Kubla Khan
If a man could pass thro' Paradise in a Dream, & have a flower presented
to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, & found that flower
in his hand when he awoke -- Aye! and what then?
(CN, iii 4287)
Kubla Khan is a fascinating and exasperating poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (. Almost everyone who has read it, has been charmed by its magic. It must surely be true that no poem of comparable length in English or any other language has been the subject of so much critical commentary. Its fifty-four lines have spawned thousands of pages of discussion and analysis. Kubla Khan is the sole or a major subject in five book-length studies; close to 150 articles and book-chapters (doubtless I have missed some others) have been devoted exclusively to it; and brief notes and incidental comments on it are without number. Despite this deluge, however, there is no critical unanimity and very little agreement on a number of important issues connected with the poem: its date of composition, its "meaning", its sources in Coleridge's reading and observation of nature, its structural integrity (i.e. fragment versus complete poem), and its relationship to the Preface by which Coleridge introduced it on its first publication in 1816.
Coleridge's philosophical explorations appear in his greatest poems. 'Kubla Khan', with its exotic imagery and symbols, rich vocabulary and rhythms, written, by Coleridge's account, under the influence of laudanum, was often considered a brilliant work, but without any defined theme. However, despite its complexity the poem can be read as a well-constructed exposition on human genius and art. The theme of life and nature again appears in 'The Rime of the Ancient...
... middle of paper ...
...pting to salvage it by reducing it to a coherent substratum of symbols, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that no single interpretation will ever resolve the complexities of so protean a product of the human imagination. Mystery and ambiguity, verisimilitude and teasing suggestiveness, are essential ingredients in Kubla Khan -- a poem which reflects, though darkly, Coleridge's largely subconscious ruminations on poetry, paradise, and the heights and depths of his own unfathomable intellectual and spiritual being. Kubla Khan is one of those "ethereal finger-pointings" so prized by Keats; it is a poem that has no palpable design upon us, and it provides at least one instance of an occasion on which Coleridge did not "let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge"
... Cake, the fulfillment of her dream under the pear tree, "He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom--a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps." (p 106) she has met the man that she was searching for.
In the West, Genghis Khan and the Mongol tribe are often presented as brutal savages who wiped out entire cultures, destroyed cities and killed many people. While these accounts are true, there was certainly more to the Mongol empire than sheer brutality. Many of the practices that Genghis Khan put into place were responsible for the successes of the Mongol Nation. With an ability to adapt and innovate, Genghis Khan became known as the world’s greatest conqueror and is still revered in many countries today.
I will have to absorb the fragrance without touching the roses, I suppose, he thought in
with the alliteration of the frst five lines : "Kubla Khan'', ''dome decree'', and ''sunless sea''. Coleridge interlaces short exclamations (''but oh!'', ''a savage place!'') and exageratedly long exclamations (''as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!'') reinforces the feeling of flowing which is related to the time ''ticking'' irregularly away, creating a sense of timelessness.
Kubla Khan, however, is predominantly a mosaic of fragments of thoughts and incomplete themes. Most likely, the reader observes that poetic material perpetually escapes Coleridge’s full attention, while the poem simultaneously contains profound gushes of documented creativity. One is led to believe that this continual tension between recorded and unrecorded poetic thought creates the unique narrative sequence and the mysterious, disturbing quality that embodies Coleridge’s story of Kubla Khan.
Mileur, J. 1982. Coleridge and the Art of Immanence. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
It is by no means a permanent beauty; compared to humans, the lifespan of any flower is pitifully short. Yet it is a flower with which George Herbert compares humanity, a frail little blossom. “My shriveled heart... was gone / quite underground; as flowers depart / to see their mother-root, when they have blown” (lines 8-11). Every autumn, the flowers die and retreat underground, and every spring new seeds burst from the frozen ground, growing and blossoming into a new season of flowers. This cycle of nature represents a Christian 's spiritual walk, too, outlining the springs and winters of faith. As Herbert describes his spiritual life in terms of the seasons, he has hope that even as winter always becomes spring, so his worldly trials will eventually come to an end.
