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Utilizing language to logically convey his conceits and exhibit standard poetic form, John Donnes poetry– The Flea’ and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’–manifests the Enlightenments confined, orderly emphasis; in contrast, Samuel Taylor Coleridges Kubla Khan of the Romantic era creates a harmonious connection with nature through the poems 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 Enlightenments priority of ordered expression over any possible deviation from the poetic form. Seeking to reverse the Enlightenments 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 Enlightenments confined limits shown in Donnes 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 Khans 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 Khans 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 Miltons 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 womans power over the British narrator to create a new hierarchy of man that is based on ones connection with nature, not ones racial status.
Coleridge uses the nature imagery in Kubla Khan, progressing to increasingly chaotic, disorderly forms, to reflect ones 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 Coleridges opium-induced writing trance, obstructs the rest of Coleridges poem from being completed; in the final stanza of Kubla Khan, Coleridge illustrates the allegorical visionary figures isolation from society to portray Industrial societys 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 Coleridges 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 Coleridges message that Industrial society suppresses literature written in the transcendental visionary state–including his own–to maintain the peoples materialistic consciousness and reject the Romantics offer of transcendence beyond the physical, rational world to the sublime.
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