ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
VISION OF NATURE: ROMANTIC POETICAL IMAGINATION
Muhammad Asim MA (English), University of Education, Lahore Email: [email protected]
Amjad Hussain M. Phil. (English), NCBA & E, Multan
Amina Akram MA (English), University of Education, Lahore ABSTRACT
The present study depicts the vision of nature in the romantic poetical imagination. The objectives of the study to explore Wordsworth and Coleridge’s vision of nature by using poetical imagination in romantic poetry. The concept of nature having the connectedness to imagination in romantic poetry, stressing the faculty of imagination to get access to a kind of knowledge that cannot be provided by other means, the senses or rationality. This concept was initiated and developed only during the romantic period. The conceptualization of imagination in poetry as a tool to understand reality that indicates a change in the concept of poetic imagination in the modern period that is also prevailing in the poetry of current romanticists. In contemporary poetry and literature, modes of imagination are being used namely as; prosaic imagination, pictorial imagination, fancy imagination, fancy-realistic imagination and poetic imagination. In the concluding remarks, the researchers can say that William Wordsworth as romantics urges that a union with nature is what frees the mind from the stir and thrust of its own dark emotions in this materialistic world. Poetical imagination in poetry remains as important as it ever was, although now it is comprehensive from the faculty by which we engage the world to the faculty by which we take our stand on why that engagement might matter in the materialistic world as well as the spiritual world of thought.
Key words: Nature, Romantic, Poetical Imagination.
INTRODUCTION
“Nature” has taken an important and significant role in poetry of different periods of literature and countries of all over the world. Nature is present not only in English literature but also in French, Spanish, Irish, Persian and Urdu poets. But in English literature the critics and poets mainly focus our attention in Wordsworth and Coleridge treatment of the topic of romantic poetical imagination and the vision of nature in romantic imagination. According to Wikipedia, not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a solid belief and interest in the importance of Nature. However, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when the poet is surrounded by Nature, preferably alone.
42 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
Poets and writers in previous eras such as the middle ages and Renaissance period tended to look to God and heaven as the ultimate sources of meaning in human life and also described the role and influence of ‘Nature’ on human beings’ life. The Romantics were more likely to stress man's ideally close connections with ‘Nature’, or at least with the more beautiful, lovely, awe- inspiring, sophisticated and appealing aspects on Nature.
Nature is the key central point in the Romantic poetry but the concept of love with it differs from poet to poet. The concept of Wordsworth about Nature especially in the famous poem ''Lines Composed Few Miles above Tintern Abbey", we find three different stages of his love with Nature. The main point is that whatever the idea Romantics have about Nature, it is, indeed, clear and comprehensible that they are strongly addicted to it.
"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in illustrative language (Wuraola, 2011). While fastidious perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably--nature as a healing power for human, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization in the real materialistic world and , including artificial language--the prevailing views accorded to nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as "organic," on the other way side, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of mechanical laws, in the romantic age, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine in the universe with analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself. Simultaneously, Romantics gave greater attention to describing natural phenomena accurately, with clarity and to capturing "sensuous gradation", and this is as true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic vision of nature in poetical imagination. Accuracy and correctness of observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is essentially poetry of meditation and of poetical imagination.
According to Shawn rider as with Wordsworth, Coleridge also combines his theoretical ideas in the poetry. He abandons Wordsworth's concept of poetry for the common man, and uses lofty language, poetic diction, poetical imagination and subject matter that is specialized. While he still holds a reverence for Nature innate to romantic literature, his poems are not exclusively based around the natural world. He makes use of primary imagination in his work; because it is the kind of poetic imagination he values most, and avoids secondary imagination or fancy as much as possible. The poem "Kubla Kahn" is a unique poem that illustrates his use of primary imagination:
In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man 43 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
Down to a sunless sea.
