English Literature Essays Orient Opium Drug

English Literature Essays target Opium medicineOrient Opium DrugWhy do you think any two or more of De Quincey, Coleridge and Doyle were so interested in the Orient in their drug writing?Throughout the nineteenth century, persisting through with(predicate) much of the 20th and even so far as today, the use of intoxicating substances, namely opium, is inextricably linked with visions of the Orient. Although there has been no significant proof of a universal chemical change in its users, opium undeniably evokes an obsession with the other. If one can non assign this to biological factors, then it is crucial to ascertain the historical, cultural or psychological implications that relate to its conception. ofttimes of the association amidst opium and the Orient in nineteenth-century Britain was a consequence of British imperialism and the resolution of the einsteinium. In expanding the Empire, Britain dominated the easternern world, coming with the promise of providing a bene volent civilisation. Instead, they exploited states for many of their near valuable commodities, including opium, and destroyed an already established pride of individuality and national-identity whilst asserting their have got sense of a hegemonic British nationality upon inhabitants.The whole works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge make a substantial contribution in our understanding of the relationship between opium use and easternism. Coleridge followed the German Higher Criticism that viewed the Bible as an extension of oriental person mythology, supplying what he believed as evidence of single God in the Eastern world. Coleridges writing at the tip over of the nineteenth-century encapsulates not only the anxieties of eastern differentiation, but more poignantly, the conspicuous differences from its impressions on the English opium user.His literary works aside, Coleridge presented perhaps his most vehement condemnation of British involvement in the Orient during a state-suppor ted lecture in 1795. He contrived that such mercantile intercourse was resulting in the death of millions of East Indians, saddling Britain with an inevitable sense of overwhelming guilt. Furthermore, he details the potentially catastrophic long term make on Britons, that being, a dilution of national identity through the pollution of imports from the Eastern world.Through his damning of British colonisation, Coleridge provides a macrocosm of himself his own opium intake was destabilising not only to his own torso, but the world nigh him. He believed the mind state brought about through the ingestion of opium masked many of the distinctions to be do between not only English and Oriental, but between male and pistillate, and even self and other. Much of the singularity of Coleridges work, in particular the visionary Kubla caravan inn, emanates from his ability to encompass polar glacial sensations towards opium in a single moment, often oscillating between both attraction and repulsion, or fun and pain.The phantasmagoric quality of Kubla Khan was composed out of what Coleridge attributed to a sleep of the eternal senses. When describing his opium reveries, Coleridge explainedLaudanum gave me repose, not sleep but you, I believe, know how divine that repose is what a spot of inchantment, a parking area spot of fountains, and flowers and trees, in the very heart of a waste sands.It comes as no confusion then that Coleridge had the potential to produce such a work as Kubla Khan whilst submerged in the alternative realm of reason that opium gave him.In the opening stanza of the poem there radiates an awe of union indoors paradise. The Oriental landscape, with caverns measureless to man and forests ancient as the hills, suggest an unworldly, ineffable quality. Although the components of Xanadu may potentially wait threatening, they are harboured within the confines of walls and towers girdled round. Thus, Xanadu is rendered passive and benevolent, un der the control of the poet.Throughout the next stanza, the Oriental landscape of Xanadu is feminised, with particular reference made to the deep romantic chasm which slanted / Down a jet plane hill athwart a cedarn cover, a subtle indication of the presence of female genitalia. The ensuing description is one that is far removed from the serenity of an English landscape, detailing A brutish place a waning moon was haunted / By womanhood wailing for her demon-lover. The wailing woman suggests a deep pain, perhaps even insanity. This ascends into a threatening, knowledgeablely explicit orgasmic crescendoFrom this chasm As if the body politic in fast thick pants were breathing, / A mighty fountain momently was forced / Amid whose swift, half-intermitted better / Huge fragments beneath the threshers flail.The swift, half-intermitted burst mentioned evokes notions of seminal emission. The nature of this portrayal belies the expected romanticistic interpretations of lakes and seas which poets leisurely sip from for inspiration, instead presenting a mighty fountain, potentially a phallic symbol, which threatens to sop up all.The overriding image is one of the Oriental landscape breaking through the boundaries attempting to suppress it occurring metaphorically through the phallic fountain, the fluids from the chasm, and the entrance into the caverns. However, what may initially seem as a jubilant liberation of sexual energy from the constraints of rigid gender roles eventually conspires to be anything but, paving musical mode for a state of or so Armageddon proportions And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean Ancestral voices prophesying war Thus, provided is an ironic sense of admonition against those who dare try and tame these powerful forces. The overall effect is that where the danger of the second stanza undercuts the perceived harmony of the first, suggesting an ambiguity within Xanadu indicating perhaps the presence of a dark side to the heavenly para dise foretold. ane of Coleridges primary concerns with regards to Orientalism lay in its power to usurp the authors authority of and consciousness of writing, a threat to his own artistic control. When referring back to Coleridges own comments on British commercial intercourse in the East, a definite causal link can be inferred between the Orient infiltrating Britain, by means of opium intake, and introducing a conscious-usurping Orient into the British body and mind to convert them from British to Oriental.Despite this, through the ingestion of opium, he actively seeks the empowerment this other provides him. Analysis of the conclusion of Kubla Khan perhaps gives some indication of a shift towards a positive scene on the stir of the Orient hoping that through the milk of Paradise the speaker may be able to transcend to a state in which he may build that dome in the air. However, his ascension to God-like status, he believes, may