Prashanth Jayaram Professor Malabika Sarkar

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Prashanth Jayaram

Professor Malabika Sarkar

What do you see as the essential points of difference between Wordsworth’s version of the creative

moment presented in Tintern Abbey and Coleridge’s version at the end of Kubla Khan.

When comparing William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. and Samuel Colderidge’s “Kubla Khan”.

one notices a distinguishable difference in the usage of imaginativeness within the two verse forms. Even

though the two poets were coevals and friends, Wordsworth and Colderidge each have an original and

different manner in which they introduce images and thoughts into their poems. These differences give the

reader rather lonely experience when reading the works of these two writers.

In Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth begins with a drawn-out description of the Wye river and the forests

environing its banks. He paints a fantastic image of the country in general within the undermentioned lines:

The wild green landscape.

Once more I see

These hedge-rows.

barely hedge-rows. small lines

Of supportive wood run rampantly;

these pastoral farms Green to the really door;

and wreathes of fume

Sent up. in silence. from among the trees (15-19)

Wordsworth takes these colourful physical descriptions and begins to tie in these images with the

spirit of adult male and all that is good and pure.

The consequence is one where Wordsworth takes a low and beautiful scene and expands the thoughts

until the same images become cosmic and empyreal associating to the really nature of adult male and to life

itself. Colderidge uses a different type of imagination in “Kubla Khan”. He takes an about super-natural and

surreal scene. and brings the reader to a expansive decision much the manner that Wordsworth does in his

verse form. Colderidge begins his verse form with the lines:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan


A baronial pleasure-dome edict:

Where Alph. the sacred river. ran

Through the caverns measureless to adult male Down to a sunless sea. (1-5)

These lines paint a phantasy-based image and put the tone for the remainder of the verse form which

brings the reader to a charming far off land where there exists a “deep romantic chasm” and “caves of ice”.

The verse forms differ in the images that is used to take the reader to the point that the poet is

seeking to do.

Both Wordsworth and Colderidge use the image of a river to some similarity within each of their verse

forms. The river symbolizes the chief force within each verse form, every bit good as being a thematic

component which ties together certain images and thoughts. The images of the river besides help to solidify

the formal construction and convey coherence to the plants as a whole. To Wordsworth. the river represents

the strength and anchor. From the scene which he is picturing, Wordsworth besides makes an interesting

mention to the river in the line, “O sylvan Wye! Thou roamer through the forests. How frequently has my

spirit turned to thee!” (57-58). which suggests that Wordsworth might even be utilizing the image of the

river as a metaphor for himself. In the lines that follow this quotation mark he goes on to depict his forest

experiences with nature. and how his apprehension of life and nature itself has grown from being a

“wanderer through the woods”. the same description used for the river.

Colderidge sets the description of his verse form on the Banks of a river every bit good. but the river

of this verse form represents the imaginativeness or originative flow of the poet. In the debut of the verse

form. Colderidge describes how while in an opium induced dream, he has a vision of Kubla Khan

commanding a topographic point to be built. Upon rousing, he set approximately to compose down his

vision but was interrupted by a visitant. When he returned to complete his work, he had merely an obscure

remembrance of the dream to which he likens as “the images on the surface of a watercourse into which a

rock has been cast”. It is this description of his imaginativeness within the debut to the verse form which

give the hints as to Colderidge’s metaphorical usage of the river within the verse form.

Colderidge believed the imaginativeness to dwell of three parts. The primary imaginativeness, which

was the godly beginning of all inspiration and thoughts. The secondary imaginativeness, which works

together with the primary imaginativeness and is in a sense the manifestation or attempted creative activity
of those thoughts that have come from the primary imaginativeness. The third is fancy. which is merely a

mimicking of something that has already been seen. The “sacred river” of the verse form is representative of

the secondary imaginativeness. while the “caverns measureless to man” are representative of the primary

imaginativeness through which the “sacred river” or secondary imaginativeness flows or draws inspiration

from. The pleasance dome which Kubla Khan is constructing on this river is a metaphorical description of

the growing of a thought from the primary and secondary imaginativeness.

Where Colderidge’s river seem to stand for a perturbation to the river. Wordsworth’s wood is a

peaceful composure that surrounds the river. In Tintern Abbey. the forests bring a “tranquil restoration” to

the poet when he remembers them. The forests in this verse form are a metaphorical mirror of the

enlightened and pure head of world.

Wordsworth is a steadfast thruster in the power of nature. and is acute to take a simple state putting

and turn it into a window through which we can see our psyche. Through nature. Wordsworth is able to

teach us about life and about the greater forces that are at work within life. In Tintern Abbey. a simple scene

by the side of a river becomes the seed which allows Wordsworth’s imaginativeness to turn Forth images

which allow him to link nature and its Torahs to the kernel that controls the well-being of the heads of adult

male.

Wordsworth was an adult male who in analyzing the ordinary, could convey about a profound sense of the

extraordinary. Colderidge preferred to take the extraordinary and do it look non-merely more common

topographic point but important to a facet of human nature. Even though the two poets’ imaginativeness

worked really otherwise from one another, their verse forms both worked towards the same end. which was

to let the reader to come in their universe so to talk and so go forth the reader feeling as though they had

learned something about themselves and the nature of life itself.

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