Amir Abou-Jaoude Assignment 3

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" remains one of the most enigmatic poems in the English canon. Coleridge, who was a heavy user of opium, claimed that the poem came to him in a dream, and that he was interrupted before he could finish the poem. It is hard to believe that this poem simply came to Coleridge in an opium-induced hallucination because its rhyme scheme is extraordinarily complex, and the chant-like rhythm of the poem creates an exotic tone. Coleridge uses iambic tetrameter throughout the poem, but he interrupts the tetrameter with iambic pentameter in lines like:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree

Iambic trimeter is also used in lines like:

Down to a sunless sea.

The tone of the poem is fanciful and exotic, and the tetrameter Coleridge uses in lines like--

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree

--creates a chant-like quality. The rhythm in these lines approximates the Buddhist chants common in the Far East. Certainly, European hymns or songs do not sound like these lines. The pentameter and trimeter either end the chant (as in the line "down to a sunless sea") or call attention to important details. The landscape of the mystical city Xanadu is important in the poem--thus, Coleridge uses pentameter to describe the "gardens bright with sinuous rills."

Coleridge's poem is also founded on juxtaposition--there is a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice, a tree that burns incense. Although Kubla Khan has drunk the wholesome milk of paradise, he is still a crazed leader. Coleridge is playing off of European expectations and connotations of words in an attempt to create a poem that is distinctly non-European. Europeans would expect the "milk of paradise" to be a kind of ambrosia that would bolster life and wisdom. In Coleridge's poem, the milk of paradise only serves to exacerbate Kubla Khan's insanity. One could argue that the odd juxtaposition and the perpetual rhythm create a dreamlike state and contribute to the otherworldly tone. Furthermore, the flow of the words mirrors the flow of the river Alph in the poem.

The historical Kubla Khan ruled China during the Yuan dynasty, but Coleridge's poem is not set in a distinct time period. Instead, it takes place in a European vision of the Orient. Coleridge's work falls in line with Marco Polo's mystic descriptions of Chinese inventions and practices. Here, China is not a great civilization, but an exotic, mystical wonderland that does not abide by the European rules of nature. The varied rhyme scheme creates a foreign, chant-like quality, and the juxtaposition subverts European connotations of words. Both create an exotic, otherworldly tone. It is interesting that Coleridge was using opium when he wrote the poem. Indeed, by 1816, China was becoming embroiled in world affairs and was not the mysterious wonderland Coleridge depicts here. Still, Coleridge's images of a completely alien society and his exotic tone make the poem appealing today, even after China's exotic qualities have completely faded.

2. I would most agree with E.M. Forster's quote. Forster, the brilliant author of A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India, wrote during a time of global turmoil. When Forster's novels were published in the early 20th-century, they were not just romantic tales of English high society, but reflections of the state of England and its role in the world. His most famous novel, A Passage to India, deals with the British colonial experience on the Asian subcontinent. A Englishwoman accuses an Indian doctor of raping her in mysterious caves, and her accusation in groundless. Forster's novel reflects the culture clash between Indians and their British overlords. The sun has set on the British empire now, but Forster's novel remains "a lighthouse that cannot be hidden."  We can ignore the historical incidents of prejudice against Indians during the British Raj, but A Passage to India remains one of the most widely read books in the English language. Even today, this "cry of a thousand sentinels" reminds us of the difficulty of bridging two cultures.

Leni Riefenstahl was Nazi Germany's premier propagandist, documenting the 1934 Nuremberg rallies and the 1936 Olympic Games in Triumph of the Will and Olympia respectively. Riefenstahl's work was propaganda, and it was meant to justify and glorify the heinous policies of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, in Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, Hitler appears as a Wagnerian deity. While Riefenstahl's work was propaganda, she was shooting actual events. The crowds saluting Hitler and listening to his every word were not her creation. It is important to see Riefenstahl's art because it is "the echo from a thousand labyrinths." In a indirect way, her films remind us that Hitler's crimes were not committed by one lunatic--the German people followed him and allowed him to perpetrate the horrors of the Holocaust. Some may choose to ignore the writings of Holocaust scholars and survivors and the factual accounts of Hitler's rallies in Nazi Germany. Yet, Triumph of the Will and Olympia are consistently ranked among the best films ever made and continue to be viewed today. Her films are a "lighthouse which cannot be hidden" because they remind us that Hitler was able to commit crimes only because he had the support of his people. Watching Riefenstahl's films, one realizes that it is important not to be a blind follower. We must speak out against the injustices around us. Thus, Forster's quote applies even to art as divisive and as offensive as Riefenstahl's.