Background history

Just near Culbone Church, Somerset, Coleridge took two grains of Opium. The resulting reverie was the
stimulus for Kubla Khan.
Coleridge had apparently been reading from the text Purchas his Pilgrimage, which contains the
following passage:

In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteen miles of plane ground with a
wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of
chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed
from place to place.

While reading this text, Coleridge says he fell asleep and records the following in what is known as the
Crewe MS.:

This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two
grains of Opium, taken to check a dysentery at a Farm House Between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of
a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797.

He was supposed to have dreamt 300-400 of the actual lines of a poem, but been interrupted (in one his
versions of the story) by 'a person on business from Porlock' before he could transcribe the words.
Hence the poem's reputation, and designation, as a 'fragment'.

But what is the poem about? It is worthwhile to know something of the trends in its criticism. Until the
mid-20th century, positive criticism of the poem (and there was a lot not that was positive) saw it as a
clever exercise in sound, with no particular meaning that could be explained. "Magic" and "music" were
common words used to describe the poem.

Music
References to the poem's 'music' are references to the plays on sound that abound in the poem and
those experiments with sound are indeed everywhere in the poem. The poem opens with the line:

'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan' (l.1)

Notice how each vowel from the beginnings balanced by an identical one further on in the line
(In-did/Xan-Khan/a-bla/du-Ku). Moreover, each line in the opening cinquain (a self-contained section of
five lines) ends with an alliterated phrase:

Kubla Khan/dome decree/river, ran/measureless to man/sunless sea

This pattern of alliteration is repeated in later groups of lines:

mazy motion/river ran/measureless to man (ll.25-27);
symphony and song/deep delight/loud and long (ll.43-45).

Rhyme scheme
The poem's rhyme scheme is also very complex.

 The opening stanza, for example has the pattern: abaabccdbdb

 The long central section has: efeefgghhiijjkcckllmnmnoo
 The final section has: pqrrpststuouuuovvo

Some of these are half-rhymes (eg war/far) and there are one or two isolated examples of alliteration
outside the nominated groups of lines, but these only serve to emphasise the complexity of the playing
with sound that Coleridge attempted in this poem.

But what does it mean?

Interpretations
Maud Bodkin's Jungian interpretation views Kubla Khan as a contemplation of heaven and
hell

There are about three or four major strands in the more modern criticism of this poem:

 that it represents aspects of Coleridge's theory of aesthetics. You may have come
across Coleridge's theories of the Fancy and the Imagination, or the Primary and
Secondary Imagination, which aspects of Kubla himself and the river are said to
 represent. One problem with these views is that Coleridge had not finally worked out
these theories when 'Kubla Khan' was published.

 psychological criticism of the Freudian kind, which treats the poem as the
unconscious revelation of personal fantasies. The problem with this school of
criticism is that no two critics agree on just what aspects of Coleridge's unconscious
are being revealed, and just what each image in the poem represents.

 more general symbolic interpretations, some of which are Jungian. The best-known
Jungian interpretation is probably in Maud Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry
(1934), which sees the poem partly as a kind of contemplation of heaven and hell.

 a view that it is a poem about the processes of artistic, particularly, poetic creation,
in which Kubla represents the creative artist.

It is worthwhile, the, keeping in mind that any view give below represents at best an
individual view of the poem in a way that is even more true than it is for other poems.

General and specific meanings

In general terms Kubla Khan is given connotations of power and authority. He is represented as a
creator.

Let us try to capture the ideas in the poem in some kind of general form before trying to tie them
down to the specifics of some of these readings.

The poem opens with:

'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree' (ll.1-2)

In general terms, Kubla is thus a powerful potentate in the position of being a lawgiver. He is also
a creator. Thus, at the most general level, he represents processes of creating and ordering.
Where does the pleasure-dome appear?

'Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.' (ll.3-5)

Thus this dome appears in the midst of a seemingly untouched natural world - certainly a world of
darkness and mystery (sunless) and a world otherwise beyond the control and even
comprehension of humanity (measureless to man). The dome itself, in being a dome, perhaps
suggests a physical church and thus spiritual meditation and sacredness (like the river), while at
the same time being a dome of'pleasure'.

Imagery
Kubla creates a luxurious earthly paradise:

'So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery'. (ll.6-11)

The walls, towers and gardens represent the coming of

order and cultivation and civilisation to the wilderness -
a process of containment, control and organisation. The
lawgiver and creator brings order.

The natural world around the dome is continually

presented as untamed and mysterious - the
'measureless' caverns, the'sunless sea' and the
origins of the river itself:

'But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover' (ll.12-
13)

Again, note how words like 'deep...chasm' and

'cover'emphasise the hidden mysteriousness of the
world in which the dome is built.

