“Kubla Khan”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge; poem and analysis

“Kubla Khan”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge; poem and analysis.

Kubla Khan (Kubla Khan) —whose original title is: Kubla Khan or a vision within a dream (Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream)—is a romantic poem by the English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), completed in 1797 and published in the 1816 anthology: Christabel, Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep (Christabel, Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep). It would later reappear in the book: The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Poetical Works of ST Coleridge).

Legend has it that, after consuming a strong dose of opium, Samuel Taylor Coleridge He fell asleep while reading. The poet had one of the most amazing dreams of his life: he observed the construction of a great palace, and he knew (as things are known in dreams) that this construction was carried out by a strange melody that sounded in the air, while a A mysterious voice crossed the heavens with verses never heard before.

When Samuel Coleridge woke up, he hurried to write down those enigmatic verses; However, he was interrupted by an unwelcome visitor. He managed to write only fifty verses of the three hundred that he had dreamed of.

It is not entirely strange to imagine a writer who dreams of a poem and a palace; The strange thing is that twenty years after the death of Samuel Coleridgea Russian researcher discovered an old Persian manuscript that tells the story of the enchanted palace of Kubla Khanthe design of which was revealed to the emperor in a dream.

To conclude this brief analysis of Kubla Khanone of the great poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we quote Jorge Luis Borges and his essay, Coleridge’s dream:

«Which explanation will we prefer? Those who reject the supernatural will judge that the story of the two dreams is a coincidence, others that the poet somehow knew that the emperor had dreamed of the palace and said he had dreamed the poem to create a splendid fiction. More charming are the hypotheses that transcend the rational. For example, that the soul of the emperor, after destroying the palace, penetrated Coleridge’s soul so that he could reconstruct it in words, more durable than marble and metal.

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»The first dream added a palace to reality; the second, a poem suggested by the palace; The similarity of dreams suggests a plan. In 1961 it was found that only ruins remained of Kublai Khan’s palace; From the poem we know that only fifty verses were rescued. Such facts allow us to conjecture that the series has not ended. The first had the vision of the palace and built it; The second, who did not know about the previous one’s dream, dreamed a poem about the palace. If the diagram is correct, some reader of Kubla Khan will dream, in a night from which centuries separate us, a marble or a music. That man will not know that two others dreamed, perhaps the series of dreams has no end, perhaps the key is in the last one. (Coleridge’s dreamJorge Luis Borges).

Kubla Khan.
Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

In Xanadu, Kubla Khan ordered the construction of a majestic palace;
where Alf, the sacred river, runs through a thousand caverns,
leading into a sea abandoned by the sun.
Twice five miles of fertile land,
They were surrounded by walls and towers;
and there were gardens furrowed by bright streams,
where rows of scented trees flourished,
and forests as tight as mountains,
enclosing smiling green passages in its bosom.

That deep and romantic ravine
that goes into the green hill,
in the shadow of the cedars!
Wild landscape!
Enchanted and beatified as if in another era,
under the dying moon,
some lady would have come to cry for her demon lover!
And from this ravine, growing in incessant moan,
as if the earth were taking a deep breath,
a tumultuous fountain gushes out at times;
whose uncertain tongues spit out fragments like hail
that jump under the sack of wheat,
And in the midst of these dancing rocks, next to them,
the sacred river jumped into the air.
For five miles, through a laid out labyrinth,
Between forests and valleys the sacred river ran,
before entering the caves to the immeasurable man
and sinking tumultuously into a dead ocean.
In the midst of this tumult, Kubla heard in the distance
the ancient voices that predicted war.

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The shadow of the palace of delights floated on the waves,
and from it the melodies of the fountain and the caves could be heard.
A miracle of subtle ingenuity, this resplendent palace with its ice caverns!

I saw in a dream a maiden, playing her instrument:
an Abyssinian maiden, playing her instrument
and singing sweetly on Mount Abora.
Ah! If I could resurrect her music and her song from my memory,
They would plunge me into such grave ecstasy,
that I could build that palace with music in the air.
That shining palace, those ice caverns!
And as many as heard me would see before their own eyes, and they would all shout:
Careful! Careful! Look at her shining eyes, look at her flowing hair!
Draw a triple circle around him and close your eyes in sacred reverence,
for he has been nourished by sweet dew and drunk the milk of Paradise.

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.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girded round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeing,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momentarily 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 momentarily the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach’d the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!