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Four Questions From Four Beautiful Poems: "Kubla Khan", "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner", "The Waste Land" and "The Prelude"

Q. Do you find Kubla Khan a broken dream unfinished?
Ans. Written in 1798, Kubla Khan was like Christabel unfinished and it also remained unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream the shadow of a shadow. Coleridge avers that he dreams the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration, threw words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned and Kubla Khan, remained unfinished. The poem, beginning with a description of the stately pleasure dome built by Kubla Khan in Yanadu, soon becomes a dream like series of dissolving views, each expressed in the most magical of verbal music, but it collapses in mid-career.  
 Q. Do you find The Rime of The Ancient Mariner a myth?
Ans. The Ancient Mariner is a myth. It presents in an unusual and lively form certain issues with which we are all familiar and forces us to look a fresh at them. By crating an impossible story in impossible conditions The Ancient Mariner draws attention to neglect or undiscovered truths. And this what Coleridge believed to be the task of the poetry. In Ancient Mariner he shapes symbols into a consistent whole and subordinates them to a single plan with the result that his poem is in the first place story which we enjoy for its own sake, but in the second place a myth about a dark and troubling crisis in the human soul. The Ancient Mariner is myth of guilt and redemption, but, of course, it is also much more. Coleridge here introduced of crime theme a new dimension. 

Q. Is The Waste Land a social document?
Ans. The Waste Land reflects the world of crisis and bore dome the cage of modern society. The practice of abnormal and unnatural sex, as depicted in the poem, results in neurosis, idleness, frustration and boredom of the modern waste landers which has been symbolically expressed by the following over the London Bridge all of which are listless and indifferent to their surroundings with their eyes pointing down. The picture of this degeneration has been completed by suggesting in different ways the destructive after affect of world War I – the picture of the London Towers falling down, hooded crowds moving here and there, and this discussion of ladies in the house of Albert from the war. 

Q. Bring out the basic poetical qualities of The Prelude.
Ans. Though completed in 1805, The Prelude was not published till 1850. The poem is the record of Wordsworthian development as a poet. He describes his experience with a fullness, closeness, and laborious anxiety that are unique in our literature. The book in fourteen divisions often is prosy and till, yet at few occasions, particularly at the time of describing the nature and its influence over emotions when confronted by seemingly unreal natural objects, the blank verse is in pensioned, and inspired by his exaltation, wonder and awe. The pattern of the poem is not linear but circular coming to the central issue from various sides, as if creating circles of waves around it. It has wonderful variety. The inner force of the verse becomes more dynamic in the narrative passages. Further, everywhere in the poem it is nature imagery, images drawn from the world of nature: water, mountains, valleys, breezes etc., and everything is literal, true, the object as it is.

  Ardhendu De

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