[This post is a fragment - a part of a sporadic train of thought first sparked by working on a paper long ago for an undergraduate English Literature course when I happened to read the previous summer the medieval poem Pearl and think back to Coleridge's Kubla Khan.]
In volume two, in the edition of Purchas His Pilgrimes published in 1905, you see right away a connection to the Romantic Era – the spirit of the age – which Coleridge helped define:
Man lives a fallen life but with a Divine Spark – or an element of the Divine Power of the Supreme Deity – within him. And all around him, in the world given by The Creator, the same or similar Divine Spark flows which is visible by man – a being in the image of God – with an eye for the divine in all things. (Whether man chooses to exercise that eye or not is a different matter).
Also in these first pages of volume two of Purchas His Pilgrimes, we find the glorified power of man – the power to create items and conditions within the universe God gave him that harness or control some of that Divine Spirit. Put it to work so to speak.
Hakluytus Posthumus, Or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others By Samuel Purchas, Thordarson Collection
Purchas specifically talks about inventions and discoveries in the field of navigation that allowed man to sail the seas and explore the world God gave man; the supreme being among all earthly creation – made in His image.
It is important to speak of this in such a Biblical or spiritual manner, because that his how Purchas describes it – and we have every reason to believe that is how Coleridge saw it – particularly during the period of his young adult life in which Kubla Khan was written.
Hakluytus Posthumus, Or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others By Samuel Purchas, Thordarson Collection
We can see through Coleridge’s letters and journals from the time period in which he was reading Purchas and composing Kubla Khan — that he was inspired by the idea of man’s divine nature – man’s divine power – to shape – no – create his own universe from the material surrounding him and from the divine spark of imagination.
Hakluytus Posthumus, Or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others By Samuel Purchas, Thordarson Collection
Here, a simple compass is a piece of metal, touched by magic, to reveal the hidden mystery (or force or code) of latitude and the direction to the North Pole – through which man was able to cut a fairly direct path or journey through his universe that remained impossible or a mystery or mystical to the ancients.
This sounds hyperbolic to us in our post-modern age of cyberspace, but this is how Purchas saw it way back in XXXX:
Hakluytus Posthumus, Or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others By Samuel Purchas, Thordarson Collection
And how Coleridge saw advances in science and society during the heady days of the late 18th Century – the days of the American and French Revolutions – the days of a spirit in the age which was sweeping the fabric of the old world away to create something new and never imagined, or so it seemed, out of what? – the very fabric of the old…. Democracy was freeing man from the tyranny of history – it was reshaping society – from the materials of the old – from the same men, women, and children – into something new and miraculous. Something fundamentally different, or so they dreamed, from something so old and ever-constant. Freedom out of tyranny.
We can find issues with Purchas’ vision and Coleridge’s interpretation. Coleridge and Wordsworth and many of the early Romantics were to create their own distance from this youthful spirit of the age once they growing understanding of the horrors of the Reign of Terror dawned on them and the fear that those horrors would be exported to their very own towns and villages.
But, we can’t use hindsight to deny how these men felt about things happening around them at the time in which they wrote their texts.
This is not to say that there were not doubts involved or temporal contradictions:
Hakluytus Posthumus, Or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others By Samuel Purchas, Thordarson Collection
(The etymology of the word temporal is interesting here: c.1340 it meant worldly, secular and later meant of time but also terrestrial, earthly and later temporary or lasting only for a short time or late simply of time.
Here, I am not using the word to mean time-related – as divided by time – but of a split in thought occupying the same space of time – meaning – how a man can at the very same instance in time have two contradictory elements of thought occupy the same space: Man is God-like/Man is Fallen.)
What to make of this?
For a reader seeking absolution, you are heading in the wrong direction already.
(Meaning – someone wanting to definitively define the meaning of the contradiction in the Purchas/Coleridian view of man as both divine and fallen — or to put a simpler way – a man seeking to define which interpretation of man was correct (or as we’d say in the equivocal post-modern age – which was more correct) — is already barking up the wrong tree, because to seek to favor one over the other is to miss the point that the authors view both as being wrapped up in the same entity – the very same flesh and bones – at the very same instant – Man is Divine and Fallen – not either/or – (whether you can grasp it or not)).
(The idea of more correct vs absolutely correct – in relation to the ability to grasp the idea of man’s dual nature – is an interesting tangent to think on: How come in our post modern Age of Equivocation, we are so much fundamentally further from understanding the completeness of the Coleridian contradiction called Man than were the people of Purchas’ Age of Absolutism? How come the men of the age of moral absolutism could grasp man’s dual nature but we must absolutely resist it as impossible – due to its logical contradictions?
