The best known Conversation poems are:
'The Eolian Harp,
Frost at Midnight,
This Lime-Tree Bower, my Prison,
The Nightingale
and
Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement.'
Because they adopt the tone of natural conversation, these poems appear artless, but in fact they are highly structured and carefully created. One of the techniques that Coleridge uses, for example, is that of moving from one subject to another because of the associations that a particular word might have - just as in a real conversation.
The Early Years
1798 - 1810
1811 - 1815
Conversation poems overview
Conversation poem examples
Systolic rhythm
The Romantics and Romantic poetry
Tenets of Romanticism (DOGMAS)
ccc
Coleridge Kubla Khan Kubla Khan', the poem, is surrounded by legend that may or may not affect our reading of it. Certainly Coleridge has left us a detailed account of the composition of the poem, though whether that account necessarily forces us to see the poem as a "Fragment" is debatable.In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five mile of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;And here were forests ancient as the hills.Enfolding sunny spots of greenery Just near Culbone Church, Somerset, Coleridge took two grains of Opium. The resulting reverie was the stimulus for Kubla Khan..In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteen miles of plane ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place to place.While reading this text, Coleridge says he fell asleep and records the following in what is known as the Crewe MS.:This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium, taken to check a dysentery at a Farm House Between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797.He was supposed to have dreamt 300-400 of the actual lines of a poem, but been interrupted (in one his versions of the story) by 'a person on business from Porlock' before he could transcribe the words. Hence the poem's reputation, and designation, as a 'fragment'. But what is the poem about? It is worthwhile to know something of the trends in its criticism. Until the mid-20th century, positive criticism of the poem (and there was a lot not that was positive) saw it as a clever exercise in sound, with no particular meaning that could be explained. "Magic" and "music" were common words used to describe the poem. Music References to the poem's 'music' are references to the plays on sound that abound in the poem and those experiments with sound are indeed everywhere in the poem. The poem opens with the line:'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan' (l.1) Notice how each vowel from the beginnings balanced by an identical one further on in the line (In-did/Xan-Khan/a-bla/du-Ku). Moreover, each line in the opening cinquain (a self-contained section of five lines) ends with an alliterated phrase:Kubla Khan/dome decree/river, ran/measureless to man/sunless seaThis pattern of alliteration is repeated in later groups of lines:mazy motion/river ran/measureless to man (ll.25-27);symphony and song/deep delight/loud and long (ll.43-45). Rhyme schemeThe poem's rhyme scheme is also very complex. The opening stanza, for example has the pattern: abaabccdbdb
The long central section has: efeefgghhiijjkcckllmnmnoo
The final section has: pqrrpststuouuuovvo Some of these are half-rhymes (eg war/far) and there are one or two isolated examples of alliteration outside the nominated groups of lines, but these only serve to emphasise the complexity of the playing with sound that Coleridge attempted in this poem.But what does it mean?
Maud Bodkin's Jungian interpretation views Kubla Khan as a contemplation of heaven and hellThere are about three or four major strands in the more modern criticism of this poem: that it represents aspects of Coleridge's theory of aesthetics. You may have come across Coleridge's theories of the Fancy and the Imagination, or the Primary and Secondary Imagination, which aspects of Kubla himself and the river are said to represent. One problem with these views is that Coleridge had not finally worked out these theories when 'Kubla Khan' was published. psychological criticism of the Freudian kind, which treats the poem as the unconscious revelation of personal fantasies. The problem with this school of criticism is that no two critics agree on just what aspects of Coleridge's unconscious are being revealed, and just what each image in the poem represents. more general symbolic interpretations, some of which are Jungian. The best-known Jungian interpretation is probably in Maud Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934), which sees the poem partly as a kind of contemplation of heaven and hell. a view that it is a poem about the processes of artistic, particularly, poetic creation, in which Kubla represents the creative artist. It is worthwhile, the, keeping in mind that any view give below represents at best an individual view of the poem in a way that is even more true than it is for other poems.
In general terms Kubla Khan is given connotations of power and authority. He is represented as a creator.
Let us try to capture the ideas in the poem in some kind of general form before trying to tie them down to the specifics of some of these readings.
