Student Paper Coleridge

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Patrick Mooney

Professor Hayes

English 102

19 April 200X

Symbolic Language in Coleridges Kubla Khan

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 NeuteredandDick 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 Khan."

Although the form of "Kubla Khan" 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

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44. He also alliterates vowels, not only consonants, to produce a rhythmic singsong

effect.

Although the form and the beautiful language in "Kubla Khan" 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 Khan" 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 Khan" 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 Khan" seems, to me, to reflect an anguished

addict's desire for and envy of strength. In the first stanza, Coleridge describes Kubla

Khan, 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



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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 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

Khan hears "ancestral voices prophesying war." Kubla Khan 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

Khan." 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



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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

Khan. The Khan decreed a stately pleasure dome, while Coleridge created a poem that is

equated with the dome. "Kubla Khan" 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 a great dynasty.



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Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Kubla Khan. An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan

Barnet et al. 13th

ed. New York: Longman, 2004. 719.

Appelbaum, Stanley, Ed. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. Mineola: Dover,

1996.


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