When we studied John Keats's poem "Ode to a Nightingale" in class last week, we also touched briefly on his method of composition and the issue of whether or not that was a Romantic-era construction or more factual in nature. Specifically, Keats's friend Charles Armitage Brown stated that after Keats had spent time sitting under a plum tree in the grass-plot and listening to the nightingale's song while composing his poem, that he'd come inside and thrust the scattered pieces of paper he'd used to jot down the poem behind some books in Brown's library. Brown then takes credit for recovering those pieces of paper with the ode written upon them and urging Keats to write them down properly and publish them. However, it was a known convention of Romantic writers to provide some sort of preface, mostly fictional, that lent more poetic impact to the following poem.
For example, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan" he included a preface entitled "A Vision in a Dream" in which Coleridge asserted that he'd been in ill health and had fallen into a sleep colored by the opium his doctor had prescribed, during which he composed two or three hundred lines of the poem with no conscious effort. While Coleridge was indeed an opium addict and that substance has the effect of hallucinatory dreams, it is unlikely that he composed an entire poem during an opium dream and then could only recall part of it upon waking. It's not impossible, of course, but when you consider that Coleridge's statement of dream composition has the effect of manipulating the situation of author and reader, namely through promoting a more active role of the audience of filling in the supposed gaps of the story, it becomes possible to examine Coleridge's veracity. His intriguing preface makes poets seem like divine channels for the Muses, keeps the reader(s) actively engaged in creating additions to the poem within negative space, and also provides an all-encompassing excuse for any areas in which the poem may fall short. Now, the question is whether or not Charles Brown's statement about Keats's method accomplishes something similar and can be thus considered as not entirely factual.
The idea that Keats just jotted "Ode to a Nightingale" down idly on four or five sheets of paper which he then carelessly shoved behind some books does seem to highlight the divine genius of the poet as it implies that such a wonderful and complex poem was nearly an afterthought for Keats. The average reader would of course be amazed by Keats's poetic powers when considering that he could jot down profound poems as effortlessly as they themselves would a list for the market. Therefore, this act does have the same effect as Coleridge's preface when it comes to exalting the poet above the rest of mankind. However, it must be considered that Keats, unlike Coleridge, did not fabricate this preface to his poem and have it disseminated along with his ode. Brown seems to have been the primary agent in that process, and though the story was circulated informally following the poem's publication it is still a very prevalent view of Keats's creative process.
The next thing to consider is whether or not the story of Keats's rather offhand treatment of the text of the poem accomplishes anything besides exaltation of poetic genius. Coleridge's account of the inspiration behind "Kubla Khan" definitively results in a sort of mediation between the poet and his audience, which of course results in a more favorable reception of the poem. The story of Keats's inspiration from nature which he jotted down and then stashed does not manipulate the audience of the poem in any way; it merely directs focus to his genius in coming up with such a deft and complex poem as well as illustrating that such commonplace treatment of the text must come from his ability to produce such creative works on a regular basis. Therefore, when added to the fact that it was Brown and not Keats who spread the story of the ode's composition, it can be said that though the story may be less than factual and aimed at deifying the poet it is not as alarmingly manipulative as that of Coleridge.
I like that you discuss "Kubla Kahn." As a teacher, it's always been a sort of problematic poem for me, in that the story of the poem's composition is almost more interesting than the poem itself. It's interesting to read and talk about, but it's difficult to make sense of in that the poem doesn't draw to much of a conclusion.
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