The poem opens with:
'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree' (ll.1-2)
In general terms, Kubla is thus a powerful potentate in the position of being a lawgiver. He is also a creator. Thus, at the most general level, he represents processes of creating and ordering. Where does the pleasure-dome appear?
'Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.' (ll.3-5)
Thus this dome appears in the midst of a seemingly untouched natural world - certainly a world of darkness and mystery (sunless) and a world otherwise beyond the control and even comprehension of humanity (measureless to man). The dome itself, in being a dome, perhaps suggests a physical church and thus spiritual meditation and sacredness (like the river), while at the same time being a dome of 'pleasure'.
Kubla creates a luxurious earthly paradise:
'So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery'. (ll.6-11)
The walls, towers and gardens represent the coming of order and cultivation and civilisation to the wilderness - a process of containment, control and organisation. The lawgiver and creator brings order.
The natural world around the dome is continually presented as untamed and mysterious - the 'measureless' caverns, the 'sunless sea' and the origins of the river itself:
'But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover' (ll.12-13)
Again, note how words like 'deep...chasm' and 'cover' emphasise the hidden mysteriousness of the world in which the dome is built.
This place is savage AND sacred:
'A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!' (ll.14-16)
What follows these mysterious lines is the highly sexual image of the fountain, drawing clear parallels between the earth itself and male ejaculation:
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced' (ll.17-19)
Sex of course holds an ambiguous position in Western history and culture. On the one hand, it has been surrounded by a sense of the illicit, the immoral and this sense has tied in strongly to a sense of sex as associated with the wild and untamed: sex is the realm of immorality and also of the "uncivilised". This dual sense of immorality and quasi-savagery is how Shakespeare has the mad Lear describe sex: '
The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.....
.....The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to 'tWith a more riotous appetite.Down from the waist they are centaurs,
Though women all above.But to the girdle do the gods inherit,Beneath is all the fiend's.There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit;'
King Lear, IV vi 112-28).
What has all this to do with 'Kubla Khan'? Well, there is no doubt that the description of the fountain's bursting is very sexual. Moreover, all of this geological activity is associated with the wild, the uncivilised: the place is 'savage' and certainly wild. Moreover, the metaphorical woman's lover is a demon figure. Thus, sex is associated here with the Western tradition of sex as uncivilised and quasi-evil.
But, as we said above, this tradition is ambiguous - sex is also sacred in Western tradition: associated particularly with love and creation. Creation, of course, is what gods do. Perhaps sex is held as sacred because it is the closest that humans get to godliness - the ability to create life. In any case, the place is not only 'savage', but 'holy' and the river thrown up by the geological activity is 'sacred'. This demonic energy creates, and what it creates is holy (ll.20-24). But creation is not just the province of gods - it is also the province of artists. Kubla is a creator, an artist in his way.
Thus, Kubla has created and brought order amidst wilderness, even savagery, though that wilderness itself contains that which was sacred.
The river and the sea: connected with darkness and death
What of the river so created? One impression of the river is of ease ('five miles meandering with a mazy motion', l.25); in contrast, another is of massive activity not unlike that of the mighty fountain ('and sank in tumult', l.28) and yet another is of death as it ends in the 'lifeless ocean' (l.28). This latter description of the sea reminds us of its earlier description as 'sunless' (l.5). Throughout the poem, light has been associated with life, and lack of light with its opposite. Thus the demon's lover wails 'beneath a waning moon' (l.15).WAN - PALE (PALIDA) WANING - MINGUANTE
Kubla's garden brings light, while the river and the sea are associated with darkness and death. The place where the river, the sea and the dome meet brings meanings to Kubla. He hears 'Ancestral voices prophesying war' (l.30); the fountain and caves convey a 'mingled measure' (l.33). The combination, it seems, of the creation with the natural has produced meaning, while reconciling opposites:
'A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice' (l.36).
As an extended metaphor
As we stated earlier, one traditional view of the poem is that it represents a kind of extended metaphor for the processes of artistic, especially, poetic creation. We know that Coleridge valued 'the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities' (Biographia Literaria) as a mark of the poetic imagination. Up to this point, the poem has been full of such contrasts: lightness and darkness; warmth and cold; paradise and hell; peace and war (hence, creation and destruction). This kind of thing, along with the figure of Kubla as god-like creator would indeed suggest that the reading of the poem as a manifesto on poetic creation is a highly valid one.
