"Kubla Khan", whose complete title is "Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is a poem of expression and helps suggest mystery, supernatural, and mystical themes. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of the poem Kubla Khan , was born on October 21, 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary, Devonshire. Coleridge was a English poet, critic, and philosopher. He, as well as his friend William Wordsworth, were of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England. Coleridge, considered the greatest of Shakespearean critic, used langueage to express the images and pictures that were in his imagination in the poem Kubla Khan. Coleridge claimed that it was written in the autumn of 1797 at a farmhouse near Exmoor, but it may have been composed on one of a number of other visits to the farm. It may also have been revised a number of times before it was first published in 1816. Coleridge claimed that the poem was inspired by a dream but the composition or the person from Porlock interrupted the composition, or piece. He said he was interrupted by this visitor from Porlock (a town in the South West of England, near) while in the process of writing it. Kubla Khan is only 54 lines long and was never completed. Also, a quote from William Bartram is believed to have been a source of the poem. There is a huge speculation on the poem's meaning, some suggesting the author is just portraying his vision while others think there is a theme or purpose. Others believe it is a poem stressing the beauty of creation. The lines of the poem Kubla Khan sound like a chant, and help suggest mystery, supernatural, and mystical themes of the poem. In the first two lines, Coleridge describes the "pleasure dome" in Xanadu. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree Kubla Khan did not merely order, but decree that a "stately pleasure dome" be built. This dome is evidence of how unnatural or unreal the place of Xanadu is it has a ruler who ignores the unpleasantness that can be found in life. He uses his vocabulary to challenge and tease the imagination into seeing what he saw in his dream. In Xanadu, there are not small streams, but "sinuous rills" and wall and towers do not enclose the gardens but are girdled round'.
Although the exact date remains unknown, it is believed that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his poem Kubla Khan sometime in the fall of 1797 and began revisions of it in the early spring of 1798. Interestingly, although no original manuscript has been found, the Crewe Manuscript of Kubla Khan was discovered in 1934. Currently, the Crewe Manuscript is the earliest know version of Kubla Khan and is believed to have been written around 1810. After Lord Byron’s zealous response to Kubla Khan, Coleridge published the poem for the first time in May of 1816 under Byron’s publisher John Murray. While the poem was initially bound with two of his other poems: Christabel and Pains of Sleep, Kubla Khan was then published in 1828 within Coleridge’s collection Poetical Works. The final publication of Kubla Khan during Coleridge’s lifetime came in 1834, when a cumulative version of Poetical Works was introduced, which included some of Coleridge’s early, unpublished works.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” Literature: A Pocket Anthology. Ed. R. S. Gwynn. New York: Addison-Wesley. 2002.
As an example, the story starts with Teddy looking out the window. As he watches from inside in the attic, “rain fell with such violence that great, pulsating sheets of water seemed to hang suspended between earth and sky… Raindrops roll like beads of quicksilver down the glass of the high, diamond-shaped window” (Nowlan 1). This quote shows how one can see how at peace Teddy seems to be, supporting the idea that the attic is a safe haven where he can relax and not worry about anything because it is where Teddy made his Kingdom. In that case, the reader understands that the attic represents an escape from reality for Teddy to live temporarily in his dream place. Additionally, the author also employed imagery to describe Teddy’s imaginary world. Teddy turned away from the window and sees “the centre of the room [where] stood a fort and a palace, painstakingly constructed from corrugated cardboard cartons. These were surrounded by humbler dwellings made from matchboxes and the covers of exercise books. The streets and alleys were full of nobles, peasants and soldiers, their two-dimensional bodies scissored from paper, theirs faces and clothing drawn in crayon and lead pencil. From turreted roof of the palace, hung a green, white and gold tri-colour, the flag of the Kingdom of Upalia” (Nowlan 1). In this quote, one can see how much effort Teddy has put into building his
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Kahn” is an example of imaginative poetry due to an opium addiction. This poem creates its own kingdom and paradise while Colridge expresses his ideas of Heaven and Hell through his own drug induced thoughts and opinions.
