Skip to main content

How does Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" use individualism?

Coleridge's poem expresses a very dreamy, imaginative vision that is characteristic of the Romantic emphasis on individualism and the importance of one person's unique perceptions. Coleridge prefaces the poem with the description, "Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment," conveying to the reader that the vision conveyed in the poem came to him in a dream and has all the confusing and imaginative symbolism of a dream.


The vastness and eeriness of the landscape and the solitary people in the poem enhance the idea of the lone individual. The poem begins by describing Xanadu and its surroundings, including the river Alph and "caverns measureless to man," conveying a sense that humans are lost and alone in the vastness of nature and highlighting the idea that the individual is alone in this dreamy and vast landscape. The palace is "With walls and towers...girdled round," suggesting that the people in the tower are isolated individuals, cut off from the rest of the world. In the second stanza, Coleridge describes a "deep romantic chasm" that is "enchanted" where a woman cries out for her lover. Here, the earth is strange and unpredictable, as it it is described as breathing in "fast thick pants." The earth offers no comfort or sense of mastery to the lone people who populate it.


In the third stanza, an unnamed narrator describes an idiosyncratic vision of a woman he imagines with a dulcimer in a way that attempts to replicate a dream that only he can understand. The third stanza enhances the individualism of the poem by conveying a strange vision that involves an Abyssinian maid and a strange creature with "flashing eyes...floating hair!" These cryptic and disconnected visions come from the narrator's fervid imagination and highlight the idea that this poem comes from a very individual vision of the world. The narrator does not attempt to bring logic to these disconnected visions; he instead presents them as the product of an individual imagination that only makes complete sense to the person who dreamed them up, highlighting the importance of the individual in creation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more