Kubla Khan: In an Indian Perspective
Dr. Pragya Shukla
Asst. Professor
Deptt. of English & Foreign Languages
Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya
(Central University, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh)
India
William Wordsworth’s friendship and the intelligent company of Dorothy Wordsworth
helped to sharpen the poetic genius of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge’s intellect and
bewitching personality impressed the siblings. Dorothy thus noted down her opinion:
…He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so
benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, and like William. At first I thought him very
plain… that is for about three minutes…His eye is large and full and not very dark, but
grey—such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression, but it speaks
every emotion of his animated mind. It has more of the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
than I have ever witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows and an overhanging forehead. (Arthur
314)
Coleridge suffered from a frail health. In order to get rid of acute physical pain, he often took
refuge of opium. Gradually the poet became addicted to it. The tyranny of his addiction
began to affect all aspects of his life. He gave an account of his pathetic state of mind in Ode
to Dejection:
But now afflictions bow me down to earth;
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But O, each visitation
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination.
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Coleridge’s health swung from good to bad like a pendulum. His fertile imagination was
flared at intervals by the narcotic. Fluctuations in the mental state, from sleeping to waking,
fascinated Coleridge. He often attempted to take his readers to that realm of waking- dream
state. William Hazlitt had referred to Spenser as a poet of ‘waking dreams’. Coleridge had
opined then:
The poet has placed you in dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish nor
have the power, to inquire where you are or how you got there.
Coleridge completed the composition of Kubla Khan in 1797 and published in 1816. In a
Preface to the poem, the poet revealed that he had composed the poem one night after he
experienced an opium induced dream soon after reading Purchas’s Pilgrimes. When he woke
up, he started writing a poem about visions seen by him in a dream, until he was interrupted
by a person from Porlock.
Coleridge was reading Clergyman and geographer Samuel Purchas’s Purchas, his Pilgrimes,
or Relations of the World and Religions Observed in All Ages and Places Discovered, from
the Creation to the Present. The book contained a brief description of Xanadu, the summer
capital of the Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan.The text described Xanadu thus:
In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteen miles of
plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs,
delightful streames,and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the
middest there of a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be moved from
place to place. (Web)
Samuel Purchas had taken the description from the writings of Marco Polo, a Venetian
explorer who had travelled across Asia to China:
…And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned, between
north-east and north, you come to a city called Chandu, which was built by the
Khan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble Palace, the rooms
of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and
with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that
you regard them with delight and astonishment…Round this Palace a wall is
built, inclosing a compass of 16 miles, and inside the Park there are fountains
and rivers and brooks, and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild
animals(excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has
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procured and placed there to supply food for his falcons and hawks, which he
keeps…(web)
While writing ‘Kubla Khan’, Coleridge clearly intended to lead the readers to a charmed
sleep or a waking- dream experience. The poem begins with a breath taking description of a
‘stately pleasure dome’ similar to the one he had been reading of before falling asleep:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Both Xanadu and ‘Kubla Khan’ are historical and legendary. They have an alien quality and
appear almost mythical. The first two lines of the poem conjure an atmosphere of a dream
vision and gradually lead the readers into a waking dreamland. When we come to think of
Kubla Khan, an image of a powerful monarch comes to our mind. Knight postulated:
As Kubla Khan himself, if we bring him within our scheme, he becomes God;
or at least one of those ‘huge and mighty forms’ or other similar institutions of
gigantic mountainous power, in Wordsworth…Or we can, provisionally—not
finally, as I shall show—leave him out, saying that the poet’s genius, starting
to describe an oriental monarch’s architectural exploits, finds itself
automatically creating a symbolic universal panorama of existence. This is a
usual process, since the poet continually starts with an ordinary tale but
universalises as he proceeds.( 165-166)
Some critics have also mulled over the fact that Kubla Khan could be Lord Vishnu Himself.
