The Curse of Kehama is an 1810 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's schoolboy days when he suffered from insomnia, along with his memories of a dark and mysterious schoolmate that later formed the basis for one of the poem's villains. The poem was started in 1802 following the publication of Southey's epic Thalaba the Destroyer. After giving up on the poem for a few years, he returned to it after prompting by the poet Walter Savage Landor encouraged him to complete his work. When it was finally published, it sold more copies than his previous works.
The poem is divided into twelve "books". Its first half describes how the evil priest Kehama is able to gain significant amounts of demonic power in a quest to become a god. This is interrupted when his son Arvalan is killed after attempting to have his way with Kailyal, a peasant girl. After the death of his son, Kehama begins to wage war upon Yamen, the god of death, and curses Ladurlad, his son's killer. However, the curse allows Ladurlad the ability to become a hero of significant strength, and he uses that power to work with the Hindu gods in a quest to defeat Kehama and ensure the safety of Kailyal. Eventually, Ladurlad is able to defeat Kehama and is freed from his curse.
Although the poem describes Hindu myth it is heavily influenced by Zoroastrian theology, and the ideal of a dualistic moral system. Part of Southey's focus on India stems from the recent British colonial expansion into India and the increasing interest by British citizens in Indian culture. Critics gave the work mixed reviews; many praised the quality of the poem's language, but others felt that the plot or choice of subject matter was lacking.
Background
The basis for Southey wishing to write an epic poem came from his private reading of literature while attending Westminster School as a boy.[1] It is possible that Southey, during this time, had problems sleeping and that an inability to sleep served as inspiration for the topic of Kehama. Additionally, a boy Southey met while at school, who looked like a fiend according to Southey's account, served as a prototype for the dark and mysterious character Arvalan.[2] By 1802, Southey spent his time writing the poem along with other projects following the publication of Thalaba the Destroyer. This continued into 1806, when the epic was worked on alongside other works, such as a translation of El Cid and a history of Portugal.[3]
It was not until 1808 that Southey attempted to finish Kehama, which came after him almost abandoning poetry because of the reception of Thalaba and Madoc. In particular, fellow poet Landor encouraged Southey to complete the epic along with writing the work Roderick the Last of the Goths. This effort continued through 1808, and he was able to complete 3,000 lines of the poem. However, he was interrupted in his work at the end of the year by an illness that plagued his family and kept him away from writing for two months. In March 1809, Walter Scott requested Southey to send him some excerpts from the work. Southey complied and the lines were sent for Scott's collection, English Minstrelsy. The poem was finished by 1810 and,[4] by 1811, Kehama was selling more copies than Thalaba sold.[5]
Poem
The poem is twelve books with the first six dealing with various episodes along with introducing Hindu theology. The story describes Kehama, a Brahmin priest, as he makes sacrifices to Shiva to gain power. His scheme is to conquer death and attain Amreeta to become a god himself. Arvalan, Kehama's son, attempts to take Kailyal, a peasant girl. He is stopped by Ladurlad, another peasant, and killed. Kehama decides to war against Yamen, the god of death, while also seeking to torture Ladurlad in revenge. Ladurlad is cursed to be separated from nature and unable to live a human life, which included not being able to sleep. His separation from nature gives him the ability to do what others cannot however.[6]
After this event, Arvalan turns into a demon. Kailyal, while trying to escape from Kehama's wrath, is pushed into a river and was about to drown before Ladurlad comes and saves her. Although he is a hero, Ladurlad cannot bear to be near her, which allows for Arvalan to pursue after Kailyal as she escapes to the temple of Pollear. When she gets there, she is almost poisoned by a poisonous manchineel tree. Before this happens, a gandharvas, or good spirit, named Ereenia takes Kailyal to Casyapa, Father of the Hindu gods. With the help of the Tree of Life at Casyapa's mountain, she is able to be healed. However, Kailyal is sent back because Casyapa is worried about Kehama's power. Kailyal is sent to the land of Indra for safety. While there, she is united with her father and Ladurlad, and they are told of how Vishnu saved humanity by assuming a human form. During this time, Kailyal grows close to Ereenia and they fall in love with each other.[7]
Arvalan turns to Lorrinite, a witch, who is able to find out the location of Ladurlad and Kailyal. After being armed with the witches magic weapons, Arvalan travels to Kailyal's location. He is prevented from reaching the place. However, Kehama completes a ritual at the same time that grants him power and the ability to invade the Hindu first heaven, and Ladurlad and Kailyal flee. They start a new life until a group of individuals kidnap Kailyal to marry her off to the god Juggernaut. During a ritual involving the sacrifice of worshippers, Arvalan possesses various priests who attempt have their way with Kailyal. Ereenia tries to save her, but he is stopped by Lorrinite and taken away. Left with no options, Kailyal attempts suicide by burning herself in a fire. She is rescued by Ladurlad who, because of the curse, is immune to fire.[8]