The third section of the poem that begins with the Abyssinian maid, carries through this reading very closely. The speaker switches abruptly from the narrative about Kubla's world to his own personal vision. The vision again is of artistic creation - not architecture this time, but music:
'A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.'(ll.37-41).
Mount Abora is a reference to John Milton's great 17thC poem, Paradise Lost. The maid is celebrating a paradisal landscape, ie seemingly a landscape very like the opening lines. Thus paradise has been represented in architecture and music, and the poet now argues that he, too, could create great art, a paradisal creation just like that of Kubla and the Abyssinian maid.
The third section of the poem that begins with the Abyssinian maid, carries through this reading very closely. The speaker switches abruptly from the narrative about Kubla's world to his own personal vision. The vision again is of artistic creation - not architecture this time, but music:
'A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.'(ll.37-41).
Mount Abora is a reference to John Milton's great 17thC poem, Paradise Lost. The maid is celebrating a paradisal landscape, ie seemingly a landscape very like the opening lines. Thus paradise has been represented in architecture and music, and the poet now argues that he, too, could create great art, a paradisal creation just like that of Kubla and the Abyssinian maid.
Poetic inspiration
Thus paradise has been represented in architecture and music, and the poet now argues that he, too, could create great art, a paradisal creation just like that of Kubla and the Abyssinian maid.
'Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!' (ll.43-47)
This is a triumphant statement of the potential of the poet as artistic creator and it is expressed in a particularly light and fast rhythm. If he, the poet, could re-live, in his imagination, the girl's song, he too could become the great creator - and, like Kubla, a figure of power, of magic and mystery and even of holy enchantment, because he represents the land of milk and honey which was promised to Moses:
'And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.' (ll.48-54)
Others would see him as divinely inspired and worship him. In such view of the poem, it is very tempting to accept the critique that the poem is about poetic inspiration - the river is seen as representing inspiration or imagination. If the poet could recapture his vision of this paradise, he too could become the inspired magical creator.
One problem with the reading of the poem as about processes of creative expression is in how we read Kubla Khan himself. Is Kubla the creative artist who imposes order by imposing form, or is he a demonic tyrant who imposes his will on the natural world, producing artificial beauty where there was once natural beauty? In general, the view that this is a poem about poetry is a popular view, but there remains little consensus about just what is being said about the poetic process. In our view, however, there seems good evidence to see it as a poem about the potential of forms of artistic expression. "Potential for what?" may have to remain an open
question.The Eolian Harp' is one of Coleridge's most famous Conversation poems. In it, through musing on a musical instrument placed in his casement window, he muses on the processes of the creation of poetry.
The following analysis takes you through the poem. As you read it, think about how it is like the other Conversation poems, both in it its themes and structures, including the movement of Coleridge's consciousness.
Using movement
Typical of the Conversation Poems is the movement through the poem by one idea setting off another that is suggested by it. The idea of the hushed murmur of the sea leads Coleridge to contemplate the figure of an Eolian harp (Lute in l.13) that has been placed in the casement window.
An Eolian harp is a musical instrument with strings stretched across a sound box. It produces music as the wind blows through the strings. Hence, it is named after the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus. The Romantic poets saw this instrument as a symbol of poetic inspiration and it is not hard to see why: the instrument is capable of producing music (art), but only does so when it "yields" itself to be played on by the power of the natural world (the wind). Coleridge, in fact, here sees the lute in terms of a highly sexual image. Listen for this association in the following lines (ll. 20-25):
The artist as creator
Sex is a relevant image in itself for the way in which the Romantics saw the artist - as a creator. The notion of creating has its symbolic parallels in the idea of God, and the idea of conception and birth. Hence, it was not unusual for the Romantics to see the artist as god-like (Mary Shelley, for example, wrote the story of Frankenstein about a human who literally creates life. One of the ways in which this novel is seen is as a symbol of artistic creation in the figure of Frankenstein, who "plays God").
Equally, it was not unusual for the Romantics to express artistic creation as a sexual act. As stated earlier, typical of the Conversation Poems is the movement through the poem by one idea setting off another that is suggested by it. Here, the sexual nature of this image also takes us back to the physical context of the poem itself.