If you think about it, the Age of Equivocation has obliterated the state of contradiction altogether: Logic and science have destroyed the possibility of a state of contradiction: It must be one or the other. It can’t logically be both. And if it is neither, it must be something else we haven’t defined exactly (yet but surely can). Man can’t be divine and fallen at the same time. Trying to think of him in such a contradiction must mean you are beginning from the wrong place in the first place — meaning — drop the whole idea of “divine” and “fallen” – and start from scratch…. — That is the way out of the mystery for the Age of Equivocation. Because in an Age of Science & Reason, there can be no more mysteries – no more mysterious – no more mystical – only the unknown. The Age of Science & Reason – as exemplified by Einstein – has destroyed the Age of Reason – as exemplified by Newton.)
Anyway —
Before this tangent, I said: For a reader seeking absolution, you are heading in the wrong direction already.
Absolution is defined as a remission of sins pronounced by a priest.
The building blocks of the word, however, explain more.
Absolute means free from imperfection – and man seeking that in himself (or what he creates) is doomed – or so a Judeo-Christian believes.
And so a man seeking to be absolved in toto is also doomed to failure.
At least in this life.
Which is, again, the very heart of Kubla Khan and Pearl.
Milton, at least from what we get in Paradise Lost, tells us to resign ourselves to the limits of of our fallen nature. This was Lucifer’s inherent character flaw: an inability to accept the imperfections of himself – the imperfections that made him not-God. (This is the same message in Pearl).
And in a real sense, the Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries – completely misread Milton.
Did they really misread him? Did they really not get it? I’m sure not. But, they preferred to suspend the realization of Milton’s message in order to revel in the power they wanted to see in Milton’s fallen Satan – while doing homage to Milton’s greatness.
I’m talking about (kinda but not absolutely) the Romantic Hero (see the last link above or this definition at Wikipedia).
They saw Satan’s speeches in Paradise Lost as not just powerful – put pointing to an innate power within man and mankind. (See the third stanza in chapter one of Paradise Lost around the line that begins: To force of those dire Arms? yet not for those / Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage)
To Milton, that innate power was ultimately vanity – the very same vanity that caused Adam to bite the apple and Lucifer to war against God himself. (And the very same vanity Purchas highlights in one of the quotes above.) Adam had to know more. He had to know it all. He couldn’t rest content – rest content in true Paradise. Satan had to control more. He had to control it all. Power was his knowledge. He had to be all-powerful or set his mind to believing he was all-powerful in the world he chose to recognize out of his manipulations. He couldn’t rest content in a Heavenly Paradise where someone else was the center and controller of power – ultimate, infinite power.
The English Romantics, like Coleridge – didn’t deny the vanity. Not at all.
(Which set them apart from the Satan of Paradise Lost, by the way…)
To the Romantics, it the Romantic hero was full of (acknowledged) vanity – but a vanity worth unleashing – if kept within (risky) parameters.
To the Romantics, at least to Coleridge (a Romantic who did not completely break with the mainstream of Christian religion – (like Einstein would with theology of any kind)) man kicked out of the Garden of Eden was not meant to waste to death in the sands without lifting a finger to help himself.
God had given man the command to harness the beasts and the soil of the lands where ever he traveled and chose to dwell. He was given the task to — create. To employ the inherent powers of man’s being given by God as gifts to manipulate (use) the power of the rest of God’s creation in our physical universe. (Think of – fire – here). God created man in His image – giving him the power to create – to create something out of the materials at hand – also created by God.
(This is an interpretation of God’s spoken curse to Adam in Genesis 3 – particularly verses 17-18 and 22-23. In fact, I’ll quote 22-23 below:
22
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23
therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
You could say, God gave Adam the gift of partial knowledge of the divine power of creation through allowing Adam to make the decision to eat the apple.
And through this knowledge — whereas before, in their state of ignorance, in the fullness of the pre-fall existence in the Garden of Eden, Adam Eve did not have to toil for material to energize their physical existence — after they gained knowledge (though not infinite knowledge/understanding), they were cursed to use it to – create life sustaining energy out of the materials in their world: out of rain and soil and seed – they were to create the bread of mankind that would maintain their physical bodies.
(Of course here, as a Judeo-Christian, I am alluding cryptically to the non-human-created bread that sustains man’s physical and spiritual existence – as seen in the manna from Heaven that sustained the Israelites as described in Exodus 16 (with Exodus (I’m now checking) being the 2nd book of the Jewish Torah) and to the bread of the Last Supper given by Jesus – to represent His flesh as Christ – to man to signify the new covenant when man was absolved from his sinful nature. (The story is repeated in the Gospels and I’ll link to Matthew 26:26-29.))
To get back to Milton and to Genesis: Despite the ability to manipulate his environment to create life-sustaining energy, Man kicked out of Eden was left imperfect. And thus the fruits of his labor would remain – in toto – imperfect.
That didn’t mean he shouldn’t pick up a hammer…….Or to keep with the analogies already stated or alluded to — a hoe.
To the Romantics, the fact of man’s imperfection was not an injunction against using man’s power. In short, for them, unlike for Milton in Paradise Lost, recognition of man’s limit in using his power to create Heaven (or heaven) on earth was not debilitating. It was tempering.
