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Utilizing language to logically convey his conceits and exhibit standard poetic form, John Donne’s poetry–“The Flea’ and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’–manifests the Enlightenment’s confined, orderly emphasis; in contrast, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” of the Romantic era creates a harmonious connection with nature through the poem’s alliteration and irregular meter. In “The Flea,” John Donne uses the physical flea as a means to communicate his sexual desires: “And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; / … / This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed and marriage temple is” (“Flea” 4, 12-13). The flea representing their union of fluids and marriage, Donne projects his intent to make love to the woman in the poem through this logical metaphor. Furthermore, in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Donne uses a compass as a physical representation of their inseparable spiritual love, describing “[o]ur two souls” (“Forbidding” 21) as “stiff twin compasses” (“Forbidding” 26); Donne parallels their souls’ metaphysical linkage to the legs of a compass’ inability to be permanently separated. Donne also utilizes a consistent stanza length and rhyme scheme of AABBCCDDD in “The Flea’ and ABAB in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ and a constant iambic beat with an oscillating meter of tetrameter and pentameter in “the Flea” and an unchanging beat and meter of iambic tetrameter in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” displaying the Enlightenment’s priority of ordered expression over any possible deviation from the poetic form. Seeking to reverse the Enlightenment’s orderly rationale, Samuel Taylor Coleridge organically uses language to depict a profound, transcendental connection with nature rather than physical representations of conceits; in “Kubla Khan,” he incorporates alliteration in “sunless sea” (“Kubla” 5), “cedarn cover” (“Kubla” 23), “miles meandering” (“Kubla” 25), and “mingled measure” (“Kubla” 33), adding a slow, calm musical element to the poem that allows the reader to unconsciously absorb the nature being described and develop a deeper connection with it rather than to be directed by the author to do so. Additionally, Coleridge integrates an inconsistent stanza length and rhyme scheme throughout “Kubla Khan” and uses an iambic beat with a differing meter for each line, often deviating from the Enlightenment’s confined limits shown in Donne’s poetry in favor of the unrestricted expression of his form of beauty.
Embracing non-western racial “otherness” in “Kubla Khan,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses the naturalistic setting of Asia and Kubla Khan’s intrinsic connection with nature to signify the transcendental superiority of nomadic life over that of the Industrialized western world, and moreover, Coleridge portrays the Abyssinian maid as a source of inspiration for the British speaker of the poem to establish a nature-based hierarchy. The setting of the poem is “[i]n Xanadu” (“Kubla” 1), the capital city of Kubla Khan’s Mongol Empire, and this city, the center of eastern nomadic life, includes natural elements such as “the sacred river” (“Kubla” 3) and the “deep romantic chasm” (“Kubla” 12) of the canyon. Residing over this powerful city of nature, Kubla Khan becomes harmonious with nature: “And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far / Ancestral voice prophesying war!” (“Kubla” 29-30). As the “Sheperd,” or ruler, of the nomadic Mongolians, Kubla Khan represents the eastern racial “otherness” that connects with nature instead of following human constructs, contrasting the influence of the Industrialized western world. After describing Kubla Khan, Coleridge introduces “an Abyssinian Maid” (“Kubla” 39), an Ethiopian woman from whom the British speaker of the poem drew his inspiration; the woman “[s]ing[s] of Mount Abora” (“Kubla” 41), a place used in Milton’s Paradise Lost to represent spiritual paradise, indicating that she is spiritually enlightened. The British narrator admires the woman and is inspiring by her bardic singing to create his own poem, and Coleridge uses the Ethiopian woman’s power over the British narrator to create a new hierarchy of man that is based on one’s connection with nature, not one’s racial status.
Coleridge uses the nature imagery in “Kubla Khan,” progressing to increasingly chaotic, disorderly forms, to reflect one’s transition to the state of the sublime, and Coleridge portrays Kubla Khan as the embodiment of sublime power resulting from this transition through his imaginative control over nature and mystic visionary status. The poem begins in a relatively peaceful place of “gardens … / [with] many an insense-bearing tree” (“Kubla” 8-9) and “forests … / Enfolding sunny spots of greenery” (“Kubla” 10-11); however, as the poem progresses, the natural setting becomes chaotic, as the canyon is described as a “savage place” (“Kubla” 14) that “was haunted / By [a] woman wailing for her demon-lover” (“Kubla” 15-16). Thereafter, nature transcends into caves that are “measureless to man” (“Kubla” 27)–a supernatural space that allows the imaginative state of the sublime to occur in its protective darkness; this metaphysical place is the embodiment of chaotic reorientation of nature–reflecting the transition to the sublime–as it was a “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice” (“Kubla” 36), defying earthly limitations through its elemental opposites of heat and ice. Having completed the reorientation of the consciousness to the sublime, Kubla Khan lives in a chaotic state of the sublime that defies earthly limitations. Through his newfound sublime power, he has control over his physical features of “flashing eyes” (“Kubla” 50) and “floating hair” (“Kubla” 50) and can “build that dome in air” (“Kubla” 46), attaining a mystic visionary status to the terrified onlookers who live in a confined earthly existence.
The “Person from Porlock,” interrupting Coleridge’s opium-induced writing trance, obstructs the rest of Coleridge’s poem from being completed; in the final stanza of “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge illustrates the allegorical visionary figure’s isolation from society to portray Industrial society’s rejection of metaphysical transcendence, reflecting the suppression of his own visionary state. After taking opium and having a dream in which he composed a poem about Kubla Khan, Coleridge–still in a transcendent dream state–began copying down his precomposed poem; however, he was interrupted by “a person on business from Porlock” (“Kubla”), who caused Coleridge to forget the remainder of the poem. This “Person from Porlock” prevents the poem from being completed to suppress society from becoming metaphysically enlightened through his poetry. This suppression manifests in “Kubla Khan,” as after seeing the visionary figure, people cries out “Beware! Beware!” (“Kubla” 49) and protect themselves from him through ritual: “Weave a finger round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread” (“Kubla” 51-52). The society isolates and rejects the visionary figure, who–mirroring Coleridge’s ingestion of opium–consumed “honey-dew” (“Kubla” 53) and “drunk the milk of Paradise” (“Kubla” 54), symbols of the altered consciousness of the sublime, to reach that transcendent visionary state, conveying Coleridge’s message that Industrial society suppresses literature written in the transcendental visionary state–including his own–to maintain the people’s materialistic consciousness and reject the Romantics’ offer of transcendence beyond the physical, rational world to the sublime.
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