Samuel Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan is a supremely beautiful example of the Romantic belief regarding creative thought and the creative process. It is a whimsical peek at the nature of the unconsicious and at the art of inspiration and holding on to imagination that has captivated many for its musical and lyrical nature. Although deemed largely unfinished and incomplete by some scholars and by the author himself, Kubla Khan has held its ground as a literary masterpiece of its time for its impeccable structure, vivid imagery, unquestionable style, and most of all, the lasting impression of both confusion and awe it leaves on its audience.
Kubla Khan's queer, almost stream-of-consciousness style is best understood when illuminated by the poem's strange background. It is said that Coleridge, after indulging in Opium and reading Purchas, His Pilgramage by Samuel Purchas, drifted into a hallucinatory, drug-induced vision in which he dreamt of the infamous Mongol leader, Kublai Khan, and "could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines of poetry". The first few lines of Coleridge's poem (" In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pelasure-dome decree") almost directly mimick an excerpt of Purchas, His Pilgramage ( "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto.") as it is easy to see from where Coleridge drew his inspiration. As he awoke, Coleridge eagerly began to write down his fresh poem, but was interupted when a "person on business from Porlock" took him away from his work. Upon his return, Coleridge attempted to finish writing down his poem, but was sadly unable to recall the remainder(Coleridge 156).
Kubla Khan's history is vital to understanding the meaning of the work as a ...
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...he lifeless ocean. This phrase has been deemed by some critics as useless and irrelevant to the rest of the poem and deserving of being overlooked, however, some meaning can be drawn from its usage ( insert). A possible meaning of this vague line may lie in the imagery preceeding it. Throughout Kubla Khan, the River Alph, a symbol of unbridled creative inspiration, is constantly contained by caverns portrayed in the poem as dark, deep, and measureless. The “tumult” heard by Khan could be the struggle between the energy of the river: artistic creation, and the cold, confining nature of the caverns: stark rationality, the enemy, yet equal, of art (insert). This confrontation between two opposing forces can be described as nothing less than a battle, and the “ancestral voices” are of those great creators who have and witnessed the ongoing and inevitable war.(insert)
... were positive, one may argue that these individuals only saw the tolerant and fair-minded side of the Mongols, and not the relentless warrior part of the society who was known for its “dirty” tactics of war, which went as far as launching diseased-ridden corpses over the walls of castles during sieges. Alternatively, one may argue that the scholars who provided negative documentation of the Mongols only saw the destructive side, not the open-minded side of the society who were known for their cultural acceptance. Although these accounts allowed for an adequate idea of the nature of the Mongols, a record from a peasant who was not a member of the upper class in their society, as all reports presented were from historians, scholars, and political leaders. This would allow for a different perspective on the issue and would produce a better understanding of the topic.
Weatherford, J. McIver. Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world. New York: Crown, 2004.
In the book Genghis khan and the making of the modern world, Jack Weatherford allows us to see the conquest of the world by the Mongols. He starts us from before Temujin was ever born. He introduces us to many of the Mongols great achievements, like the conquest of china.
The most important constituent to the Mongols success was ‘a ruthless use of two psychological weapons, loyalty and fear’ (Gascoigne 2010). Ghengis Khan, the Mongol leader from 1206-1227, was merciless and made a guileful contrast in his treatment of nomadic kinsfolk and settled people of cities. For instance, a warrior of a rival tribe who bravely fights against Ghengis Khan and loses will be r...
When the word “Mongol” is said I automatically think negative thoughts about uncultured, barbaric people who are horribly cruel and violent. That is only because I have only heard the word used to describe such a person. I have never really registered any initial information I have been taught about the subject pass the point of needing and having to know it. I felt quite incompetent on the subject and once I was given an assignment on the book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern Age, I was very perplexed for two reasons. One I have to read an outside book for a class that already requires a substantial amount of time reading the text, and secondly I have to write a research paper in History. I got over it and read the book, which surprisingly enough interested me a great deal and allow me to see the Moguls for more than just a barbaric group of Neanderthals, but rather a group of purpose driven warriors with a common goal of unity and progression. Jack Weatherford’s work has given me insight on and swayed my opinion of the Mongols.
Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown, 2004. Print.
The poem is about a Sumerian king named Gilgamesh, who encounters a lot of obstacles and adventures in his quest for eternal life. Gilgamesh was a strong leader, and the builder of their great city called Uruk. Although Gilgamesh was brave and posessed supernatural qualities, he was plagued by human weaknesses like pride and immortality, one thing he desired most. Even though Gilgamesh was the main character in this book, readers can still decipher a lot about the Mesopotamian civilization. For example, during that time the class system was rigid and unfair. The power of the king was unmatched in the Mesopotamian government to the point where Gilgamesh had no consequences for his wrong doings. In the beginning of the poem before Gilgamesh had met Enkidu, Gilgamesh had executed many erroneous acts, but since he as the almighty king, he was never penalized...
This story can be summarized by dividing the story into three major sections that represent a genealogy of the Genghis Khan ancestors, the lifestyle of Genghis Khan and the story of Genghis son and Ogodei his successor. This piece of early time’s literature was translated and edited by Jack Weatherford and it was not released until 16th February, 2010. The piece of work restores early history’s most prominent figures to the positions they rightfully deserves. It clears the picture of the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongols and it is rich with information regarding the society of the Mongols in the 12th and the 13th centuries” (Kahn, 2005).
Kubla Khan contains an overabundance of descriptive language that creates a vivid, yet simultaneously fragmented picture within the reader’s mind; th...
...ubla Khan, the imagination is more of a physical, creative force, with more raw power than finesse. With it, works such as a pleasure-dome full of physical paradoxes can be inspired, created, and described, far better than with the words of a critic alone “A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has it that the imagination is more of an intangible force, subtle yet with as much power as the imagination in Kubla Khan. It connects the huge array of creatures on the Earth together, and without the imagination, they would, die in the end, one by one.
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.
Weatherford, J. McIver. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown, 2004. Print.
Kubla Khan, however, is predominantly a mosaic of fragments of thoughts and incomplete themes. Most likely, the reader observes that poetic material perpetually escapes Coleridge’s full attention, while the poem simultaneously contains profound gushes of documented creativity. One is led to believe that this continual tension between recorded and unrecorded poetic thought creates the unique narrative sequence and the mysterious, disturbing quality that embodies Coleridge’s story of Kubla Khan.
In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge expresses his desire to use the inspirations from nature to create his own “Paradise” of poetry (54, p.1634). In the first stanza, Coleridge creates an exotic oriental garden, where the trees, gardens, hills, and the “Alph” river, together present the beauty of Mother Nature (3, p.1633). Here, the poet carefully observes his surroundings, as the nature will serve as the source of inspiration for his poetry. The “pleasure dome” (2, p.1633) in line two has two functions, one representing the creation of human beings on earth, and the other being the foundation of Coleridge’s poetic paradise. As the clash between nature and humans takes place in the second stanza with a “woman wailing for her demon-lover” (16, p.1633) the poet calls upon nature for his inspiration, represented by the powerful activity of nature. The energy of nature is released in forms of “a might fountain” (19, p.1633), “rebounding hail” (21, p.1633), or “dancing rocks” (23, p.1633) and eventually the natural disasters will accompanied by man-made destruction as “Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war” (29-30, p.1634)! Coleridge on one hand reinforces that man and nature are inseparable and one the other uses the energy of nature to represent the spontaneous spurring of emotions in the poet’s mind.
to he caverns, and ''ancient'', referring to the forests, purposely present in the first stanza to show the importance they hold. The mysterious names he employs, like Kubla Khan and Xanadu, he is suggesting that what is man-made is evanescent, unlike the ternity of nature. To enforce this feeling and underline eternity, he chose to keep the natural subjects in the poem undefinite : "green hills", "caves of ice''.