Coleridge mainly focused on imagination as the vital key to romantic poetry. He divided imagination into two main components: primary and secondary imagination. In Biographia Literaria, one of his significant theoretical works, Coleridge (1814) writes:
The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite of the eternal act of creation of the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation.
It is the imagination mixed up in the romantic poetry that produces a higher and striking quality verse. The primary imagination is a spontaneous creation of new ideas, emotions and they are expressed perfectly in the form of poetical imagination. The secondary imagination is mitigated by the conscious and deliberate act of imagination by the poet; therefore, it is delayed by not only imperfect creation, but also by the use of imperfect expression in the poetical imagination
The exploration of poetical imagination’s working in the soul led to divide usually into two part of opinion between mind and soul of human beings. This dichotomy places thought in one realm, referring to mind as the objective part of the consciousness, and imagination in another realm, referring to soul as the subjective part of the consciousness. The idea that poetic image is not associated with thought indicates that the poetic imagination belongs to the poet’s soul (Bachelard, 1969). Similarly, the phenomenological conceptualization of not considering any past for the poetic image, which means poetic imagination has no cause, discusses emerging of the poetical imagination from the soul into the consciousness.
The concept of nature was connected to imagination in romantic poetry, stressing the faculty of imagination to get access to a kind of knowledge that cannot be provided by other means the senses or rationally. This concept was initiated and developed only during the Romantic period. Nature’s elements discussed as important and significant in developing poetical imagination from a perceptive power to a creative and poetic power in romantic poetry (Zalipour, 2011). The Romantic concept of the connection between nature and imagination explore several facets of creative imagination in English poetry and literature. The researcher says that creative imagination is a source of energy that can regenerate nature in the artistic creation in the form of poetical imagination especially in romantic poetry. This notion associates creative imagination of the poet as being capable of conveying the intuitive and transcendental knowledge in the poem or verses. In a similar stratum, the unifying power of imagination is one of the important features that were only explored and developed in the Romantic period. The unifying power of imagination is a “synthetic magical power” that reconciles the opposites of two poles and forms a whole (Coleridge,
44 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
1817). The significant aspect of imagination as a unifying power is to provide forms of knowledge that are intuitive and subjective.
Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the study are as under;
1. To explore William Wordsworth’s vision of nature by using poetical imagination in romantic poetry. 2. To investigate Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s vision of nature by using poetical imagination in romantic poetry.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Romanticism elevated the achievements of what Nature perceived as heroic individualists and artists, who are pioneering examples, would elevate the society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as critical notions of form in the art of literature. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a zeitgeist in the representation of its ideas and feelings.
Imagination was originally considered similar to memory as it was thought to mediate the reproductive images of mental realities rather than those of sensory realities that exist in the real materialistic world. This conceptualization highlights some facets of imagination that were developed later when imagination distinguished from memory. This position associates the poetical imagination with mental reality rather than sensory ones. The early distinction between memory and imagination stresses the fact that memory refers to the past while imagination does not. This also emphasizes that imagination cannot be defined in terms of time and place; we can say that it is non-temporal which distinguishes between images that belong to the past compared with images that are associated with imagination and are not from the past. Emotions were also conceptualized as secondary impressions that are received from the actual feeling of things in the real world (Hume, 1978). In Hume’s terminology, “impressions” are directly received from the senses and are reproduced as “ideas” under the process of poetical imagination.
The interconnection of imagination to the notion of the soul forms one of the main distinguishing characteristics of imagination in romantic English poetry and literature. This interconnection highlights the emergence of the poetic imagination from the poet’s soul rather than the poet’s mind. The early exploration of the existence of a connection between soul and imagination conceptualized imagination as a medium of soul and spirit that comes on the part of psychology. In other words, any work that embodies greatness, un-commonality and beauty as the elements of a true creative work according to the judgment of aesthetic taste permeates soul with revelation and newness, which raise unique pleasures in the poetical imagination (Addison, 1712).
