Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

Such a distinction is fruitful in any of the arts. In literature it is a
touchstone to distinguish verse from poetry, and might with advantage be
applied to much modern writing. But Coleridge by no means considered
Fancy and Imagination as opponents or enemies. On the contrary he thought
that the one could hardly exist without the other. “Imagination must have
Fancy,” he wrote, “in fact the higher intellectual powers can only act through
a corresponding energy of the lower.” A young writer will enrich his perception
in the sphere of fancy; only maturity brings true imagination. But if
Fancy holds its domain in fee to Imagination, it is nevertheless a rich domain
with hunting grounds of its own in which the over-lord will not despise
the game.
Imagination not only gives significance to a whole poem (or work
of art in general) it invests even the single words with meaning. The greater
the poem the more we need to call forth the imaginative quality of every
word. We need not do this to any great extent with a simple descriptive
poem such as Gray’s Elegy:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
This is a scene which is easily pictured, a painting of great charm but no
great depth or richness of colour. Contrast this verse with a passage from
Shakespeare’s Tempest.
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palace
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind.
The apparently simple catalogue with which the passage begins is deceptive.
In reality it calls forth in the fewest possible images the totality of
human achievement on the earth. Tower—palace—temple, with what a
wealth of meaning we can, and must, invest these simple words if we are to
appreciate these lines!
If Imagination invests words with their meaning, the reverse is true
that without Imagination words become mere counters or symbols. They
turn into a kind of algebra. But like the symbols of algebra they can be
made to work even when they have no meaning. Some modern philosophies
deal with words as mere algebraical symbols—and in the process human
values disappear. The conception of the world postulated by mathematical
physics certainly works at one level. But it has lost all meaning for
human life. Man cannot insert himself—his rich experience of life—into
this network of formula. And because man is part of the universe, any con-
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