Plato\'s Phaedo and Stc\'s \"Christabel\" in Phaedo

Plato's Phaedo and STC's "Christabel"

In Phaedo 80ff, Socrates outlines Plato's theory of Forms, particularly attempting to prove that the eternal Forms are of divine origin. Through analogy with the living body and the dead body, Socrates in dialogue with Cebes forces his interlocutor to admit that the body-soul dualism admits to a qualitative difference between the two, and then Socrates begins to describe the separation of body and soul, such as we would describe as a ghost:

"And, my friend, we must believe that the corporeal is burdensome and heavy and earthly and visible. And such a soul is weighed down by this and is dragged back into the visible world, through fear of the invisible and of the other world, and so, as they say, it flits about the monuments and the tombs, where shadowy shapes of souls have been seen, figures of those souls which were not set free in purity but retain something of the visible; and this is why they are seen."

"That is likely, Socrates."

"It is likely, Cebes. And it is likely that those are not the souls of the good, but those of the base, which are compelled to flit about such places as a punishment for their former evil mode of life. And they flit about until through the desire of the corporeal which clings to them they are again imprisoned in a body. And they are likely to be imprisoned in natures which correspond to the practices of their former life." (Phaedo 81c-e)

To a certain extent, the basic understanding of the soul here is wh-at is used by Coleridge to describe the unearthly Geraldine in his long poem-fragment "Christabel." In the poem, Coleridge relies upon the "corporeal" aspects of a supernatural presence in order to demonstrate its connection with "the base" and their "evil mode of life." Platonic notions about the inferiority of physical existence combine with much-modified Christian notions of good and evil to result in Coleridge's image of a lesbian vampire.

The moment in the poem when Geraldine reveals herself to Christabel is at once depicted as a sort of lesbian strip-tease but with a revelation of horrors at the end:

But through her brain, of weal and woe,

So many thoughts moved to and fro,

That vain it were her lids to close;

So half-way from the bed she rose,

And on her elbow did recline.

To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,

And slowly rolled her eyes around;

Then drawing in her breath aloud,

Like one that shuddered, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast:

Her silken robe, and inner vest,

Dropped to her feet, and full in view,

Behold! her bosom and half her side

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

O shield her! shield sweet Christabel! ("Christabel" Part I)

Coleridge's description here is deliberately coy: to some extent, he is relying on the Burkean definition of the "sublime" in literature, in which the refusal to describe things outright permits the reader's imaginative involvement. The reader is asked to imagine Geraldine's naked body, which is "a sight to dream of, not to tell" -- suggesting the Platonic disconnection between the eternal and ineffable essence of things, and their (flawed) physical manifestation on earth. Yet "dream" sounds almost positive -- we are not expecting that something described as a "dream" could be menacing enough to cause the narrator to break off and invoke the heavens to protect his heroine.

Michael Gamer describes the complicated history of the composition of "Christabel"; Coleridge would write the first part of the poem in 1797, expecting inclusion in the joint volume of Lyrical Ballads that Coleridge would publish with Wordsworth the next year. But Coleridge would write a second part of the poem, in anticipation of the revised edition of Lyrical Ballads, whereupon Wordsworth suddenly rejected the poem for its Gothic and supernatural elements. As Gamer puts it "Wordsworth objected primarily to the 'extraordinary Incidents' of 'Christabel' -- a phrase that occurs both in the Preface's attack on gothic fiction and drama and in Coleridge's reviews of gothic fiction." (Gamer 125). In other words, something about the supernatural and occult element of "Christabel" seemed to Wordsworth out of harmony with his own rather placid pastoral depiction of the persistence of rural English life in the face of the industrial revolution. Yet it is also possible that Wordsworth was simply disinclined to face up to the queasy issues of sex and wickedness within the poem. Bennett's analysis of the poem focuses on the way in which Geraldine's witchcraft is a form of mind (and speech) control:

The dangers of and the desire to control speech also determine the plot of 'Christabel': Geraldine puts a spell on Christabel so that she cannot tell anyone what she has experienced: 'In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell, / Which is lord of thy utterance' (lines ? -- ?)….Geraldine's control of voice, of other voices, is only matched by the loss of her own. Finally, Geraldine is the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux of Triermaine, a name which allows for an aural disturbance of naming in the potential for mishearing, or mis-saying, 'Vaux' -- as 'vox ' or 'voice'. A witch, Geraldine is also embodied voice, voice personified. (Bennett 124-5)