Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Willing Belief in the Logos of Shakespeare and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Abstract

The following piece is the last we have of Professor Géza Kállay. He could not revise, let alone edit his paper before its publication. Although he had expressed his doubts concerning its “merits” after the conference, and considered it rather a “curiosity”—a curious digression from his ongoing research on Shakespeare and philosophy—the editors wish to pay homage to him by conveying his words as faithfully as they can to transmit, however imperfectly, what Géza calls, in his paper, “voiced animation.” That is, the “heated passion” with which he—like Coleridge or the actors impersonating Shakespeare’s characters—used to “animate the ‘cold,’ arbitrary and con- ventional symbols [...] of everyday language” in lecture theatres, in seminar and conference rooms. Géza had a “strange power of speech” that used to mesmerise his students and colleagues alike.