In a letter to Thelwall, it was revealed that the image of the Indian God is used as a metaphor
for his own meditative state:
I can at times feel strongly the beauties, you describe, in themselves, and for
themselves—but more frequently all things appear little—all the knowledge,
that can be acquired, child’s play—the universe itself—what but an immense
heap of little things?—I can contemplate nothing but parts, and parts are all
too little --! – My mind feels as if it ached to behold and know something
great—something one and indivisible—and it is only in the faith of this that
rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of sublimity or
majesty!—But in this faith all things counterfeit infinity...It is but seldom that I
raise and spiritualise my intellect to this height—and at other times I adopt the
Brahman Creed, and say—It is better to sit than to stand, it is better to lie than
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to sit, it better to sleep than to wake—but Death is the best of all!—I must
wish, like the Indian Vishna,to float along an infinite ocean cradled in the
flower of the Lotos, and wake once in a million years for a minutes—just to
know that I was going to sleep for a million years more.
Perusing the above passage, we can well gauge Coleridge’s inclination towards Indian
culture. It appears he was accustomed of dwelling in a spiritualised state of intellect but soon
enough he gave in and lassitude took over. He yearns to be a yogi-- like Vishnu who is
visualised as sleeping on his flowery bed.
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Since Coleridge was deeply influenced by Indian mythology, Alph could be a reference to the
River Saraswati. It is believed that river Saraswati inspires creativity and knowledge. All
important Vedic scriptures like Manusmriti, initial verses of Rigveda and several Upanishads
were believed to have been composed by Vedic seers on the banks of this river.The Saraswati
however disappears underground only to re-emerge at Triveni Sangam to wash off the sins of
mortal beings and free them from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
Coleridge was aware of the Indian Goddess, Saraswati. Jones had composed a hymn to
appease the Goddess and it was published in Craufurd’s Sketches. Craufurd included a note
on Saraswati:
…as the patroness of imagination and invention. Another note refers to
Saraswati as a sacred river which disappears underground. (Craufurd, pp. 1505)
Michael Witzel dwelled upon the mythical nature of Saraswati and opined:
Saraswati is not an earthly river, but the Milky Way that is seen as a road to
immortality and heavenly after-life. (Witzel 133)
The ‘five miles of fertile ground’ that Coleridge poetises could be an elaboration of the five
sections of the Doab region in North Indian plains which includes the Sind Sagar Doab, Jech
Doab,Rechna Doab, Bari Doab and Bist Doab.
A ‘Dome’ is often associated with Mughal architecture. Purchas considered the Mughals to
be direct descendants of Mongols. Hence we can safely conclude that Coleridge might be
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alluding to the great Mughal ruler Akbar as Kubla Khan to the fort or ‘pleasure dome’ of
‘Illahabad’, now known as Allahabad built by Akbar in 1583.The fort is constructed on the
banks of the river Yamuna and is the largest Fort built by Akbar. This gigantic fort, renowned
for its beauty houses a number of palaces in its fold. A temple in the courtyard encloses the
‘Saraswati Kund’ which is supposed to be the origin of the mighty river Saraswati.
Hodges had visited India in 1783 and he described the Allahabad fort which stood at the
confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers. He described the fortress as built in an old style,
the heavy walls of which were flanked by towers which had fallen into ruins.
The Allahabad fort had been erected in the midst of a seemingly untouched world of thick
forests shrouded with mystery and beyond comprehension of human race. The AgraAllahabad region consisted of dense forests where elephants were hunted by the Mughals to
stock their military force. Akbar, the great Mughal ruler, it seemed had created a luxurious
paradise in Allahabad. His fort, according to the poet appears amidst the natural world and it
appears akin to a place fit for spiritual meditation. The ‘Saraswati Kund’ in the palace further
makes it imperative that the dweller of the fort sought ‘moksha’. In the remote region, in his
grand palace, which incidentally housed his wives, the emperor was seeking the Supreme
Being. He believed, perhaps that the sacred river Saraswati would help him reach his
destination at the earliest. The walls, the towers and gardens of the Allahabad fort represented
the coming of order and refinement.
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Akbar, or for that matter Coleridge could feel the deep conflict and the searing desire for
wholeness. He has realised the pain of being divided from the Almighty. The belief that
happiness will evade him as long as he remains away from his Creator makes him desperate
further still.. In desperation, the divided soul, strives for union with the Supreme Being, his
other self. This path undertaken by a seeker is not known to many and usually remains
untrodden by mortals enmeshed in the web of life. Here the seeker, fully conscious that he is
departing from the glitter of the materialistic world, has to ignore the words of caution trying
to keep him from venturing forth.
