Kubla Khan Critical Analysis: As we know, Kubla Khan is a famous poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was written in 1797 and published in 1816. Through this poem the poet tries to reflect the Romantic ideals of inspiration, creativity, and the mysterious connection between nature and the human mind. Today in this article we will see the critical analysis of Kubla Khan as a romantic poem.
Kubla Khan Critical Analysis
If romanticism essentially means a quest for wonder, thrill and beauty through the magical power of imagination, Coleridge's Kubla Khan must be a supreme example in English-cum-world literature of genuinely romantic poetry It originates in a dream, a strange and beautiful dream, an amazingly creative dream, in which, Coleridge informs us in a preface, 'all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. This is how primary imagination, as Coleridge calls the highest faculty of a creative mind, works, mysteriously gathering its materials from numerous sources, from conscious and subconscious levels and marvellously gives them an artistic shape.
It is Coleridge's superb romantic imagination that mysteriously amalgamates the story of Purchas's Pilgrimage, memories of Milton's Paradise Lest, stories, poems and legends of medieval times, travelogues like Maurice's Tales of Hindostan and who knows what else. Being an emanation from a dream-soaked mind, completely free from the domination of the rational element, Kubla Khan is a procession of images dressed in the colours of the rainbow, set to a subtly varied cadence of haunting melody evocative of a world of enchantment.
The overwhelming sense of the far-away and the unknown strikes us from the very first line in the poem: 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan... Both the place and the protagonist grab our imaginative sensibilities and challenge them to fly to a dizzy height. The depiction of landscape that follows, of the sacred river Alph, the 'caverns measureless', 'a sunless sea", "girdled' garden and 'sunny spots of greenery, are suggestive of allegorical patterns almost inexhaustibly.
But it is from line 12 onward that Coleridge's supernatural romanticism asserts itself with stronger intensity. The "deep romantic chasm", dividing the foot of the green hill and the 'cedarn cover', opens up the fascinating world of mystery: A savage place! as holy and enchanted... Here the supernatural image of a woman wailing for her demon-lover' 'beneath a waning moon', becomes natural; and the natural image of the earth, 'with ceaseless turmoil seething before giving birth to 'a mighty fountain', that sends the rocks up in the air to dance, becomes supernatural, due to Coleridge's romantic treatment. This is not mere love and understanding of nature, not just a mythical appreciation of its personality and activities, but an apocalyptic vision of the total mystery of existence and the cycle of life and death. The dying 'tumult' of the river as it falls into 'lifeless ocean' is transformed imaginatively into Ancestral voices prophesying war' to Kubla. The pre-historic past lends the romantic charm of the remote and at the same time there is an anticipation of the future. Between the two is the present, just as between the two opposite poles of the origin and the final destination of the stream of life lies the reflection on the mid-stream: 'a miracle of rare device,/A sunny pleasure. dome with caves of ice! The romantic craze for attaining a rare artistic ideal, where strangeness and beauty would be in magically perfect proportion, finds memorable expression here.
The final briefer section of the poem further testifies to its genuinely romantic character. Here the poet directly speaks out in his own person. A passionate personal urge to pour out purely subjective feelings, which inevitably gives birth to romantic poetry, is magnificently displayed here. At the same time it reveals both romantic melancholy and romantic ambition. The poet draws his inspiration from his dream. The Abyssinian maid in his dream is parallel to the Muses of classical mythology. Such a vision would enable him to 'build that dome in air,/That sunny dome! those caves of ice!' Mysterious and marvellous artistic creations thus come into existence through inexplicable inspiration. But Coleridge laments the rarity of this inspiring vision in his career. He is agonized by his inability to hold steadily on to his dream, and revive it at will. Yet he holds out his dazzling hope of what might happen to him if the fit of poetic creation seized him. Then his 'flashing eyes' and 'floating hair' might be equally associated with divine glory and demonic force, because he would transcend far above ordinary mortals. This is the genuine romantic aspiration, to yearn for the ultimate mystery of a creator, to bear the utmost labour pain in order to dissolve into the maddening joy of fathering offspring of immortality', as Shelley calls genuine poetry. Unfortunately, throughout the major part of his career, Coleridge is heard to lament over how this paradisal vision has eluded him. In this poem, however, he is 'the inspired magical prophet-bard which the quintessential romantic poet asks to be.
