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2. Isle of Palms |
William Bartram:
2. Isle of Palms
Bartram was easily enchanted.
In the following passage, he's inspired by the unexplored, or at least,
uncultivated Isle of Palms. This tiny island gives off rich fragrances,
wafting from the groves of magnolias, citrus, and other trees, encircled by
yuccas.
Bartram loses himself in the mingled odors, an ambrosial perfume coming from
this blissful garden set in the middle of a lake.
Coleridge may already have borrowed the scenery from Bartram in a letter to
his brother George, in April, 1798, describing the use of laudanum for an
infected tooth. The opiate dream resembles that of Kubla Khan: Laudanum gave me repose, not sleep; but you, I believe, know how divine that
repose is, what a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountain and flowers
and trees in the very heart of a waste of sands. Letters I 240 The Note Book of the same period includes this passage: -some wilderness plot, green and fountainous and unviolated by Man. Archiv
359 That note appears between two parts of a long commentary on crocodiles in Bartram,
based on pages 127-130 of Bartram's Travels. Perhaps that note, and the
similar passage in the letter, refer to the description of the Isle of
Palms, on page 157 of Bartram, where he describes the isle as a "delightful
spot," a "beautiful retreat," "blessed unviolated spot of earth," full of
flowers and trees, and, if not a fountain, at least a lake.
If Lowes is right, "Impressions of Bartram's 'inchanting little Isle of
Palms' were among the sleeping images in Coleridge's unconscious memory at
the time when Kubla Khan emerged from it," and, given the fact that he was
writing Kubla Khan in another opiate dream, we can imagine that for
Coleridge, the scenery itself suggested that divine repose, in which he
could have visions, without falling asleep.
This associations--between the drugged state of consciousness and the vision
of a spot of enchantment, and within that spot, between flowers, trees, and
fountains--make up a cluster, hooked together with other similar images in
authors like Purchas, in Coleridge's unconscious, according to Lowes. "Twice
already its imagery had recurred to memory and clothed itself with words.
And recurrence to memory soon becomes a habit. Conspicuous now, among its
details were 'grassy meadows,' a 'blissful garden,' 'fragrant groves,' and
multitudes of trees. And at the moment of the dream, by way of Purchas,
impressions of 'fertile Meaddowes' conjoined with a 'goodly Garden'
furnished with trees were stirring actively in Coleridge's brain. Clearly,
then, there were sufficient links between the images from Purchas which were
sinking into the Well, and the images from Bartram which were already there.
And they did coalesce. Here are the lovely lines of the fragment once again: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, You can see that Lowes has an extraordinary magnifying glass, with which he
can see into Coleridge's mind, and watch the associations link together,
hook and eye. See whether you think Lowes has spotted a real constellation
of associations here, or just some coincidental verbal echoes. |
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William
Beckford
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