Ramblings through 'Kubla Kahn'

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

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.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

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.
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!
And all who heard should see them there,
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.

This is the poem "Kubla Khan" in case any of you are interested. I remembered that Sexson had set us a challenge to see if we could find the romance within the poem itself. To begin with, it may be easiest to note that only once within the 55 or so lines is a form of the word romance actually used: "that deep romantic chasm." That being said I will try in the next few paragraphs to at least pull together a semblance of an answer to the question of what makes "Kubla Khan" a romance. Not to say that my answer is the definitive solution, or that I have come in any sense close to what the true meaning or "answer" to such a query might be, but I will make my own stunted attempt and leave the judgement of its worth to my readers.

Let us begin then with the beginning. "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea". The very start of the poem brings us to a magical land far away, a world of the faerie where anything is possible. It is, perhaps, the same world that Gawain traversed in his search for the Green Knight and that Conn-eda wandered through with his pony companion. But this Kubla Khan character is new, a Kingly figure, perhaps a fisher king. Whatever his origins he has ordered the construction of a "stately pleasure-dome." From the lines that follow in the second stanza, the reader can almost see a paradise, a world that had not fallen into sin at the choices of Adam and Eve.

It is a beautiful place to be sure, a land, as it were, in perpetual spring. Yet perhaps the most interesting aspect of this landscape comes in the third line of the poem with the "sacred river" Alph. What to say about the river? To begin with let us start with the most obvious reference to the Alpha, the first letter of the alphabet in Greek and perhaps a reference to the very foundations of life in a place where "forests [are as] ancient as the hills". Yet it also echoes words from the Bible with a God that is both Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," for the river travels from the land of plenty into a world that can only be described as barren and dark "a sunless sea" reflecting the chaotic void at the beginning of the bible before God spoke the world into creation.

As the play continues Kubla constructs his utopia, and the perfection of it is described for us in the next several lines. Finally, we arrive to what I consider to be the "meat of the matter" that is to say the third stanza, for not only is it here that we, for the first and last time, hear the word romantic: "That deep romantic chasm" we are told, and for the life of me I could not decipher what the poet could have been talking about. He had, after all, just finished recounting to us the splendor of the court of Kubla Kahn. Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that this chasm referred to the river Alph itself, for we know already that it is sacred from the first stanza. The "holy" aspect in the third stanza would seem to strengthen this case. It is also interesting that the poet uses the term enchanting, a word that seems to denote the presence of magic. Within the next few words we are told of a woman and her "demon-lover" and the remainder of the stanza up to the point that begins "Five miles" seems to describe almost a playful aspect of the river, jumping up in a fountain. Yet soon the river makes its way down to the caves and to a "lifeless ocean." I will only argue here that the river seems to have made a full course, from the beginning of its life to the frivolity and happiness of youth, to the long meanderings of age, and finally to the vast halls of death to which we all must go in the end.

At this point then, it would seem that the river is nothing more than a representation of each of our paths along the road of mortality. Yet, that does not make it romantic For, as Dr. Sexson has pointed out to me on several occasions, there can be no death in a romance, only apparent death, which I will eventually argue is nothing more than a path that the hero must take on a road to metamorphosis in order to achieve his ultimate goals. But I digress. We must look then for something deeper, and perhaps it is hinted at in the next stanza where a "miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice" is put before us. In my own opinion this seems to reflect the very duality of the concept of life and death that we have been dancing around throughout the entire semester. That is to say, we can see from the image that Coleridge places before us at once a world of both light and dark, heat and cold, happiness and sadness, demons and lovers, the beginning and the end.

Without going into too much depth, for I do not wish to spoil any points that I may find particularly useful for my final paper, I will say only that I believe that the poem "Kubla Khan" is romantic because it contains within itself the quintessential dualities that must exist in order for a romance to function. There must always be opposites weaving in and out of each other, supporting one another in the enormous web of life that breeds such stories. In Coleridge's poem we have it all.

In the end, it is the narrator's journey into this other world, this land of magic and faerie, his desire to find something deeper, that leads him to what he has written. There he finds all manner of dualities, these coexisting opposites that bring about his verse. He has made his quest. And yet that quest continues further into the land of the dead, where Alph meets the lifeless ocean. The narrator does not die, however, but rather sees for the first time the intricacies of a far subtler world than he imagined. He returns from his journey a man changed into something other than what he was. He has "drunk the milk of Paradise" and returned from those far lands to tell his story to the world. Here then we have all five aspects of the romance for within the narrator's return is a sense of the happy ending. He has already seen Paradise and knows that he may one day return there. As he tells his tale to the reader, however, he is transformed into an otherworldly being for he has, in a sense, found the nugget of his own immortality within the mortal flesh of his being. Thus, even his return to this world is much like that of the King in "The King and the Corpse" for both are here only so long as their allotted time to humanity remains. Then the narrator will, it can be assumed, return to paradise.

