Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai Khan (Emperor Shizu of Yuan). Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock". The poem could, according to Coleridge, not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan, as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.
Some of Coleridge's contemporaries denounced the poem and questioned his story of its origin. It was not until years later that critics began to openly admire the poem. Most modern critics now view Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge's three great poems, along with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. The poem is considered one of the most famous examples of Romanticism in English poetry, and is one of the most frequently anthologized poems in the English language. The manuscript is a permanent exhibit at the British Library in London.
Poem The poem is divided into three irregular stanzas, which move loosely between different times and places.
The first stanza begins with a fanciful description of the origin of Kublai Khan's capital Xanadu (lines 1–2).Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772–1804. New York: Pantheon, 1989. It is described as being near the river Alph, which passes through caves before reaching a dark, 'sunless' sea (lines 3–5). Ten miles of land were surrounded with fortified walls (lines 6–7), encompassing lush gardens and forests (lines 8–11).
The second stanza describes a mysterious canyon (lines 12–16). A hydrothermal explosion erupted from the canyon (lines 17–19), throwing rubble into the air (lines 20–23) and forming the source of the sacred river Alph (line 24). The river wandered through the woods, then reached the caves and dark sea described in the first stanza (lines 25–28). Kubla Khan, present for the eruption, heard a prophecy of war (lines 29–30). An indented section presents an image of the pleasure-dome reflected on the water, surrounded by the sound of the geyser above ground and the river underground (lines 31–34). A final un-indented couplet describes the dome again (lines 35–36).
The third stanza shifts to the first-person perspective of the poem's speaker. He once saw a woman in a vision playing a dulcimer (lines 37–41). If he could revive her song within himself, he says, he would revive the pleasure dome itself with music (lines 42–47). Those who heard would also see themselves there, and cry out a warning (lines 48–49). Their warning concerns an alarming male figure (line 50). The stanza ends with instructions and a warning, to carry out a ritual because he has consumed the food of Paradise (lines 51–54).
Composition and publication Date of composition
Kubla Khan was likely written in October 1797, though the precise date and circumstances of the first composition of Kubla Khan are slightly ambiguous, due to limited direct evidence. Coleridge usually dated his poems, but did not date Kubla Khan,Holmes 1989 p. 165 and did not mention the poem directly in letters to his friends.
Coleridge's descriptions of the poem's composition attribute it to 1797. In a manuscript in Coleridge's handwriting (known as the Crewe manuscript), a note by Coleridge says that it was composed "in the fall of the year, 1797."Holmes 1989 qtd. p. 162 In the preface to the first published edition of the poem, in 1816, Coleridge says that it was composed during an extended stay he had made in Somerset during "the summer of the year 1797."Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep, 2nd edition, William Bulmer, London, 1816. Reproduced in The Complete Poems, ed. William Keach, Penguin Books, 2004. On 14 October 1797, Coleridge wrote a letter to John Thelwall which, although it does not directly mention Kubla Khan, expresses many of the same feelings as in the poem, suggesting that these themes were on his mind.Holmes 1989 pp. 166–167 All of these details have led to the consensus of an October 1797 composition date.
A May 1798 composition date is sometimes proposed because the first written mention of the poem is in Dorothy Wordsworth's journal of October 1798, where she mentions "carrying Kubla to a fountain". October 1799 has also been suggested because by then Coleridge would have been able to read Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer, a work which drew on the same sources as Kubla Khan. At both time periods, Coleridge was again in the area of Ash Farm, near Culbone Church, where Coleridge consistently described composing the poem. However, the October 1797 composition date is more widely accepted.
Composition in a dream In September 1797, Coleridge lived in Nether Stowey in the southwest of England and spent much of his time walking through the nearby Quantock Hills with his fellow poet William Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister DorothyHolmes 1989 pp. 161–162 (his route today is memorialised as the "Coleridge Way"). Some time between 9 and 14 October 1797, when Coleridge says he had completed the tragedy Osorio, he left Stowey for Lynton. On his return journey, he became sick and rested at Ash Farm, located near Culbone Church and one of the few places to seek shelter on his route. There, he had a dream which inspired the poem.