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A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
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.
When seekers commence their trek down the stony, thorny road to the Almighty, they have
to take several tests to prove his firmness and determination. Beautiful women meet them on
their journey. Pots of gold obstruct their path. If they are able to oversee all lures, they reach
their destination effortlessly. When Akbar had set forth on his search, visions of Jodhabai, his
most beloved wife’s vision haunted him all the way. He could visualise her singing away her
melodious bhajans. Slowly, her melodies turned celestial and mortal Jodhabai transformed
into an immortal Mother Nature, leading the traveller to Shiva Himself. In Lay Sermons,
Coleridge elaborated on a similar experience:
We speeded from the temple, when we were addressed by a woman, tall
beyond the stature of mortals, and with something more than human in her
countenance and mien, which yet by mortals could only be felt, not conveyed
by words, or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, animated by ardent
feelings, was displayed in them: and hope, without its uncertainty, and
something more than all these, which I understood not; but which yet seemed
to blend all these into a divine unity of expression.… We enquired her name.
My name, she replied, is Religion. ‘She led us to an eminence in the midst of
the valley, from the top of which we could command the whole plain, and
observe the relation of the different parts, of each to the other, and each to the
whole, and of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which assisted
without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to see beyond the
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limits of the Valley of Life: though our eye even thus assisted permitted us
only to behold a light and a glory, but what we could not descry, save only that
it was, and that it was most glorious.’ (S T Coleridge: Lay Sermons p.141)
Coleridge’s parable doubtlessly reveals a similar experience---of Mother Earth leading a
seeker to the Divine Father. These lines also sum up Coleridge’s own faith and an answer to
superstition and the new atheism. Coleridge is even identifying himself with those seekers
who move on single-mindedly, focussed on their goal and at the same time envisioning the
relationship of everything to everything else.
Mary Rahme concluded:
..... the symbols created by the artist are not representations merely of
objective outer nature, nor are they representations of the artist's own
subjective feelings. Rather they are forms created by the human mind in the
same way that the forms of nature are created by the Divine Mind. The
implication is that the artist is peculiarly fitted by his genius to achieve an
insight into this process and re-create it in his art. Thus a symbol is both a
result of, and, in a sense, a representation of, the art~~tic insight which
inspires and guides its own creation. This dual nature of poetic activity settles
it firmly in the central preoccupation of all Coleridge's thinking; that polar
logic whereby one becomes two while yet remaining one. Without imagining
polarity, the nature of reason is not to be understood, and nor is the nature of
God, since 'God is reason' •The apparent dislocations of 1Kubla Khan' - the
person from Porlock, the Preface from the poem, the sunny dome and icy
caves, the third stanza from the first two stanzas - reflect the two worlds of the
poet, the conscious and the unconscious, or perhaps the conscious and the selfconscious. The fragment which is the conscious intellect creates the impulse to
move beyond the broken form to an infinity, so that, in a sense, the poem
never really ends.
Anita M. O’Connell, in her Paper, ‘Kubla Khan: The Waking Dream’ dwelled upon the
flawless rhythmic flow of verses, composed so as to serve as a lullaby for the dreamer and
not to jolt him out of his reverie:
The hypnotic rhythm of the verse continues, but with a more varied meter, to
create a heightened dream effect and appear truer to nature—to the supposed
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transcription of a real dream—than would a more structured meter and form.
In an article entitled ‘Coleridge, Mary Robinson, and the Prosody of Dreams,’
Daniel Robinson writes effectively on the ‘dream world’13 that Coleridge
creates through his versification. Robinson suggests that Coleridge may have
followed what he saw as Spenser’s lead and ‘devised a prosody of dreams to
achieve a similar effect’.14 Indeed the varying verse of ‘Kubla Khan’ does
appear to the reader to be less consciously constructed and more believably a
product of the unconscious. The rhythm flows smoothly so as not to disturb
the reader from the waking dream in which Coleridge wished to place him.
