The
Romantic lives in a world, not of things, but of images; not of laws, but of
metaphors. Although best known for his poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was also
an important literary critic who helped to popularize the Romantic Movement
among English speaking peoples. Romanticism had emerged from the German Sturm
und Drang movement of the second half of the eighteenth century, which itself
had arisen as a reaction to Enlightenment philosophy and values. Whereas
Enlightenment thinkers envisioned an orderly universe and advocated for the use
of reason as guide for productive living, the Sturm und Drang called for a
passionate approach to life in a world more sensual than sensible. The
Romantics, while maintaining distance from the objective rationalism of the
Enlightenment, also distanced themselves from the impetuousness of Sturm und
Drang. They focused on a subjective view of reality that, while transcending
the strictures of logic and reason, also avoids complete domination by
ungoverned emotionalism. For the Romantic, meaning is best found through the
use of imagination rather than strict adherence to calculation or passion.
Coleridge’s critical essays and his poetry, especially “Kubla Khan,” serve as a
Romantic counterargument to the ideals of the Enlightenment as described by
Emmanuel Kant in his seminal essay “What is Enlightenment?” Indeed, “Kubla
Khan,” in its very form and message, illustrates the Romantic principles that
Coleridge advances in his criticism.
S.T. Coleridge may be distinguished as the most representative of
the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. Kubla Khan, a
celebratory poem of Coleridge is romantic in its tone, temperament and content.
Coleridge excels his
contemporaries in the psychological treatment of the Middle Ages, where, a
strange beauty is there to be won by strong imagination out of things unlikely
or remote. The exquisite, distant setting of Kubla Khan is laid in harmony with
this aspect of Romanticism, that is, “strangeness added to beauty”. The first
stanza gives a sensuous, typical pictorial presentation of an earthly paradise,
which does not have any historical significance. It is the landscape of Xandu,
which Kubla Khan has selected for building his pleasure-dome, on the bank of
the river Alph. Thus a medieval, autocratic Chinese monarch forms the subject
of the poem. The names--- Xandu, Alph etc.—unfamiliar and wrought with the
spirit of mystery, lend to the poem an enchantment of their own. The exotic plot
of land is one of teeming nature—garden, hills, serpentine rivulets, forests
and spots of vegetation—all these embracing the centrally located “miracle of
rare device”, that is, Kubla’s palace. Down the slopes of the green hills runs
a “deep romantic chasm”. A mysterious atmosphere hangs over the place as a
woman is heard lamenting for her deserted demon-lover. The story derives its
origin from the Gothic tales. The nocturnal beauty of the paradisal landscape
is maligned by the “waning” lunar crescent. This is a morbid aspect of
romanticism. The second part of the poem also exhibits his inclination for
medievalism as here the poet transports us to the far-off land of Abyssinia.
It is the perception of “strangeness added to beauty” that makes
for the Romantics’ interest in the supernatural—in things veiled under mystery.
The essence of Coleridge’s romanticism lies in his artistic rendering of the
supernatural phenomena. The “woman wailing for her demon lover” and “the
ancestral voices prophesying war” are obviously supernatural occurrences. The
process of the genesis of the river—the bursting of the fountain volleying up
huge fragments and its subterranean terminus evokes a sense of wonder and awe.
Towards the end of the poem the poet is presented as a supernatural being
feeding on honey-dew and milk of paradise.
Kubla Khan is remarkable for its sensuousness which is a
great romantic feature. It abounds in sensuous and picturesque description of
the vast stretch of land overgrown with the beauties of nature:
“And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree:
And here were forests ancients as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”
The shadow of the dome floating midway on the waves is also
sensuous. The sensuousness is further reinforced with the description of the Abyssinian
maid playing on her stringed instrument and singing of Mount Abora. The images
employed in the poem are sensuous. The dome is an agreed emblem of fulfilment
and satisfaction. Its spherical shape is likened to a woman’s breast, both
being circular and complete. Moreover, the word “pleasure” is the recurrent
qualifier of dome---“a stately pleasure dome” in the line 2, “the dome of
pleasure” in the line 31, “a sunny pleasure-dome” in the line 36. The other
sensuous images are “thresher’s flail”, “rebounding hail”, “caves of ice”,
“sunny dome” etc.
Kubla Khan is essentially a dream-poem recounting in a poetic form
what the poet saw in a vision. It has all the marks of a dream—vividness, free
association and inconsequence. The dream-like texture of Coleridge’s poem gives
it a kind of twilight vagueness intensifying its mystery. This dream-quality
contributes greatly to making the poem romantic.
To conclude, it has been rightly said that Coleridge’s poetry is
“the most finished, supreme embodiment of all that is purest and ethereal in
the romantic spirit”.
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Notes made by using books and Internet sources.
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