As explored in...
Kubla Khan and
Orientalism : The Road to
Xanadu Revisited
By Leask, Nigel
Romanticism; 1998, Vol.4 Issue 1, p1, 21p
In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure-dome
decree:
Where Alph, the sacred
river, ran
Through caverns
measureless to man
Down to a
sunless sea.
So twice five miles of
fertile ground
With walls and towers
were girdled round:
But oh! That deep romantic chasm
which slanted
Down he green hill athwart a
cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and
enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon
was haunted
By woman wailing for her demonlover!
And from this chasm, with
ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick
pants were breathing,
It flung up momently the
sacred river.
Five miles meandering
with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale
the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns
measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a
lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult
The shadow of the
dome of pleasure
Floated midway on
the waves;
heardofthe
It Where
was a was
miracle
rare device,
mingled
measure
A sunny
pleasure-dome
with caves of ice!
A damsel
with a dulcimer
From
the fountain
In
a the
vision
once I saw:
and
caves.
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
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!
And all who heard
should see them
there,
And all should cry,
Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his
o
There is ‘lack of reference to Kubla Khan in Coleridge’s
copious journals and letters of the late 1790’s’
This meant that many critics over the years have
speculated as to what exactly inspired Coleridge, the
meaning within the poem, the purpose of the structure of
the poem and the social and cultural comments it makes.
o
‘Reaching any sort of consensus about the poem’s meaning
has been problematical...’
o
Agrees with Coleridge’s description of the poem, stating it
to be ‘a psychological curiosity’
o
Suggests that the preface to the poem (written in 1816)
‘...distances the reader from the specific imagery and content
of the poem by explicitly focusing his attention upon the
poem as an instance of poetic creation...’ -K.M. Wheeler
o
The poem isn’t simply a ‘drugged, unconscious composition’
but rather a highly organised and structural poem.
o
Leask suggests that critics often focus on the celebration of
the sublime and imagination in works associated with the
Romantic period, and states that ‘...by recovering the lost
cultural narrative of the poem’s ‘visionary’ elements we might
restore a geopolitical specificity to its original setting absent
in the ‘High Romantic’ published version’.
In summary...
o
‘I will argue that not the syncretic links between the poem’s two
oriental ‘settings’, China and Abyssinia, but rather a cultural
contrast dependent upon their abrupt juxtaposition, determines
the geopolitical meaning of Kubla Khan, a meaning virtually
suppressed in the 1816 published version of the poem.’
o
Orientalism: of or characteristic of E. Asian civilisations etc. (The
Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary)
o
Southey is seen as someone whom may have directly influenced
Coleridge in his composition of Kubla Khan, through the text
Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) which critiques the ‘politicotheological ... Of ... Mahomet ...’ – Mahomet was the subject
matter of a poem considered to be written by both Southey and
Coleridge (of which all remains cannot be found) regarding an ‘...
idol-breaker and liberator of Mecca ...’
o
Marilyn Butler suggests ‘...that it was Southey’s ‘work-inprogress’ Thalaba which first introduced Coleridge to the
catalogue of oriental gardens...’
o
The legend of Aloadin’s false paradise is also seen as a
source for inspiration for Coleridge. The legend involves the
tale of three young men being ‘drugged by Aloadin, or the
‘Old Man of the Mountain’ then forcibly removed from the
paradise, only able to return if ‘various acts of political
murder’ are undertaken.
o
However the garden/scene depicted in Kubla Khan is
implied to have ‘...no function except to give pleasure to its
solitary maker...’ – this contrasts the power of the garden
and its creator as portrayed in the legend.
o
Tartar: a member of a group of Central Asian peoples
including Mongols and Turks. (The Australian Concise Oxford
Dictionary)
o
The poem is said to embody the power of the Tartars, whom
conquered the majority of the Asian continent (in the early
1000’s) through the majesty depicted as the environment
o
‘...represent a landscape garden; in other words an artificial
rather than a natural landscape.’
o
‘For Coleridge the entire landscape...for all its aesthetic
potency, is massively contrived, quite literally ‘a miracle of
rare device’...’
This suggests that the poem is in fact a ‘vision’,
however was inspired by Coleridge’s knowledge of Chinese
gardens and geopolitics. This puts forward the notion that
the poem might not be simply a vision that came to him
whilst under the influence of opium, but inspired by his
studies instead.
o
‘Had China been accessible to Mr Browne and Mr
Hamilton..I should have sworn they had drawn their
happiest ideas from the rich sources which I have tasted this
day...’ - Macartney