45 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
The modern poet writing particularly about personal life has the tendency to discover this territory of the unreal with no much attempt at creating the unreal situation through poetical imagination. Before the modern period, poetical imagination was considered as a human faculty and capability concerned with creating autonomous aesthetic which could represent directly or indirectly the human experiences. This notion has now been turned into as “an agency that is used solely for nurturing and insulating the self’s interiority” in the modern world of romantic poetry.
MODES OF IMAGINATION
A series of modes of imagination in contemporary poetry and literature are being used namely as; prosaic imagination, pictorial imagination, fancy imagination, fancy-realistic imagination and poetic imagination. There modes have been drawn from the existing concepts of poetic imagination. The definitions of these modes signify that some of the modes of imagination embrace more poetical and imaginative imagination. There modes are described below;
Prosaic Imagination
Prosaic imagination is characterized with non-pictorial images that cause a sense of matter- of-factness that reduces and make lessen imaginative dimensions of the poem in romantic poetry. There are too many abstractions in image making process which makes the poem look like a good prose composition that has been cut off into line lengths.
The idea of this mode of imagination is based on Imagism’s concept of using too many abstractions in the creation of image process which they believe makes the poetry looks like a good prose except for “chopping … composition into line lengths”. This type of mode reduces potentiality and creativity of images in poetry. Another very important aspect of the mode is that abstractions are mostly rendered through images that do not evoke pictures. The poet’s excessive use of non-pictorial imagery causes a sense of matter-of-factness and reduces imaginative aspects of the poem in romantic poetry. This is what Bly says makes the poem “dry” (Bly, 1982).
Pictorial Imagination
Pictorial Imagination is a mode of imagination that sees the things imagined when it is absent but exists in reality. It allows the poet to treat images that deal with reality but does not extend to the occasions when imagination is creatively engaged in a project of poetry in which the real object is not known. This is particularly true when the imagined object is known in advance. Imagism’s stress on exactitude, clarity, concreteness and use of visual images and echoes the main idea in pictorial imagination that emphasizes the pictorial dimensions of images in romantic poetry.
Pictorial imagination is characterized with a high pictorial quality of images in the poem especially when they evoke strong visualizing pictures in the mind of the poet. However, pictorial imagination does not refer to mere copying of things from the real life of existing world. In pictorial
46 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017 imagination the poet does not merely record what he sees: he envisions it under the stimulus of the objects actually seen. In this way, perceiving with emotion, he may reveal the immanent aesthetic beauty of things which wants to quickly escape ordinary seeing. This mode of imagination works with the influence of the things that are presented themselves to the poet’s mind.
Fancy Imagination
Fancy Imagination gathers images from memories or sensory perceptions and on other hand mixes them together to create new imaginary ideas and thoughts. This type of mode works according to a mechanic association of ideas, and imposes a prefabricated pattern upon the work of poetical art. This is the main factor, indeed, that diminishes the creativity of this mode.
The close association between fancy and imagination in the conceptual history of imagination in poetry shows that fancy has been discussed as a mode of imagination in modern romantic poetry and literature. The original idea of fancy imagination is based on what Wordsworth wrote about fancy in the Preface to Poems (1815): “Where there is more imagination than fancy in a poem, it comes under the head of imagination, and vice versa”. By using the term “fancy imagination” the researcher means to make a stress the Romantic notion of fancy as a mode of creative imagination that is involved with fanciful creativity and authenticity.
Fancy imagination receives “all its materials ready made from the law of association” (Coleridge, 1817). It works according to “a mechanic association of ideas”, and this fancy imagination imposes a prefabricated pattern upon work of poetical art (Abrams, 1953). This is the factor, indeed, that diminishes the creativity of this mode. This is similar to the kind of writing that was called “fairy way of writing” by Dryden. This means that the poet “has no pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own invention” (Addison, 1712).
