Kubla Khan

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.
 1 part: the description of the place
KublaKhan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph
Alph, the sacred river, ran
caverns measureless
Through caverns measureless to
to man
man hyperbole
Down to a sunless
sunless sea..
sea.
This big, dramatic riveroftakes
First letter over most
the Greek of the first half of
alphabet
They
the areThis
poem. the opposite
is the only of time
the warm,
its name happy palace. They
is mentioned
are dramatic,
according
It casts to freezing,
a shadow overunderground,
mythology, the beginning
these first few and represent
of life andItlanguage
lines. also
Kublai Khan (1215-1294)
everything the pleasure was
dome"theisfifth
not. ofWe
thegetMongol
a sensegreat khans,
gives
Noticegrandsonusofathe
how Coleridge sense of being
is already
legendary in an
stepping
Mongol imaginary
away from
conqueror landscape,
Genghishistory:
Khan. he
Heisis
There's
Alpheus
that certainly
thisthis
landscape no
= the classical river in Mongolia
underground
is could
both huge and river; by this name
the sacred river.
unknowable.
because
transforming where
place,else
this person, a and
sea always
this storybeinto
best known in the West as the Cublai Kaan of Marco Polo who "sunless"
his own
and
creation.
Itvisited
gives never
"Kubla
Xanadu,
us thebright
Khan" isormain
and helped
poem's cheerful
definitely
to images ?poem
startathe theabout
legend
of of itsthe
force andjourneys of the
magnificence
excitement
mindof
and
thethe imagination.
natural world. While other places may be quiet or safe or
calm, the river is noisy, active, and even a little dangerous.
 So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls
walls and
and towers
towers were girdled round:
sinuous rills,
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
The natural world outside is wild and strange, but within the
TheThe
palace speaker
language
walls takes
gets
things areus
fancy away
here. from
peaceful Aand those
"sinuous gloomy,
rill“ is really
protected.
justendless
a twistycaverns,
stream. and tells us a little bit about the
gardensoften
Coleridge around
uses the palace.language to illustrate simple
beautiful
Everything about this place feels safe and
underlying
happy.concepts.
TheIt's "fertile,"
contrast the gardens
between arestrange
the scary,
"bright,"
cavernseven
andthe
thetrees smellfamiliar
pleasant, good
space around the palace is striking
 chasm which slanted
But oh! that deep romantic chasm
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
Maybe a ghost, since she haunts the place. Maybe she has been
cursed, or has had a spell cast on her, and she has fallen in love
Note
with how The
the
an evil riverTypical
poet,
spirit. falls like
adding theathe
of cascade
word downliterature.
"demon“,
Romantic thechanges
side of and
deepens thisone
Back hill,
image. cutting
to the aAlph,
riverwas
If she "deep chasm,"
justwhich
wailing oracanyon,
is for
beginning
plain to
old "lover,"
Thewould
that speaker
seem isn't
through
be sad, sayinglikethat
it. not
almost
but anysoofstrange
a character
nearly these things
in this
andpoem are there in the
exciting.
poem; he's saying that this is the kind of place where they would
be atspeaker
The home. is very excited when he talks about the river as all
those exclamations points suggest.
The speaker is using them to let us know just
how romantic and spooky the chasm really is.
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
reboundinghail,
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail
Or chaffy
chaffy grain
grain beneath the thresher's flail: similes
And `mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
One reading of the poem:
TheThe river isdome=
pleasure not seen as something
imagination and poetry
Thecontinuous, but asnegative
natural world= something that( is
reality created
savage place)
each moment.
in contrast with the world produced by imagination
The mighty fountain= the poetic power
alliteration Five m iles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
measureless to
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
man,
lifelessocean:
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean
First we have an image of the river rushing down a deep canyon cut into a
Here we see the caverns again, described in exactly the same
woodedThe hillside. The water
Different is moving
words, ofsame fast and reproduces
furious, almost like a
murmuring
way: "measureless sound
to man." Thegloomy
these words
repetitionidea. the lazy,
of this phrase
waterfall; the river then
slow-moving flattens
feeling of theoutriver
andatturns into
this home a proper
moment theriver,
in sense poem flowing
emphasizes their importance and drives their of
gently through Xanadu for five miles until it reaches some "caverns.”
mystery and depth.
The other settings in the poem tend to be active and alive. The
forest is took
The speaker sunny,
us the river
up to is noisy,
peak, and now the he's
dometaking
is warm, even again,
us down the caves
circling
backare deep
to the and spooky
quiet, icy. Theimages
ocean,that
however
started is the
justpoem.
an empty, open reaches
The river space. now
It might
the flat make
plain of the us think
valley a little
where bit of the
Xanadu Underworld, a place where
is located.
things simply end.
 And `mid this tumult KubIa heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

This is Genghis Khan's grandson, after all, so he probably

spent aThis
lot of
newtime thinking
image takesabout warfrom
us away or….the river, and
into the even wilder second half of the poem.
......the ancestral voices symbolize the voice from the rational
world,a menace against the miracle of art ,that is the peaceful
world created by Kubla Khan.