Like the harp, Sara is "reclined"; the tone of the opening is very loving and Coleridge's particular view of the harp perhaps suggests what else was on his mind.
Myth, magic and fantasy
When the strings are played upon by the wind, the music evokes visions of a paradisal, magical fantasy world:
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing! '(ll.20-25)
Myth, magic and fantasy were interests of a number of the Romantics - Coleridge's own most famous poem is probably 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', which is set in a world of myth, magic and fantasy. It is interesting, then, that when the music is produced by the instrument yielding itself to Nature, that it should suggest such magical images to the poet.
Associations and the one life theme
'O! the one Life within us and abroad...
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd.' (ll.26-33)
These lines were not in the original 1796 version of the poem, but were added by Coleridge to later versions of the poem from 1828. The lines refer very obviously to the Coleridgean theme of the "one life" - the idea that humanity and nature are essentially unified, and that realisation of this produces a feeling of profound love. Again, the relation to the physical context of the poem is important: the beauty of the world around them, and of the music makes it impossible not to love.
Like the first stanza, this one ends in silence:
'Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.' (ll.32-33)
And again, the notion of 'Music slumbering' and the reclining harp suggests the "chance" association of himself slumbering.
'And thus my Love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon...'(ll.34-35).
These associations lead to Coleridge seeing himself and his consciousness as being just like the harp, which has just produced these magical associations. Listen for these ideas in the following lines (ll. 36-43).
Click on GO and read the extract as you watch and listen:
Whilst thro' my half-clos'd eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,
And many idel flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various, as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!
c
Interpretations |
|
Coleridge's thoughts, of course, produce poetry, just like the wind's influence produces music. Both are about the influences that produce art. Note that 'tranquillity' seems to be a condition for this musing - his mind must be 'indolent and passive', and the thoughts will come 'uncall'd'. Basically, at this point, Coleridge is suggesting that, again like the harp, he must yield himself up to these influences and to let them come.
These lines are followed by the most famous lines of the poem, in which Coleridge muses on this very association between himself and the harp. | | |
|
|
|
| Click on GO and read the extract as you watch and listen:
'And what if all of animated natureBe but organic Harps diversely fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,At once the Soul of each, and God of all?' (ll.44-48) |
|
|
These lines have been read in a number of ways:
* One interpretation is that it is an expression of "pantheism" - the idea that all things ARE God and that God IS everything. This is different from the Christian notion that God's presence is reflected IN the world.
* Another view is that he is simply saying that all things are unified in God, despite their diversity.
* Another view is that it is a statement about the nature of poetic creation as it has been reflected in this very poem. In the latter interpretation, it would follow that the poet is being set up as God-like in a very Romantic sense.
Either the first or the third of these interpretations would explain the lines which follows, in which Sara reproves him for these thoughts and 'biddest me walk humbly with my God'.(l.52). Against Sara's conventional Christianity, Coleridge now disparages his earlier thoughts as 'vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring' (l.57) and moves to a conventional statement of conventional religion in ll.58ff. |
|
Sara |
|
There is good reason to believe that Coleridge himself would intend this section of the poem as a compliment to Sara who seems to express or represent the acceptable sentiments of the day, being a genuinely 'Meek Daughter in the family of Christ' (l.53). Modern critics might argue, however, that Coleridge has constructed Sara here as very prissy and object to that very construction, because it sets himself up as the more interesting character.
Certainly many critics have seen this section of the poem as demonstrating conventionality in the face of the earlier, more daring statements. For these critics, the sense of oneness Coleridge felt in ll.44ff is discarded for an intellectual impotence in ll.54ff. |
|
Background
The poem is based on a real incident. Coleridge and his wife, Sarah, were being visited at their cottage in Nether Stowey by Charles Lamb and Coleridge's closest companion, William Wordsworth, with the latter's sister, Dorothy. According to Coleridge's notebook, Sarah accidentally spilt a skillet of boiling milk onto his foot, preventing his joining the others on a walk.
Like the later 'Frost at Midnight', the occasion of this poem is a human tie - in this poem, it is the tie of friendship, since the poem is explicitly addressed to Coleridge's friend, the writer Charles Lamb ('My gentle-hearted Charles', l.23).
