saying that Christabel is under an enchantment. But the addition seems to indicate that in fact Coleridge was very elusively allusive in the original version of this section. He does not state that the woman is a wandering mother, nor that she is Christabel's guardian spirit. Presumably this turned out to be, however, too much for the general reader to have to intuit. Coleridge pieced out the action at the expense of making Christabel seem either naïve or deeply enchanted. One should also note that the rhyme scheme of the stanza in the original form is a quite regular ABACDCDEE. The additions again form a very neat and regular series of introductions.
In an edition called Christabel 1800 I have tried to reproduce the poem as it was at the start of 1800. In other words, this is as close as possible to the state the poem was in before Coleridge added the Lake District material in that year. In the received text, Part One is 278 lines, and Part One and One Conclusion are 331 lines. The Christabel 1800 text has only 256 lines.
There are some scant remarks from Coleridge and friends explaining the poem. Furthermore, several possible continuations or endings to the poem (putatively mentioned to friends and family by Coleridge) have been mooted: two from Dr. James Gillman, and two from Derwent Coleridge.
(1) Part III is to have been Christabel's “song ... of desolation”.
(2) “It seems that Hazlitt from pure Malignity had spread about the Report that Geraldine was a man in disguise.” (And therefore, Geraldine was not a man in disguise—but what idiot would think that?)
Coleridge claimed to have expanded the poem to 1200 or 1300 lines, which is normally dismissed since no manuscript existed. He was able to recite the poem, however, and may have composed this in his head. His family thought he was lying when he said he was working on a new edition of the Friend, so I think it behooves historians to look charitably or at least neutrally at claims such as these.
(3) Annotations in the style of the Mariner annotator:
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112–22:
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129–32:
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141–42:
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204–9:
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262–70:
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(1) “In the outline recorded by JG Geraldine ceases to personate the daughter of Sir Roland de Vaux and instead takes on the appearance of Christabel's absent knight. In spite of Christabel's seemingly inexplicable repugnance from her lover, she is forced by her father to continue the marriage plans and is only rescued at the last moment by the reappearance of the real lover. Geraldine, defeated, disappears, and the marriage with the true lover takes place. Her mother's voice, as predicted, is heard when the wedding bell tolls, and father and daughter are reconciled.” (Mays)
(2) “In conversation many of his brother poets would, like the reviewer, echo his praises, while in secret, they were trying to deprive him of his fair fame. It has been said, that ‘Coleridge never explained the story of Christabel.’ To his friends he did explain it; and in the Biographia Literaria, he has given an account of its origin.
“The story of the Christabel is partly founded on the notion, that the virtuous of this world save the wicked. The pious and good Christabel suffers and prays for
“‘The weal of her lover that is far away,’
“exposed to various temptations in a foreign land; and she thus defeats the power of evil represented in the person of Geraldine. This is one main object of the tale.
“At the opening of the poem all nature is laid under a spell:— [...] The spell is laid by an evil being, not of this world, with whom Christabel, the heroine, is about to become connected; and who in the darkness of the forest is meditating the wreck of all her hopes [...] Geraldine had already worked upon the kindness of Christabel, so that she had lifted her over the threshold of the gate, which Geraldine's fallen power had prevented her passing of herself, the place being holy and under the influence of the Virgin. [...] Such is the mysterious movement of this supernatural lady, that all this is visible, and when she passed the dying brands, there came a fit of flame, and Christabel saw the lady's eye. [...] The poet now introduces the real object of the supernatural transformation: the spirit of evil struggles with the deceased and sainted mother of Christabel for the possession of the lady. To render the scene more impressive, the mother instantly appears, though she is invisible to her daughter. [...] At the ceasing of the spell, the joyousness of the birds is described, and also the awakening of Christabel as from a trance. — During this rest (her mother) the guardian angel is supposed to have been watching over her. But these passages could not escape coarse minded critics, who put a construction on them which never entered the mind of the author of Christabel, whose poems are marked by delicacy.”
(1) “The sufferings of Christabel were to have been represented as vicarious, endured for her ‘lover far away’; and Geraldine, no witch or goblin, or malignant being of any kind, but a spirit, executing her appointed task with the best good will, as she herself says:—
“All they who live in the upper sky,
Do love you, holy Christabel, &c (11. 227-232)
“... If any reader of ‘Christabel’ be displeased with this explanation, let him impute it to mistaken apprehension or imperfect recollection on the part of the writer—and forget it.”
