Monday, September 14, 2015
Kubla Khan
I just wanted to point out something interesting I noticed today while re-ready this poem. Hearing it out loud made some particular words pop out. I would like to look at two lines in particular; in line 5 "Down to a sunless sea" and then in line 28 "And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean". I feel that the water in this poem has a deeper significance and when line 28 was read it felt like line 5 was being repeated but in a deeper sense. I think that the sunless sea leads to a lifeless ocean and this truly shows how dark, this poem is.
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Yes, Madison, nicely observed -- those are interesting lines, for sure. That juxtaposition of a river sinking "in tumult" to a "lifeless" ocean is startling (and just before this the river was described as the very opposite of a "tumult," i.e. as "meandering with a mazy motion"). There are a lot of opposites and contraries and seeming contradictions to wrestle with and reconcile in this poem. Maybe that's part of the overall point: that only a grand creator figure -- like Kubla Khan, like God, like the speaker himself at the end -- is powerful enough to unify and reconcile these various opposites ...
ReplyDeleteBy the way, some of you might want to listen to (and watch) this simultaneously strange and transfixing performance of "Kubla Khan." It's a fever dream of a reading, somehow, one that somehow seems attuned to the poem's meaning and surreal ambiance. It makes me want to invite you all again to think about recording your own readings of some of our poems this semester so that we can make them available on Moodle for everyone in the class. Think about it! You'd need only to send me a nice little mp3 file as an attachment and I'll upload them to the class site ...