In ‘Kubla Khan – or a vision in a dream.
A Fragment’, the reader finds the spirit of the poet himself,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is a surreal reflection of his imaginative prowess and creative genius. He
himself had clarified that the concept of ‘Kubla Khan’ was born from a state of trance after he
entered a semi-conscious state when he consumed opium. His composition is an interrupted work
based on memory which resulted in a highly distinctive fragmentation, giving rise to contrasting
psyche, and sparked an ageless debate of interpretations and suppositions. The utopian vision
decorated by vivid imagery stands out as a perfect piece of work in the Modern Romantic era, with
inspiration from European intellectualism and the revolutionary ideals of the French Revolution.
Coleridge himself led an extremely vibrant life and his works often reflect his nature – a cornucopia
of detailed imagery mixed with intellectual fodder and symbolism.
The idealist critic Rolf Breuer has conceptually divided the entire poem into two parts – level and
metalevel. The first two stanzas constitute the first part, in which Coleridge talks about this
fantastical place – the palace of Kubla Khan, historically the grandson of Genghis Khan and provides
a picturesque description of the land which seems to be straight out of a fairytale. In the second
part, Coleridge enters a dreamlike trance wherein he revisits his old dreams and tries to draw a
semblance of inspiration from it, and weave together his present thoughts about Kubla, his palace
in Xanadu, and the air of mystique that surrounds them all. C.H. Herford says, ‘Romanticism is an
extraordinary development of imaginative sensibility’, and ‘Kubla Khan’ contains all the heightened
imagination – ‘deep romantic chasm’, ‘a waning moon was haunted’, ‘vaulted like rebounding hail’
to classify it as a Romantic masterpiece.
These four lines mark the end of the second stanza, and the end of Breuer’s Level part. Coleridge
marks the end of his description with the symbolism of duality. ‘Kubla Khan’ may be treated as an
allegory for the creation of art, and what choice would a human being take when creating that art
form. With the pleasure-dome in Xanadu, Kubla Khan represents that force of humankind who
asserts the dominance of Nature, creating a palace amidst ‘forests ancient as the hills’, decorated
with ‘gardens bright’ and bordered by ‘sinuous rills’. Coleridge points out how despite the
intervention of Man, the holy river Alph still flowed through the fertile lands, rocky hills and
through the caverns into the sunless sea. The choice of creation of art, can be done like Xanadu, by
grasping Nature, or like the Abynissian maid, embracing it.
Coleridge drew parallels with the natural process of procreation and sexual ecstasy with that of
liberation of art’s creation. The emergence of the river Alph in a ‘swift half-intermitted bust’, over a
fertile Earth which was ‘in fast thick pants were breathing’ signifies the precursor of the birth of life.
Xanadu was in no way lifeless. The sounds of the river flowing were different in every stage, from a
possible roar over the rocky mountainous landscape to a hollow groan in the caverns to a falling
gush as it met the ‘lifeless ocean’. Coupled with that are the supernatural elements, of a ‘woman
wailing for her demon-lover’, possibly representing Isis and Osiris, and echoes of ancestral voices –
the Mongol warriors. All these are opposites – the creative urge of human travelling alongside a
destructive will, the gurgling of the river in the mountains to the steadiness at the end; and these
opposites coexist, handing together by a delicate thread. Coleridge is awed by the existence of this
dichotomy in Life and in Art. He is so wonderstruck by it that he refers to it as ‘A miracle of rare
device’. ‘A sunny pleasure-dome’ and ‘caves of ice’ are elements from the Xanaduian landscape
which Coleridge uses to represent the extremities that co-exist in art and life forms.
‘Mingled Measure’ acts like a transformation, converting the geometric design of the Xanadu palace
established earlier in the poem into a lyric, or poetry. In this transformed realm, the dichotomy
exists. The unification of ‘sunny pleasure dome’ with ‘caves of ice’ is a throwback to Spenser, and
the Renaissance sonnet conceit of juxtaposition of fire and ice. This paradox exists to highlight the
preservation of art. As a symbol of art, it remains constant throughout time. It is pure reflectivity, an
ambivalent paradigm of vision as both shine and sheen. The antonyms of sunlight and ice, subtly
established as reciprocity of identity and difference, signifies the underlying paradox of poetic
imagination as understood by Coleridge. In correlation to this imagery, Coleridge had presented a
similar symbol in ‘Frost at Midnight’ when he painted a picture of reflected light in a fixed and
frozen form - an icicle hanging from the cottage seen through the window on a wintry night, which
was ‘quietly shining to the quiet moon’.
‘Kubla Khan’s missing synthesis passage suggest an openness in transitioning from description to
reflection, and in that openness lies its distinctive beauty. It celebrates the creation of art, and itself
is art, succeeding when it seems to fail.
