Discuss S.T. Coleridge S Poetic Achievements in the Prescribed Pieces of Poetry

MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS

Q:

DISCUSS S.T. COLERIDGE’S POETIC ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE PRESCRIBED PIECES OF POETRY.

Q:

COLERIDGE IS MYSTERIOUS IN HIS VISION OF THE WORLD,

ELABORATE.

Ans:

S.T. Coleridge falls in the category of primorolial romantic poets and is turned overin our mind to be an autochthon of the Romantic Age. When William Wordsworth jotteddown the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, Coleridge lent him a helping hand in composingthe volume. In the point of fact, S.T. Coleridge, rather than a starry-eyed poet, was aphilosophical poet. Coleridge was blessed with scintillating wit and ripened wisdomamong the Romantic poets. In the throes of his contemporaries, romanticism tends totake a single domineering hue, whereas, in Coleridge’s poetry, it captures all the darkerand brighter aspects of life as well as attains the accomplishment of convolution.

In Coleridge’s poetry, there is leeway for the spirit of undoubting adventure, thefelicity of lucky strike and the romance for action. There is glamour of the untrammeledregions which are replete with wondrous and eerie elements. Coleridge’s poetry isoverwhelmed by instinctive depiction in a variety of moods and possesses a familiarityand comfort. It is also bizarre and spine-chilling, tender and smoothing, desolating aswell as heavy-hearted. S.T. Coleridge unlike most of the others, counts the gift of tellingan account pregnant in dramaturgic ins and outs in his possessions.

The sum and substance of Romanticism lies in his artistic treatment of thesupernatural. His poems “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of Ancient Mariner” are rich inunblemished supernaturalism. His outlook about supernatural things is never vitiationon our blind faith. In lieu of abruptly, steeping into the realms of supernatural, firstly heconquers the faith of his readers with the various rendering of the common gardenlandscape and then, by and by, proceeds to turn his faith to account and leads thesupernatural elements into commence.

Medievalism is also an eminent feature of Coleridge’s poetry, as the people ofMiddle Ages had faith in sorcery and witchcraft as well as superstitions. The word“Ancient” in the introductory lines of “The Ancient Mariner” not only refers to the oldage of the mariner but also portrays the ancient times. In this poem, the citation to the“Cross bow”, “The Vesper” be the “Shriving Hermit” and the “Prayer to Mary Queen”makes us remember of the Middle Ages. In fact, most of his poems instill the medievalatmosphere. Sue enticement for the past which Coleridge shares with Keats, Byron andespecially Waller Scott, at once, sets him apart as a romantic poet.

A suggestion has been put forward that Coleridge’s dream faculty lay at the root ofhis luster and nobility as a poet and his puniness as a man. Coleridge is indeed first andthe Classic Don Quixote in English verse. “Kubla Khan” is the first rate visionary poemby Coleridge which exhibits a phantasmagorical atmosphere. In the “Ancient Mariner”several dreams give the poem its real logic. Thus, visionary degree of excellence of hispoetry also contributes to his Romanticism.

Like all romantic poets, Coleridge too had a great attachment to the nature. At theoutset of his career, he was enormously inspired by Wordsworth. His “Frost atMidnight” is typically Wordsworthian in spirit as well as in expression. Coleridge is ofthe view that the fillips we get from nature do not have any distinct existence from ourown. According to Coleridge, nature comes tickled pink into view but according to ourinner weather, it is

lugubrious which manifests his Romanticism. This view of the natureis embodied in his last mind blowing poem “Dejection: An Ode”;

“O Lady! We receive but what we give.
And in our life alone does nature liv,
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud.”

The creative power is also the most acclaimed trait of Coleridge’s romantic poetry.His poetry brings the deftness of mental images to light which are superbly controlled byan infallible artistic sense. He also sets him apart from others by distinguishing betweenfancy and imagination. Coleridge wished poetry to be reined by the parameters ofimaginations and not by those of fancy.

Coleridge shares with other romantic and idealistic poets, a deep rooted hankeringfor music. That’s why, he is also contemplated as one of the most dulcet and lyrical poetin English poetry. In concern with, H.D. Traill says:

“Coleridge is always a singer, as Wordsworth is not and Byron almost never.”

