Romanticism In Kubla Khan: C.U. English Honours Notes

S.T. Coleridge may be distinguished as the most representative of the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. Kubla Khan, a celebratory poem of Coleridge is romantic in its tone, temperament and content.

Coleridge excels his contemporaries in the psychological treatment of the Middle Ages, where, a strange beauty is there to be won by strong imagination out of things unlikely or remote. The exquisite, distant setting of Kubla Khan is laid in harmony with this aspect of Romanticism, that is, “strangeness added to beauty”. The first stanza gives a sensuous, typical pictorial presentation of an earthly paradise, which does not have any historical significance. It is the landscape of Xandu, which Kubla Khan has selected for building his pleasure-dome, on the bank of the river Alph. Thus a medieval, autocratic Chinese monarch forms the subject of the poem. The names--- Xandu, Alph etc.—unfamiliar and wrought with the spirit of mystery, lend to the poem an enchantment of their own. 

The exotic plot of land is one of teeming nature—garden, hills, serpentine rivulets, forests and spots of vegetation—all these embracing the centrally located “miracle of rare device”, that is, Kubla’s palace. Down the slopes of the green hills runs a “deep romantic chasm”. A mysterious atmosphere hangs over the place as a woman is heard lamenting for her deserted demon-lover. The story derives its origin from the Gothic tales. The nocturnal beauty of the paradisal landscape is maligned by the “waning” lunar crescent. This is a morbid aspect of romanticism. The second part of the poem also exhibits his inclination for medievalism as here the poet transports us to the far-off land of Abyssinia.

It is the perception of “strangeness added to beauty” that makes for the Romantics’ interest in the supernatural—in things veiled under mystery. The essence of Coleridge’s romanticism lies in his artistic rendering of the supernatural phenomena. The “woman wailing for her demon lover” and “the ancestral voices prophesying war” are obviously supernatural occurrences. The process of the genesis of the river—the bursting of the fountain volleying up huge fragments and its subterranean terminus evokes a sense of wonder and awe. Towards the end of the poem the poet is presented as a supernatural being feeding on honey-dew and milk of paradise.
The kingdom of Xandu as pictured by Kubla Khan.

Kubla Khan is remarkable for its sensuousness which is a great romantic feature. It abounds in sensuous and picturesque description of the vast stretch of land overgrown with the beauties of nature:
 “And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree:
And here were forests ancients as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

The shadow of the dome floating midway on the waves is also sensuous. The sensuousness is further reinforced with the description of the Abyssinian maid playing on her stringed instrument and singing of Mount Abora. The images employed in the poem are sensuous. The dome is an agreed emblem of fulfilment and satisfaction. Its spherical shape is likened to a woman’s breast, both being circular and complete. Moreover, the word “pleasure” is the recurrent qualifier of dome---“a stately pleasure dome” in the line 2, “the dome of pleasure” in the line 31, “a sunny pleasure-dome” in the line 36. The other sensuous images are “thresher’s flail”, “rebounding hail”, “caves of ice”, “sunny dome” etc.

Kubla Khan is essentially a dream-poem recounting in a poetic form what the poet saw in a vision. It has all the marks of a dream—vividness, free association and inconsequence. The dream-like texture of Coleridge’s poem gives it a kind of twilight vagueness intensifying its mystery. This dream-quality contributes greatly to making the poem romantic.

To conclude, it has been rightly said that Coleridge’s poetry is “the most finished, supreme embodiment of all that is purest and ethereal in the romantic spirit”.
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