"Hopelessness"

Life is full of contradictions. We are witnesses to them day by day. The news, television, people in general, say things that may have contradictions. In the specific case of Keats, his poetry is rather pessimistic but very very deep. I think his intention was to transmit his world within as precisely as possible. Nonetheless, the language he uses is at times ambiguous and has almost no connection with what the spirit and thoughts of that time were.
Romanticism was characterized by optimism and “fresh air”. The idea was to revitalize those times. All the opposite was the content of Keats’ poetry. Nevertheless, after discussing in class, I arrived at the conclusion that Keats probably saw death as a way of escaping and being in peace. It is not that strange to believe in this since a lot of people see life as something tortuous, hopeless and confusing. Keats might have wanted to contradict all he was seeing with his extremely “dark” but personal, intense and honest ideas (according to my standpoint). No motivation and lack of interest may be the causes of the “bitterness” shown through words.

"Connecting with inborn emotions"

Kubla Khan made me travel amongst different emotions that do not arise every day. While reading this piece of literature I thought about the internal trip that a lot of people go through when they feel certain emotions. For example: melancholy, sadness, happiness, tiredness, sweetness, stress, and so on. The poem also makes you feel reflected on the picture through the words that are used, the subtlety of the expression of the ideas and the description of the scene.

Even though poetry seems to be accessible to everybody, it is really hard to understand a poem like this one, when it is not your language. For instance, for Spanish speakers reading Neruda’s poetry is not as challenging as reading Coleridge’s. Nevertheless, when I understood the poem in some way it was not that difficult. I really liked the way the author set the atmosphere. When I was reading it, I truly felt into it. Indeed, it reminded me of “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse because of its mysticism and its great depiction of natural features such as trees, rivers, hills and forests.