Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Iambic, Irregular rhyme
Related content:
- • Coleridge: Kubla Khan – Reading & Analysis (Playlist) (Video Playlist)
- • Coleridge: Kubla Khan – Plain Reading (Video)
- • Coleridge: The Preface to Kubla Khan – Analysis (Video)
- • Coleridge: Kubla Khan – Illustrated Reading (Video)
- • Coleridge: Kubla Khan – Analysis (Video)
Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" – Complete Reading & In-Depth Analysis with Q&A
"It is not a poem, but a musical composition" — so said William Hazlitt in 1816, dismissing Kubla Khan as brilliant nonsense. He wasn't entirely wrong about the music. But is there more going on beneath the surface?
The analysis examines Coleridge's extraordinary use of sound, rhythm, assonance and alliteration; the contrasting elements running through the imagery (man-made versus natural, light versus dark, the pleasure dome versus the sunless sea); and the deeper question of what, if anything, the poem actually means. This video is also useful as a summary and explanation of Kubla Khan for students studying the poem.
Along the way: the links to Milton's Paradise Lost and the Book of Tobit that cast doubt on Coleridge's famous account of the poem's composition; the possible connection to the Enclosure Acts; the argument that the poem is really about the creative process itself; and the final section's tantalising suggestion that the poet has failed to achieve the very inspiration he describes.
Is Kubla Khan a symbolic representation of divine and artistic creation — or, as one critic memorably puts it, "a small masterpiece of confidence trickery"? That's something you'll have to decide for yourself. As always, the bottom line is not what the poem means, but what it means *to you*.
You also need to see the poem in the context of Coleridge's preface, which I discuss here: https://youtu.be/LFVd8IPkCwc
Ano Sensei (aka John R. Yamamoto-Wilson) holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and taught English literature at Sophia University, Tokyo, for many years.
0:00 Introduction & opening lines
0:24 Critical reception: Hazlitt's verdict
1:09 The music of the poem: sound and rhythm
5:03 Does the poem mean anything at all?
6:04 Contrasting elements in the imagery
8:00 Gardens and forests: lines 6–11
10:04 The Enclosure Acts connection
12:14 The deep romantic chasm
16:18 The sacred river: lines 17–36
19:57 Poetic technique in the central stanza
22:42 The damsel with a dulcimer: final section
25:20 Has Coleridge delivered the goods?
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6 Comments
What an inspiring reading of Kubla Khan. Thank you.
Thank you for the feedback! The reading is also available as a standalone video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv3rekBSrSY&t=14s
Kipling, in his short story “Wireless”, writes: “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.'” Three of them, he says, are “A savage place! as holy and enchanted/ As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted/ By woman wailing for her demon lover”. The other two are Keats’ “Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam/ Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
Right. It’s noteworthy that, in both the poems referenced, the poet is in an altered state – Coleridge, as he claims, under the effect of opium, and Keats “As though” under the effects of hemlock or opium. In Kipling’s tale, Shaynor produces his lines after drinking the narrator’s pharmaceutical compound – “Night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a poet.” Somehow, by being in a particular state of mind, a person becomes a conduit for something magical, much as conductors are a conduit for electricity. The metaphor is reminiscent of the Grecian Muses and Plato’s observations in the Ion about the nature of poetic creation. In the Ion, Plato has Socrates describe poetic inspiration through a specific physical metaphor: a lodestone that passes its attractive power through a chain of iron rings — from the Muse to the poet, from the poet to the rhapsode, from the rhapsode to the audience. Each link in the chain is a passive conductor, not an originator. The power flows through them; they do not generate it themselves.
@anosensei Thank you for your reply. The connection of a drug-induced state had never occurred to me.
0:00 Introduction & opening lines
0:24 Critical reception: Hazlitt’s verdict
1:09 The music of the poem: sound and rhythm
5:03 Does the poem mean anything at all?
6:04 Contrasting elements in the imagery
8:00 Gardens and forests: lines 6–11
10:04 The Enclosure Acts connection
12:14 The deep romantic chasm
16:18 The sacred river: lines 17–36
19:57 Poetic technique in the central stanza
22:42 The damsel with a dulcimer: final section
25:20 Has Coleridge delivered the goods?