Kubla Khan

Kipling, in his ‘Wireless’, channeled: “Remember that in all the millions permitted there are no more than five—five little lines—of which one can say: ‘These are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry’”.

Those five are lines 14-16 of ‘Kubla Khan’ (above) and the following two from Keats' ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

Charm'd magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in fairy-lands forlorn.

Joyce opined: “‘Kubla Khan’ might have been the most beautiful poem in the English language if he had been able to finish it”. I second the superlative, though JJ was wrong to take Coleridge literally about Kubla being incomplete.

Coleridge entitled it ‘Kubla Khan’ Or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment, and added the following prefatory note:

The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the grounds of any supposed poetic merits. In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 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 with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external sense, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. 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. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, 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 purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!

Whatever. Even if this straight-up stoner story is asymptotically true, I believe Coleridge included it as a hint to the poem's final purport, after completing it with the second part (l.37). ‘Kubla Khan’ is by no means a fragment.

Quite possibly, the first part is an oneirological fragment from one of Coleridge's opiate siestas, but the second part is as sober as Wordsworth. The first is a fantastic description of the environs of junior Khan's seaside chillground, complete with spacious caves, a rock-rending geyser and a banshee-haunted chasm (literally the holiest of all moonlit chasms that were ever banshee-haunted, but the context implies that this condition is not satisfied vacuously). With its forceful imagery of natural phenomena (vaulting rocks... really?), the first part in itself would seem like a hyperbolic nature poem;  in light of the second, however, the mighty fountain and Romantic (sic!) chasm are evidently placeholders for poetic afflatus or at least such stuff as poems are made on.

The second part is an invocation of an Ethiopian muse, in yearning for a poetic resurrection of the aforesaid wonders. The dulcimer-plucking damsel would enable the poet to "build that dome in air" (l. 46), that is, conjure up Kubla's beach resort. And this aerial edifice is expected to inspire awe in his bystanders, not to mention some freaky ocular-fulguration and horripilation in him (l. 50). The berserk poet's trance is also said to benefit from weaving a manned circle around him (l. 51), which I am told was an actual superstition: the thrice-spun circle is meant to ward off intrusion. If you are wondering how you could beget such virtuoso verse with a bunch of fools dancing around you, try chasing the dragon as often as Taylor C.

As commentators like to point out, the mention of milk and honey in the closing lines is likely a reference to Plato's Ion, where Socrates, in one of his most egregious argumentative triumphs,  inveigles a freshly-accoladed rhapsode into accepting that, though he is a great artist, he has no talent. (He is merely a privileged mouthpiece of the muses.) Thus, ‘Kubla Khan’ is a two-part poem about the eruptive power and fragility of poetic inspiration.

01    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
02    A stately pleasure-dome decree:
03    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
04    Through caverns measureless to man
05             Down to a sunless sea.
06    So twice five miles of fertile ground
07    With walls and towers were girdled round:
08    And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
09    Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
10    And here were forests ancient as the hills,
11    Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
12    But oh! that deep Romantic chasm which slanted
13    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
14    A savage place! as holy and enchanted
15    As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
16    By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
17    And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
18    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
19    A mighty fountain momently was forced:
20    Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
21    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
22    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
23    And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
24    It flung up momently the sacred river.
25    Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
26    Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
27    Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
28    And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
29    And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
30    Ancestral voices prophesying war!
31            The shadow of the dome of pleasure
32            Floated midway on the waves;
33            Where was heard the mingled measure
34            From the fountain and the caves.
35    It was a miracle of rare device,
36    A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
37            A damsel with a dulcimer
38            In a vision once I saw:
39            It was an Abyssinian maid,
40            And on her dulcimer she played,
41            Singing of Mount Abora.
42            Could I revive within me
43            Her symphony and song,
44            To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
45    That with music loud and long,
46    I would build that dome in air,
47    That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
48    And all who heard should see them there,
49    And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
50    His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
51    Weave a circle round him thrice,
52    And close your eyes with holy dread,
53    For he on honey-dew hath fed,
54    And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Stuff you can actually click on:

Coleridge's (selective) translation of Faust; out of copyright (DJVU):
http://ifile.it/5w7xcl1 (Why not PDF? Because PDF sucks balls.)

WinDJVU:
http://windjview.sourceforge.net

Ridiculously overpriced scholarly edition of this:
http://www.amazon.com/Faustus-German-Goethe-Translated-Coleridge/dp/0199229686

Errata for the latter:
1. "eves" instead of "eyes" in "tears fill her eyes"
2. line 3325 is missing the word "Aye"