The poem begins in melancholy as Coleridge ponders being left alone in the lime-tree bower while his friends have gone walking. In fact, probably the first thing to note about this poem is the paradox of the title itself. The idea of such a symbol of the beauty of the English countryside as a lime-tree bower being a prison seems to run against the usual Romantic notions of the freedom of nature as against 'the great City pent' (l.30). The melancholic mood could be seen as an exaggerated pose - it certainly comes across as such by l.6, where he somewhat pompously declares his friends those 'whom I never more may meet again'. In any case, the mood is ironic, since the 'imprisonment' of the bower actually liberates his imagination to the point where he later 'rejoins' his friends, and also to the point where he is able to create this poem itself.
Systolic movement |
|
| In the systolic movement that characterises the Conversation poems, Coleridge's opening self-consciousness pans out, using imagination, to his friends and their present situation: | | |
|
| |
|
| Click on GO and read the extract as you watch and listen:
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lostBeauties and feelings, such as would have beenMost sweet to my remembrance even when ageHas dimm'd mine eyes to blindness !They meanwhile Friends, whom I never more may meet again,On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,Wander in gladness' (ll.1-8) |
|
| |
From here Coleridge's focus zooms in on aspects of the landscape to a minute detailed description of the landscape. Keep in mind as you read this that Coleridge is still in his prison-bower, and that the unity achieved with his friends is through imagination:
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,And only speckled by the mid-day sun;Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rockFlings arching like a bridge; - that branchless ash,Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leavesNe'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,Fann'd by the waterfall!' (ll.10-16) | | |
|
| |
Alternating images |
|
What images does Coleridge juxtapose throughout the poem? |
| Alternating images of light and dark dominate this poem and correspond to the poet's moods of grief and joy. From the imagined blindness of the opening lines to the "speckling" of this section, the poet's imagination proceeds to imagining his friends beholding a wide panoramic vision as they emerge from the dell. From the minute description to the wide panorama is the next movement in the systolic rhythm
' Now, my friends emergeBeneath the wide wide Heaven - and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificentOf hilly fields and meadows, and the sea...' (ll.20-23) |
|
Similarities to Frost at Midnight |
|
| | The connection of the tract with steeples is another of Coleridge's linking of Nature and God, as he is to do in Frost at Midnight. Another connection with Frost at Midnight is the disparity between the city and the world of nature represented by the English countryside. In this poem, it is Charles Lamb who has been "captive" in the "City pent", and it this history that we see in the next section of the poem as the focus narrows right down again to the sole figure of Charles Lamb:
'My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pinedAnd hunger'd after Nature, many a year,In the great City pent...' (ll.28-30)
Note how the placement of the word "pined" and its resonances with Nature places emphasis on it and implicitly links Nature itself to the sorrow of Charles. It is the solace of natural beauty that is emphasised above all in this section of the poem as Coleridge imagines the scene now facing his friend and addresses Nature directly so that Charles may be comforted and renewed:
'Ah! slowly sinkBehind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!' (ll.32-35)
|
|
Beauty in the microcosm |
|
What Coleridge after his imagined vision is able to do is to see in the bower itself a microcosm of the beauty of Nature that he had earlier "seen" as a large panorama. The minutiae of nature in the bower is also a source of great beauty and a source of comfort and delight:
'Nor in this bower,This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'dMuch that has sooth'd me..... .............................I watch'dSome broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to seeThe shadow of the leaf and stem aboveDappling its sunshine!' (ll.45-51)
|
|
Concluding remarks |
|
What did Coleridge learn during the process of writing the poem? He learnt that the beauty of Nature is available in every natural area, no matter how small. | |
Effectively what Coleridge learns from here is a lesson that the beauty of Nature is available in every 'plot' (l.61), and that every natural area, no matter how small, is capable of awakening a sense of 'Love and Beauty' (ll.61-64). This realisation, in its turn, leads to Coleridge reflecting on the very process of this poem:
'and sometimes '
Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share' (ll.64-67)
From here, the poem moves in its systolic beat, to focus on Charles, as Coleridge imagines that he and Charles may be viewing the same rook currently crossing the face of the setting sun and thus, again, are unified in the present moment:
'when the last rookBeats its straight path along the dusky airHomewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing.......Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory,While thou stood'st gazing...
