The Edinburgh Review slammed The Lake Poets and so did Francis Jeffery as ‘ the school of whining’. Associated with the Romantic Movement, one of the members being Coleridge, we find it hard to agree with the sweeping remark when faced with Coleridge’s genius. Not only did he coin the phrase “ willing suspension of disbelief “, but he was also credited with introducing German idealism to England. Although losing his tempestuous life to laudanum, he had a sizeable influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism. A feature that singled out Coleridge’s poetry with the rest was the element of the supernatural. Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel are allegedly hallucinatory but are some of the best examples of blending mystery with folk traditions.
The palace of famed Mongol emperor Kubla Khan, the 1816 poem ‘ Kubla Khan’ depicts the pleasure dome in Xanadu on the shores of the river Alph. Therein lies the mystery of a haunted gorge by an abandoned woman crying for her demon lover. Subtitled ‘ A Vision in a Dream’ and ‘ A Fragment ‘, it is the composition of an opium-induced dreamer. The Abyssinian maid leaves him powerless, creating a creative lacuna unless heard again. The poem is at best a pastiche of fragmentary stanzas bound together.
Written in 1797, Christabel is a ballad written in two parts. Christabel encounters Geraldine who puts her under a spell to have her way with Sir Leoline. The dogs moan and weak flames burn brighter when Geraldine passes by. She is even denied a prayer. Unaware of the eerie, confounding signs surrounding Geraldine, Sir Leoline launches a rescue operation overlooking Christabel’s objections. The poem ends abruptly leaving the readers restless to know more.
Often considered to mark the beginning of Romantic literature, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The longest of Coleridge’s poems tells the tale of a sailor returning from a long sea voyage. The Mariner or the sailor’s eyes casts a spell on the impatient wedding guest to have him hear his story. Coleridge’s poetry is Christian in parts; a tale of penance is interweaved with ominous signs like shooting an Albatross. The Christian message of roaming around the earth in guilt to tell his story again and again is underscored in the poem. The reader of Coleridge’s poem is saddened and wiser like the wedding guest.
The poetic world of Coleridge is dreamlike; mysterious and ominous but full of wisdom. The readers set themselves loose in the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. Coleridge's handling of such themes makes him prominent among the Romantics. While in the works of later Romantics like Keats and Shelley, we find the influence of Hellenism but in the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the world of nature stands supreme.
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