In Greek tragedy, ‘hubris’ is defined as “excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis” (Oxford Languages). I have had much the same sort of feeling since I decided – well, ‘decided’ sounds too, er, decisive (?), when what really happened was that my resistance to ‘taking on Coleridge’ was gradually chipped away, seemingly by some hand other than my own, until that fateful day during a residency with the Quantocks AONB more than 10 years ago on which it became evident to me that I was ‘going to finish Christabel’, the great man – the epitome of a non-completer-finisher (Porlock!) – never having managed to do so himself.
Yes, ‘hubris’ – who, or what was I calling out? The literature on Coleridge (and his Romantic poet companion wanderers in halcyon landscapes) is probably enough to sink hundreds of Titanics multiple times over. Every work, every sentence, every word, every comma, every obscure reference in Greek, Latin – or Coleridgean – has been pored over by people who have invested their lives in The Quest … then along comes some Bristol poet or the other who ‘finishes’ one of Coleridge’s opuses: Christabel. Derision is to be expected. Praise, perhaps. More likely to be ignored, which no artist much likes.
Yet – and this undoubtedly opens me out to further derision – I tried to resist the necessity to release Christabel and the whole cast of protagonists (her sire, Sir Leoline; her nemesis, Geraldine – is she the daughter of Sir Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine Castle in the Scottish Borders, “that castle good / which stands and threatens Scotland’s wastes”, as she purports to be, or could she be someone else’s daughter?) from their over 200 years in limbo – but they insisted someone had to do it, none more so than Christabel herself.
Sir, you say, pshaw! But if you’re up on top of the Quantock Hills of Somerset at midnight on the winter equinox at Lady Fountain ‘neath ancient Dowsborough and the Lady herself appeareth and spake, ‘Release Christabel! Release … Christabel….’, then what to do? Release her, evidently, or stop pretending to be ‘a poet’.
Brighter then, and brighter as it seemed,
Shone the spectre, as Geraldine screamed:
‘Mercy, have mercy upon me, mother mild,
‘T was not my wish to besiege thy child!’
‘Then whose, demon-stock?’ Set forth the mother
‘Doth the succubus have father, sister, brother?
Art thou witch, warlock, devil’s sporn?
In which measureless cavern wast thou born?
In which savage place, devil haunted?
Out of which hag’s unclean womb wast enchanted?
Speak!
The process, which unwound naturally over most of the rest of a year – with major chunks written at Treowen, a 17th century manor house in Monmouthshire, Wales – was uncomplicated: let the cast of Christabel work out their own destinies though me. Write – in longhand – until I come to a stop, then refer back to Coleridge: who was Geraldine (‘dine’, not ‘deen’)? Why was she trying to seduce Sir Leoline and destroy all his seed? That seduction scene – was Christabel really innocent? Was Geraldine also under some form of compulsion? Why had Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux argued bitterly all those years ago and would now have nothing to do with each other? What’s with the green snake demonesses (common enough in the Quantocks, rare elsewhere)? I’d intended Christabel, at the beginning, to ‘do an Ophelia’, id est, go mad, float downstream with flowers in her hair, and drown. But she point blank refused. What to do?
I decided at the beginning that I would ‘bolt on’ my voice to that of Coleridge’s: Christabel Released contains all of STC’s original (split into 4 parts rather than 2), bar his ridiculous coda (‘a little child, a limber elf’ … ‘a fairy thing with red round cheeks’, ‘singing, dancing to itself’??? Camille Paglia is correct – he calls up these atavistic apparitions, then can’t deal with them!). The other 16 parts are all mine, making Christabel Released 18% Coleridge, 72% Hoyte. When I didn’t know where the story was going, I’d ask Coleridge. I am a declamatory poet (‘the poetry is in the voice’), so Christabel Released takes 3 to 4 hours to declaim (it’s fun doing a performance and then asking people who didn’t know Christabel where they thought Coleridge ended and Hoyte took over!). The premiere was a perambulation through the various rooms of Halsway Manor in the Quantocks over a long weekend, with a period banquet, comments including, ‘was that really nearly 4 hours? I never wanted it to end!’ and ‘we found this event by chance, yet it was a highpoint to our Summer, a night of magic and mysterious intrigues in a peerless setting.’
Is Christabel Released ‘a reimagining of Romanticism’? Well, not so much ‘a reimagining’ as an extension, perhaps – it takes the tropes of Romanticism (the uniqueness of the human spirit, reflected in and deeply connected to the untamed wildness of nature; emotion over reason; freedom of form; and an exploration of the Gothic and unknown, etc.) and adds a 21st century twist, noting the passing of the Old Order and the individual choices which may be possible today, but not in the 18th century; it appropriates Coleridge and makes him, terrible phrase, ‘21st century – relevant’ (bonus: no ‘limber elves’). Is that ‘an escape’ from the realities of our age? Just as William and Dorothy Wordsworth and ST Coleridge sought a new way of doing poetry, of living, in the closing years of the 18th century after the disillusionment of the French Revolution, so perhaps we can also reimagine our lives set against ‘the untamed wildness of nature and the uniqueness of the human spirit’?
Ralph Hoyte will be next declaiming Christabel Released (abridged) as part of the Words in Watchet literary festival on 17 February 2024. Christabel Released is available as print-on-demand/eBook on Amazon; and as an audio book on Bandcamp. Anyone up for making Christabel Released into a graphic novel?
Website and contact: ralphhoyte.org