Sacred and sexual imagery

This place is savage AND sacred:

'A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!' (ll.14-16)

What follows these mysterious lines is the highly sexual image of the fountain, drawing clear parallels
between the earth itself and male ejaculation:

And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced' (ll.17-19)

Sex of course holds an ambiguous position in Western history and culture. On the one hand, it has
been surrounded by a sense of the illicit, the immoral and this sense has tied in strongly to a sense of
sex as associated with the wild and untamed: sex is the realm of immorality and also of the
"uncivilised". This dual sense of immorality and quasi-savagery is how Shakespeare has the mad
Lear describe sex: '

The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly

Does lecher in my sight.....
.....The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to 't
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are centaurs,
Though women all above.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiend's.
There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit;'
King Lear, IV vi 112-28).

Order and chaos

What has all this to do with 'Kubla Khan'? Well, there is no doubt
that the description of the fountain's bursting is very sexual.
Moreover, all of this geological activity is associated with the wild,
the uncivilised: the place is 'savage' and certainly wild. Moreover,
the metaphorical woman's lover is a demon figure. Thus, sex is
associated here with the Western tradition of sex as uncivilised and
quasi-evil.

But, as we said above, this tradition is ambiguous - sex is also

sacred in Western tradition: associated particularly with love and
creation. Creation, of course, is what gods do. Perhaps sex is held
as sacred because it is the closest that humans get to godliness -
the ability to create life. In any case, the place is not only'savage',
but 'holy' and the river thrown up by the geological activity is
'sacred'. This demonic energy creates, and what it creates is holy
(ll.20-24). But creation is not just the province of gods - it is also the
province of artists. Kubla is a creator, an artist in his way.

Thus, Kubla has created and brought order amidst wilderness, even
savagery, though that wilderness itself contains that which was
sacred.
The river metaphor
What of the river so created? One impression of the river is
of ease ('five miles meandering with a mazy motion',
The river and the sea: connected with l.25); in contrast, another is of massive activity not unlike
darkness and death that of the mighty fountain ('and sank in tumult', l.28) and
yet another is of death as it ends in the 'lifeless ocean'
(l.28). This latter description of the sea reminds us of its
earlier description as 'sunless' (l.5). Throughout the poem,
light has been associated with life, and lack of light with its
opposite. Thus the demon's lover wails 'beneath a waning
moon' (l.15).

Kubla's garden brings light, while the river and the sea are
associated with darkness and death. The place where the
river, the sea and the dome meet brings meanings to Kubla.
He hears'Ancestral voices prophesying war' (l.30); the
fountain and caves convey a 'mingled measure' (l.33). The
combination, it seems, of the creation with the natural has
produced meaning, while reconciling opposites:

'A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice' (l.36).

As an extended metaphor
As we stated earlier, one traditional view of the poem is that it represents a kind of extended metaphor for
the processes of artistic, especially, poetic creation. We know that Coleridge valued 'the balance or
reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities' (Biographia Literaria) as a mark of the poetic
imagination. Up to this point, the poem has been full of such contrasts: lightness and darkness; warmth
and cold; paradise and hell; peace and war (hence, creation and destruction). This kind of thing, along
with the figure of Kubla as god-like creator would indeed suggest that the reading of the poem as a
manifesto on poetic creation is a highly valid one.
Music and vision
The third section of the poem that begins
with the Abyssinian maid, carries through
this reading very closely. The speaker
switches abruptly from the narrative about
Kubla's world to his own personal vision.
The vision again is of artistic creation - not
architecture this time, but music:

'A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.'(ll.37-41).

Mount Abora is a reference to John Milton's

great 17thC poem, Paradise Lost. The maid
is celebrating a paradisal landscape, ie
seemingly a landscape very like the opening
lines. Thus paradise has been represented
in architecture and music, and the poet now
argues that he, too, could create great art, a
paradisal creation just like that of Kubla and
the Abyssinian maid.

Poetic inspiration
Thus paradise has been represented in architecture and music, and the poet now argues that he, too,
could create great art, a paradisal creation just like that of Kubla and the Abyssinian maid.

'Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!' (ll.43-47)

This is a triumphant statement of the potential of the poet as artistic creator and it is expressed in a
particularly light and fast rhythm. If he, the poet, could re-live, in his imagination, the girl's song, he too
could become the great creator - and, like Kubla, a figure of power, of magic and mystery and even of
holy enchantment, because he represents the land of milk and honey which was promised to Moses:

'And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.' (ll.48-54)

Others would see him as divinely inspired and worship him. In such view of the poem, it is very tempting
to accept the critique that the poem is about poetic inspiration - the river is seen as representing
inspiration or imagination. If the poet could recapture his vision of this paradise, he too could become
the inspired magical creator.

Conclusion
One problem with the reading of the poem as about processes of creative expression is in how we read
Kubla Khan himself. Is Kubla the creative artist who imposes order by imposing form, or is he a demonic
tyrant who imposes his will on the natural world, producing artificial beauty where there was once natural
beauty? In general, the view that this is a poem about poetry is a popular view, but there remains little
consensus about just what is being said about the poetic process. In our view, however, there seems
good evidence to see it as a poem about the potential of forms of artistic expression. "Potential for what?"
may have to remain an open question.