Chapter 5 - The French Revolution

Summary

In April 1798 Coleridge published an ode of 105 lines about the French Revolution in the Morning Post. That fact alone, which would have struck no one at the time as remarkable, reminds us again of the importance of poetry two centuries ago as a medium for discussing any topic under the sun. It was far from the first of Coleridge’s newspaper poems, and by 1798 he had acquired a reputation as a liberal reformer, and a man of “Jacobin” or pro-French sympathies, in a climate overwhelmingly hostile to such opinions. This poem, however, publically confessed his abandonment of the French Revolution and apologized for his earlier defense of it. Though in later reprintings he titled it “France: An Ode,” in its first appearance he called it “The Recantation: An Ode.” Much later he titled it “France: A Palinode,” a word that evokes the famous palinodia or “back-ode” of the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus in which he retracts his attack on Helen. It is a “recantation” in the original sense of that word, a “back-song” or song of retraction for songs sung earlier. From the beginning, he writes, despite British opposition to it, “Unawed I sang” in favor of the Revolution (27), and even when Britain went to war against France “my voice, unaltered, sang defeat” to her enemies (36). But now he sings a new tune.