Ladurlad and Kailyal travel in search of Ereenia and end up in the underwater city of Mahabalipur. Ladurlad goes down into the city and enters into the palace of Baly, the ruler of the city who was a demon that attempted to do the same thing that Kehama is trying to do: overthrow the gods. Ladurlad comes to the Chamber of the Kings of old where he finds Ereenia. After battling against a naga, he is able to rescue Ereenia. By the time they return to Kailyal, they are attacked by Arvalan's servants. Baly appears, as he is allowed to do so once a year, and uses his powers to condemn Arvalan's army to damnation. Kehama, wanting Kailyal for himself, tries to bargain with her and offer to remove Ladurlad's curse. After refusing, Kailyal is given leprosy.[9]
Ereenia sets out to wake up Shiva at Mount Calasay. When he gets there, he rings the Silver Bell and the mountain turns into light followed by a message telling Ereenia to talk to Yamen. Ereenia returns to Kailyal and Ladurlad, and the three travel to the world of the dead, Padalon. They are brought to the city Yamenpur and are able to meet Yamen. After talking to Yamen, they are told to wait, but Kehama attacks Padalon. Kehama defeats Yamen and tries to convince Kailyal to join him. After being rejected again, Kehama attains the Amreeta and becomes immortal. However, the Amreeta gives Kehama an immortality of torment, which reflects Kehama's soul. Shiva comes down and restores Yamen to power. Shiva allows Kailyal to drink the Amreeta, which allows her to become a divine being that can be with Ereenia. Ladurlad is given the ability to die and the poem ends with him entering the paradise Yedillian to be with the other dead.[10]
Themes
Southey was intrigued by the Zend Avesta and in Zoroastrianism. In particular, the aspects of a dualistic moral system along with a focus on death appealed to the poet. He wanted to create a poem based in the ideas and dealing with a Persian prince, but he was unable to write the poem. Instead, he incorporated aspects of it, including how evil allows for the shaping of good, to enter into Kehama. Other theological aspects involved the Hindu pantheon to have an epic with gods that both behind the scenes and directly within the story of the epic. The evil discussed in the poem had a contemporary and political model. It paralleled Southey's belief that Napoleon was becoming an Antichrist figure who would set up a reverse millennium.[11]
The poem's focus on Hinduism became an important topic to Southey because of the British colonial interest in India. He was advised by William Taylor that focusing on India would allow for the work to become popular as the Empire became greater. The poem also marks the shift in view of the "exotic" from China to India and the appeal the religion started to hold. This transition was furthered by the translations of William Jones of Sanskrit along with possible connections between Hinduism and other theological traditions including Christianity. Southey knew of various translations and read Shakuntala (from the Mahabharata) and the Bhagavad Gita, which helped to form a basis for his knowledge of India. His rationalism kept Southey from accepting many of the beliefs he considered superstitious. Instead he wished to hide what he thought were deformities, to promote his own view.[12]
Critical reception
In a poem on Southey, Landor praised his friend, "In Thalaba, Kehama and Roderick the most inventive Poet/ In lighter compositions the most diversified."[13] An anonymous review in the February 1811 Monthly Mirror claimed "The plot is ... powerfully spirit-stirring, but not interesting... because it is utterly impossible for the feelings to travel with the persons of a drama so constituted as the present... It seems Mr. Southey labours under a great disadvantage, through the choice of his machinery."[14] It continued, "Having given this opinion, we are now free to confess that the poet's art is, in the terrific, prodigiously displayed throughout, and we have no doubt that if Mr. Southey's love of eccentricity had not overcome his better taste, he would have chosen such a machinery, and so conducted his story, as not only to have agitated the nerves, but to have come home to heart, and rested there. Being what it is, however, we pronounce it a splendid specimen of a daring poetical imagination, fed and supported by vast sources of knowledge and observation."[15]
