Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped define a poetic movement with his original topics and emotional content. His contributions to the definitions of poetic genres were nigh unprecedented. Coleridge, along with other successful poets, created a new form of poetry called Romanticism. This movement was characterized by emotions, experience, and esoteric exoticism (Holmes 166). Even at a young age Coleridge wanted to feel the emotions and view the secrets of the world that would later fuel his work. His childhood nanny noted that:

When, at the age of two, he came to be inoculated, he howled when the doctor’s tried to cover his eyes. It was not the pain, but the concealment of mystery which upset him. (Holmes 2)

Coleridge’s early life was filled with ideas that, instead of being contained within the sphere of conventional thought, seemed to float around the space surrounding his otherwise mundane world. His parents explained this behavior by saying that, “He was a drifter and dreamer, yet capable of sudden, short burst of extreme imaginative intensity” (275). These behaviors later manifested themselves into debt, isolation, and depression. Yet, as Coleridge himself claims, he had only fallen from grace to experience the emotions and harness the ensuing creative outbursts (275). Still, despite these claims, Coleridge felt it necessary to momentarily alleviate his lonely pain by means of opium escapes. He would use the drug to cure both his colds and his loneliness (270). This continued substance abuse was ironically the source of his greatest poetic achievement, “Kubla Khan”. This poem is widely regarded as a monument attesting to Coleridge’s genius (270). Ironically, with such a large following and such influence, it seems that no critic can pinpoint a meaning, no one scholar can produce a definitive analysis. This unwonted exclusion of interpretation was derived from Coleridge’s own distaste for the analysis of his poem, “For a long time, encouraged by [his] own statements concerning the poem, critics refrained from interpreting ‘Kubla Khan’” (Suther 1).

These analytical problems have since been undertaken and Coleridge’s statements placed on the proverbial backburner of literary concentration. Since that point, interpretation of the poem has been approached in a variety of ways. “Most readers interpret ‘Kubla Khan’ as an allegory for the creative process” (1). Still other specialists argue that “‘Kubla Khan’ is a pagan celebration of creative force in the universe” (Holmes 166). Regardless of popular interpretation, it is imperative that the historical timeframe that surrounded the poem’s conception be scrutinized. “Kubla Khan” was most likely written in 1798, a time that marked the cusp between two literary era’s: the Age of Reason and the Age of Romanticism (150). The approximate date for this literary transformation was 1800, two years after the conception of “Kubla Khan”. As an already established member of the academic community, it can easily be inferred that Coleridge understood both the cause and the consequences of such a shift. One conclusion that it seems no modern critic has espoused is that “Kubla Khan” symbolizes the death of Enlightenment and welcomes the birth of the Romantic movement. Given the poem’s place in history along with Coleridge’s inclusion in the literary circles of the day, it is reasonable to infer that, within a opium inspired dream, the energy of this change could have manifested itself into mental images.

To understand the importance of the change, knowledge of the events that preceded the shift have to be noted. The Enlightenment was a time period characterized by reason, attention to classic works, and a celebration of human capacity. The aforementioned shift occurred as a result of the reasonable Enlightenment. This new movement saw a paradigm shift of ideas and a swing towards the emotional aspects of life. Romanticism was born and contained aspects of exoticism, emotion, darkness, and mystery. Using these definitions it is clear that Coleridge wrote with a very Romantic state of mind. This can be evidenced by his obsession with mystery as a child, his emotional escapades as a teen, and his love for the exotic east cultures.

“Kubla Khan” is clearly a Romantic poem with the inclusion of exotic places, pagan ideals, and emotional content. The first line contains an allusion to a very esoteric person of the time, Kublai Khan. This ruler of the Yuan dynasty must have seemed extremely remote and therefor alluringly exotic to Coleridge. Other foreign places and ideas appear throughout the poem as if bridging gaps between otherwise equal cultures: a very Romantic ideal. These places include, “Xanadu” (Coleridge 1), “Alph” (Coleridge 3), “Abyssinian” (39), and “Mount Abora” (41). These, often self-invented locales instill an exotic tone in “Kubla Khan”.

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