Coleridge’s mellifluous genius can best be sensed in such poems as “The AncientMariner”, “The Kubla Khan” and “Youth and Age” etc. so, consequently, it shows hisappetizing tendency towards Romanticism. In reference to “Kubla Khan” he puts intowords that “With music loud and long, he could build Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome inthe air”.

“The Ancient Mariner” aptly illustrates the maestro spell of Coleridge’s music,

“The Fair breeze blew the white foam flew:

The furrow followed free,

we were the first that ever burst into that silent sea.”

To summarize our discussion about Coleridge’s Romanticism, we can sanguinelywind up that his poetry is the most supreme assimilation of all that is the most etherealand flawless in the Romantic poetry.

Q:

DISCUSS COLERIDGE AS A VISIONARY POET.

Q:

DISCUSS COLERIDGE’S POWER OF DREAMS.

Ans:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a greatest visionary poet indeed among all theromantics. The hours that he spent in visions were more important than his wakinghours, for his creative faculties were more wake when he was lost in dreams or visions.In fact, he fed on his visions and vitalised them in his poetry. All his important poemshave vision like movement. Escapism is a common trait of all the romantics. To escapethe cruel realities of the world, almost all the romantic poets used to be lost in future,childhood or fantasies or visions. Coleridge’s visionary knack seems to behave like anoffshoot of his escapism but it touches the depth of mind and heart.

Coleridge, when creates poetry is deeply lost in visions and then fertilizes them insomething concrete. It has been suggested that Coleridge’s visionary faculty lies at theroot of his greatness as a poet and his weakness as a man. He is indeed the first and finestdreamer in English verse. In his visions he visits the untraveled, unseen and far offregions with the element of marvel and mystery that is glamour of his poetry.

Coleridge is said to have an unusual gift of imagination and most vigorous mindamong all the romantic poets. Coleridge’s major works mostly have the quality ofdreaming or visionary atmosphere. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” shares manycharacteristics of a vision. To begin with, even the inspiration to write came from adream.

A friend of Coleridge had dreamt about ‘a skeleton ship with figures in it’. Thisdream caught Coleridge’s fancy and later when he planned “The Rime of The AncientMariner”, he decided to make it the basis of the poem. His dreaming ability is so strong that he comes across visions into visions. The whole drama on the ship occurs in visionary state.

Coleridge’s dreams are life like and real as he says in “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”.

“The silly bucket on the deck.
That had so long remained.
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke it rained.”

In his dream, even a life like reality has been described. In the whole prime a lifelike dream has been presented. In reality one goes on a voyage, one has one’scompanions in some adventure, one must repent on sins and trust of offer sacrifices etc.If we analyse “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” in the light of the Characteristics of adream or vision we find unmistakable signs of a visionary movement in it.

In Coleridge’s vision we find remoteness in its full glory that is the mostdistinguished of Coleridge’s visionary poetry. In “Kubla Khan” Coleridge proves himselfa visionary poet more convincingly. “Kubla Khan” is itself a result of Coleridge’s dreamwhen one day he falls asleep in his chair, while at that time he is busy in reading“Purchase Pilgrimage”. On awakening he writes the lines of “Kubla Khan”. So “KublaKhan” is an opus more than a physiological curiosity.

Kubla Khan the great oriental king ordered that pleasure-dome should be built forhim in Xanadu where the sacred river alpha runs through the caves which aremeasureless to man. The very opening word “Xanadu” gives us a sense of remoteness intime and place or space. Coleridge uses his sense of remoteness and his remoteness giveshis poetry a marvellous visionary greatness. In fact, his remoteness is vision and hisvisions are remoteness.

Another facet of his far-sighted nature is still remained to be discussed that is hismysterious outlook. Coleridge’s visions towards life are thoroughly mysterious and fullof horror. “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” is subterranean, atrocious and dream likevisionary rhyme.

We find in this two spirits talking each other, triumph of death over life, re-emerging of the dead man, recklessly shooting the Albatross, then it is hung around theMariner’s neck etc. the entire atmosphere of the rhyme is highly startling and terrifying.

