The first time I specifically remember reading this poem was in 12th grade, in Mrs. Umstead's AP English Literature class. This class, which covered a startling range of subjects, was also my first exposure to Beowulf and Chaucer.
Here is the poem:
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.
It's long, and not all of it hit me with equal strength. The full first stanza, however, got into my head like nothing else. I think I've remembered it word-for-word since the first time I read it. It actually reminds me a bit of "How doth the little crocodile" from Alice in Wonderland--
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
Same odd rhythm and word order-- like a children's nursery rhyme, only... not.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree." I didn't know for sure who Kubla Khan was, though by that time I'd done a paper on Genghis Khan for a history class and thought they were somehow related. I definitely didn't know where Xanadu was-- I thought the poet had made it up.
(I learned later that the word was an Anglicization of "Shàngdū," an ancient city in China. Reading the Wikipedia article now, it's pretty clear that Coleridge must have read Marco Polo's account of the city-- read it; it's interesting!-- and been inspired to convert some of it to rhyme. Less amazing than coming up with it wholecloth-- it's more like a piece of historical fanfiction.
But it's still a cool poem.)
Having no idea what Coleridge was talking about seems to have added a lot of mystery to the whole reading experience. (Imagine that.)
"Caverns measureless to man" is another phrase that caught my attention. Imagine a place where you could take a few steps past the threshold and be lost forever. I'm trying to get a bit of that into my novel, but it's hard to match the evocative power of that one simple phrase.
The "sunless sea" we're going to leave alone for right now, because the idea creeps me out. I'm terrified of oceans, in a vague and general way-- didn't know that, did you? When I go near the sea, I can't help but think of how easy it would be to swim out a little bit too far and be lost forever. (There it is again.) Being carried off beyond human reach or memory is the ultimate nightmare, for me. Add the "sunless" part and those two words are a vision of hell.
I tend to forget about the second stanza, and most of the third. There is one phrase that sticks out there, though: "woman wailing for her demon lover."
Remember, I was in high school when I read this poem. (I think. I may have read it once before then, too.) The words demon lover (as the YA shelves at the bookstore would suggest) are like blood-flavored candy to the teenage reader's soul. (I'm generalizing here... probably.) It's part of why the Twilight books, and vampires in general, are so popular. A beautiful, powerful, dangerous immortal creature who has chosen me as his one and only? Sign me up!
Of course, that idea only really works in fantasy (see Twilight), and even then it doesn't always work out in the end (see Dracula).
(My friend Brittany reminded me of a relevant comic strip tonight.)
The dark, brooding lover is usually best left to the realm of fiction (and powerfully scrutinized when he appears). I plan to write a short story, at some point, about a character who runs afoul of a person like that. When I do write it, I will post it here.
The last three lines that have always stuck in my mind are:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid...
Just those three lines. The sudden change in rhythm caught my attention, and then the Abyssinian maid seemed so wise and knowing. At the same time, this section bothers me. It really doesn't fit well with the first four stanzas. If these lines:
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there...
were rewritten, the final stanza could stand alone. I am not a Coleridge scholar-- or a poet-- and there may be some structure at work here I'm not aware of. I suspect, though, that the last stanza was actually the beginning of a different poem, and Coleridge stuck them together because he didn't know what else to do with them. (That would make "Kubla Khan" the poetic equivalent of a pair conjoined twins.)
(I had no idea at the time where Abyssinia was (though I'd read about Abyssinian cats), but it seemed nice and exotic so I didn't question it. In retrospect it does seem strange to skip from a description of a Chinese "pleasure-dome" to an Ethiopian girl playing a dulcimer. I guess that's Orientalism for you.)
So there you have my none-to-coherent impression of a poem I found captivating in twelfth grade. I don't really have a driving point to close with here, but I hope I can capture some of the magic of this poem in the novel I'm working on this year.
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