Inutilis scientia Spinozana [18] Spy Nozy Redivivus

Aanleiding voor nog eens een blog over Coleridge's beroemde "Spy Nozy"-anekdote resp. incident is een scan die ik van Wim Klever ontving van een van zijn Facebook'friends', Charles T. Wolfe, die meldde:

"18th c. spying reports and the specter of Spinozism... From my friend Claude Xander this amazing story: "Government informer in Somerset 1797 sent to investigate whether Wordsworth & Coleridge were potential French revolutionary agents was very disturbed to overhear them both constantly refer to a certain Spy Nozy."

Al eerder had ik een blog met "Het verhaal over hoe Spinoza 'Spy Nozy' werd."

In de vroege jaren 1790 stonden Coleridge en zijn vriend Wordsworth zeer sympathiek tegenover de Franse Revolutie; vooral Robespierre droegen zij een warm hart toe. Volgens Nicholas Roe zagen ze in hem "an alarming, distorted version of themselves." Binnen twee dagen na de executie van Robespierre op 28 juli 1794 schreef Coleridge The Fall of Robespierre waarin deze voorgesteld werd als "the heroic rebel undaunted by the ruin brought upon himself."

In het najaar van 1798 maakte Coleridge en Wordsworth een reis naar Duitsland, waar ze contacten hadden met o.a. Schleiermacher en op de hoogte kwamen van de Pantheismusstreit. Coleridge kreeg een exemplaar te pakken van Jacobi's Spinoza-Büchlein. Net als Schleiermacher werd hij aangestoken door de systematiek van Spinoza's filosofie en diens inzicht in de natuur. Maar het kan niet zo zijn dat hij pas tijdens die reis met Spinoza in aanraking kwam, want het "Spy Nozy"-verhaal speelde in 1797 en gaat terug op een verhaal dat Samuel Taylor Coleridge in zijn Biographia Literaria (1817) in hoofdstuk 10 vertelde [in te zien bij Gutenberg]

 

Ik neem daarover de volgende tekst

If we can accept as credible and chronologically accurate the anecdote of "Spy Nozy" in the Biographia Literaria—and there is reason to question its historical accuracy—then Spinoza had been a topic of conversation at Stowey as early as the summer of 1797. A local constable, suspecting French democratic sympathies in Coleridge and Wordsworth, had petitioned the government to send down an agent, a spy, "pour surveillance of myself and friend." Later, Coleridge, probably through hearsay, learned of the details of the investigation and represented them rather comically:

He had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for hours together behind a bank at the sea-side (our favorite seat) and overheard our conversation. At first he fancied, that we were aware of our danger; for he often heard me talk of one Spy Nozy, which he was inclined to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable feature belonging to him; but he was speedily convinced that it was the name of a man who had made a a book and lived long ago."

There is no reason for us to doubt that, twelve years after the publication of the Jacobi-Mendelssohn debate, two intellectually curious and inquiring Englishmen would be sensing the aftershocks of the controversy. Perhaps, the significance of Coleridge's account lies in the fact that, besides attesting to his sense of humor, it is indicative of the intellectual stimulus that made Europe so appealing to both poets. In fact, if we bear in mind that before the 1802-1803 publication of Paulus's two-volume edition, any edition of Spinoza's work was hardly accessible, we might fairly conclude that the mere possibility of acquiring Jacobi's work was incentive enough for Coleridge to have decided upon the trip to Germany.

Coleridge was among the first Englishmen to read through Paulus's Spinoza, decades before any English translation became available. This more careful study did not, however, result in any essential change in Coleridge's position. Throughout the years of transition, while he moved toward the Christian orthodoxy of the 1816 "Confessio Fidei," there remained constant his high regard for Spinoza—but only as a philosopher, not as a theologian. For Coleridge, religion was the meeting ground of philosophy and poetry, the place where the head and the heart united." He reflects in the Biographia Literaria, "For a very long time indeed I could not reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinoza, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John." It was not until he had fully accepted Trinitarianism that Coleridge identified Spinozism, which had appeared largely consistent with religion, as ultimately antagonistic to Christian theism."

Uit: Tod E. Jones, The Broad Church: A Biography of a Movement. Lexington Books, 2003 - books.google

Deze 'gebeurtenis' werd ook aanleiding voor het hoorspel:  

Spy Nozy and the Poets 
Paul B Davies is de auteur van een hoorspel, Spy Nozy and the Poets (45 minutes). A drama of espionage, intrigue and poetic inspiration set in a Somerset village. En: Suspicious behaviour by new residents in a Somerset village leads to the arrival of a Home Office spy. Het meermalen op de BBC uitgezonden - van 2001 tot 2012 zo'n 7x. [Cf. die van aug. 2005 staat daar niet vermeld, cf.]

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Dat er alle aanleiding is aan te nemen dat Coleridge in zijn autobiografie zijn tamelijk jacobijnse jeugd wat weg te poetsen en de zgn spionaffaire wat op te vrolijken, blijkt vooral uit werk van

Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge the Radical Years. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1988 [This study is a much-needed reappraisal of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's radical careers before their emergence as major poets. Dr Roe presents a detailed examination of both writers' debts to radical dissent in the years before 1789. Wordsworth's first-hand experience of Revolution.]

Nicholas Roe, "Coleridge and Jpohn Thelwall: The Road to Nether Stowey" [met paragraaf 'A most philosophical party': Thelwall at Stowey] In: Richard Gravil, The Coleridge Connection: Essays for Thomas McFarland. Humanities-Ebooks, (1e 1999) 2007

Nicolas Roe, 'A sympathy with power': imagining Robespierre. In: Michael O'Neill & Mark Sandy (Eds.), Romanticism: Romanticism and history. Taylor & Francis, 2006 - books.google

 

Van Kenneth Johnston, schrijver van The Hidden Wordsworth en ook van Unusual Suspects. Pitt's Reign of Alarm and the Lost Generation of the 1790s. waarop ik mijn eerdere blog over Spy Nozy baseerde, is nog te vinden
"Lonely as a spy" [6 juni 1998; over William Wordsworth "spy-activities" Cf. ] en een ingezonden brief in 2001 aan de London Review of Books in 2001 waarin interessante informatie is te vinden over Coleridge’s joking cover-up, in Biographia Literaria (1817), that Walsh overheard them talking about Spinoza and reported it back to Whitehall as ‘Spy Nozy’. [Zie verder aldaar]