The “walls and towers” built by Kubla Khan could not

even protect himself from the outer world, suggesting
that imagination is only a temporary relief from reality.
 The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
ice!
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!
There's a whole world of contrasts between the dome and the
caverns: Natural vs. man-made, symmetrical and irregular, sunny
The reflection of the dome on the water might allude
and frozen.
to thegives
This is what Platonic conception
the poem a lot ofof
itsthe material
energy: realityclashing
opposites as
togethershadows
and thencast by light
making fromkind
a weird the world of Ideas (see
of harmony.
Plato's cavern). In this way Kubla's dome would be the
Kubla Khan's pleasure-dome
perfect is the
idea of poetic central
creation structure
projected oninthe
thesea
poem.
of With
its combination of sacred and profane, of natural and artificial elements,
appearances.
it represents first of all that reconciliation of opposites, of the many into
one, which Coleridge considered the task of poetic imagination. The
poet's energy should therefore be directed to the creation of the "dome"
like Kubla's
 2 part: Oniric vision of the poet

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

For example,
Without where and
any warning, the what is Mt.
speaker
sudden change Abora?
changes
from 3°the subject.
to 1° person He starts to
Some people
describe think
another theIspeaker
vision that
=the he is referring
poetonce had. to a real place in Ethiopia,
some
In thisthink
visionit's
heasees
biblical reference,
a girl. andthree
He tells us others tie itabout
things to a place that
her, in Milton
three
mentions in Paradise Lost.
lines:
YouShe
1) could wasask the same questions
Abyssinian (that's an about
old waytheofother
saying parts of this vision.
Ethiopian).
WhyShe
2) is she
wasfrom Ethiopia,
playing what (an
a dulcimer doesinstrument
the dulcimer withsymbolize?
strings).
In one
3) Shesense all dreams
was singing anda visions
about are private,
place called Mt. Abora and(a they can't
name be
that
completely
Coleridge explained.
made up). That sense of mystery is part of what makes this
poem beautiful.
How can we interpret these lines?
 Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight `twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
If he could revive that music then he would be able to create the
perfect work of art: the pleasure-dome that Kubla had ordered
Nowbethe
would speaker
built lookstoback
"in air", on the
signify the spiritual
powerfulquality
music of
he the
heard
poetic
in that unifying
creation, vision. the opposites — "That sunny dome! those
He of
caves can describe
ice!" — inita to us, but he can't
harmonious wholereally get back
in natural to
adherence to
theexperiencing that intense
music from which it tookfeeling
its origin.
 And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave
Weaveaacircle
circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The figure represented is characterised by flashing eyes which might
have a blinding
The poet effect
portrayed by on
thehumans
last , floating
lines of the hair, isand
poem the finally, by the
prophet-bard,
The speaker
assumption that The
he on second
demands act is
of the
honey-dew to close
reader
[has] fed your
And eyes
or listener to with
drunk perform acts
the milk of
ofthe
who was to become popular
holy in the Romantic Age, different from
great reverence
Paradise; thus he ordread,
has been i.e. with
fear entitled
towards to fear
this towards
figure:
share the the afirst act,
privileges of which
gods (for
the
common human beings for
superhuman his prophetic
being. qualities, feared by them
reminds
ancient gods' of symbolic
consuming gestures
ambrosia performed
and nectar). during a religious or magic
his insight into the divine.
conjuration or incantation, is to weave a circle round him thrice.
 A person from Porlock ?
Improbabilities in Coleridge's story

1934 a manuscript was discovered with significant variants

?
Coleridge spent a good deal of time revising it before publication

Purchas. His pilgrimage (1613) a rare and very large volume

?
he could hardly have taken with him to a lonely farmhouse
 Why did he invent this story?

Coleridge seems to have had an intense desire to be seen as

1 an instinctive, spontaneous poet, who composed without
difficulty;
In fact, he took enormous pains over his poems, and wrote so little,
according to Wordsworth, because of the labour that writing cost him.

Another possibility is that he was aware that his

2 contemporaries would find the poem meaningless — it
tells no story, and consists only of a series of exotic and
apparently unrelated images.

Thus he invented the story of unconscious composition as a defence

against the charge of writing non-sense
 What does it mean then?
It is unknown whether the poem was meant to have a particular meaning.

1 It is possible that Coleridge wanted the individual reader to use

his/her own imagination to reach an interpretation of it.

2 The poem could be about language:

"Alph, the sacred river" is the river of language . This river springs from
underground, from the unconscious, and the magical pleasure dome built
where the river runs represents poetry.

3 The poem could be about the two different kinds of

imagination that Coleridge distinguished in his criticism.
Kubla's palace is the product of the decorative 'fancy', whereas the river, which
bursts irresistibly from underground represents the true poetic imagination, an
irresistible, even dangerous force.
Thank you