i hate 'fragment'

i know that as a student of English literature, i should embrace the paradoxes that provide the scaffolding for life as we know it. generally, i can accept that life is all flux and yet things never change. i will admit that someone can say too little by saying too much. one thing i am unwilling to accept, however, is that fragments, created as such, should be taken seriously as aesthetic objects.

perhaps i should elaborate on what i mean by 'seriously,' because surely we encounter fragmented art on a day to day basis. eliot's 'wasteland' is basically a hodge podge of fragments from the original typescript pound tore to pieces, and we take it seriously. we certainly take what verses remain from sappho seriously. eliot and sappho represent two alternate poles of the spectrum in which i perceive 'fragments' as existing. eliot's "fragment" is read as being a complete aesthetic work rather than a part of a whole. most critics set aside the ontology of the poem as a sort of secondary concern when it comes to interpretations. i suppose, then, what i mean by 'take seriously' is 'to see the potential for solid and largely explanatory interpretations'.

sappho's verse, on the other hand, comes to us in bits and pieces of lines found quoted in other sources. the sapphic fragments have a 'partial' existence because the full body of sappho's work is apparently inaccessible. time did away with lots of it, not sappho herself.

the reason i'm thinking about all this is because it really pisses me off that i have to think about 'kubla khan' as being a "fragment". i don't care that coleridge claims that his writing is interrupted and that he only relates a small portion of his dream vision. he's full of shit. let's take a brief look at the final stanza of the poem:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,	40
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,	45
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!	50
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

if the final lines of this poem don't sound like a sort of ending, i don't know what does. the whole notion of something being 'intentionally fragmented' just seems impossible to me. either something is whole or it is not. there is no in between, and when it comes to interpreting a fragment, i think a reader finds himself drowning in endless hermeneutic possibilities.

the other people in my romanticism class don't seem to be phased by the idea of an 'intentional fragment'... but it really really bothers me. and i want to know what you, my beloved readers, think on the subject. i will happily reward you with provocative tales about my always tantalizing life in the post to come; look forward to hearing about happy donuts, dog walking and my inability to settle down with just one nice cereal.