The USA English Forum Blog

Welcome to the English Forum for Week 3. Here you will find the text of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” which is one of the best examples we will read of how language can be constructed to be beautiful, even sensuous, for its own sake.

The imagery in the poem is indeed beautiful and intense, but the language itself, with its rich manipulation of sound through rhyme, meter, alliteration (the repetition of consonant sounds) and assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds) is as well crafted as any I have read.

Coleridge famously claimed that this poem was only a fragment because he had composed much more in his head that he unfortunately forgot before he could write it down; however, I’m not so sure that those additional lines would have made it a better poem. And they may have made it worse.

What I would like you to do is make comments and ask questions about particular sections of the poem. Use this unique commenting environment to create a dialogue with the text, to construct the meaning of the text through the act of reading, to make your reading more active by writing your reading into the comment boxes.

I was struck by the erotic nature of the poem. Remembering that Coleridge composed this poem while having an opium dream, it seems that he was comparing this intense pleasure with other pleasures he had known. The pleasure of romance (4).

After having read the poem 3 times, it seems to me that it depicts a natural progression of a femal body. The deep romantic chasm which slanted down to a thicket, sounds like the curve of the female belly that leads to a savage place, that is holy and enchanted. A wild, untamed, magical place. Where a woman is wailing for her fierce lover. From there follows the natural progression of intercourse, a seething, moaning, panting, eruption. Very erotic and beautiful.

This part speaks to me of the surface (sunny) and the depth (caves of ice) that occures at the joining of two people (mingled measure). From the fountain (man) and the cave (woman).

Here in his vision, as he beholds the maiden, he is aroused again. And he wonders can he revive himself again to deep delight. Can he erect his plesure-dome again to plunge into the caves of ice (the metaphor of ice seems to suggest a feeling of pleasure that is painful and dangerous). Beware! Beware! suggests that he is warning himself even as he partakes of the milk of paradise, to be careful. I don’t think he likes or respects women. Metaphors like caverns, caves of ice, lifeless ocean, all suggest that he uses women for pleasure but that he does not trust them.

For some reason when i read this section i think he is talking about a woman. Like i think he all the things he is describing have a allusion to a women for example when he says “with walls and towers girdled round” i think of how women use to where girdles a long time ago. and the walls and towers is suppose to be her body that the girdle wrapped around

I really have a hard time reading this poem. However, I do see a a lot of powerful imagery in it. I did notice several lines in this stanza that seem to relate back to his “dream” he had before he actually wrote the poem. “in a vision I saw” and then it says “could I revive within me her symphony and song”. It seems like he is talking about the part of the poem that was not written. He wishes that he could remember and revive in his head what he was going to write originally. It seems he would be really happy if he could only remember the rest of the lines.

This is where I start to see that maybe I could relate it more to what Brenda and John have been saying about a woman. But still I feel like he had such a deep passion for nature it almost seems unreal that nature is what he is talking about.

This poem remindes me very much of the Song of Solomon. A lot of beautiful metaphors and imagery. And like the Song of Solomon it correlates the act of loving God with the act of loving a woman. Both endeavors are portrayed as holy, mystical, and pleasurable.
I can also see another allegory in this last part - his muse calling him to create another poem. Her symphony and song beguiling him to build another dome.

This entire poem is strange to me. I think that Coleridge was definitely on opium when he wrote this one. To me it doesn’t even make much sense; just words that he put together.

I’m with Kassidy on this, Coleridge had to be on some strong stuff right here. What’s even more strange than the poem itself was that the text about the poem said this was only a fragment. There’s no telling where this was going to go.

I never thought of it that way! The more I look at the lines though the symbolism does seem to be there. To me it seemed like he took a strange dream he had and applied it to some of his surroundings. He mentions rolling hills and wandering streams that sound very reminiscent of England. I really enjoyed the imagery in this poem.

John you are humorous. It seems to me that since I cant come up with an interpretation to this poem that Brenda post and John’s response to kubla khan makes the most sense to me. Although I would have never made those assumptions myslef. great posts

It seems like throughout the whole poem he is comparing nature to a relationship between two lovers maybe comparing that relationship to an experience he had in nature, like Brenda said.

I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who interpreted this sexually. I don’t feel so weird any more.
I wonder about Coleridge’s account of the business man who interrupted him when he was writing this poem. I read that the factuality of this event is disputed by some scholars who say that it was meant as an excuse for the poem’s “seemingly fragmented state.” That’s from Wikipedia, so I can’t vouch for the factuality of that account either, but it got me thinking: suppose Coleridge had intended the preface to give another layer of meaning to the poem itself. I think the intruder could represent the way the business of the real world interferes in the pleasures of the solitary. The poem was supposedly conceived in the midst of an opium dream, so it seems like it could be interpreted as real life intruding into one’s fantasies.
But I don’t know. I probably got way off topic with here, but it was a thought.

William, I love your interpretation of this poem. That is so interesting (if it is factual), about the interruption leading to such a random account of events. However, I do feel as though the sense of complete chaos throughout the work is what makes it interesting. As a reader, I can’t help but be compelled to read further, if only to find out if the end actually pulls all of this chaos together. Coleridge obviously had a purpose for writing this piece; it’s just too bad the concept is so far out of our mindset to understand.

I couldn’t agree more. On the surface, this piece seems to be all over the place. After a closer look, the imagery becomes a little clearer. It just took me a few readings to finally see it!

I agree with you, Danielle. It was interesting that he referred to it as a vision, because the vision was probably the result of an opium trip! If anything, it seems as though the drugs may have just made him more aware of his surroundings. Overall, Coleridge seems to have a deep admiration for all things nature and the imagery he uses paints a beautiful mental picture. It’s a shame that the drugs put such a damper on his writing capabilities, but I have to wonder how much of this creativity was a product of the actual drug usage itself.

Not to brag, but this thought hit me right off the bat! Besides it’s hard to brag when everybody else has posted all over the place and brought up the intimacy analogies. But I too was struck by “Where was heard the mingled measure.” To expand on Brenda’s thoughts a little bit, to me the thought of intercourse becomes quite prevalent. Two key words that set it off for me were “shadow” and “pleasure”. Most of the time intercourse is done in private…in the “shadows” so to speak where the man and woman recieve “pleasure.” These lines kind of served as an innuendo or at least forshadowed what was to come in the next few lines talking about the “mingled measure.” Lastly, for me, where it talks about hearing the mingled measure provokes the image or the sounds being heard within the act of intercourse between the “mingled” couple. And I wish to appologize for word usage, I might have been able to formulate my opinion using lighter language, but I wanted to use the terminology within the text.