Desire and subjectivity in S. T. Coleridge’s “Frost at midnight”

Abstract

The present article is an attempt to offer a fresh critical reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Frost at Midnight" based on the theoretical ideas of Jacques Lacan on desire and subjectivity. Coleridge's desire for a unified subjectivity lulls him into the dream of a bright future for his son, while the only ethical thing for him to do, from the psychoanalytical point of view, is to accept the split and, having traversed the fantasy and subjectified the cause of this split, to take responsibility for his unconscious mind. It is no wonder, then, that the poem begins and ends with the description of “frost’s secret ministry”; after all, the endless pursuit of desire qua the Other in search of a lost object which would complete the puzzle of one’s life is no pursuit at all; the act of moving in a circle of course means there is no actual movement or change in location.