Critical Annotations on Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1)

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she play’d,

Singing of Mount Abora.

The abrupt change in rhythm and obvious disjointed juxtaposition between the previous stanzas and this one may be attributed to the infamous Person from Porlock. Coleridge said that he awoke from an opium-induced dream with perhaps 200 lines of this poem in his head. However, while he was transcribing the words in his head, a visitor knocked on his door and so distracted him that he lost the thread of the dream. I always imagined when he returned to the poem that he could only produce these last lines. Various scholars have doubted the story, but the Porlock has become a metaphor for any distraction, procrastination or impediment to completing a work.

2)

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Both Xanadu and Kubla Khan existed in history. Kubla Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan and united the Mongolian and Chinese kingdoms when he became emperor of China in 1263. Xanadu was built near the Mongolian steppes and was Kubla Khan’s first capital. The remains of the city exist today. The city’s listing on Unesco.org’s site states, “the site was a unique attempt to assimilate the nomadic Mongolian and Han Chinese cultures.”  This merging and respect for both cultures was a characteristic of Kubla’s reign. Though there was no pleasure dome, nor was there a river Alph—one exists in Antarctica, but not China—the symbolism Coleridge uses in the poem is a tribute to the panacea Kubla Khan was attempting to create.

3)

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

In a preface to the poem, Coleridge wrote that he had been unwell and had taken a prescribed dose of opium while reading this sentence, from Purchas’s Pilgrimage: “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed (sic) with a wall.” Though Coleridge takes great poetic license in describing the city, the basis of the geography is confirmed by multiple historical sources. The explorer Marco Polo visited the city, then named Shangdu, and wrote of it that Kubla Khan

“caused a palace to be erected, of marble and other handsome stone, admirable as well for the skill displayed in its execution. The halls and chambers are all gilt, and very handsome…Within the bounds of the royal park there are rich and beautiful meadows, watered by many rivulets…”

4)

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

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,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

The passage here strongly evokes a birth. The woman wailing could be Gaia, goddess of the earth, panting in labor as she births this paradise. The dark chasm, filled with “ceaseless turmoil,” is the world’s womb, the crucible of life itself. The fact that the chasm is “seething” evokes the molten core of the earth. Coleridge reinforces the primordial imagery with his use of the word “grain,” which symbolically represents fertility and the earth.

5)

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Here Coleridge is using both biblical and mythological imagery and also alluding to the inspiration for the entire poem. In Norse and Germanic mythology, honeydew is said to be produced by the sacred ash tree, Yggdrasil, which is the same tree the god, Odin hung on for nine days to gain the knowledge of the world. Honeydew is also synonymous with “manna,” which in the bible is food sent by god to sustain the Israelites during their exile in the desert.

The milk of paradise is a nickname for opium, the allegedly prescribed medication whose influence he was under when he fell into the dream that inspired the poem.

Works Cited

Cartwright, Mark. “Xanadu.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 9  

May 2020, www.ancient.eu/Xanadu/.

Centre, UNESCO World Heritage. “Site of Xanadu.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre,

whc.unesco.org/en/list/1389/.

Colerid.html, web.suffieldacademy.org/english/english4h/colerid.html.

DomainOptions, Inc. “Synonyms for HONEYDEW.” Thesaurus.net, 10 May 2020,

www.thesaurus.net/honeydew.

Kubla Khan, knarf.english.upenn.edu/Coleridg/kubla.html.