earticle

영어

This essay offers Coleridge’s self-conscious notion of evil reflected in “Christabel”. His notion of self-knowledge and self-consciousness emphasizes the certainty of subjective truth. For him, it ensures a human’s innate ability of knowing truth, which is possibly obtained through reflection. Therefore, he tends to turn inward as he searches for great truths pertaining to his explorations of the meaning of good and evil. Understanding evil is as important as understanding good because Coleridge considers both to be interwoven. Without an understanding of evil, one cannot comprehend what good is. In the case of Coleridge’s approach to understanding evil, he accepts both biblical explanations and related philosophical arguments; however, he also seems to search for his inner self suffering as he reflects on his sense of guilt brought on by his sexual desires, his lack of will, and his lapse into an opium overdose, etc. His self-acknowledgement of the existence of evil obtained from his own inner search comprises some particularity with regards to his explanations of evil, which is smeared throughout his poems. His explanations are relegated to symbols of the problem as he insists that truth can only be grasped through symbols. “Christabel”, like other poems such as “Ancient Mariner” and “Limbo”, raises awareness of the complexities surrounding the meaning of evil. This essay examines the relevance between “Christabel” and the problem of evil that is reflected in the poet’s mind.