Reaching for the stars was not vainglorious – it was the stuff through which some of man’s most Godly creations were obtained – or by which the hidden mysteries in God’s creation were discovered.
Take for example what Purchas has offered us: The loadstone – nothing more than elements found common in earth around us – coupled with forces the earth provides – magnetism – to unlock the hidden code of latitude – which unlocked the potential of voyage to the ends of the earth.
Coleridge, in the Age of Romanticism, was not like we are today. He did not divorce Newton from religion and the spiritual. (Go to Coleridge’s Religious Musings and use the “search” feature of your browser to look for the name Newton and you’ll see the scientist placed in a group with the poet Milton and the preacher Priestly and ultimately figures other “prophets” like Moses (and Jesus) as well.)
Perhaps Coleridge’s age was well along that path – the path that eventually led to the breaking away of religious spirituality from inquisitive science:
Newton’s family buried the mountain of work he had done in the occult and other unorthodox writings on religion in its broader term for fear of tarnishing his gigantic reputation as a scientist and man of reason — as well as his reputation as a Christian. But, even they would not have thought to divorce the scientist from his deeply held religious faith altogether!!
How could they? His writings, like those of Coleridge, and the average man of those ages, were filled with Judeo-Christian sentiment – whether strictly orthodox or not.
Well, they could have managed it. The divorcing thing. We manage to do it very easily as a matter of routine in contemporary academia — by simply ignoring it.
Science and religion don’t mix, stupid —- a post-modern would surely chide.
They sure as hell mixed in the Age of Newton and the Age of Romanticism. In fact, the Romantics were specifically trying to pull society back from the excesses of the Age of Reason!!
Simply put, Coleridge saw in the likes of a Newton a Moses or a Jesus.
A prophet, like a scientist, was a man. All three were the same – more correctly – from similar stock!!
(Each man has the same spark of Understanding and Creation within him. Each has the ability to commune with God and a (variable) ability to mirror God – to be in God’s image.)
In this sense, looking at the etymology of the Latin word for Absolute (absolutus) – absolution is possible:
Absolutus is the past participle of absolvere – meaning – to loosen, to free, to complete.
If we focus on the last – to say that absolution is a completion – a complete break from the weight of sin – a purification – then man is a failure at it.
But, if we focus on the “to loosen” clause, we can more approach both the Romantic sense and the Christian sense:
In the Christian sense — man is absolved from sin (through Christ) but not perfected – not free from sinning again.
Or, to put another way, man will continue to sin, but his ultimate guilt/punishment for that sin is wiped clean – in toto.
Man is – in this sense – loosened from sin.
In Coleridge’s sense — man using the spark of the God within him and within His creation which surrounds man — is loosening himself from the limitations of being man. Through creation, man is reaching out to God by being God-like.
The Romantics would call this divine inspiration:
Man tilling the soil through sweat and tears was not simply growing wheat to pound into bread —– he was exercising the knowledge and power God had given him – and the soil – and the air – and the water – and the minerals — to create wheat to create bread to fill his human form with the energy needed to sustain the act of creation.
His ability to play God was limited: To bring life out of soil for man was a burdensome toil, and he was limited in what he could produce out of that soil (unlike God who created man from clay through the breathe of the Divine Spirit), but —- man’s ability to create was not to be mocked due to these limitations.
That is the message in Kubla Khan — Man’s God-like ability to create was to be praised. Trying to create heaven on earth was to be done ultimately in vain but not vainglorious. It was to be glorified.
Others might scoff at such an effort by another mere man: They might might weave a circle round him thrice, and close their eyes in holy dread, and cry “Beware! Beware!” — as Milton and the Pearl-Poet did.
But, to a Coleridge, man as Kubla Khan was divinely feeding on the honey-dew and milk of Paradise – the Land of Eden – this earthly garden – which God had filled with it His Spirit.
This is certainly not to say Coleridge was glorifying the specific character of Satan out of Paradise Lost. The Romantic Hero was not God. He did not mistake himself for God.
More specifically — he did not go so far in the belief in his power to create his own universe by manipulating the materials around him —- to believe there was no greater good……
We can clarify this in a nutshell this way:
Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost was screaming, “I am God!!”
Kubla in Coleridge’s vision was screaming, “I am God-like!!”
The man in Pearl was standing at the vision of the End Times, looking at the future New Jerusalem, and understanding the difference –(the between the two – Satan and Kubla).
When the Romantic Hero was able to understand that difference well enough – he gained by his God-like actions.
When he became drunk on the honey-dew, however, the Romantics depicted him tragically falling (much like Adam).
The Romantics didn’t, however, use their depictions of the Romantic Hero to instruct readers that the effort itself was vainglorious.
The Pearl-Poet did.
The Romantics, however, likened the effort to godliness. It was an effort to be encouraged – even if there were pitfalls involved…..
