Hello
Romanticists,
We venture now
into the stranger, creepier, and fantastical works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
poems that are more like “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” than the
philosophical or conversation poems.
Like the story of the cursed mariner, “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and
“The Pains of Sleep” all challenge comprehension by presenting strange lands,
supernatural creatures, and altered states of consciousness. They have baffled readers since their first
appearance.
It may not
surprise us to learn that folklore and fairytales were a genre of interest to
Coleridge and that they were much on his mind in the period when he was writing
his fantastical poems. A month before
composing “Kubla Kahn,” Coleridge recalled in a letter to a friend the profound
effect that reading fairytales had had on his young mind:
I
remember that at eight years old I walked with [my father] one winter evening
from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery, and he told me the names of the
stars and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world, and that the
other twinkling stars were suns that had worlds rolling round them. And when I came home he showed me how they
rolled round. I heard him with a
profound delight and admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or
incredulity. For from my early reading
of fairy tales and genii, etc., etc., my mind had been habituated to the Vast, and I never regarded my
senses in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions,
not by my sight, even at that age.
Fantastical
tales thus habituated Coleridge to the idea that there might be worlds or
realities beyond his own experience.
Happy reading,
Prof. M.
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| Andrew Lang's illustration of the walls and domes of "Kubla Kahn" |
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| Andrew Lang's illustration of Christabel |
Coleridge’s poem “Christabel” is decidedly creepy, and is teeming with supernatural phenomena. Geraldine, although not explicitly classified, seems to be a witch, and she succeeds in placing a tongue-locking spell on poor Christabel. This makes her feel confident to engage her in questionable sexual activities (perhaps a window into the way sexuality was viewed at this time, but I’m not quite sure how). Then, there is the spirit of Christabel’s mother which ostensibly comes to protect her daughter, although Geraldine manages to banish it somehow. Furthermore, Geraldine seems to use some kind of charm to convince Leoline that she is simply a victim of some bad men, not the instigator of deviant behavior with his daughter. Finally, Leoline’s bard reveals a sort of vision he had of something evil befalling Christabel.
ReplyDelete“Christabel” is full of these classic bits of superstition and folklore, which make the whole poem feel a bit wonky and out of reach. Perhaps that was Coleridge’s aim? Either way, it definitely reflects his paranoia and fascination with the supernatural.
It’s also interesting to note that Geraldine’s curse even seems to touch the speaker, and by extension the reader – we are not quite sure what exactly happened between Christabel and Geraldine. The witch’s spell seems to have worked pretty well :)
My first impression of The Pains of Sleep was, "Man, you need a psychologist!" As soon as you read this poem, your hit with a boatload of emotional turmoil and confusion. The limitted storyline: Coleridge discusses how he usual feels when he goes to sleep (after pointing out that he doesn't pray before hand the way many do), then makes an abrubt shift to "yesternight," in which he is plagued by "Anguish and agony," "tortured," and basically feels every terrible feeling there is. This repeated on the third night, causing him to wake up and cry. At his point, he calms himself by thinking that things like this only happen to those who deserve it, and he does not. (Therefore it has to end at some point?) Finally, he concludes with some sort of question - Why is all this happening when all I need is to love and be loved?
ReplyDeleteWhile this poem doesn't have much of a storyline, and I didn't pick up on any references to another time, I think it definitely has a psychoanalitic element to it. It differs from fairytales in that there are no symbols, but rather a straight up discussion of the emotions. There is no logic to Coleridge's thoughts and feelings when it comes to these dreams - it is the rawest emotions, unbarred by any sort of coherent thought. This is the deepest part of a person, the way someone might feel after every kind of wall is taken down (though most of us probably don't feel quite like this...). It is a concious discussion about the subconcious - I thought that was pretty cool.
Kubla Khan would not be a typical fairy tale. I’m not even sure what it is, to be honest. The term ‘fragment’ felt pretty accurate – it seems like a bunch of strong images, little pieces of a larger story mashed together. It even looks like a fragment on the page – it has all these jagged edges and random (seemingly random) indentations.
ReplyDeleteYet certain aspects of it seem fairy-tale inspired. The mashup of different images, for one. We said that fairy tales often have layer upon layer of allusions to entirely different cultures, all haphazardly combined. In Kubla Kahn, we have Kubla – he’s Mongolian (if he’s the same as Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghenghis Kahn and conqueror of China). Then we have a sacred river, and who knows what culture that’s from – who has a sacred river? Then there’s a woman “wailing her demon-lover,” which feels like Arabian Nights. There’s an Abyssinian woman, not sure who she is, and then there’s a reference to “milk” and “honey” which is very Judeo-Christian, as well as a seeming exorcism ritual. It’s a jumble of allusions from different places and cultures all combined in a very strange way.
