Begonia 1
Rudy Begonia
Intro to Literature W554
Professor Farbman
15 April 2012
Miracle of Rare Device:
S.T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"
In his preface to "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes the claim that his poem
is a virtual recording of something given to him in a drug-induced reverie, "if that indeed can be
called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things . . . without any
sensation or consciousness of effort." As spontaneous and as much a product of the unconscious
or dreaming world as the poem might seem on first reading, however, it is also a finely
structured, well wrought device that suggests the careful manipulation by the conscious mind.
The first verse paragraph of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is the most ornately patterned part of the
poem. Coleridge gives us end-rhymes that are repetitive and yet slightly "off": "Khan" is not an
exact match with "man" or "ran." End-rhymes will be carried throughout the poem, but within
these lines, we discover similar sounds, the "Xan-" and "Khan," again; the "Xan-" and "a" sound
of "Alph" get picked up again in "sacred" and "cav-," before being played out, finally, in "ran"
and "man." The intricacy of sounds being repeated and modulated and repeated again creates the
poem's energy, playful here, but also exceedingly musical and incantatory.
The paradise that Kubla Khan creates is a delightful playscape. At first, it seems a bit
compulsively arranged, a bit overly luxurious, a bit too Disney. The "sinuous rills" adds a
slightly ominous element to the Edenic paradise, a hint of what's to come. Already, though, there
is a distinction implied between what is natural -- the "sinuous rills" and the "forests ancient as
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the hills" -- and what is clearly man-made, nature bent to mankind's service: the enfolded "sunny
spots of greenery," the various gardens and perhaps even the incense-bearing trees (that seem
somehow unnatural here, compared to the forests). The whole thing is "girdled round," with the
walls and towers of Kubla Khan's fancy. Nature is controlled, set apart; pattern and order have
been asserted and established as supreme.
The first line of the second stanza -- "But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted" -carries an extra half-beat; the easy rhythms and order of the first paragraph are upset as we move
into "A savage place" or begin to recognize the place for what it really is, beneath the surface.
We become more and more aware of contradictions being held together: the contrasting ideas of
nature and artifice of the first stanza, the holy and enchanted (the sacred and the pagan). The
sacred river, Alph, takes on its own voice in the following lines:
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.
The production of sounds has become difficult, forced, like giving birth to something: "forced"
and "burst." The last line of this sentence begins with a spondee "HUGE FRAGments," two hard
stresses, and the line breaks down in harsh, diphthong sounds: "vaulted like rebounding hail."
The river's rapids create the "dancing rocks," as we see in another contrast of elements -- moving
water and rocky earth -- the contrast again of art (in the dance) and nature (in the violent
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splashing of water). This is the paradox of the river, that in its eternal movement it creates the
artistic moment: perpetual energy frozen perpetually in time.
With the soft, mellifluous "m" sounds of "five miles meandering with a mazy motion"
(which will be picked up later on in "mingled measure"), we return to the easy movement of the
poem's beginning. In the midst of Kubla Khan's peaceful vision, though, he always hears the
tumult of the river sinking toward the sea (which lives at the base of everything), and in that
tumult "Kubla Khan heard from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war!" Kubla Khan has walled
himself off in his self-created Eden, yet the friction between what is natural and what is art
creates a sound (the river's roar) that speaks to him of what is outside his little heaven: man's
primordial urges toward war, the destructive element. Again, we see the principle of order versus
disorder: the peace within Khan's paradise and the vision of horror outside.
The paradox of Khan's creation is finally characterized in this middle stanza as a "miracle
of rare device / A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!" There is the ultimate paradox and
oxymoron. The "sunny pleasure-dome," made according to Khan's masterplan (the "rare
device"), seems like a toy on the mere surface of things; beneath it, within it, are the realities, the
deep "caves of ice." Khan's creation thus contains opposite, disparate energies: what man can
control and what he can't, the product of his conscious mind and conniving on one hand and the
subconscious urges buried within the imagination (uncovered, perhaps, by opium-induced
reverie?) on the other.
The narrator of the piece is introduced at the beginning of the final stanza as the speaker
describes a vision "once I saw." The feminine artist, the "damsel with a dulcimer" contains both
the primal energies of the "woman wailing for her demon-lover" mentioned before and the
control of art, the "dulcimer." She sings of Mount Abora, which is where Milton located his
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paradise: the poem is, again, about creation, the birthing place. The narrator longs for the sound
that he had heard once "in a vision" (but which is closed off to him now?). The verbs of this
sentence are conditional: "Could I revive within me / Her symphony and song, / To such a deep
delight 'twould win me," for this is wishful thinking at this point. Again there are contrasts within
the narrator's wishing: the "symphony" suggests majesty, order, harmony among parts; the
"song" suggests something unto itself, the solitary "Abyssinian maid" singing for her own delight
simply because she likes the sound of it. Also the joy he would feel would be "a deep delight":
"delight" is the surface element, the "pleasure dome"; the "deep" is the caverns, the caves of ice.
The speaker of the poem proclaims that if he could only hear this maid's song, he would build
"that pleasure dome" -- which is, at once, the creation of Kubla Kahn and the poem that is in the
process of being built, and he would build it "with music loud and long." (Note how the long
vowels suggest the kind of music he has in mind and how the pronouns create a sense of
insistence and specificity -- "that dome," "those sunny caves.") The sunny dome is a creation of
the poem's breath, the "dome in air," holding the twin opposites of being together: "That sunny
dome! those caves of ice!" The speaker becomes the artist, the architect-genie of Kubla Kahn,
and the beholders (readers) of the genius and poet-speaker see him as both madman and prophet:
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.
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The vision of the poet is not just a private matter: "all who heard" and "all should cry." It is a
collective enchantment with the poet at the center of it. The magic of the final spellbinding lines
-- beyond explication -- is based partly on abracadabra incantation ("Weave a circle round him
thrice") and our corporate recollections of holy visionaries. The poet compels the vision of the
public, but at the same time he is an outcast among them -- untouchable and even cursed ("his
flashing eyes, his floating hair!") by his gift. The lines become completely suggestive in their
wild blend of holiness, sensuality, prophecy, and danger. The poet and poem have become their
own "miracle of rare device," and the reader has borne witness to the creative miracle.
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