Curse of Kehama
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.
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.
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.
Although the poem describes Hindu myth it is heavily influenced by Zoroastrian theology, and the ideal of a dualistic moral system.
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.
The basis for Southey wishing to write an epic poem came from his private reading of literature while attending Westminster School as a boy.
In particular, fellow poet Landor encouraged Southey to complete the epic along with writing the work Roderick the Last of the Goths.
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.
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.
[12] 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 ...
"[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.
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.
"[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.
[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".
[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.
