Coleridge's story regarding "Kubla Khan" is that, while taking a laudanum-induced nap, he dreamed the poem. Prior to falling asleep he had been reading about the Khan's palace from Samuel Purchas's travel book Purchas's Pilgrimage. He awoke in something of a creative frenzy and began writing. Then, according to Coleridge, he was interrupted, following which he was unable to continue what he had dreamed as a long, narrative piece.
I have personal doubts containing parts of Coleridge's claim. I do not dispute his word that he dreamed the poem, but I tend to suspect that the supposed fragment which exists is pretty much the whole of the poem. I believe it is a complete and, with the exception of a line or two, internally consistent piece. I suspect that Coleridge realized that he had constructed something that was so out of keeping with the understanding and critical standards of the time that it would not be accepted by any member of the public as a completed work. The claim that the piece was a fragment would deflect any such criticism.
Below is a close reading proceeding from that premise (noting that at least a couple similar interpretations are possible).
| Kubla Khan | line means | interpretation |
| In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: |
Note the "decree," indicating the building by edict or by thought or conception. | Suggesting to me that we are dealing with art and the creative impulse rather than a building |
| Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. |
Note similarity of Alph to alpha, the beginning of the alphabet; the river, curiously, runs through caverns: much of the flow is underground; and it ends in a completely unlit (sunless) sea. | I suggest that the beginning of thought is the surface; the caverns refer to the "underground" or subconscious thought process; and that the repository of ideas, the root of creativity, is below the conscious ken of all, forever hidden from sight. |
| So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: |
A chosen bit of ground is enclosed, confined, walled. | As the creative process requires selection, "fencing in" of ideas, confining and defining a chosen element of the wild world. |
| And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. |
We have blossoming, blooming things here; beautiful sights, beautiful smells, rich new things combined with ancient things, things that had been alive and growing as long as the hills themselves; the mix of sun (light) and fertility (green). | Beautiful thoughts, fragrant ideas, the new (blossoms and blooms) combined with the old, in fact timeless, ideas; enlightenment mixed with fertile, regenerating life. The flowers and (implied) fruits suggest productive gardens: the ideas are rich; the art beautiful. |
| But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! |
Almost hidden by a thick stand of evergreen (cedar) trees lies a deep, narrow gorge. | Corresponding to a narrow passage down, into the depths of the unconscious or the "dark" aspects of the soul; a part of the self kept hidden; it appears similar to what Jung would later call the Anima. |
| A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! |
Suggestions not of benevolent Nature but of the Sublime; of pagan rites (the place is both savage and holy); of danger (the waning moon is referred to, as is the 'demon lover'); and of some feminine principal (is the wailing woman like a banshee?). | As we plunge deep into impulses, the unknown, the realm of instincts, and demonic forces; the Anima, the feminine, is here the repository of the forbidden, the one who dreams of dancing with demons. Creativity involves touching the darkness. |
| And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: |
We have a spring "exploding" from the ground, rising with unexpected force like a bursting dam (or like a water tap that has been held shut as pressure builds) | The suggestion is that the creative moment involves the emergence of something powerful from beneath the conscious realm; something which the artist or the dreamer may have been unaware of or may have worked to hold inside, but which is too strong to be held and must burst forth, for good or ill. |
| Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: |
Water drops (and rocks powered by the water) are bounding fiercely, and are compared with hail (fallen wild from the sky) bouncing off the turf or with kernels of grain bouncing under the fierce attack of the thresher. | Indicates the power with which these "particles" of the unconscious bound into the world; the sense is that they are beyond directing or controlling, but must come onto the scene as an undirected force. |
| And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. |
As we have our chasm identified as the source of the Alph, the sacred river from the beginning of the poem. | As these wild impulses, once emerged, take on form, direction and structure; they become as a river. |
| Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, |
The river has appeared; it will run its course within the walled garden, controlled, curling gently through the some little piece of the world. | The creative impulse, once unleashed, can carry on its earthly role; it moves easily, under control, winding through the various aspects of life -- taking its own route, but meandering, moving easily and gently, rather than roaring or thundering. |
