Consider Kubla Khan as a fragmentary poem - Summary, Critical Appreciation & Analysis

Kubla khan as a fragmentary poem

 Kubla Khan, says Prof Watson, is the most imaginative of poems. It is truly a mysterious miracle of a rare device whose meaning is elusive but whose visionary import is unmistakable. It is the most perfect example oI What. might be called the purely magical strain in Coleridge's poetry. A victim of lifelong neuralgia and of the opium prescribed to relieve his pain; he nevertheless spawned ideas like a hearing, but rarely completed the "stately pleasure-dome" which his imaginations decreed. The poem Kubla Khan was composed in a dream. Coleridge described in the introductory note to the poem, how he had been taking opium, and fallen asleep while reading a sentence from a travel book, Purchas' His Pilgrimage", concerning Kubla's palace and the wall around its gardens. Awakening, he wrote it down but was interrupted by a person from Porlock and Coleridge could not recall the rest of the dream. So the poem cannot maintain its perfect exposition, middle and absolute end. Although Coleridge had ended the poem superbly pulling together the non-connected bits into a triumphant declaration of the magic of creativity.

Kubla Khan as a fragmentary poem

Kubla Khan is about poetry and poetic inspiration. It is divided into two parts. The first 36 lines of the poem deal with the naturalness, popularity, and matter of fact ness of poetry. The second part of the poem purports to mean that the speaker could build a propitious palace with music if he could revive in himself the deep delight that he felt at visions he once beheld. Some critics have found fault with Kubla Khan on the ground that there is no logical connection between the first part and the second. In the first part, the poet describes a stately pleasure-dome which Kubla ordered to be built in a mysterious place called Xanadu. It was situated in a romantic spot, which was full of "gardens bright with sinuous rills" and forests "ancient as the hills". In the background, there is a hill also, down the slope of which there is a deep romantic chasm. From this chasm, water gushes out with such a great speed that huge pieces of rocks are scattered on all sides. According to the poet, it is a wild and savage place, the sacred river Alph, which was formed of the water coming out of the chasm, flowed with a mazy motion for five miles and then sank in tumult Kubla heard from a great distance of time the voices of his ancestors foretelling of a war:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 

Ancestral voices prophesying war "

In the second part the poet tells us .of an Abyssinian maid whom he once saw in a dream, playing on her dulcimer and singing of Mount Abora. If the poet could revive within' him her symphony and song, he would be so much delighted that with "music loud and long", he would make that pleasure dome in the air. Thus in the second part of the poem, the poet makes an attempt to realise his vision and to give it a concrete form. The poet's condition was under poetic inspiration would be such that all who look at him would be afraid of him because they know that he has been divinely inspired and has "drunk the milk of paradise."

There is a close connection between the two parts of Kubla Khan and as Humphry House says the second part is a logical extension of the first. In his opinion, the second part describes the act of poetic creation and the deep pleasure of imaginative fulfillment. In the first part of the poem, the poet describes the images of the dream in words, and in the second part, he wants to give an actuality and concreteness to the dreamy image by the power of music. The creative power of poetry is so great that with its help he can make such a pleasure-dome with all its romantic and gorgeous surroundings in the air. His listeners would then regard him as a mighty magician who had fed on magic juice "Honeydew".

Thus the whole poem is about the creative power of the poet and artist. Despite its fragmentary character, the poem is complete in itself as Humphry House says, "For this is a vision of ideal human life as the poetic imagination can create it. Part one only exists in the light of part two". There may be other paradises, other false paradises too, but this is the creation of the poet in his frenzy and it is because he can create it, he deserves the ritual dread.