An Analysis Of Mr. Coleridge's The Pains Of Sleep

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Hazlitt wryly observed in 1816 that "the fault of Mr. Coleridge is that he comes to no conclusion." This is never more evident than in Coleridge 's three fragment poems, all of which are offered to the public as emphatically unresolved, exemplifying an anxiety that runs throughout Coleridge 's entire poetic career.

Fragment poems were an increasingly popular genre in the early nineteenth century, and attempts to mimic the structure were often poorly done: the construction of the 'fragment ' was heavily relied upon to create meaning in otherwise lacklustre poetry. Yet there are examples of it done well, and none more emblematic of how evocative and powerful the form can be than Coleridge 's Christabel collection. Coleridge 's poetry captures …show more content…

The pervasive "sense of intolerable wrong" that cuts through the entirety of the poem suggests an awareness within the poet-persona that he is unable to tap into his creative potential and therefore cannot express his suffering: rather than using the vehicle of music to translate his interior workings into poetry, he can only observe the anonymous "trampling throng". Andrew Allport has observed that 'Kubla Khan ' and 'The Pains of Sleep ' are "two sides of the same experience", although whether that experience is taking opium or the act of writing is unclear: perhaps because they are inextricably tangled together in the poems of Christabel. The connection Coleridge draws explicitly between the two, with 'The Pains of Sleep ' "describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease", heightens the self-conscious presence of the poet in both poems and appears to find him wanting. By drawing our attention to this act of self-condemnation, Coleridge is purposely claiming failure as the achievement of Christabel and emphasising the unstable interior world which all three poems inhabit: they are all in the process of becoming, but the poet and the reader are both aware that this process will not reach …show more content…

The Christabel collection is thus riddled with the anxiety of irresolution that runs through the majority of Coleridge 's poetic career, and this is never more pronounced than in the case of 'Kubla Khan '. Thomas McFarland claims 'Kubla Khan ' is "as fully terminated as any poem in the language": this in turn suggests that to define the poem as a fragment must be a thematic and biographical comment rather than a structural observation. Yet the use of the word 'terminated ' suggests a rather ominous, self-contained resolution which 'Kubla Khan ' does not

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