_5. The Selection and Control of Images_

It is easier, no doubt, to realize something of the swarming of images in
the stream of consciousness than it is to understand how these images are
selected, combined and controlled. Some principle of association, some law
governing the synthesis, there must be; and English criticism has long
treasured some of the clairvoyant words of Coleridge and Wordsworth upon
this matter. The essential problem is suggested by Wordsworth's phrase
"the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement." Is the
"excitement," then, the chief factor in the selection and combination of
images, and do the "feelings," as if with delicate tentacles,
instinctively choose and reject and integrate such images as blend with
the poet's mood?

Coleridge, with his subtle builder's instinct, uses his favorite word
"synthesis" not merely as applied to images as such, but to all the
faculties of the soul:

"The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man
into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other
according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and a
spirit of unity, that blends, and as it were fuses, each into each, by
that synthetic and magical power to which I would exclusively appropriate
the name of Imagination." "Synthetic and magical power," indeed, with a
Coleridge as Master of the Mysteries! But the perplexed student of poetry
may well wish a more exact description of what really takes place.

An American critic, after much searching in recent psychological
explanations of artistic creation, attempts to describe the genesis of a
poem in these words: