A Fragment + A Discussion
The story surrounding the writing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan is one of my favourite literary legends.
The myth – propagated by STC himself – is well known: one summer’s day, STC chased the dragon. Then, while reading a book on Kubla Khan’s great, unfinished palace, he fell asleep and dreamt a poem. Or, as he wrote, “All the images rose up before [me] as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness effort.” Upon waking, he found he ‘had’ a poem of several hundred lines and remembered it in its entirety. He began to write it down until a visitor disturbed him. Later, when he came back to the poem, the general idea of it remained but, aside from a few lines, the rest had gone.
What he did manage to get down is what follows:
Kubla Khan: Or, a vision in a dream. A fragment
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.
1798
Jorge Luis Borges seized upon the idea that Kubla Khan was composed by/given to Coleridge while asleep: “it is best simply to bear in mind, for now, that Coleridge was given a page of undisputed splendour in a dream.” Certainly, that a masterpiece came in a dream is the most enchanting part of this legend. Ah! But, in this case, it is not, according to Borges, the first dreamed, and incomplete, masterpiece that lead to the poem’s composition.
Kubla Khan, the Mongolian emperor, dreamed and retained in his memory the plans for a grand palace. He had it built. But years later, all that remained of it were ruins – fragments. Borges postulates that this cycle of dreamers being given what has manifested itself as a castle and a poem will continue, maybe forever, or maybe until the final incarnation reveals the mystery.
It’s a great story (or, more correctly, meta-story). However, I don’t think either Borges’ or Coleridge’s explanations are true. My feeling as a writer, one who has had ideas/concepts/stories come to him while asleep, is that Coleridge’s explanation is a metaphor for the creative process, a metaphor which STC was aware of and fully intended.
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