I sincerely hope that my ramblings have not been too confusing at any point during this entire blog. If so I apologize in advance. The more I wrote about this subject, the deeper I wanted to go, and I think that is dangerous before my final paper. I will say in parting that if there was anything at all helpful or enlightening to any one of you that read this, then I will consider my attempts a success.

A Kind of Adventure

It's interesting that not twenty minutes after class today, I was asked if I would like to go to an "art talk." Since non of you will really understand what that means to me personally, let me just say that I've never really been much of what you would call an "art person." It's not that I despise the stuff. I simply have never taken the time to really connect with the part of my brain that can find more interest in works of art than a simple acceptance of the skill that it takes to produce a piece. Thus, in spite of its less than adventurous tone, I found myself faced with the prospect of either opening the door and letting my anima in. To my surprise, not only was the acceptance and embracing of this surprising event worthwhile, but it gave me a somewhat different perspective on what we have been discussing in class throughout the semester.
The talk was given by an an artist who, within the first couple minutes of her talk, claimed to be enthralled by a romanticized view of nature. The use of the "R" word had my ears perking up quickly, and I found myself drawn deeply into a topic that had seemed, at first, a painful experience that I would have to endure. She spent much of the rest of the presentation talking about her artwork itself, and I was very surprised and pleased to learn that much of what she dealt with was erosive in nature, that is to say a descent, if I may be so bold as to put words in her mouth. I found myself looking at each image that she showed as a kind of pictorial representation of our own studies in literature. From shadows and reflections, to natural formations that were themselves eroded, each picture reminded me more and more of our class.
There is not much more for me to add to that. I found the topic enlightening and refreshing and will now probably return for more.

The Journey of Gawain

After finishing the three tales of Sir Gawain in The King and the Corpse, I thought that I would share some thoughts about my own interaction with the text. I realize it’s been more than a week since I last posted so hopefully anyone who thought that my posts were worth reading have not migrated to greener pastures. Either way here goes.

For those of you who don’t know, the tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is rather simple, at least on the surface, and elaborates on a challenge set forth by a strange green man to the men of Arthur’s castle. The challenge is that whoever is brave enough should step forward and, with the axe that the Green Knight holds, strike the large man one blow. The stipulation is that the next New Year the man should find the knight at the Green Chapel and receive one blow in kind. Gawain takes up the contest in order to protect the honor of his lord and delivers a blow that knocks the head from the Green Knight’s shoulders. Problem solved right? Wrong! The giant then picks up his head, gore dripping from the wound (I imagine he blew the larger debris and germs off as well, because who wants to reattach their head to their body  only to get an infection from some unseen piece of detritus.) The allotted year passes and Gawain goes in search of the Knight. Nearly dead, he prays to God and Mary for a safe place to stay the night on Christmas Eve and lo and behold a castle appears. Being the trusting man that he is, Gawain enters the castle and is greeted as a great lord. He learns that the Green Chapel is not far from his current location and agrees to stay the remainder of the time before his appointment with the Lord and Lady of the realm. The next three days involve a wager set between Bertilak and Gawain that the former will go out and hunt and whatever he catches he will bring to Gawain whiled the latter remains at rest within the castle. Gawain agrees and the first two days go by smoothly, each with one more kiss from the Lady to Gawain which the knight promptly bestows upon the Lord. It is on the third day that Gawain breaks his vow for the Lady, attempting to bestow upon Gawain a token that will somehow bind him to her, gives to Gawain a girdle of green cloth that protects the wearer from harm. Thus Gawain, withholds the belt from Bertilak and, though he is troubled by the deceit, goes on his way the next morning to the Green Chapel. There he is confronted by the Green Knight who, after two feinted swings, the first of which makes Gawain flinch and the second to test his resolve to remain still despite impending death, makes only a small cut in the other man’s throat. It is after this trial that the Green giant is revealed to be no other than Bertilak himself, and the man also reveals that Gawain has been tested for the last three days, failing only slightly in that he took the belt from the mistress of the castle. In the end, however, Gawain is permitted to go on his way and chooses to wear the belt as a sign of his newfound knowledge the rest of his days.