make others treat him as un saintly, perhaps with h oly dreadAnd all should cry, heed Beware / His flashbulb eyes, his floating hair / Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread.The use of the oxymoronic phrase holy dread reiterates Coleridges own pleasure against pain contradiction with opium ingestion and Orientalism. Furthermore, it perhaps subtly indicates the approach he believes the imperialistic order of Britain should adopt when attempting to contain those with flashing eyes.The plot that unravels throughout Kubla Khan is one where a powerful Eastern, feminine force penetrates and destroys the little(a) Western, male barriers that enclose it. The implication presented by Coleridge is that these same forces can not only impose themselves on a nation, but on an individual. D. A. Miller identifies the male terror at the prospect of being occupy by the female, arguing that it resembles and inverts a classic rape scenario.Thus, it strikes a common chord in Coleridges own Oriental possession, which is often feminised, invading his body but exerting its own control over it, by nature evoking paradoxical destruction and pleasure within him. Moreover, this inverted rape scenario is itself a partial thong of what Coleridge deemed Britains exploitation of the East, and an ironic act of retribution.It was Coleridges foremost concern that this invasion and alteration accomplish went some way into eroding sense of national identity and British floriculture, a dish up that he deduced would ultimately blur any distinctions to be made between Britain and the Eastern world, until they eventually merged into one.doubting Thomas De Quinceys analyses of the relationship between opium and Orientalism yield conflicting opinions to those formulated by Coleridge. It was De Quinceys underlying speculation that opium acted as a means of excavating the Orient within the British self. He concludes, contrary to Coleridge, that divisions between the East and West never actually existed the Orient al other never facilitated a hostile invasion of body and nation, but was present at conception, and is indeed the origin of all things British.In a comparable vein to Coleridge, De Quincey condemns the exposure of the other within the self, but still paradoxically seeks it by means of opium intake. toilette Barrell comments that De Quincey identifies the internal manifestation of the Orient within as an infection, and adopts measures to protect him against this. One such method follows the process of inoculation, whereby in taking a piece of the Orient into himself, namely opium, De Quincey hopes to dismiss that which he does not attribute to himself, conceptualising an internal West against East division in terms of what is familiar and what is alien. However, as Barrell suggests, this measure is bound for failure because the subject reinforces the infection by the same means he hope will coerce it.Integral to De Quinceys musings on Orientalism is the visit of the Malay in Con fessions of an English Opium-Eater. The Malay is depicted in a demonic fashion, with fiery eyes that took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the Opera House. The otherness of the Malay is overtly referred to in its comparison to the domesticity of the newborn servant mention is made of an impassable gulf that exists between their methods of communication. In addition, the purpose with a turban and loose trowsers of dingy white is harshly juxtaposed with the native spirit of gage intrepidity displayed by the young servantAnd a more striking picture there could not be imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations.The impression given is one of a man, or, as his statute title may imply, a collective, who are deh umanised, depicted in terms of a polished piece of piece of furniture his only relief is that his trowsers of dingy white are excused by the dark panelling of the kitchen. Furthermore, De Quincey emulates Coleridges sense of holy dread within Kubla Khan in the manner in which he expresses the young servants reaction to the appearance of the Malayhe had fit(p) himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to scag though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance express as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her.Provided here is not only a comment on the approach taken by the familiar West to the alien East, one that, although threatening, still proves intriguing, but perhaps further indicates De Quinceys own personal struggle with his opium intake. Moreover, significance lies in De Quinceys attempts to converse with the Malay in unmixed Greek, in that it exemplifies Edward Saids concept of Orientalism De Quinceys const ruction of a material conjoined East, in which differences between India and China, for instance, are ignored is why he believes speaking to the Malay in any Oriental tongue will suffice.De Quinceys oriental dreams in the later stages of Confessions provide a supplementary outlook on the Orientalism construct. He reveals that the causes of my horror lie deep, continuingAs the cradle of the human race, it would altogether have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, c. is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed.De Quincey is of the opinion that the sheer age and permanence of the Orient implies that it provides the origin for everything attributed to British culture and identity. This notion is enhanced by his further consolation that the barrier of utter abhorrence , and want of sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse De Quincey ironically accepts that there is in fact, no barrier at all, and that what may indeed lie on the other side manifests itself within him during his opium reveries.Thus, De Quincey inverts his own previously conjured distinctions between West and East, self and other, through his opium ingestion. Paradoxically, that which reveals itself as most other to him is still ironically the origin of his own self. De Quinceys conceptualised Orient is thus rendered useless as he accepts that the West of all time was the East to begin with, and that any argument to the contrary is a futile one.BibliographyAllen, N. B., A Note on Coleridges Kubla Khan. Modern Language Notes, 57, 1942, pp. 108-113Berridge, V., Opium and the People Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century England, 2nd edition (London Free Association, 1999).Cooke, M. G., De Quincey, Coleridge, and the Formal Uses of Intoxication. Yale French Studies, 50, 1974, pp. 26-40Hayter, A., Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London Faber, 1968).Jay, M., Emperors of Dreams Drugs in the Nineteenth Century (Sawtry Dedalus, 2000).Leask, N., British Romantic Writers and the East Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1992)Said, E. W., Orientalism (London Penguin, 2003)Schneider, E., The Dream of Kubla Khan. PMLA, 60, 1945, pp. 784-801