Fancy-Realistic Imagination
Fancy-realistic Imagination refers to the poet’s faculty of imagining process when he mingles up realistic portrayals of ordinary events and characters with fancy images, fantasy and legendry myth in the history. Fancy-realistic imagination is based on magical realists’ notion of fantasy in a natural context. It refers to the use of the real elements of fantasy in a natural context – magical realism – and also to the use of natural objective reality tenants in a fantastic context. Fantasy is used in two senses as making the elements magical realism or preparing the context for the incoming ideas and thoughts. In addition, fantasy is used in a broader sense than in magical realism. The mode of Fancy-realistic imagination refers to the poet’s imagining process when he mixes up realistic portrayals of ordinary events and characters with fancy images and smiles, surrealist elements, fantasy and myth. This is to portray real world as having marvelous aspects and dimensions in it. Treating fantastic as normal, normal as fantastic, or the ordinary as miraculous and the miraculous as ordinary through imagination and poetic imagination or creative imagery is the trademark of Fancy-Realistic mode of imagination.
47 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
Poetic Imagination
Poetic imagination is closely attached to the idea of creation and novelty in the field of romantic poetry. The creative core of poetic imagination encompasses and also defines its other dimensions. This mode of imagination is characterized with the highest level of creativity and potentiality in the poetry. The idea of this mode of imagination is mainly from the Romantic notions of poetic imagination, the phenomenological concept of poetic image and notion of imagination as a tool to understand reality in the real. The distinguishing characteristic of this mode of imagination refers to the consistent presence and working of features of poetic imagination. The features of poetic imagination include poetic image as an act of the poet’s soul, communicability of poetic image, the presence of reality-principles in imagining, Intuitive Knowledge of Poetic Imagination, and the dynamic freshness of poetic image. This mode of imagination embodies poetic image which is the act of the poet’s spirit; when images in the poem communicate and acquire new meanings through their interaction; when the poet using the reality- principles creates the unreal out of what is real; when mode imagination is capable of providing “intuitive knowledge”; when poetic image epitomize the vitality and freshness by which it can create noble meanings and aspects in the romantic poetry. These features permit a certain awareness of new meanings or the developing of possible meanings by re-vivifying declining discourse of thought in this mode of imagination (Zalipour, 2008).
USAGE OF POETICAL IMAGINATION IN WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S POETRY
This part of study aims at analyzing the usage of poetical imagination in the two of most important William Wordsworth’s poems namely, “The Daffodils” and “The World Is Too Much with Us”. The content analysis will be used to analyze these poems as it has been already mentioned in the methodology.
AN OVERVIEW OF “THE DAFFODILS” BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The accomplishments in the poem is reasonably simple but the meaning of the incident and occurrences is however more complex and dynamic. The poet goes outside for taking a walk beside a lake alone. He suddenly comes across of beautiful flowers known as ‘Daffodils’ swaying in the wind. This beautiful scene makes him very excited and happy. The happiness does not stop at once at the lake side. After a long while, he remembers, he retains that scene again in his mind and it brings him unlimited joy and happiness. William Wordsworth provides us with the details of this simple experience in four stanzas. And all this poetry works in the imagination of poet. The poet gives the color of this imagination into the poetic imagination.
The poet wanders alone in stanza 1 and suddenly comes across to the beautiful flowers of golden-color Daffodils under the trees beside a lake and he sees hundred and thousands of flowers in a glance. The wind blows over them and so they bend from one side to other according to the direction of the wind. The poet visualizes all this in the form of poetry in his imagination;
48 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden Daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees.
In stanza two, the poet is overwhelmed by the hundred and thousand number of the Daffodils. They are ‘crowd’, a ‘host’ and as many as the ‘stars’ in the sky at night. The poet becomes so romantic in this charming scene that he could not simply believe it;
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze, continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way, they stretched in never ending line along the margin of a bay.
In stanza three of the poem, the breeze causes the waves on the surface of the lake to also move from side to side. Still, the movement of the Daffodils swaying from one side to the other and it look very much attractive to watch. The poet is so emotional and happy that he does not know how long this scene is going to be in his mind afterwards and what pleasure it will bring him.