This was followed by an anonymous review in the March 1811 The Critical Review that argued: "The Curse of Kehama is a performance of precisely this violent and imposing description. Like the shield of Atlante, it strikes dead everything that is opposed to it; one might as well hold a farthering candle to the sun, as to think of placing Homer, or Shakspeare, or Milton or Dante, by the side of it. But it is the false blaze of enchantment, not the steady radiance of truth and nature; and if you gain courage to look at it a second or third time, the magic has lost its power, and you only wonder what it was that dazzled you."[16] The review continued, "we think there is quite enough to discover to us how great a poet Mr. Southey might be, were the single gift of judgment to be added to the qualities which he undoubtedly possesses. Till then, we fear that we shall never be able to subscribe to the belief in a Trinity of living poets, of whom Mr. S. is represented as entitled to the foremost honours."[17]
John Foster wrote a review for the April 1811 Eclectic Review which said, "We must repeat then, in the first place, our censure of the adoption or creation of so absurd a fable" and "The next chief point of censure would be, that this absurdity is also paganism; but this has been noticed so pointedly and repeatedly in our analysis, that a very few words here will suffice."[18] In an analysis of other aspects, Foster argued, "The general diction of the work is admirably strong, and various, and free; and, in going through it, we have repeatedly exulted in the capabilities of the English language. The author seems to have in a great measure grown out of that affected simplicity of expression, of which he has generally been accused. The versification, as to measure and rhyme, is a complete defiance of all rule, and all example... This is objectionable, chiefly, as it allows the poet to riot away in a wild wantonness of amplification".[19] An anonymous review in the June 1811 Literary Panorama stated, "If we were desired to name a poet whose command of language enables him to express in the most suitable and energetic terms the images which agitate his mind, we should name Mr. Southey; if we were requested to point out a poem which to freedom of manner in the construction of its stanzas, united a condensation of phrase, with a happy collocation of words, thereby producing force, we should recommend Kehama".[20]
Ernest Bernhardt-Kabish, in 1977, claimed that "The Curse of Kehama is a striking poem" and that the poem was "better constructed than the preceding ones".[21] However, he argued that the poem's ending was "too crass in its situation and too facile in its resolution to succeed fully even as a moral allegory."[22]
Kubla Khan is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Shangdu, the summer capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics such as Byron accused him of siding with the establishment for money and status. He is remembered especially for the poem "After Blenheim" and the original version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".
Cilappatikāram, also referred to as Silappathikaram or Silappatikaram, is the earliest Tamil epic. It is a poem of 5,730 lines in almost entirely akaval (aciriyam) meter. The epic is a tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannaki and her husband Kovalan. The Silappathikaram has more ancient roots in the Tamil bardic tradition, as Kannaki and other characters of the story are mentioned or alluded to in the Sangam literature such as in the Naṟṟiṇai and later texts such as the Kovalam Katai. It is attributed to a prince-turned-monk Iḷaṅkõ Aṭikaḷ, and was probably composed in the 5th or 6th century CE.
Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written from 10 September to 14 December in 1815 in Bishopsgate, near Windsor Great Park and first published in 1816. The poem was without a title when Shelley passed it along to his contemporary and friend Thomas Love Peacock. The poem is 720 lines long. It is considered to be one of the first of Shelley's major poems.
Domdaniel is a fictional cavernous hall at the bottom of the ocean where evil magicians, spirits, and gnomes meet.
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a poem by William Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The poem was completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in 1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was provided to Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with his own poem, "Dejection: An Ode", in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with seven additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was first printed as "Ode" in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version that is currently known, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".
"The Inchcape Rock" is a ballad written by English poet Robert Southey. Published in 1802, it tells the story of a 14th-century attempt by the Abbot of Arbroath ("Aberbrothock") to install a warning bell on Inchcape, a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles (18 km) off the east coast of Scotland. The poem tells how the bell was removed by a pirate, who subsequently perished on the reef while returning to Scotland in bad weather some time later.
East Coker is the second poem of T. S. Eliot's 1943 book Four Quartets. It was started as a way for Eliot to get back into writing poetry and was modelled after Burnt Norton. It was finished during early 1940 and printed in the UK in the Easter edition of the 1940 New English Weekly, and in the US in the May 1940 issue of Partisan Review. The title refers to a small community that was directly connected to Eliot's ancestry and was home to a church that was later to house Eliot's ashes.
