Subject
Coleridge and Pale Fire
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The poems in Coleridge’s Sibylline Leaves (Woodstock Books 1990) contain many connections to Pale Fire, especially mountains and fountains. Like the Johnson work previously excerpted on the list, Coleridge's “Hymn, Before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouny,” also mentions rivers coming together in mountains, forming waterfalls:
“…Motionless Torrents! silent Cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full Moon?...” (167)
One is reminded that Shade’s fountain is white, as if in moonlight. I think it’s also worth noting that this scene is in Switzerland, and in Pale Fire the lady’s mountain image is likely based on her daughter’s recent visit to the Matterhorn.
Then in “Inscription, For a Fountain on a Heath”:
“…Here Twilight is and Coolness: here is Moss,
A soft Seat, and a deep and ample Shade.
Thou may’st toil far and find no second Tree…” (196)
(Coleridge’s capitalizations).
This fountain, with its single tree that seems to echo Shade’s shagbark (“I had a favorite young shagbark there/ With ample dark jade leaves…” (ll. 49-50)), is a sort of final, paradisiacal resting-spot. (In a generally pastoral way it also echoes Ada’s, and Titania’s, bowers.)
The many biographical connections between Coleridge and Kinbote have been commented on previously, as have those between "Kubla Khan" and Pale Fire. I think Sybilline Leaves is also worth a look.
Will
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