To fully understand this poem, the reader would find it helpful to know what led Coleridge to write it. Coleridge grew up with English essayist Charles Lamb in school and the two were close friends (Merriman.) In their later years, however, the two rarely saw each other as Coleridge lived in the country side and Lamb lived in the city, where he cared for his mentally ill sister (Merriman.) On one of the rare days Lamb went to visit him, Coleridge planed to go on a walk through the scenic area surrounding his house with Lamb and some other friends, but before they left, Coleridge’s wife accidentally dropped boiling milk on his foot and he was unable to participate in the walk (Benzon.) While the others gallivanted across the countryside, Coleridge sat in his garden and wrote this poem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of ten children and was often teased and bullied by the others. When he was 7 years old, Coleridge ran away from home. He was found unharmed the next morning. This event has recurred, in a literary sense, in a large portion of his writings. Many of his poems, sketches, and notebooks contained pictures and descriptions of his night spent outdoors. Although it was evident that Coleridge was a prodigy, he did not do well at a young age because he lost himself in women, drugs, and alcohol. He turned to the army, but this too fell through for him because his family was furious and his brother had him released for reasons of insanity. He immediately brought him back to Cambridge. It was here that he met William Wordsworth (Ashton 29).
a sort of dream sequence. Several changes were made to the poem to make the setting more
Throughout the beginning of the poem there are religious undertones Coleridge uses words like bended knee and reverential to highlight a religious belief and perhaps a plea to God to cure the “Pains of Sleep” this is interesting as he seems to feel “humbled” by the spirit presence. He mentions being weak but realises he is blest by this power. The religious undertone suggests to me a feeling of utter helplessness.
Wordsworth is raised in a simple country side and he views his childhood as a time when his relationship with nature was at its greatest; he revisits his childhood memories to relieve his feelings and encourage his imagination. Even if he grew up within nature, he didn’t really appreciate it until he became an adult. He is pantheistic; belief that nature is divine, a God. Since he has religious aspect of nature, he believes that nature is everything and that it makes a person better. His tone in the poem is reproachful and more intense. His poem purpose is to tell the readers and his loved ones that if he feels some kind of way about nature, then we should have the same feeling toward it as well. On the other side, Coleridge is raised in rural city such as London and expresses his idea that, as a child, he felt connected to nature when looking above the sky and seeing the stars. Unlike Wordsworth who felt freedom of mind, Coleridge felt locked up in the city. Since he did not have any experience with nature, he did not get the opportunity to appreciate nature until he became an adult. In Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight,” readers see how the pain of alienation from nature has toughened Coleridge’s hope that his child enjoy a peaceful nature. Instead of looking at the connection between childhood and nature as
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 459-462. Print.
To the Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.
Coleridge successfully illustrates the qualities of imagination in his poem, Kubla Khan, through the sound of words, the creative content and his ability to create and recreate. Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that are suspended in the reader’s mind. Coleridge uses creative powers to establish the infinite I AM, a quality of the primary imagination. Coleridge mirrors his primary and secondary imagination in the poem by taking apart and recreating images. The qualities of imagination discussed in the poem exist independently but also work together to create an imaginative world. It is important to understand how the poem works to achieve these qualities, but also how the poem works to bring the reader back to reality. The powers and qualities of imagination are present in Kubla Khan and it is through Coleridge’s extraordinary writing that the reader is able to experience an imaginative world, in which we alternate between reality and imagination.
In "Klassik Komix" Steven Millhauser uses the well-known poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot, to create an intermediary between complex poetic prose and the simplicity of the classic comic book. He uses descriptive language to beautifully capture the importance a writer's medium in the literary interpretation of his/her work while also demonstrating his love for the imagination.
It is believed that “Kubla Khan” was created by Coleridge when he was in a deep sleep that was induced by the use of opiates which were prescribed for dysentery. He fell asleep while reading Purcha’s Pilgrimage about building of Kubla Khan’s palace and garden. When he woke up from experiencing the dream in which he created the poem he began writing it down. He was part way through writing the poem and was interrupted by a person from the nearby town of Porlock. After this interruption he was unable to complete the poem because his access to the dream was lost. The unfinished work was not published for three decades. Much mystery has enshrouded “Kubla Khan” and it’s meaning due to the circumstances of it’s creation. The poem itself is as mystical and interesting as the story behind its creation.
Although both “Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Coleridge and “Ode on Grecian Urn,” by John Keats are poems originating from the poets’ inspiration from historical figure, the two poems convey different messages through their respective metaphors. While Coleridge emphasizes on the process of creating a Romantic poem, Keats expresses his opinion about art by carefully examining the details of the Grecian urn.