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7. Manatee Springs |
William Bartram:
7. Manatee Springs
Reflecting on the fountain in Kubla Khan, Lowes argues that "The vision is
an amazing confluence of images from these separate yet closely linked
reports of actual fountains which Coleridge had read." 370.
Near a description of an alligator hole, Bartram describes a place called
the Manatee Spring, mentioning the force that threw water up through rocks,
tossing around particles of shells, and then the brief pauses, when the
surface settled, intermittently.
Bartram stresses the regular alternation between furious bursts, and brief
moments of calm.
Coleridge's fountain, too, is forced out of the rocks, with "swift
half-intermitted burst," but in his handling, we see huge fragments
vaulting, and the water makes whole rocks dance.
Bartram's fountain, then, is smaller in scale, less dramatic, but similar in
action.
Bartram stresses that this activity is continual, regular, and perpetual,
and Coleridge does echo that impression when he talks about the fountain as
flinging up the river "at once and ever," seething in "ceaseless turmoil."
What makes the association psychologically fit, then, is not the verbal
echoes, but the similarity of point. |
 Other sources
William
Beckford |