Then reached the caverns measureless to man, |
Our river Alph flows not to the visible sea, but to an underground ocean, back to the deep and hidden waters from which it rose. | The idea or the creation flows, not to some easily seen conscious home, but back to the unconscious from which it came; the waters there are lifeless -- unapproachable until some idea again bursts to the surface and chooses to allow itself to be seen by the conscious mind. |
| And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! |
Kubla Khan apparently hears voices on the waters. | This is the one pair of lines I have trouble connecting to the poem as it appears; I can connect ancestral voices to the unconscious, but the substance of the prophesy does seem to connect to some narrative that never was written. This is the only line that leaves me dissatisfied with my reading. |
| The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves: |
We see shadow or reflection from Kubla Khan's dome, his artifice of pleasure, on the water. | The word is shadow: does Kubla Khan's conscious construction (the dome) serve to dim or diminish the beauty of the river? Or should we see the shadow as reflection, the mingling of conscious and unconscious creation. |
| Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. |
The sounds of the upswelling fountain and the caverns which are the river's home are audible. | Here we have a sense of music -- harmony tempered (mingled measure) with wild, possibly discordant, notes; we are reminded of the wild source of the creative river. |
| It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice! |
We have the meeting of antithetical concepts; we have the sunny pleasure dome shading the meandering river; we have the icy caves beneath. | To answer our question of a few lines before, it appears the miracle lies in the combination of the conscious creation (the dome) and the knowledge from the unconscious (the caves); the creative is composed of elements of both conscious plan and deep, felt knowledge. |
A damsel with a dulcimer |
Here we have a dream woman, one so fine as to exist in a vision, not on earth; and one who is singing and playing unearthly music -- she sings the music of the spheres. | I connect the damsel with the Anima, the feminine aspect of the Unconscious Self; by my interpretation she is the part of the self capable of seeing and bringing to consciousness those deep harmonies from the depths; she is an affirmative figure in these lines, though she was a wailing banshee when she earlier appeared: the Anima is both, as the unconscious may hold both heaven and hell. |
| Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, |
The narrator suggests that the song has been lost; he remembers its power but cannot reproduce it. | Coleridge is playing with us, suggesting the "lost memory" of the song even as he is concocting the story of having lost the rest of the poem; more seriously, his narrator is pointing us to the power he felt upon contacting that vision from beneath consciousness. |
| To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! |
The song is all that is needed to construct Kubla Khan's miracle (corresponding to the decree at the beginning of the poem); the narrator could build it if he could remember the damsel's song. | The suggestion is that the damsel's song reflected perfect harmony, the secret of creation, the Music of the Spheres. It can only be touched for a moment by a human creator, and all our creations reflect a moment of contact or a faded memory of deep reality (philosophically, the line touches Plato & his Allegory of the Cave). If one could grasp fully the unconscious song, one would have the secret of the cosmos. |
| And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! |
Such a builder would be a worker of miracles and would be seen as a sorcerer; his power would be beyond what a man should hold. | Suggests what power lies in the pure depths of the unconscious, and also suggests why one can only momentarily touch it, not absorb it; it carries both good and evil and, in any event, is so vast as to leave its holder outside the ken of human understanding. |
| Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, |
The sorcerer must be contained; he must be confined; he cannot be looked at. The circle woven three times is a magical incantation to confine the sorcerer. | Observers, quite justifiably, would be in dread of the power of one who had fully tapped the realms below; the sights are awesome at a single glance; far too fearful to know. |
| For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. |
The sorcerer has seen secrets not of this world; he has stepped into the eternal. | We note that, while the observers fear is entirely justified, these last images are affirmative; the one who has seen is one who has seen heaven. It is too much for human understanding, but it is heaven. Thus the artist reaches for it, brings back what he can, incorporates that of the unconscious that makes its way to the surface. He must; it is desirable; it is honey-dew and the milk of paradise. The problem is that he can only "bring back" a little, and he cannot be understood if he sees too much. |