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was published with a collection of his early works. After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career. The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772. The youngest of 14 children, he was educated after his father's death and excelled in classics. He attended Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge. While attending college, he befriended two other Romanticists, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, the latter causing him to eventually drop out of college and pursue both poetic and political ambitions.
"Monody on the Death of Chatterton" was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1790 and was rewritten throughout his lifetime. The poem deals with the idea of Thomas Chatterton, a poet who committed suicide, as representing the poetic struggle.
"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge during 1797. The poem discusses a time in which Coleridge was forced to stay beneath a lime tree while his friends were able to enjoy the countryside. Within the poem, Coleridge is able to connect to his friend's experience and enjoy nature through him, making the lime tree only a physical prison, not a mental one.
The Fall of Robespierre is a three-act play written by Robert Southey and Samuel Coleridge in 1794. It follows the events in France after the downfall of Maximilien Robespierre. Robespierre is portrayed as a tyrant, but Southey's contributions praise him as a destroyer of despotism. The play does not operate as an effective drama for the stage, but rather as a sort of dramatic poem with each act being a different scene. According to Coleridge, "my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative language of the French Orators and develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors."
Madoc is an 1805 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. It is based on the legend of Madoc, a supposed Welsh prince who fled internecine conflict and sailed to America in the 12th century. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's schoolboy days when he completed a prose version of Madoc's story. By the time Southey was in his twenties, he began to devote himself to working on the poem in hopes that he could sell it to raise money to fulfill his ambitions to start a new life in America, where he hoped to found Utopian commune or "Pantisocracy". Southey finally completed the poem as a whole in 1799, at the age of 25. However, he began to devote his efforts into extensively editing the work, and Madoc was not ready for publication until 1805. It was finally published in two volumes by the London publisher Longman with extensive footnotes.
Thalaba the Destroyer is an 1801 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's school boy days, but he did not begin to write the poem until he finished composing Madoc at the age of 25. Thalaba the Destroyer was completed while Southey travelled in Portugal. When the poem was finally published by the publisher Longman, it suffered from poor sales and only half of the copies were sold by 1804.
Roderick the Last of the Goths is an 1814 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem lie in Southey's wanting to write a poem describing Spain and the story of Rodrigo. Originally entitled "Pelayo, the Restorer of Spain," the poem was later retitled to reflect the change of emphasis within the story. It was completed after Southey witnessed Napoleon's actions in Europe, and Southey included his reactions against invading armies into the poem. The poem was successful, and multiple editions followed immediately after the first edition.
Joan of Arc is a 1796 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The idea for the story came from a discussion between Southey and Grosvenor Bedford, when Southey realised that the story would be suitable for an epic. The subject further appealed to Southey because the events of the French Revolution were concurrent to the writing of the poem and would serve as a parallel to current events. Eventually, Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped rewrite parts of the poem for a 1798 edition. Later editions removed Coleridge's additions along with other changes.
The Palace of Pleasure is a poem by James Henry Leigh Hunt published in his 1801 collection Juvenilia. Written before he was even sixteen, the work was part of a long tradition of poets imitating Spenser. The Palace of Pleasure is an allegory based on Book II of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and describes the adventure of Sir Guyon as he is taken by airy sylphs to the palace of the "Fairy Pleasure". According to Hunt the poem "endeavours to correct the vices of the age, by showing the frightful landscape that terminates the alluring path of sinful Pleasure".
The Feast of the Poets is a poem by Leigh Hunt that was originally published in 1811 in the Reflector. It was published in an expanded form in 1814, and revised and expanded throughout his life. The work describes Hunt's contemporary poets, and either praises or mocks them by allowing only the best to dine with Apollo. The work also provided commentary on William Wordsworth and Romantic poetry. Critics praised or attacked the work on the basis of their sympathies towards Hunt's political views.
Gebir is a long poem by the English writer Walter Savage Landor. The poem was first published anonymously in English in July 1798, before being revised and republished in 1803, in dual, separate Latin and English editions.
References
Bernhardt-Kabisch, Ernest. Robert Southey. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977.
Madden, Lionel. Robert Southey: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1972.
Simmons, Jack. Southey. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.
Speck, William. Robert Southey. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