Had the rhythm been too regular or equally too irregular, the result may have
been noticeably conscious or jarring and would have dissolved the dream
effect. Coleridge often noted the lack of surprise felt in sleeping dreams.
Nothing in the rhythm of the poem, he realized could surprise the reader or the
hypnotic effect would be lost. reader or the hypnotic effect would be lost. The
historical and exotic but natural romance of the first section slides deeper into
the waking dream as it moves into a more supernatural, gothic romance. The
‘deep romantic chasm’ covered by cedars—ancient trees—is ‘A savage place’,
wild and sublime. The description of the chasm invokes the imagery of
romance: not only is it ‘enchanted’; it is ‘holy’ too. (Anita 29-- 37)
The caves of ice seem to have held timeless wisdom in its fold. Only those who care to look
beyond the bright, vibrant world devised by the Almighty seem to hear the voice of Mother
Nature beckoning them to these ancient caves that are anxiously waiting to share their wealth
of wisdom with the mortals. People, who delve deeper, away from the illusion of the external
world, aspire for salvation. They realise the futility of the momentary pleasures of earthly life
and yearn to reach the Supreme Being which is the only truth. It sought with devotion,
without being pulled down by the glitter and glamour of earthly life; they are able to meet
Shiva Himself, with ‘His flashing eyes, his floating hair!’ As the mortals ‘weave a circle
round him thrice ‘the tedious journey of life, death and rebirth comes to an end. Then the
travellers revel in the arms of their Almighty Father who has all along fed on ‘honey dew’
and ‘milk of paradise’.
Akbar, it is believed had become an ascetic towards the end of his life. Though he dwelled in
a magnificent palace along with his several wives, he too, it is said had heard the eternal
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‘music loud and long’ beckoning him. Akbar had given in too. A perusal of the poem thus
makes it very easy for us to see it in an Indian context and one can assert with conviction that
‘Kubla Khan’ was none other than the great Mughal ruler, Abu’l-Fath Jalal ud-din
Muhammad Akbar and Xanadu is our very own Allahabad!
Neil Peart, a renowned US Canadian drummer, has intricately summed up the essence of the
poem, Kubla Khan, in his lyrics Xanadu. He has flawlessly capitulated the essence of
Coleridge’s work with lucidity and accuracy.
To seek the sacred river
To walk the caves of ice
To break my fast on honey dew
And drink the milk of Paradise...
I heard the whispered tales
of immortality
The deepest mystery
From an ancient book. I took a clue
I scaled the frozen mountain tops
Of eastern lands unknown
Time and man alone
Searching for the lost....Xanadu
Xanadu---To stand To stand within the Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste anew the fruits of life
The last immortal man
To find the sacred river Alph
To walk the caves of ice
Oh, I will dine on honey dew
And drink the milk of Paradise
A thousand years have come and gone
But time has passed me by
Stars stopped in the sky
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Frozen in an everlasting view
Waiting for the world to end
Weary of the night
Praying for the light
Prison of the lost.....Xanadu
Xanadu...held within the Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste my bitter triumph
As a mad immortal man
Nevermore shall I return
Escape these caves of ice
For I have dined on honey dew.
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References:
Lee, Edmund. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dorothy Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism, ed. Thomas Middleton
Raysor, London: Constable, 1936.
http://www.archive.org/details/purchashispilgrim
(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_1/Chapter_61
Knight, G.W. "Coleridge's Divine Comedy" in English Romantic Poets. Ed. M. H. Abrams.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Lines to Thelwall, Poetical Works.Ed. J.C.C.Mays. 2 Volume,
Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton Press: Princeton, 1969.
Craufurd Quentin, Sketches Chiefly Relating to the History, Religion, Learning, and manners
of the Hindoos, Vul.2, pp. 150-5)
Wetzel, Michael, The Origins of the World's Mythologies, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Anita M. O’Connell Kubla Khan: The Waking Dream, Coleridge Bulletin 24, 2004,29-36.
White, R.J. Lay Sermons: The Collected Works Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1972.
Rahne, Mary. Coleridge’s Concept of Symbolism, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900,
Volume 9, Nineteenth Century, 619-632.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan
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