Symbolic Language in Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn"
Paper Two
Patrick Mooney
English 106
May 18, 1998
When I was younger, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, who lived just a few miles from my family and me. On those occasions when I spent the night at my grandparents' house, my grandmother would frequently read to my brother and me. Unlike many other children, we were not subjected to constant repetitions of such children's classics as Spot Gets Neutered and Dick and Jane Become Lost in the Woods and Are Eaten by Hungry Bears. My grandmother, a remarkably well-read woman without a college degree, selected our bedtime stories from the high points of world literature. My grandmother was, for instance, the one who introduced me to Greek mythology. Thanks to her, I grew up on stories of Pandora's box, Hades and Persephone, and Perseus. Although very little of this bedtime reading material was poetry, one of the selections which I remember the most clearly from the many years of bedtime reading that my grandmother gave to me was Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn."
Although the form of "Kubla Kahn" is beautiful, it is complex. The rhyming patterns are quite complicated; the first stanza, for instance, rhymes in the pattern abaab ccdede. Coleridge's patterns of alliteration are also involved: He will sometimes use the sound at the beginning of one syllable as the sound at the beginning of the next syllable, as in "Xanadu did" in line one, "miles meandering" in line 25, and "deep delight" in line 44. He also alliterates vowels, not only consonants, to produce a rhythmic singsong effect.
Although the form and the beautiful language in "Kubla Kahn" were all that I could appreciate when my grandmother first read the poem to me, I have since come to realize that the poem has a complex symbolic pattern, as well. My own analysis may seem to be paltry when faced with the fact that, as was mentioned in class, there have been thousands of criticisms of this poem published, some comprising entire volumes. But the very quantity of criticism may serve as an argument that any interpretation of the poem is really an investigation of the writer of the criticism. That is to say, the poem has no outward meaning, or at least that the meaning put in by the author is of secondary importance. The subtitle of "Kubla Kahn" reads "Or a Vision in a Dream." Dreams may or may not have symbolic meaning, but it is doubtful that anyone intentionally designed symbolic meaning specifically for an individual dream.
My reading of "Kubla Kahn" depends on a biographical detail from Coleridge's life. Coleridge was an opium addict for years, and Appelbaum, an editor of a collection of romantic poetry, claims that "some of his [Coleridge's] poems reflect the anguish this caused." (Appelbaum viii) Coleridge also claimed, for many years, to have written this poem while intoxicated on opium. "Kubla Kahn" seems, to me, to reflect an anguished addict's desire for and envy of strength. In the first stanza, Coleridge describes Kubla Kahn, the main character of the poem, who "did a stately pleasure dome decree," (lines 1-2) and describes the landscape surrounding and enclosed by the dome. The setting is immediately identified as sensuous; for instance, in the dome "blossomed many an incense-bearing tree." (line 9) Incense, like opium and opium addicts, immediately calls to mind sensuality and languor, at least for me.
The pleasure dome is not, however, all sensuality: It is "a savage place" (line 14). It contains a fountain that occasionally throws rocks into the air from deep underground (lines 19-21). Finally, it is a rests over a deep cavern, "measureless to man," which is a "cave of ice" and a "chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething" (lines 36 and 17).
The pleasure dome, then, has a dual character: it suggests both softness and hardness, in that it is identified with both sensuality and danger. I think that Coleridge, in describing the dome, sees it as a work of man of strength who can "a stately pleasure dome decree," and who was, historically, a warlord, a man of strength — in line 30 the Kahn hears "ancestral voices prophesying war." Kubla Kahn is also a man who can both enjoy its sensual pleasures and survive in this atmosphere of danger.
Coleridge, in describing his vision, also describes the anguish that it causes. In the fourth and last stanza, he describes an "Abyssinian maid," a "damsel with a dulcimer," who sung to him of the dome and its creator. It seems that this woman fills a place, for Coleridge, which is frequently identified with the Greek muses — she provides him with inspiration. Coleridge states that if he could "revive within" himself "with symphony and song," he would "build that dome in air." (lines 43-44 and 46) He intends, should he ever be inspired, to build the pleasure dome "with music loud and long" — with poetry, perhaps. It seems that this is exactly what Coleridge has done with the poem "Kubla Kahn." In the meantime, however, the torment caused by this vision is almost unendurable for Coleridge. The poem closes with a warning for others who may look upon the pleasure dome, perhaps in the form of Coleridge's poem, that they are bound to be unhappy with the everyday life of the average person. Those who look upon the pleasure dome advise others not to look upon the author of the poem, the creator of the dome, who has not only seen a vision of a heaven — who has "drunk the milk of paradise" — but has built an earthly version of it. (line 54)
The fourth stanza reflects a change in the author's attitude. Whereas he may have previously been supposed to be merely an opium visionary — a weak person who lives outside the everyday reality that the rest of us inhabit — he is revealed here to be a creator, a strong individual, as well. Coleridge is here identifying himself with Kubla Kahn. The Kahn decreed a stately pleasure dome, while Coleridge created a poem that is equated with the dome. "Kubla Kahn" is Coleridge's attempt to rise above what many people assume drug addicts to be and to show himself to be a strong creator, on a level with an emperor who founded of a great dynasty.
References
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Kahn" in The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry. Ed. Kraft Rompf and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.
Appelbaum, Stanley, Ed. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. Mineola: Dover, 1996.
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