Coleridge and Milton's Allusion to the Abyssinian Paradise, Lecture notes of Philology

Download Coleridge and Milton's Allusion to the Abyssinian Paradise and more Lecture notes Philology in PDF only on Docsity! THE ABYSSINIAN PARADISE IN COLERIDGE AND MILTON In his Poems of Coleridge, p. 292, Dr. Garnett annotates the allusion to Abyssinia in Kubla Khan as follows: L. 40. Singing of Mount Abora. There seems to be no mountain of this name in Abyssinia at the present day, though one may be men- tioned by some ancient traveler. Whether this be the case, or whether the mountain be Coleridge's invention, the name must be connected with the river Atbara, the Astaboras of the ancients, which rises in Abyssinia and falls into the Nile near Berber. The principal affluent of this river is the Tacazze = terrible, so called from the impetuosity of its stream. If Coleridge knew this, an unconscious association with the impetuosity of the river he had been describing may have led to the apparently far- fetched introduction of the Abyssinian maid into a poem of Tartary. Abora might be a variant spelling, not only of Atbara, but of Amara in some old itinerary or, say, in one of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century books that touch on the location of the paradise terrestrial. I have not, however, been able to find the variant in anything that Coleridge read. Presumably he read many both of the earlier and of the later travelers. One of the later, the best authority that he could have for his knowledge of Abyssinia, was James Bruce, whose Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile fell into Coleridge's hand perhaps as early as 1794.' It is barely possible that Coleridge borrowed the book from Southey, for the latter's library in 1844 contained a copy of the Dublin (1790) edition. Bruce, of course, mentions the river Astaboras or Atbara, as well as Atbara, a peninsula, and Amhara (compare Amara), a "division of country." He speaks of the Tacazze also, remarking on the contrast between its placidity at one season2 and its turbulence when swollen with rain: But three fathoms it certainly had rolled in its bed; and this prodi- gious body of water, passing furiously from a high ground in a very deep descent, tearing up rocks and large trees in its course, and forcing down 1 Coleridge's Poems: Facsimile Reproduction, p. 173. 2 Edinburgh edition (1790), Vol. III, p. 157. 327] 1 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, January, 1906 2 LANE COOPER their broken fragments scattered on its stream, with a noise like thunder echoed from a hundred hills, these very naturally suggest an idea, that, from these circumstances, it is very rightly called the terrible.' Some of the diction and imagery here reminds one of Cole- ridge's tumultuous river Alph. However, there is in general not enough of the fabulous about Bruce to warrant the supposition that Coleridge is indebted to him for much of Kubla Khan, full though that poem be of the spirit of the "old travellers." In any case, I cannot believe that Dr. Garnett has hit upon the "uncon- scious association" that brought Abyssinia into "a poem of Tartary." For that matter, I cannot regard "poem of Tartary" as an entirely fitting name for Coleridge's sensuous vision. This might preferably be termed a dream of the terrestrial, or even of the "false," paradise; since, aside from its unworthy, acquiescent admission of demoniac love within so-called "holy" precincts,2 it reads like an arras of reminiscences from several accounts of natural3 or enchanted parks, and from various descriptions of that elusive and danger-fraught garden which mystic geographers have studied to locate from Florida to Cathay.' Like the Tartar paradise at the beginning of Kubla Khan and the bewitched inclosure of the Old Man of the Mountain which seems to appear toward the end,5 this Abyssinian hill in the middle is simply one of those "sumptuous" retreats whose allurements occupied the imagination of a marvel-hunter like Samuel Purchas. It is cer- tainly not "Coleridge's invention." The Portuguese Alvarez passed by the mountain Amara in Abyssinia and was acquainted with the myth concerning it.6 Incidentally he speaks of a city IEdinburgh edition (1790), Vol. III, p. 158. 2 A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover I - Kubla Khan, 11. 14-16 3 For example, Bartram's descriptions of Georgia and Florida in his Travels, etc (Philadelphia, 1791). 4 See the authorities cited in Pierre Daniel Huet's La situation du paradis terrestre (Paris, 1711). 5 Compare Purchas his Pilgrimage (1617), p. 428. 6See his account (chap. 54) in Ramusio. 328 THE ABYSSINIAN PARADISE IN COLERIDGE AND MILTON 5 .... the setting Sun Slowly descended, and with right aspect Against the eastern gate of Paradise Levelled his evening rays. It was a rock Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds, Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent Accessible from Earth, one entrance high; The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung Still as it rose, impossible to climb. Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat, Chief of the angelic guards . . . There are, it is true, too many points of similarity in the various paradises of The Fathers and geographers to permit the critic to say with great assurance that Milton or Coleridge borrowed this or that embellishment of his mystical inclosure from any one prior writer. We are dealing here, I presume, with a world- old effort of imagination showing certain reappearing essentials of an inherited conception, such as a fountain with outflowing "sinuous rills," a symmetrical mountain, a disappearing "sacred river," all within a wall of measured circuit, and the like, the chief of which may be found in a poem of small compass like Kubla Khan2-probably all of them in the fourth book of Para- dise Lost. In how far Milton may be indebted to Purchas' com- pendium for all sorts of quasi-geographical lore, in addition to the slight obligations already indicated, is a question lying rather in the province of the professed student of Milton. For the present writer, whose interest here is more particularly in Coleridge, it seems enough to point out the relationship between Coleridge's beautiful fragment and Milton's completed masterpiece; to indi- cate, in passing, Milton's greater distinctness and mastery in handling his material; finally, to suggest, on the basis of this brief paper, that, instead of continuing to treat Kubla Khan as a sort of incomparable hapax legomenon, wholly unexplainable, because 1 Paradise Lost, Book IV, 11. 540-49. 2 Compare, for example, Coleridge's " mighty fountain," " sinuous rills," and " meander- ing " river with the following, quoted by Todd: " In ipso hortorum apice fons est eximius, qui primfim argenteis aquarum vorticibus ebulliens, mox diffusus in fluvium sinuosis flexibus, atque maandris concisus oberrat, et felicia arva perennibus fcecundat rivulis."- P. Causinus, de Eloq., lib. XI., edit. 1634 (Todd, Milton's Poetical Works [1809], Vol. III, pp, 95, 96). Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, 11. 223 if., and the first part of Kubla Khan. 331 6 LANE COOPER incomparable, we shall understand it and its author better if we seek to trace the subtle, yet no less real, connection between them and the literature to which they belong. Specifically, let the reader of Coleridge be also a reader of Coleridge's master, Milton, and the lover of Kubla Khan a lover also of that "pleasant soil" in which "his far more pleasant garden God ordained."' LANE COOPER. CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 1 Paradise Lost, Book IV, 1. 215. 332