In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge expresses his desire to use the inspirations from nature to create his own “Paradise” of poetry (54, p.1634). In the first stanza, Coleridge creates an exotic oriental garden, where the trees, gardens, hills, and the “Alph” river, together present the beauty of Mother Nature (3, p.1633). Here, the poet carefully observes his surroundings, as the nature will serve as the source of inspiration for his poetry. The “pleasure dome” (2, p.1633) in line two has two functions, one representing the creation of human beings on earth, and the other being the foundation of Coleridge’s poetic paradise. As the clash between nature and humans takes place in the second stanza with a “woman wailing for her demon-lover” (16, p.1633) the poet calls upon nature for his inspiration, represented by the powerful activity of nature. The energy of nature is released in forms of “a might fountain” (19, p.1633), “rebounding hail” (21, p.1633), or “dancing rocks” (23, p.1633) and eventually the natural disasters will accompanied by man-made destruction as “Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war” (29-30, p.1634)! Coleridge on one hand reinforces that man and nature are inseparable and one the other uses the energy of nature to represent the spontaneous spurring of emotions in the poet’s mind.
...ubla Khan, the imagination is more of a physical, creative force, with more raw power than finesse. With it, works such as a pleasure-dome full of physical paradoxes can be inspired, created, and described, far better than with the words of a critic alone “A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has it that the imagination is more of an intangible force, subtle yet with as much power as the imagination in Kubla Khan. It connects the huge array of creatures on the Earth together, and without the imagination, they would, die in the end, one by one.
“A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.” Coleridge followed his own advice in the crafting of Kubla Khan; which presents his interpretation of the Kubla Khan court when under the influence of opiates. Due to the complexity of the poem, many have found that the poem lacks a true theme but instead focuses on “the nature and dialectical process of poetic creation.” Coleridge created a masterpiece by providing the readers room for personal interpretation but also a poem so well crafted that it illustrates the Romantic period as a whole.
In his epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge critiques the Gothic convention of the explained supernatural (in particular explanation in the form of divine intervention) through his portrayal of the tension between Christian themes and the sublimity of the archaic both within the poem itself as well as in the external preface and marginal glosses accompanying the poem. I intend to argue that despite the seemingly inherent Christian morality present on the surface of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge subtly draws attention to a pre-Christian subtext, which holds the insignificance of humanity and the unknowability of the universe in high regard. Through his characterization of the Ancient Mariner and his
...g conveyed better in the words of that language as opposed to in the English language. But, the linguistic element would in no way convey to me, as a reader, some meaning which wouldn’t come across to a non-Assamese speaker who reads the translated version of the poem. Thus, I read the poem keeping in mind the background information about the poem and the poet but that information did not distract me from deciphering the actual meaning of the text; it actually added to it. In other words, unlike the proposal of Wimsatt and Beardsley, I “consulted the oracle” and also uncovered the true meaning of the text.
Through the ingenious works of poetry the role of nature has imprinted the 18th and 19th century with a mark of significance. The common terminology ‘nature’ has been reflected by our greatest poets in different meanings and understanding; Alexander Pope believed in reason and moderation, whereas Blake and Wordsworth embraced passion and imagination.
Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be interpreted in many different ways regarding the question of the relationship between the man and the nature. According to Geoffrey H. Hartman "Coleridge's poem traces the 'dim and perilous way' of a soul that has broken with nature and feels the burdenous guilt of selfhood" (48). Robert Penn Warren explains his perception and “the primary theme in this poem as the theme of sacramental vision, or the
“Xanadu” is a wonderful “Paradise” of fantasy, but Coleridge draws the readers back to reality with the word “I.” He immediately transitions from describing visionary objects to explaining his own poetic challenge. The “pleasure-dome” mirrors the poem and Kubla Khan mirrors Coleridge. The poem ultimately becomes a “vision in a dream,” where the reader recognizes the images that Coleridge recreates through imagination.