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Coleridge's "Nil Pejus est Caelibe Vita" - 1787

The only detailed summary and analysis available online.

By HoaramPublished 2 years ago 9 min read
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A video essay accompanied.

Intro - Nil Pejus est Caelibe Vita was written in 1787 during Coleridge’s 15th year of life during his residency at Christ’s Hospital, his school in West Sussex, located south of Horsham. The school still stands to this day. The poem is a piece about the pain of living in celibacy, a word meaning “the state of abstaining from marriage or sexual relations”. Not to be confused with how celibacy is viewed today, mostly in the eyes of purely sexual relations, and mostly through the lens of an involuntary and upset young man.

Information background - First and foremost: I as writer and researcher must mention, there is nothing online to reference the summary or analysis of this poem, nothing to cross-reference or support my own first-hand information with, therefore every idea in the summarising and analysing of this poem is entirely from my own academic construction and is to be taken as precisely an amateur’s construction; nevertheless I think it is important to have the summaries and analyses of old poetry available for it expands the poetic understand of the collective unconsciousness.

“Nil Pejus est Caelibe Vita” is Latin for “Nothing worse than a celebate life” but as mentioned before in my “Dura Navis” summary, Latin is such an open ended language that it could be more aesthetically and poetically referred to as “There is nothing worse than a celebate life”. It is important to understand the term celibacy in this poem mostly refers to the aspect of marriage, only mentioning the sexual aspect of a marriage when Coleridge mentions how the speaker will have no son to remember his name. There is no idea of celibacy in this poem meaning “not included in purely animalistic sexually connection”, we have to remember we are dealing with a true Romantic; rather celibacy should be perceived in this poem as almost “wifeless”.

One of the only real pieces of information available on the open internet for Nil Pejus is on the Genius.com website stating that [The line] is an inversion of a line from Horace, “nil ait esse prius, melius nil caelibe vita” which means “Nothing is finer or better than a single life”.

As mentioned in my previous “Easter Holidays” video Horace was a major influence on Coleridge and the Romantics.

Every other result in a search engine for Nil Pejus results in websites simply hosting the poem itself for reading.

It is my intention to get my summary and analysis online and with this piece, encourage more thought about this wonderful piece that should be viewed by more modern western people. It has aged quite well and grows ever more relevant with each growing day, and I feel the message can be quite easily understood even by the most dull children if guided.

Summary - The poem is an 18 line, 3 stanza sestet (meaning it has six lines in each stanza) with the first four lines of each stanza generally revolving around an idea or ideas, and the remaining two lines stating an outcome, which is either about the subject or about the aforementioned idea. The overall idea of the poem is pretty straight forward: Coleridge demonstrates how sad he really sees someone living in celibacy, who inevitably will cling to his belongings in his death, as he has no child or family, but also because that’s what made the subject of the poem happy - so they spent their life pursuing such things.

An important observation that I noted while anaylizing this poem is that the subject of the poem is nameless and I believe that is intentional, and if it isn’t, it was a genius misintention, however Coleridge’s poetry (like Shakespeare’s) has survived for centuries for a reason - I believe that the subject is meant to be nameless, as it reinforces the central idea of the poem: a powerful and rich nameless “main character” that has everything he could every dream of wanting, remaining single or celibate, prefering to covet and collect his goods (much like many people especially in the last 100 years) without a remaining child or spouse, therefore making the “main character” of the poem forgotten to everyone and everything - even the speaker of the poem who is literally reading off the outcome of his life who in theory should know. Do they not share? Perhaps they hold back to reinforce the lesson? Nevertheless the powerful subject of the poem dies as every single person must, except he chooses to die with no one to carry on his very clearly “significant” family name, as he preferred his vain collection and hoarding of riches.

The Poem itself -

What pleasures shall he ever find?

What joys shall ever glad his heart?

Or who shall heal his wounded mind,

If tortur’d by Misfortune’s smart?

Who Hymeneal bliss will never prove,

That more than friendship, friendship mix’d with love.

Then without child or tender wife,

To drive away each care, each sigh,

Lonely he treads the paths of life

A stranger to Affection’s tye:

And when from Death he meets his final doom

No mourning wife with tears of love shall wet his tomb.

Tho’ Fortune, Riches, Honours, Pow’r,

Had giv’n with every other toy,

Those gilded trifles of the hour,

Those painted nothings sure to cloy:

He dies forgot, his name no son shall bear

To shew the man so blest once breath’d the vital air.

Detailed summary and analysis.