.......................... and had a charmFor thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whomNo sound is dissonant which tells of Life.' (ll.68-76)
Even a rook can be beautiful, and the poem ends on a note of acknowledging the beauty of life itself.
|
The Frost performs its secret ministry,Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cryCame loud-and hark, again! Loud as before.The inmates of my cottage, all rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my sideMy cradled infant slumbers peacefully,Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbsAnd vexes meditation with its strangeAnd extreme silentness | |
| | | Frost at Midnight is one of Coleridge's most famous Conversation poems. In it, through musing on some childhood memories set off by the quiet within his cottage, Coleridge partly muses on those psychological states that produce poetry.
The following analysis takes you carefully through the poem. As you read it, think about how it is like the other Conversation poems, both in its:
- themes
and
- structures, including the movement of Coleridge's consciousness
|
|
Tone and movement | | |
| 'The Frost performs its secret ministry' (l.1) Here Coleridge establishes an air of a magical, quasi-religious process at work in the simple natural act of the frost falling outside. The line also implies a strong energy at work - despite this sense of energy, it is silence that is to be the most overwhelming sense in the poem
'Unhelped by any wind'. (l.2) The feeling of extreme stillness is built up, broken only by the cry of the owlet - a cry which Coleridge uses to draw the reader into the poem, with the direct address of 'hark, again!' (l.3).
From here, in a typically systolic movement, Coleridge then moves his attention from outside, and we discover as he moves his attention inward, that indeed he himself is inside a cottage (l.4) and that the description of the outside world has been a piece of imagination. Continuing the narrowing focus, Coleridge then focuses his attention on himself alone (l.5), and then again outward somewhat onto a sleeping child: 'My cradled infant slumbers peacefully' (l.7). The innocence of the cradled infant stands in opposition to the almost sinister secretiveness of the opening line. |
|
|
|
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strangeAnd extreme silentness' (ll.8-10) | |
|
|
The notion of a calm so great that it disturbs is not only a paradox, but seems to overturn the idea that Coleridge is in a situation of 'a solitude, which suits abstruser musings' (ll.5-6). If anything, the calm seems to be disturbing him - and this is the central paradox of the poem: the idea of quiet stillness-in-the-midst-of-movement or of movement-in-the-midst-of-quiet stillness. The best example of this paradox is Coleridge's own active mind in the midst of, and set off by, the extreme quiet. The silence itself is the provoker of meditation, like the wind in 'The Eolian Harp'. The whole poem is a fine balance of slumberous stillness and super-sensitive awareness.
From here, Coleridge's consciousness moves outward again, this time to the wide world outside the cottage. |
|
The central paradox |
|
| |
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strangeAnd extreme silentness' (ll.8-10) | |
|
|
The notion of a calm so great that it disturbs is not only a paradox, but seems to overturn the idea that Coleridge is in a situation of 'a solitude, which suits abstruser musings' (ll.5-6). If anything, the calm seems to be disturbing him - and this is the central paradox of the poem: the idea of quiet stillness-in-the-midst-of-movement or of movement-in-the-midst-of-quiet stillness. The best example of this paradox is Coleridge's own active mind in the midst of, and set off by, the extreme quiet. The silence itself is the provoker of meditation, like the wind in 'The Eolian Harp'. The whole poem is a fine balance of slumberous stillness and super-sensitive awareness.
From here, Coleridge's consciousness moves outward again, this time to the wide world outside the cottage.
| | |
|
Symbols and consciousness | | '...Sea, hill and wood,This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,With all the numberless goings-on of life,Inaudible as dreams!' (ll.10-13)
Once again, we have the paradox of the 'numberless goings-on' being 'inaudible'. But, again, the paradox is not just that - because at this time of night the 'numberless goings-on' are literally 'dreams', except in the one 'live' consciousness we are witnessing in action - that of Coleridge himself. Coleridge's mind at this point moves back into the cottage and focuses very closely on one object - a small piece of ashy film fluttering in the grate of his fire:
' the thin blue flameLies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;Only that film, which fluttered on the grate.Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.' (ll.13-16)
This fluttering film is the central symbol of the whole poem, for by now we see the poet's mind as 'the sole unquiet thing'. The film becomes the symbol of Coleridge's consciousness.
| | |
| | | |
|
|
Greetings