In “Kubla Khan” there is also mysterious vision that is vitality of the poem. “KublaKhan” in his palace hears the voices of his ancestors. The setting of the palace is alsoappears to us a blend of natural and supernatural elements. Coleridge’s exercise ofdiction in “Kubla Khan” is visionary, matchless and mysterious as he uses romanticchasm, holy and enchanted and warring moon all are remarkable.

Lastly, Coleridge’s vision has life like class, mystery, sense of remoteness, are nearto nature. They act as an enlivened blend of natural and supernatural elements. Hisworks enjoy all the superb elements that enable him to be a visionary poet of highesteem.

Q: NO SINGLE INTERPRETATION WILL EVER RESOLVE THE COMPLEXITIESOF SO PROTEAN A PRODUCT OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION, SAYSLIVINGSTONE ABOUT KUBLA KHAN. WHAT IS SIGNIFICANCE OF THESTATEMENT?

Q: KUBLA KHAN IS SO PROVOKINGLY ENIGMATIC AND SO DELICIOUSLY SUGGESTIVE, COMMENT.

Q: WHY KUBLA KHAN IS SO CONFUSING?

Q: KUBLA KHAN IS THE STUDY OF POET’S MIND THAT IS MYSTERIOUS ONE.

Q: GIVE POSSIBLE INTERPRETATIONS OF KUBLA KHAN.

Ans:

If a man could pass thro' Paradise in a Dream, & have a flower presented to him asa pledge that his Soul had really been there, & found that flower in his hand when heawoke -- Aye! And what then?Kubla Khan is a fascinating and exasperating poemwritten by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Almost everyone, who has read it, has beencharmed by its magic. It must surely be true that no poem of comparable length inEnglish or any other language has been the subject of so much critical commentary. Itsfifty-four lines have spawned thousands of pages of discussion and analysis. Kubla Khanis the sole or a major subject in five book-length studies; close to 150 articles and book-chapters have been devoted exclusively to it; and brief notes and incidental comments onit are without number.

Despite this deluge, however, there is no critical unanimity and very littleagreement on a number of important issues connected with the poem: its date ofcomposition, its meaning, its sources in Coleridge's reading and observation of nature, itsstructural integrity (i.e. fragment versus complete poem), and its relationship to thePreface by which Coleridge introduced it on its first publication in 1816. Coleridge'sphilosophical explorations appear in his greatest poems. 'Kubla Khan', with its exoticimagery and symbols, rich vocabulary and rhythms, written, by Coleridge's account,under the influence of laudanum, was often considered a brilliant work, but without any defined theme. However, despite its complexity the poem can be read as a well- constructed exposition on human genius and art.

Throughout the nineteenth century and during the first quarter of the twentiethcentury Kubla Khan was considered, almost universally, to be a poem in which soundoverwhelms sense. With a few exceptions (such as Lamb and Leigh Hunt), Romanticcritics -- accustomed to poetry of statement and antipathetic to any notion of ars gratiaartis -- summarily dismissed Kubla Khan as a meaningless farrago of sonorous phrasesbeneath the notice of serious criticism. It only demonstrated, according to WilliamHazlitt, that Mr. Coleridge can write better nonsense verses than any man in England --and then he added, politically, it is not a poem, but a musical composition.

For Victorian and Early Modern readers, on the other hand, Kubla Khan was apoem not below but beyond the reach of criticism, and they adopted (without the irony)Hazlitt's perception that it must properly be appreciated as verbalised music. When ithas been said, wrote Swinburne of Kubla Khan, that such melodies were never heard,such dreams never dreamed, such speech never spoken, the chief thing remains unsaid,and unspeakable. There is a charm upon this poem, which can only be felt in silentsubmission of wonder. Even John Livingston Lowes -- culpable, if ever anyone has been,of murdering to dissect -- insisted on the elusive magic of Coleridge's dream vision: ForKubla Khan is as near enchantment, as we are like to come in this dull world. While onemay track or attempt to track individual images to their sources, Kubla Khan as a wholeremains utterly inexplicable -- a dissolving phantasmagoria of highly charged imageswhose streaming pageant is, in the final analysis, as aimless as it is magnificent.