Stanza One -

The poem starts out immediately speaking about one subject who is living in or experiencing celibacy. The first four lines go so far as to say the speaker will find no pleasure in life, his heart finding no joys to brighten up his life; nobody to heal his hurt viewpoint or emotions that are constantly ravaged by the pains inflicted by the ills and maladies that life does unluckily throw at us.

“What pleasures shall he ever find?

What joys shall ever glad his heart?

Or who shall heal his wounded mind,

If tortur’d by Misfortune’s smart?”

The last two lines speak of life once again, but in a more pleasant way. Coleridge claims the bliss of marriage and romantic connection (Hymeneal means “of or relating to marriage”) will never prove what marriage truly is to the speaker in the opinion of Coleridge - more than just friendship, a friendship joined together in harmony by love; How romantic.

“Who Hymeneal bliss will never prove,

That more than friendship, friendship mix’d with love.”

Stanza Two -

In the first four lines of the second stanza, Coleridge continues his talk of the poem’s subject and his celibacy, and celibate life. Coleridge states that the subject metaphorically shuffles his way through life lonely, without either a child or a wife to scurry away what the subject thinks about that bothers him, or what ails him and makes him sigh with grief. An interesting point to note is that child and wife were both objects of desire that Coleridge claimed in his poem Dura Navis were the key to happiness in life. Coleridge continues by stating the poem’s subject is unknowing to the beautiful connections that friendship and marriage do bring.

“Then without child or tender wife,

To drive away each care, each sigh,

Lonely he treads the paths of life

A stranger to Affection’s tye:”

The remaining two lines of the second stanza continue on this idea of wife and family, in a rather depressing but artistic way; when Death (personified as a figure or person demonstrated by the capital “D”) grants the subject his final displeasure in life…the subject’s death. The metaphorical death made even more so depressing when we remember the idea surrounding the first four lines of the stanza: the subject has no wife or child, and therefore has no one to mourn over him, no one to think about when he perishes, no wife to cry with thoughts of goodness and beauty over his death, or his literal gravestone in the poem to make it even more dramatic. What a very sad thought.

“And when from Death he meets his final doom

No mourning wife with tears of love shall wet his tomb.”

Stanza Three - In the first four lines of stanza three, Coleridge continues his idea from the second stanza, “Tho’” would be translated to “Even though” or “Although” nowadays. As it would turn out the subject of the poem is quite famous, quite powerful and awesome, but here’s the most poetic part: no-one knows his name, not even Coleridge who had the power to make the subject of the poem known. Coleridge states that even though the subject of the poem had everything he could have or would have wanted, any “toy” obtained through the subject’s “Fortune, Riches, Honours, and Power”, those various “wealthy and privileged, golden things of little value or importance” that were fashionable and desirable during whatever hypothetical era this poem exists in. Additionally, the aforementioned “Fortune, Riches, Honours, and Power” make the subject of the poem actually value the things Coleridge sees as worthless even more! Those four highly desirable attributes to any modern or antiquated person Coleridge states, will make one absolutely sure to cling onto those attributes through their life; attributes that Coleridge clearly sees as more harmful to the subject’s sense of completeness and oneness, and sense of mental and physical wellness. No sane and healthy person would be described as being “sure to cloy to painted nothing and gilded trifles of the hour”. The literary world would describe a figure like Golum, or a fantastical evil king, queen, wizard or warlock.

“Tho’ Fortune, Riches, Honours, Pow’r,

Had giv’n with every other toy,

Those gilded trifles of the hour,

Those painted nothings sure to cloy:”

The final two lines of the third stanza and of the poem connect every idea together: The subject dies forgotten, with no child to bear his family’s surname, no child to continue on the lineage of the so blessed subject of the poem. No child to continue the life of a man who breathed and wasted the air of this planet on obsessing over trifles and useless nothings, collecting golden and shiny things. The subject of the poem is gone now, unnamed and forgotten by all now. A rather misfortunate and undesirable outcome for anybody on this planet and breathing this Earth’s air. I dare say that is, in fact, some people’s WORST fears.

“He dies forgot, his name no son shall bear

To shew the man so blest once breath’d the vital air.”

Outro - Despite being one of Coleridge’s earliest pieces and made when he was only a teenager, this piece had to be one of the most enlightening to think about, and fun to analyse that I’ve done outside of making videos for Youtube. It really is a wonderful thought provoking and emotion tugging piece for something only 18 lines long, and only three stanzas.

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About the Creator

Hoaram

Just trying to get by doing what I have a passion for. Please consider leaving a tip if anything I say stirs something inside you.

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