Coleridge described the circumstances of his dream and the poem in two places: on a manuscript copy written some time before 1816, and in the preface to the printed version of the poem published in 1816. The manuscript states: "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 dysentry, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church." The printed preface describes his location as "a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire," and embellishes the events into a narrative which has sometimes been seen as part of the poem itself.
According to the extended preface narrative, Coleridge was reading Purchas his Pilgrimes by Samuel Purchas, and fell asleep after reading about Kublai Khan. Then, he says, he "continued for about three hours in a profound sleep... during which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines ... On Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved."Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 435 The passage continues with a famous account of an interruption:Holmes 1998 p. 435 "At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock... and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away." The "person on business from Porlock" later became a term to describe interrupted genius. When John Livingston Lowes taught the poem, he told his students "If there is any man in the history of literature who should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, it is the man on business from Porlock."Perkins 2010 qtd. p. 39
There are some problems with Coleridge's account, especially the claim to have a copy of Purchas with him. It was a rare book, unlikely to be at a "lonely farmhouse", nor would an individual carry it on a journey; the folio was heavy and almost 1,000 pages in size.Fruman 1971 p. 337 It is possible that the words of Purchas were merely remembered by Coleridge and that the depiction of immediately reading the work before falling asleep was to suggest that the subject came to him accidentally.Bate 1968 pp. 75–76 Critics have also noted that unlike the manuscript, which says he had taken two grains of opium, the printed version of this story says only that "In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed." The image of himself that Coleridge provides is of a dreamer who reads works of lore and not as an opium addict. Instead, the effects of the opium, as described, are intended to suggest that he was not used to its effects.Perkins 2010 p. 39
According to some critics, the second stanza of the poem, forming a conclusion, was composed at a later date and was possibly disconnected from the original dream.Perkins 2010 pp. 40–44
Publication
After its composition, Coleridge periodically read the poem to friends, as to the Wordsworths in 1798, but did not seek to publish it. Coleridge's friend, the author Mary Robinson wrote a response to the poem titled, "To the Poet Coleridge," which was first published in the October, 17, 1800 edition of The Morning Post, and was later included in her Poetical Works compilation in 1806. In 1808 an anonymous contributor to the Monthly Repertory of English Literature quoted two lines from it in a book review.Monthly Repertory of English Literature, Arts, Sciences, etc. Vol. 4 No. 13 (April 1808), p1.
The poem was set aside until 1815 when Coleridge compiled manuscripts of his poems for a collection titled Sibylline Leaves.Holmes 1998 p. 387 It did not feature in that volume, but Coleridge did read the poem to Lord Byron on 10 April 1816.
Byron persuaded Coleridge to publish the poem, and on 12 April 1816, a contract was drawn up with the publisher John Murray for £80.Holmes 1998 p. 426 The Preface of Kubla Khan explained that it was printed "at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits."Sisman 2006 qtd. p. 417 Coleridge's wife discouraged the publication, and Charles Lamb, a poet and friend of Coleridge, expressed mixed feelings, worrying that the printed version of the poem couldn't capture the power of the recited version.
Kubla Khan was published with Christabel and "The Pains of Sleep" on 25 May 1816.Holmes 1998 p. 434 Coleridge included the subtitle "A Fragment" to defend against criticism of the poem's incomplete nature.Ashton 1997 pp. 112–113 The original published version of the work was separated into 2 stanzas, with the first ending at line 30.Yarlott 1967 p. 145 The poem was printed four times in Coleridge's life, with the final printing in his Poetical Works of 1834.Mays 2001 p. 511 In the final work, Coleridge added the expanded subtitle "Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment". Printed with Kubla Khan was a preface that stated a dream provided Coleridge the lines.Sisman 2006 p. 417 In some later anthologies of Coleridge's poetry, the preface is dropped along with the subtitle denoting its fragmentary and dream nature. Sometimes, the preface is included in modern editions but lacks both the first and final paragraphs.Perkins 2010 pp. 39–40
Sources Purchas and Marco Polo