I gazed and gazed – but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought.
The poet discovers afterwards in stanza four of the poem that very often when he is alone, he all at once remembers this scene and his loneliness turns into happiness. You can rightly say that nature represented in this poem by the Daffodils that keeps the poet accompany, so to speak. It thus prevent him from being lonely; “A poet could not be gay, in such a ground company”.
ROMANTIC STYLE, LANGUAGE AND THEMES IN “THE DAFFODILS” BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
William Wordsworth combines his poetical narrative and descriptive skills to write the beautiful poem “The Daffodils”. The poem has a structure that allows you to hear, to see, to visualize, to participate and to make up your mind for happiness and to go to another world of imagination that is full of charm and happiness. In this way, it is true to say that even the structure of the poem makes it easier and comprehensible for you to understand the message of the poet, what the poet want to say in the poem. The soft and melodious sounds of the rhyming words combine with the three beat rhythms that are fairly and aptly consistent to make the poem a musical one – this is comforting, decent and suitable because since everything in the poem seems to be dancing in the world of imagination, the mood must be a gay one. The musical quality of the poem provides this mood. Wordsworth uses a skilful choice of words to emphasize this happy mood and mainly concentrate on natural faculties. You can imagine the following words in this regard: floods, golden, fluttering, dancing, tossing, sprightly, jocund, gazed, and bliss. All these words are associated with happiness and deep satisfaction of the person inner self and the worldly related things. 49 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
The two situations of the poet-personae are contrasted elegantly. At first, he was disorderly and later becomes orderly having come in contact with nature. Also, through the use of contrast, we are able to see the Daffodils as better dancers than the waves. It creates a harmony in the mind of a person. And Wordsworth beautifully makes the use of poetical imagination in the stanzas of the poem thoroughly.
The major themes in “The Daffodils” are;
Rural solitude: It has been described as the proper environment or condition for the right contemplation of nature in the form of poetical imagination. The Romantic poets prefer the tranquility and serenity of the rural environment to the contamination and complexity of the city life by implied contrast, the poet, his life in the rural environment makes the poet to think deeply and have a right view of life. The poet views the natural and real aspect of life through his imaginative and insightful faculty by the use of poetical imagination in the poem.
In “The Daffodils” the first line of the poem paints the picture of a helpless poet wandering about aimlessly and would have continued the itinerant about had it not been his sudden perception of the Daffodils, he stops wandering about, and think a while about the things that are not necessary. This shows that nature is in its real sense an agent of orderliness.
God is not mentioned throughout the poem but is implied at number of places in the imaginative form. The Daffodils are ‘placed’ beside the lake and beneath the trees waving in an elegant manner. The Daffodils need to survive and at the same time, the Daffodils should not be over-exposed to the scorching light of the sun therefore its placement beneath the trees is ideal. It shows that God of providence is demonstrated in nature. This one is the poetical imaginative look of the poet in the poem “The Daffodils”, and this is the unique facet of the Wordsworth poetry.
USAGE OF POETICAL IMAGINATION IN SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE’S POETRY
This chapter aims at analyzing and interpreting the usage of poetical imagination in the two of most important Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems namely, “Kubla Khan” and “Frost at Midnight”. The content analysis will be used to analyze these poems as it has been stated in the methodology of this study.
Here mentioned that romantic tenets that made the Coleridge romantic poetical imaginative poems will be showed. Themes, motifs and symbols in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge will also be looked at in this chapter.
