This analysis captures the heart of Coleridge’s creative and emotional crisis in Dejection: An Ode:

• Dejection as paralysis: The speaker’s grief is not sharp or dramatic but a dull, immobilizing numbness that prevents him from experiencing inspiration or emotional response to nature.

• Inner world shapes perception: Joy is framed as an internal, generative power. Without it, even the most beautiful external scenes—the night sky, the landscape—fail to inspire, rendering the world cold and lifeless.

• Imagination as the “shaping spirit”: Coleridge portrays the imagination as the source of both joy and creative vitality. Its absence leads to a profound inability to engage with either life or art.

• Contrast with the past: Previously, imagination transformed misfortunes into dreams of happiness, showing its restorative and transcendent power. The present state of dejection highlights the loss of this internal faculty, underscoring the Romantic view that the mind’s inner vitality is essential for experiencing and creating beauty.

Meaning of Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief refers to the reader’s temporary acceptance of implausible or impossible elements in a story. In this process, readers willingly set aside their skepticism in order to immerse themselves in the narrative. This enables poets and authors to explore imaginative, fantastical, or supernatural themes while still evoking genuine emotional responses.

Application in Literature

Suspension of disbelief plays a central role in genres such as fantasy, Gothic fiction, or supernatural tales, where readers encounter ghosts, magic, mythical beings, or other extraordinary events. According to Coleridge, these elements do not need to be realistic, but they must be presented with consistency and internal logic so that readers can accept them as part of the story’s world.

For example, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, readers accept the supernatural events—such as the curse of the albatross and the ghostly crew—because Coleridge presents them within a coherent imaginative framework.

Conclusion

In short, suspension of disbelief allows readers to emotionally and imaginatively engage with a narrative, even when it defies the rules of ordinary reality.

Coleridge বলেন তিনি দুঃখে এমন অবস্থায় পৌঁছেছেন যেখানে আর কিছু ভাবতে চান না। তাঁর একমাত্র উপায় হলো “to be still and patient”—অর্থাৎ নীরব ও ধৈর্যশীল থাকা, কল্পনা ছাড়া। ধীরে ধীরে এটি তাঁর অভ্যাসে পরিণত হয়েছে। এতে বোঝা যায় কল্পনার শক্তি হারিয়ে তিনি যান্ত্রিক সহিষ্ণুতায় বাঁচছেন।