Ans: “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (S.T. Coleridge) is one of the most celebrated and debated works of the Romantic period in English literature. This very poem has been created out of an opium-induced dream of Coleridge. In fact, it is just a written form of his fancy in its original shape. It describes the mental flow of thinking in an exact way of presenting various references without maintaining logical coherence. The poem presents a true picture of dreams and fancy in a subconscious state of mind. It is just the inscription of the poet’s dream of the magnificent palace of Kubla Khan.
Being essential to the nature of a dream it enchants us with the sheer loveliness of its color, artistic grandeur, and sweet harmony. The poem exemplifies Coleridge’s mastery of supernatural poetry. The images which passed through his mind during the dream have been expressed through word pictures that have the vividness and clarity of a dream.
From the very outset of the poem, Coleridge gives a dream touch to the poem. The title of this poem is rather unique and unexpected, the name of a ruler of China in the 13th century. This ironic name simply injects a sense of wonderment and unexpectedness into the poem by presenting a character that does not belong and inserting him into the delicately painted background that is this poem. The imagination or dream-like state certainly had something to do with this name, it points to the irreverent and unexpected. The characters and events that the poem presents can only be possible in dreams. The happenings in Kubla’s world defy reality and perplex the senses. But in a dream anything is possible. Impossibility is the reality in a dream.
The setting of “Kubla Khan” is a distant past. The ‘sunny pleasure dome’ and the ‘caves of ice’ – an impossible picture of warmth and coldness that can only occur in the magical distant land of the poem. Besides making the poem remote in time and space, the poet has also imparted to it a dream-like quality so that the rational self is kept at bay and ‘poetic faith’ is easily achieved. In the poem, a dream has been restated in poetic language, and “willing suspension of disbelief” is achieved for the magical as well as supernatural in the poem.
The mysterious and supernatural environment in “Kubla Khan” is mainly produced through Coleridge’s description of the pleasure dome and it also arrests our attention through its stunning beginning as —
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree.”
An exquisite quality of Coleridge’s supernaturalism is his suggestiveness. Coleridge as a skillful master of treating supernaturalism does not describe it directly. In “Kubla Khan”, he vividly describes the palace tower and the huge surrounding area with a keen suggestiveness of its supernatural environment. Coleridge’s suggestiveness of supernaturalism is clearly noticed in the following lines:
“A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’ers beneath a waning moon was haunted.”
The story that Coleridge presents in the poem, has many magical and supernatural elements. In the world of Kubla, contrasting elements mingle in one palace. An impossible picture is created by juxtaposing the sun and ice in the same pleasure dome. Coleridge makes Xanadu idyllic but also savage. It is lovely and innocent, surrounded by evil and the constant threat of destruction. Coleridge has sought to impart reality to the magical and supernatural by setting the poem in the framework of a dream.
To sum up, we can say that “Kubla Khan” is rightly considered as a product of sheer fancy. It is just the inscription of the poet’s dream of the magnificent palace of Kubla Khan.