KUBLA KHAN BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
This poem is one of the famous poems of the romantic period of the contemporary age. Samuel Taylor Coleridge became an opium addict and it is thought that “Kubla Khan” originated from an opium dream or an imaginative faculty of the poet. 50 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
The title of the poem, “Kubla Khan” is a name of great power, bearing the title of an Asian ruler. The speaker describes where Kubla resides in Xanadu the place as mentioned in the poem “stately pleasure- dome” built in Xanadu according to the decree is of Kubla Khan the king, in the place where Alph, the sacred river, town, area, and country of a great natural beauty and mystery. All these things poet developed in his mind through the help of his imaginative power and then wrote down on the paper in the form of poetical imaginative poetry.
The lines go thus:
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….Where blossomed many on incense-bearing tree; and here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny completed.
The narrator insists that if he be able to “revive” within him “her symphony and song” he would recreate the pleasure-dome out of music and rhythmical words, and take on the persona of the magician or visionary. His hearers would recognize the dangerous power of the vision, which would manifest itself in his “flashing eyes” and “floating hair”. But, enthralled, they would nonetheless dutifully take part in the ritual, recognizing that “he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise”. The major theme of the poem is the quest for power. All this poet wants to mention in the form of his powerful imagination in connect with the surroundings of nature.
The poem is an unprompted overflow of powerful feeling. The atmosphere of the poem varies according to the sections (lines1-5) is mysterious and mystifying in nature (lines 6-11) is peaceful, calm and pleasant, (lines 12-16) is mysterious and sinister, (lines 17-28) agitated and irritating in nature (lines 37-38) dream like, peaceful, delightful, (line 49-50) awe-inspiring, fearsome and finally (lines 51-54) awe-inspiring and pleasant.
The predominant figures of speech that embellished and adorned the poem, used in “Kubla Khan” are personification, simile and repetition.
The use of personification is giving an attribute of living thing to a non-living thing. This can be seen in: -
Line 23 – “… dancing rocks…….’’
Line 26 – “… the sacred river ran…...”
A powerful imagination is used in the above mentioned lines to enhance the impact of the use of poetical imagination in this poem. That non-living things work in the form of living things.
An example of simile is seen in:
51 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017
-Line 18- “as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing”.
The use of repetition is predominant in the entire poem. Elements of landscape re-occur at various points, creating some “unity of space”, helping the reader to imagine the scenery and events. This is found in lines 1-36. “Pleasure-dome”, “dome of pleasure” is repeated in lines 2, 31, 36, “the sacred river ran” in lines 2, 24, 26. “Dome and Caves” are repeated in 46 and 47, “five miles” lines 6 and 25, “chasm” lines 12 and 17, and “fountain” lines 19 and 34.
THEMES AND SYMBOLS IN THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE
Coleridge believed that a strong, active imagination could become a vehicle for transcending unpleasant circumstances in natural setting. Many of his poems are powered exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the poet temporarily abandons his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for an entirely new and completely fabricated experience using the imagination in this way is both empowering and surprising because this poetical imagination encourages a total and complete disrespect for the confines of time and place. These mental and emotional lumps are often well rewarded. Perhaps Coleridge’s most famous use of imagination occurs in “This lime-tree bowers my prison” in which the speaker employs a keen, poetic mind that allows him to take part in a journey that he cannot physically make but spiritually in the world of imagination. When he returns” to the bower, after having imagined himself on a fantastic leisurely walk through the countryside, the speaker discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself, including the leaves, the trees, and the shadows. The power of imagination transforms the person into a perfectly pleasant spot. Coleridge used his poetry to explore conflicting issues in philosophy, daily life problems and religious piety. Some critics give arguments that Coleridge’s interest in philosophy was simply his attempt to understand the imaginative and intellectual impulses that fuelled his poetry. To support the claim that his imaginative and intellectual forces were in fact, organic and derived from the natural world and Coleridge also depicts nature in most of his poetry work.
Coleridge linked them to God, spirituality and worship.
