The archetypal mandala: Visions of the self in the poetry of Coleridge, Eliot and Breytenbach
Literator June 4, 2013 E. Deudney
This paper surveys how three poets—a Romantic, a Modernist, and a Postmodernist—depict transformations of consciousness in cyclical poems. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an allegory of the poet's temporal subjective consciousness metamorphosing into an eternal subject position. Eliot's "Four Quartets" exemplifies a Modernist ironic vision of unity achieved through a religio-aesthetic meta-narrative. Breytenbach's "The Undanced Dance" prison poetry volumes adopt an Einsteinian time-space form of relations, luring readers into postmodern quantum consciousness.