Kubla Khan. A vision in a dream. A Fragment.

This Quarter our humanities piece takes us back to 1797 when, after a particularly psychedelic evening on laudanum, a young Thomas Taylor Coleridge sat down to write…

About Coleridge

Thomas Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) was an English poet, philosopher, and literary critic, best known as a founder of the Romantic Movement in England. A close collaborator of William Wordsworth, Coleridge co-authored Lyrical Ballads (1798), a groundbreaking collection that helped redefine English poetry.

His most celebrated works include The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and our current poem Kubla Khan, both rich with imagination, mysticism, and psychological depth.

He was known for his deep intellect and love of conversation, often engaging in long philosophical discussions. A passionate reader and thinker, he immersed himself in German philosophy such as the works of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling who stimulated his thoughts about the self and perception.

He enjoyed walking in nature, especially in the Lake District, where he found inspiration for much of his poetry. Despite personal difficulties, he was a devoted friend to fellow poets like Wordsworth and Southey, and his letters reveal a man of great sensitivity, wit, and emotional depth.

However, there is a darker history in Coleridge’s personal and private life. One of pain, turmoil and addiction.

Coleridge suffered from multiple ailments which included Rheumatic fever which is an infection of multiple joints and organ systems with the streptococcus bacteria. It can be very debilitating and sometimes fatal, and has symptoms like:

• Severe joint pain and swelling (migratory arthritis)

• Fever

• Fatigue

• Inflammation of the heart (rheumatic carditis), which could lead to long-term heart valve damage

• Skin rashes and small, painless lumps under the skin

• Neurological symptoms, including Sydenham's chorea (involuntary, jerky movements)

• 
  

These can persist and become chronic after infection. Treatment at the time was focused on symptom reduction and laudanum (a mixture of opium and alcohol) was often used to ease suffering and aid sleep. For Coleridge, pain, fatigue and anxiety were a constant companion and his use of opium continued, but no longer brought with it the relief he once he felt as his use turned in dependance and then to addiction.

Although his most famous poem Kubla Khan was written after a night with laudanum, Coleridge lamented the way it interfered with his ability to write and think clearly in his letters to friends and his works. Despite various attempts to quit—sometimes aided by friends like Wordsworth and later, the physician James Gillman—he struggled with addiction for much of his adult life. His writings, especially his later notebooks and letters, show a deeply self-aware and often tormented man, painfully conscious of the hold the drug had on him.

About Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan was written in 1796 but not published until 1816, the story being that it was Coleridge’s friend Lord Byron, who (according to Wikipedia 😳) encouraged him to finally publish it.

This poem seems to be somewhat controversial for many reasons, one of them being its architecture - is it merely “a meaningless reverie” or poetic genius and a technical exploration of the creative process? (see https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Taylor-Coleridge for deeper discussion).

Either way, by Coleridge himself it was considered incomplete. The scraps and fragments of a memory of a dream…

And here, I’ll leave you to enjoy and consider this poem for yourself.

L x

Thomas Taylor Coleridge

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 girdled round;

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.

But oh! 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 seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently 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 momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached 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!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves;

   Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid

   And on her dulcimer she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

   Could I revive within me

   Her symphony and song,

   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!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.