This is the story, in quite a hurried fashion, as told by Zimmer. The man does an excellent job of not only passing on the tale but then unburying many of the secrets that lay beneath. I had not thought, for example, that the Green Knight was death incarnate, but the knowledge now makes since. It is also interesting to note that, though this may be true, there is another, more obvious guise that the transformed Bertilak assumes, that of the well named Green Man. The Green Man in Celtic lore was a fertility god. He was of the Otherworld, and thus only interacted with people on the most menial of bases, only coming forth from his evergreen kingdom when men or women needed to learn a lesson. What Zimmer does not add to the axe in the tale is that the man also held a bundle of holly, important in that it is the only plant native to England that grows green in the depths of winter. Zimmer does state later that he sees a union between life and death in the marriage of the Lady of the Castle to her husband Death. Yet I would take the metaphor one step further and say that the Green Knight himself is a unification of both the aspects of life and death. He is, in other words, what Gawain may seem to become at the end of the poem (though we will come to that shortly). Thus it is the wielder of death, the carrier of the axe who is also, in many ways the one who offers life in the depths of winter, apparent death in its physical manifestation.

As Gawain sets out, we come across another form of apparent death, for to all eyes that witness the departure, even to Gawain himself, the brave knight is going to his death. He made the wager with the demon specter and so must go to pay his due, and the only outcome that can be seen by the party is that he will never return from his quest. Thus Gawain has essentially become the walking dead, a figure whose last days are numbered. As Gawain journeys into the wilderness, he is assailed by the world around him, caught in the storms of the wide world which he must overcome in order to make his final destination. Yet, near death, the flame of his life nearly spent in a quest that has lead him across the vast landscapes of England to no avail, Gawain finds himself in a dark forest and prays for deliverance if only for the night that he might worship Christ on the eve of the Lord’s Mass (Christ-mass). Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a castle looms before him. No doubt weary and not thinking straight, Gawain enters the castle with little regard as to from where it might have come. 

It is here that Zimmer makes the second error in his abridgements from the tale, for when Gawain passes into the realm of Bertilak, he is instantly stripped of his armor. As a knight, this is much the same as stripping the man of his identity. The images of death are all about us now. Gawain has, as in the later story of his journey into another castle, crossed into the land of the dead (though at one time it would have been Otherworld, the land of the faeries, but that is a topic for another argument and blog altogether). Here he makes a final descent and loses his very identity, an occurrence that greatly interests Northrop Frye who sees the loss or stripping of identity as one of the tell-tale signs of a fall or descent from a higher plane of existence to a lower one. Thus, Gawain, though he may not yet know it, is charged with literally finding himself again, with rediscovering who and what he is.

Here enters, then, the Lady of the Castle, charged, in no small part, with seducing Gawain, with testing the virtues to which he so adamantly clings. Despite all of her efforts, Gawain remains faithful to his lord, his duty, and, perhaps most importantly, to his host. Yet, he is not completely immovable, and when the Lady offers him a token that could perhaps save his life, the young man takes hold of it, sensing, no doubt, an opportunity to thwart death and return from his once seemingly final quest. The belt, as we learn, is nothing more than a final rouse to tempt the doomed man, a spider web dangling above a cavernous pit that offers to pull the doomed man to safety if he will but reach out and grab it. Bertilak, is none other than the Green Knight himself, and it was his test that the young knight fails. 

Yet, all is not lost for Gawain, as Zimmer notes, for he is eventually given the very belt that offers protection, a symbol of his journey through death into immortality. I am somewhat loathe to argue with a figure such as Zimmer, who no doubt has forgotten more than I will ever know on the subject about which now I type, yet I cannot help but see the belt as not an image of the gained immortality that Gawain first sought, but still as nothing more than the spider web. In other words, I would argue that the belt was nothing more than a gift from the Lady that would make Gawain forget the one thing that he was supposed to remember, his faith in God. Though this may be an uncomfortable subject for some, still I cannot help but see an indictment of any attempts to circumvent the natural order of things. Gawain, in leaving for the Green Chapel is given back his arms (on the inside of his shield by the way is the Virgin to whom he prayed for relief from his suffering before entering Bertilak’s castle. It is to this figure of womanly virtue and to her son that Gawain is supposed to look for comfort in a world of death, and, yet, his faith is marred by the addition of a green girdle that offers no more safety than the strand of web over a chasm. Gawain returns home, not with a mark of immortality, but with a brand that he will ever wear in shame, a reminder that his faith wavered in the face of utter annihilation.

As I write this, however, I am struck by the fact that the man’s faith did not go unanswered. He was saved from the very brink of death by an otherworldly power that he could not comprehend. Who is to say that this power was not in league with his faith? What then can we learn from Gawain, or what were the poets attempting to convey as they concocted such a story? Gawain passed through the fires of death into the very domain of the thing which he sought to avoid only to pass out again later, marked for all time as one who stood in contest with death and was rewarded for his bravery. There can be no doubt that he was transformed, utterly, as marked by the green belt later worn as a sash and reminder of his time within the halls of Life and Death.

In romance, at least, we can see the necessity for the hero to pass through perils that would destroy other men, to brave the deepest darkness in search of some truth that has eluded so many. It is only once he has finally emerged from all these trials, changed from what he once was, that the hero can take up his role and live, in the end happily ever after, but that is a story for the next blog.