by Coleridge · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
A witty squib ennobling fleas immortalised by Donne, plus an ex-libris jingle and the famous burlesque ode on Fichte’s idealism (‘I, I, I! I itself I!’); literary allusion, philosophical parody, and immortality through verse.
Connections
Topoi: Immortality Through Verse Motifs: Animals Themes & Concepts: Satire of Society, Immortality of Art Fame, Identity Forms & Genres: Parody, Epigram
Testo integrale / Full text
Be proud as Spaniards! Leap for pride ye Fleas!
Henceforth in Nature’s mimic World grandees.
In Phœbus’ archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of Nobility.
No skip-Jacks now, nor civiller skip-Johns,
Dread Anthropophagi! specks of living bronze,
I hail you one and all, sans Pros or Cons,
Descendants from a noble race of Dons.
What tho’ that great ancestral Flea be gone,
Immortal with immortalising Donne,
His earthly spots bleached off a Papist’s gloze,
In purgatory fire on Bardolph’s nose.
1811.
Now first published from an MS.
[EX LIBRIS S. T. C.]
This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case;
Your writing therefore I will not erase.
But now this Book, once yours, belongs to me,
The Morning Post’s and Courier’s S. T. C.; —
Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage
To Friends and Public known as S. T. Coleridge.
Witness hereto my hand, on Ashley Green,
One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen
Year of our Lord — and of the month November
The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.
15th Nov. 1814. Ashley, Box, Bath.
First published in Lit. Rem., iii. 57. First collected P. and D. W.,
1877, ii. 387.
•“©•š‘™ ‘
The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may, perhaps, be
amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are
unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte’s
idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature. [S. T. C.]
The Categorical Imperative, or the annunciation of the New Teutonic God,
•“©•š‘™ ‘: a dithyrambic Ode, by QUERKOPF VON KLUBSTICK, Grammarian,
and Subrector in Gymnasio… .
Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus,
(Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus,
Here on this market-cross aloud I cry:
‘I, I, I! I itself I!
The form and the substance, the what and the why,
The when and the where, and the low and the high,
The inside and outside, the earth and the sky,
I, you, and he, and he, you and I,
All souls and all bodies are I itself I!
All I itself I!
(Fools! a truce with this starting!)
All my I! all my I!
He’s a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!’
Thus cried the God with high imperial tone:
In robe of stiffest state, that scoff’d at beauty,
A pronoun-verb imperative he shone —
Then substantive and plural-singular grown,
He thus spake on:—’Behold in I alone
(For Ethics boast a syntax of their own)
Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye,
In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!
I of the world’s whole Lexicon the root!
Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight,
The genitive and ablative to boot:
The accusative of wrong, the nom’native of right,
And in all cases the case absolute!
Self-construed, I all other moods decline:
Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
Yet as a super-postulate of mine,
Unconstrued antecedence I assign,
To X Y Z, the God Infinitivus!’
1815.
First published in Biographia Literaria, 1817, i. 148n. First
collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 370.