(2) “He considers it [Christabel] to be founded on the Roman Catholic notion of expiation for others’ sins; that Geraldine is a divinely appointed penance imposed on Christabel for the redemption of her lover who had committed some crime.” (via Barclay Fox)
In both external accounts, Christabel is said to represent the virtuous who must atone for the sins of the fallen, or do something in service at least the tempted. Geraldine is said to be a spirit, too, in both accounts; but her nature differs between Gillman and Derwent Coleridge in that the former says she is evil, whereas the latter says she is good and was sent only to be the grounds of the action whereon Christabel must work to perform her good.
Coleridge says that the “first part of the following poem was written in the year 1797, at Stowey, in the county of Somerset.” Apart from this remark, there is no other direct evidence of the original date of the poem at its inception. There are, however, some interesting correspondances between some lines and observations by Dorothy Wordsworth in her journal for early 1798.
| Date | DWJ | Lines | Poem |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Jan 1798 | The manufacturer's dog makes a strange, uncouth howl | 7–10 12–13 |
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She makes answer to the clock [...] Ever and aye, by Moonshine or shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud |
| 27 Jan 1798 | again her [the moon's] form became dimmer; the sky flat, unmarked by distances, a white thin cloud | 16–19 |
The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind, and at the full; And yet she looks both small and dull. |
| 31 Jan 1798 | When we left home, the moon immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of the moon without concealing her. | ||
| 7 Mar 1798 | One only leaf upon the top of a tree -- the sole remaining leaf -- danced round and round like a rag blown by wind. | 49–52 |
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. |
| 24 Mar 1798 | The spring continues to advance very slowly | 21–22 | Tis a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way. |
| 24 Mar 1798 | no green trees, the hedges leafless; nothing green but the brambles... | 33 | And naught was green upon the oak |
(Source: ultimately E. H. Coleridge)
Does this mean that Coleridge was revising the poem in those months? Or did he misremember the year and actually start writing it at that date? Even the direction of the borrowing is not certain: “Although images in ‘Christabel’ bear a remarkable resemblance to passages in Dorothy's journal, it is debatable whether Coleridge draws on Dorothy's journal, or, whether Dorothy imbricates within her journal images from ‘Christabel.’” (Koenig-Woodyard)
It is interesting to note that the observations used group into January and March in terms of dates, skipping February, and none of the lines are over a fifth of the way through the poem. This could mean that he had only just started; but I suspect that in fact he was trying to make the first part of the poem stronger. I suspect that he spent much of February on Mariner, since he completed that on 18 February 1798.
“Coleridge departed for Germany on 16 September 1798 and returned on 28 July 1799. He did not work on "Christabel," although an account of a recitation of the poem during Coleridge's stay in Germany is recorded by Clement Carlyon:
“‘[Coleridge] frequently recited his own poetry, and not unfrequently led us further into the labyrinth of his metaphysical elucidations, either of particular passages, or of the original conception of any of his productions, than we were able to follow... At the conclusion... of the first stanza... he would perhaps comment at full length upon such a line as--
“‘Tu whit!--Tu whoo
“That we might not fall into the mistake of supposing originality to be its sole merit. In fact he seldom went right on to the end of any piece--to pause and analyse was his delight. What he told us fellow travellers respecting Christabel, he has since repeated in print, in words, which, if not the same, are equally Coleridgean.” Carlyon quoted in Arthur Nethercot (1962). The Road to Tryermaine. p.7.
(Source, by Chris Koenig-Woodyard in Romanticism on the Net)
Coleridge, in his notebooks, quotes 43–64 of the Hymn to St. Teresa by Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649), and says that “these verses were ever present to my mind whilst writing the second part of Christabel; if, indeed, by some subtle process of the mind they did not suggest the first thought of the whole poem.” (The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. H. N. Coleridge, 1917).
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Farewell then, all the world, adieu!
Farewell whatever dear may be—
Sweet, not so fast; lo! thy fair spouse,
O how oft shalt thou complain |
Created February 2011, by Sean B. Palmer