There are, in short, as many different interpretations of Kubla Khan as there arecritics who have written about it. Kubla Khan, a poem about poetic process Generallyspeaking, the most popular view by far is that Kubla Khan is concerned with the poeticprocess itself. What is Kubla Khan about? This is, or ought to be, an established fact ofcriticism: Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry. On this reading, the Tartar prince KublaKhan, who causes a pleasure-dome and elaborate gardens to be constructed in Xanadu, isa type of the artist, whose glorious creation, as the ancestral voices from the deep cavernswarn, is a precariously balanced reconciliation of the natural and the artificial. The dreamof Xanadu itself is an inspired vision which expresses dramatically the very nature ofvision: the fountain that throws up its waters from an underground ocean and so givesbirth to the sacred river that meanders five miles through Kubla'shortusconclususbefore sinking again into the subterraneous depths images the sudden eruption of thesubconscious into the realm of the conscious mind and its eventual inevitable recessionback into the deep well of the unconscious.

Kubla Khan records an early, perhaps largely unconscious, exploration of criticalperceptions united only loosely in an inchoate theory of literature. Freudian Analysis apoem such as Kubla Khan -- so provokingly enigmatic and so deliciously suggestive --also provides an irresistibly fertile ground for psychological speculation, especially onthe part of Freudian critics. When Coleridge called the poem a psychological curiosity inhis 1816 Preface and confessed that Kubla Khan was the record of an actual dream, heunwittingly opened wide the door to analysts anxious to expound the latentpsychological implications of his symphony and song. One of the earliest of the Freudianreadings was offered in 1924 by Robert Graves, who proposed that Kubla Khanexpressed Coleridge's subconscious determination to shun the mazy complications of lifeby retreating to a bower of poetry, solitude and opium -- a serene refuge beyond thebitter reproaches of Mrs. Coleridge (the woman who is wailing for her demon lover) andalmost beyond the gloomy prophecies of addiction uttered by the ancestral voices ofLamb and Charles Lloyd. By comparison with recent Freudian interpretations, this ispretty tame stuff. Nevertheless, it was enough to alert I.A. Richards almost immediatelyto the chilling possibilities of such an approach: The reader acquainted with current methods of [psychological] analysis, he warned, can imagine the results of a thorough going Freudian onslaught.

In general, the Freudians treat Kubla Khan as an unconscious revelation of personalfantasies and repressed, usually erotic, urges; but there is little agreement about theprecise nature of these subliminal drives. Douglas Angus argues that the poem illustratesa psychoneurotic pattern of narcissism that reflects Coleridge's abnormal need for loveand sympathy; Eugene Sloane, however, is convinced that Kubla Khan is an elaboratedevelopment of a birth dream, expressing an unconscious desire to return to the warmthand security of the womb (the hair in line 50, for example, is floating in amniotic fluid);and Gerald Enscoe finds the core of the poem's meaning in the unresolved strugglebetween two conflicting attitudes toward the subject of erotic feeling, i.e. the attitude . . .that the sexual impulse is to be confined within a controlled system is opposed to theanarchistic belief that the erotic neither should nor can be subjected to such control.

Still other readers prefer to follow Robert Graves by concentrating on what thepoem implies about Coleridge's experience with opium: James Bramwell reads KublaKhan as a dream-fable representing Coleridge's conscience in the act of casting him out,spiritually and bodily, from the paradise of his opium paradise; and Eli Markowitz, whosets out to treat the poem as we would a dream in our clinical practice, confidentlyconcludes that Kubla Khan is almost a chart of the psychosexual history of a personalityineluctably embarked on the road to addiction: It depicts the life of the poet -- his infancyand early childhood, the pleasures and deprivations of the oral period, the stimulationand dread of his oedipal period, the reaction to the death of his father at nine, the fear ofincest and gentility with the regression to passive-femininity and morality, and theattempt to cope with his life's problems by the appeal to the muse and to opium.