The desire to search for meaning or a moral, and the inability to find a cohesive message, is also very fairy-tale-esque. At first I thought there was something there. Here’s Kubla, a military hero, trying to retire in his pleasure dome, and yet all he can hear in the roar of nature is the prophecy of war. He’s like the river, which at first meanders through the woods only to crash against the rocks in the waterfall. He can’t relax. He’s can’t reconcile his warrior instincts and his desire to retire – he’s both “sunny” and “ice,” and though he’s in a pleasure dome, it “casts a shadow”…I had a whole thing building in my head. And then comes the last bit, with someone playing a dulcimer, and visions, and dreams, and castles in the air, then people say he’s seen the divine, so there’s ‘holy dread,’ and then they circle him three times…I had no idea what to make of that. It certainly feels like a fairy tale in the way it includes the fantastic without any explanation. The pleasure dome makes a reappearance but the connection is entirely unclear. What’s the moral here? Who knows.
The fairytales we read made gestures at a religious moral (chastity, obeying elders, not going around the church the wrong way, etc.) but they rarely engaged in religion directly. The fairytales reveal their morals by making the narrative journey from sin to redemption clear. If they don’t complete the mission, the consequences are dire. The moral path speaks to the deep-rooted desire for clarity that all humans share. We all want to believe that the bad get punished, and the good find their way through to redemption and reward. They start at point A and by the time they get to point B they are changed.
ReplyDeleteThe Pains of Sleep contains the same path and desire that the fairytales did. Coleridge begins the poem stating that when he lays down to sleep, he does not pray the normal way. Instead, he prays silently, composing to Love (not God) and humbly falling asleep. He does not seem to pray about anything specifically nor to anyone specifically. Coleridge repeats the word ‘sense’ twice. He is giving a sense of prayer but not the complete and regular prayer of the everyman.
There is a sharp turn in the next stanza. ‘But’ says Coleridge, making it obvious that there is a shift from the calm of the first stanza. Now, Coleridge prays aloud. Why? Because of a dream, which turned his world upside down. Desire and loathing are mixed, his enemies have become strong, and unnamed shapes threaten him. Yet, he is confused about whether he deserves this dream punishment. He prays aloud but does not know why he is praying (or what he is repenting about).
The third night brings the moral journey to a close. Before falling asleep Coleridge finally succumbs to the ultimate prayer, loud tears. He recognizes that “Such punishments, I said, were due/ to natures deepliest stain with sin.” Once Coleridge acknowledges that punishment does not come for no reason and that the worst enemy a man can have is his mind, he can pray.
The journey ends with a recognition of the importance of love. At the beginning of the poem Coleridge prayed to love, now he separates love from God and prays to God for love. Like the fairytale journey, Coleridge traveled to a foreign place (in his case a dream world) and learned from his journey that he must pray so that the world’s law and order can be restored and that he can acquire the peace and love he craves.
Kubla Kahn:
ReplyDeleteIn the introduction, the author of the paragraph says that the fragments of Kublah Kahn were written when Coleridge was on an opioid. Well, I have to admit that DOESN’T SURPISE ME AT ALL. Not only was there very strange imagery, but it was strange in the way that the metaphors and visuals Coleridge tried to create and have his readers see, were either not possible in the physical world, or plain old strange and nearly impossible to understand. This certainly echoes fairytale and fantasy because of the magic aspect. There are concepts that don’t make sense in the real world in fairytales, like when the girl in the Mother Holle story falls down a well. That’s not possible, nor do we expect it to be but that’s ok because were not expecting reality in a fairytale.
Coleridge takes us into this chasm (I think) and says that it is a pleasure dome that is sunny, but filled with caves of ice. Though it can be sunny and icy, it still seems like its an image meant to confuse; the brain has trouble figuring out what image to conjure. Another example is Coleridge says he’ll “build that dome in air”. Sunny and icy is far more comprehendible to have than building in air. These ideas though, when looked at through a fantasy lens, don’t bother us. Like, in Harry potter, it doesn’t confuse us how a cloak can make someone invisible, because were expecting it. So perhaps the same with this imagery as well.
There are other strange elements in the peom such as feeding on honey-dew and milk makes one have to dread this man. But the specific weirdness I wanted to point out is the fact that his elements are not realistic, or cannot exist in reality.
Christabel, like so many fairytales, is about an innocent maiden who falls for a disguised witch. There's a lot of evidence to support Geraldine's being some kind of witch: she's chased by men on white horses, animals are afraid of her, she's afraid of angels and good spirits. She can't cross over water. She's beautiful at first glance but has some kind of hideous mark of evil, like all the beautiful but evil witch-queens. It's possible that her constant requests for Christabel's hand are ways to get around the no-evil-spirit-may-enter-a-dwelling-uninvited rule. Oh, and she casts dark spells on innocent maidens.
ReplyDeleteI did a little background check on Geraldine and it turns out that a lot of literary critics believe she's a vampire. This poem may even have inspired the vampire story "Carmilla". One telling piece of potential vampirical evidence is that Geraldine has some sort of trouble entering the castle. This could be because she's a generic evil spirit that can't cross water, but Coleridge specifically tells us that the gate is "ironed within and without". Apparently, vampires have some kind of allergy to iron.
Vampire, witch or garden-variety spirit, Geraldine is definitely a fairytale villain.