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other romantic poets praised the imaginative soul of youth, finding images in nature with which to describe it. According to their formulation, experiencing nature was an integral part of the development of a complete soul and sense of personhood. The death of his father forced him to attend school in London, far away from the rural idylls of his youth, and he lamented the missed opportunities of his sheltered, city-bound adolescence in many poems, including “Frost at midnight” (1798). Here, the speaker sits quietly by a fire, musing on his life, while his infant son sleeps nearby. He recalls his boarding school days, during which he would both daydream and lull himself to sleep by remembering his home far away from the city, and tells his son that he shall never be removed from nature, the way the speaker once was, unlike the speaker, the son shall experience the seasons and shall learn about God by discovering the
52 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017 beauty and bounty of the natural world. For Coleridge nature had the capacity to teach joy, love, freedom and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy developed individual.
Talking of motifs, Coleridge wanted to imitate the patterns and cadences of everyday routine speech in his poetry. Many of his poems openly address a single figure the speaker’s wife, son, friend and so on in an appropriate imaginative manner. Who listens silently to the simple, straightforward language of the speaker, unlike the descriptive, long, digressive poems of Coleridge’s classicist predecessors, Coleridge’s so called short conversation poems are short, self- contained, and often without a discernable poetic form of imagination. Coleridge’s sometimes, wrote in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, he adapted this metrical form to suit a more conversational rhythm. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth believed that everyday language and speech rhythms would help in the way of broadens poetry’s audience to include the middle and lower classes, who might have felt debarred or put off by the form and content of neo-classicists such as Alexander pope and many more of the contemporary age.
Like other romantics, Coleridge worshipped nature and recognized the real sense of poetry’s capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world not only in the real world as far as in the world of imagination. Nearly all of Coleridge’s poems expresses respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observation, and precise imagery of color aptly demonstrate Coleridge’s respect and delight. Some poems, such as Youth and Age”, and “Frost at midnight”, mourn the speakers’ physical isolation from the outside world keeping in the natural setting. Other poems like “the Nightingale”, simply praise nature’s beauty, poems that don’t directly deal with nature including “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, derive some symbols and images from natural setting and nature. To Coleridge, nature contained an innate, constant great pleasure wholly separate from the ups and downs of human experience.
CONCLUSION
William Wordsworth as romantics urges that a union with nature is what frees the mind from the stir and thrust of its own dark emotions in this materialistic world. An embrace with nature and its aesthetics senses gives man the required happiness and joy in the real life. “Kubla- Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a good example of dream vision poetry as a kind in Romantic compositions and poetical imagination construction in the romantic poetry. The poet narrates sub- conscious experiences when the brain is supposed to be active and gain all the faculties of imagination. While in a state of dream, the images that have been deposited in the poet’s sub- conscious become associated with his experiences of daily routine life and nature.
Romantic writers generally see themselves as reacting against the thought and literary practices of the preceding century and the contemporary age. The Romantists major subject matter is the beauty, peace, calm and satisfactions derive from nature and natural settings. Although today we use the term ‘poetic imagination’ liberally especially in the discussions of poetry, literature, arts and aesthetics, we find that in attributing a concrete specification to the concept of poetic
53 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54. ISSN: 2520-0143 (Online) Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (AIJSSH) Vol. 1 No. 1 January, 2017 imagination, we remain with something inherently adjustable in character and escapee in conventional literary terms in currently used romantic poetry.
The research manifested an exploration of contemporary notions of poetic imagination in poetry and provided insights into the current nature of this concept. The account of the existence of other modes of imagination apart from poetic imagination and discussing the level and amount of creativity, imaginativeness and potentiality of modes of imagination that create an opportunity to explain the manifestations of creative imagination in the contemporary romantic poetry. Poetical imagination in poetry remains as important as it ever was, although now it is comprehensive from the faculty by which we engage the world to the faculty by which we take our stand on why that engagement might matter in the materialistic world as well as the spiritual world of thought.
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54 | P a g e Asim, M., Hussain, A. & Amina, A. (2017). Vision of Nature: Romantic Poetical Imagination. Asian Innovative Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(1), 42-54.