Summary of the poem kubla khan stcoleridag?

Answer 1

SUMMARY

On the face of it, the poem is fragmented and incoherent. The first verse opens with a description of how the ancient Mongol emperor Kublai Khan ordered the creation of some kind of "pleasure dome". This takes place in the fictional land of Xanadu, where the fictional River Alph flows through fictional caves down to a made-up Sunless Sea.

In the second verse, we learn that the dome is built with a ten-mile diameter or circumference (it's not entirely clear which). It's a very lush utopia, complete with gardens and forests. Generally a very pleasant place, you might go on a honeymoon there if it weren't for the disturbing things to come in the next verse…

Verse three is longer than the first two verses put together. Indeed the first time I read the poem I thought it must have been an error, that it should really be split up, but no, this is how STC designed it. We learn that (presumably within the pleasure-dome), there is a strange chasm on the side of a hill, surrounded by cedar trees. This chasm is a "savage" place, "as holy and enchanted" as any place that was ever "haunted by [a] woman wailing for her Demon Lover". Within this haunted cavern, there's all kinds of turmoil- to illustrate, Coleridge compares this to if the Earth itself were heavily panting for breath. From this savage cleft in the hill, a geyser of some kind shoots up, throwing up giant boulders with it, which the poet compares to hail or to grains falling free from the stem as they're threshed. Things are generally so chaotic that the River Alph itself changes course, running through the forests (something of a flash-flood), but apparently reaching the same destination in the end, the Lifeless Ocean in the measureless caverns. And amidst all this havoc and mayhem, Kublai hears "ancestral voices prophesying war".

The fourth verse describes the pleasure-dome in this flooded state. There's a certain beauty amidst the chaos, the "mingled measure" description of noises coming from the fountain and the caves makes it sound like a kind of natural music. Lo and behold: somehow (it's not exactly clear how), all this chaos led to ice-caves, which Samuel describes as a very rare miracle.

The fifth verse is another long one, and starts with a total shift of gears. In what seems like a total change of topic, the narrator suddenly tells us about a vision or dream he once had. In this vision or dream, he saw a maiden playing a Dulcimer (a stringed instrument) singing about a mountain. Unfortunately, he's forgotten her song. And, he says, if he could only remember it ("Could I revive within me her symphony and song"), he'd be so sublimely delighted that he'd build the Pleasure-Dome of Xanadu "within the air", that is, he'd construct some kind of floating city or paradise, ice-caves and everything. This would be visible to everyone who heard the song, and all that audience would be so astounded by the sheer wonder of it all, they'd be downright terrified by it, thinking the narrator some kind of wizard or vampire or demon (hence "weave a circle round him thrice", a reference to a superstition that you could ward off evil spirits by waving your hands in a circle three times).

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

In order to completely understand the poem, you need some additional clues given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the publication. Coleridge claims the work came to him in an opium trance. When he regained his senses, he could still remember it, and wrote down what would become Kubla Khan. Unfortunately, he was suddenly disturbed by a "visitor from Porlock" who kept him distracted for a full hour. When he was finally free of the visitor, he discovered that he'd forgotten the rest of it, so that the existent poem is just a fragment of the full vision.

At least, that's the claim made by Coleridge. After thinking about it a long time, I've realized this story is probably not true, but that it's a crucial clue into the true nature of the poem. Kubla Khan is not a poem about Mongol emperors, man-made utopias, catastrophic upheavals, or caves of ice at all. All of that, the entire first four verses, is just a very complicated illustrative device. Illustrative of what? Illustrative of how strongly the narrator wishes he could remember his dream. The whole work is actually a profoundly complete, coherent and self-contained tribute to the dreams we forget when we wake, the lingering residue which remains of them, and our fervent desire to remember those dreams.

If I were to convert the whole poem into a short and casual three-liner but otherwise preserve the basic structure of it, here's what it would look like:

"You know, this really incredible and unbelievable miracle happened a long time ago.

And the reason I bring it up is, I had this really amazing dream once…

Which I can't remember, but if I could, I'd be so happy I'd recreate that miracle and no-one would believe their eyes!"

Thus the bulk of the poem is irrelevant, and only serves to emphasize and reemphasize just how incredible and unbelievable the legendary miracle was, and thereby underscore just how intensely the speaker wishes to remember the lost dream.

Answer 2

One night, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wasn't feeling all that great. To dull the pain, he took a dose of laudanum, a preparation of opium used as a medicine in the 19th century. He fell asleep and had a strange dream about a Mongol emperor named Kubla Khan. Coleridge dreamed that he was actually writing a poem in his sleep, and when he woke up after a few hours, he sat down to record the dream poem. He meant to write several hundred lines, but he was interrupted by someone who had come to see him on business. When he came back to the poem, he had forgotten the rest. The lines he did manage to scribble out turned into one of the most famous and enduring poems in English literary history. (You can read more on about Coleridge's inspiration for "Kubla Khan" here.)

Not your average night, maybe, but why should we care about this story? Well, Coleridge wasn't just a guy with the flu who happened to have a weird dream. He was a famous poet, one of a group we now know as the Romantics. He was a particularly good friend of the poet William Wordsworth, and together they published a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. "Kubla Khan" was first published in a collection called Christabel, Kubla Khan: A Vision, and the Pains of Sleep, and it kicked off the Romantic movement. The Romantics were interested in writing about nature, and they wanted to escape the old, traditional forms of English poetry. "Kubla Khan," with its interesting rhyme scheme, variable line lengths, and intense focus on nature, is both a good example of Romantic poetry and proof that even your weird dreams can be turned into a masterpiece.

Answer 3

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a dreamlike poem that narrates the construction of an imaginary palace by the Mongol ruler Kubla Khan. Coleridge describes the exotic beauty of the palace and its surroundings, evoking a sense of mystery and enchantment. The poem explores themes of creativity, nature, and the power of the imagination.

Answer 4

Samuel Taylor Coleridge