Homework Assignment #3-- Kubla Khan

“Kubla Khan” is one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most well known and  riveting poems, and the story in which it came to exist is just as intriguing as the poem itself.  The Romantic era, in which Coleridge wrote this poem highlighted the importance of the imagination.   And “Kubla Khan” exemplifies such a fascination. 

Romantic poets during the Enlightenment emphasized nature, religion, and imagination.  They felt that science was ruining what God had intended for the world, by picking the natural world apart.  A Romanticist poet  for example, dismays scientific theory and reason.  Instead, they live in a world based off emotions and feelings.  

Romantics deemed the imagination highly important, and as a result, should play a role in  one’s daily life.  In “real” life, one may grow discouraged of their dreams or even rational thought.  However, in a dream world anything is possible.  For example, someone can create a world where purple elephants existed, like mentioned in class last Thursday.  That is a perfect example since when one thinks of purple elephants, the first thing that comes to mind; child’s play.  Which brings me to my next point, children who are beings of innocence live with this mindset everyday.  As one enters adulthood, they start trying to answer all of life’s “big questions” and rationalize all thought.  These romantic poets believed that one should never let go of their imagination, in that realm of “make believe” anything can happen.  Oppression, or harm is not in arms reach and life is much more enjoyable.   

To attain such a connection with the imagination, most romantic poets used drugs, such as opium which allowed them to live and think in such creative ways.  Such a phenomena holds true for Coleridge in his work of “Kubla Khan”.  The story says that Coleridge, after taking a drug similar to opium, and reading about how Kubla Khan commanded the creation of the new palace, he fell asleep.  And during his slumber he had an indescribable vision and while sleeping,   created more than two hundred lines of poetry.  As soon as he awoke from his slumber, he began writing furiously, jotting down every line that he could remember, however, a few stanza’s into the poem he was interrupted by a visitor, “a business man from Porlock” and was unable to remember the rest of his imagination’s creation. It is believed that the last stanza of the poem was written after the interruption.  No one has been able to pin point who this man from Porlock was, however, he stands as a prominent figure in many of Coleridge’s works as a collective whole.       

The first three stanzas of “Kubla Khan” are products of pure imagination. “...And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills-Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree; and here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery” (8-11).   Here, he is building a totally imaginative location, which sounds absolutely beautiful.  This creation could be a metaphor for the building of one’s imagination itself as well.  

In  stanza two, we see elements of a war prophecies, “Abs’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far-Ancestral voices prophesying war!” (29-30). Thus, following an even of “eruption”, “As if his earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced; Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst-Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,” (18-21).  Coleridge is saying that following a natural disaster, a man made one is bound to happen. In lines  thirty five and thirty six, contrasting images of  beauty with elements of darkness, “It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”.  In lines thirty seven and forty one, the speaker recalls a vision of a beautiful damsel, “A damsel with a dulcimer, In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she play’d, Singing of Mount Abora.  The speaker is impressed with the the damsel’s voice and tries to revive the image within himself, “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!”  considering some say that the last stanza was written after Coleridge had been interrupted of jotting down his dream, which is symbolic of his attempt to recreate her voice.  Within the last few lines, the speaker invites the audience to use their imagination to those who are willing, “And all who heard should see them there, An all should cry, Beware! Beware!...And close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise” (49-54).  Here the speakers thesis comes together: one should never deny their imagination.

        Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is one of the most well known poems written during the Romantic Period.  And like other romanticists, Coleridge believed that the use of ones imagination is very important and “Kubla Khan’s” message directly represents this belief.