Paper- E.C.201
“THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE”
Topic: - Supernatural elements in “KublaKhan”
Name: - Bhatt Urvi B
Roll No: - 04
M.A- 1, Sem-2
Batch – 2010-2011
Submitted To: - Mr. Jay Mehta
Department of English
Bhavnagar University
Supernatural elements in “KublaKhan”
Along with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” “KublaKhan” is one of Coleridge’s most famous and enduring poems. The story of its compositions is also one of the most famous in the history of English poetry. The poem “KublaKhan” has many elements. Coleridge uses elements like, rhyme, rhythm, etc.
The whole poem is dream type structural poem. In many places we can find supernatural elements used by Coleridge.
The very first stanza,
“In Xanadu did KublaKhan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea”
The speaker describes the ‘stately pleasure-dome’ built in Xanadu according to the decree of KublaKhan, in the place where Alph, the sacred river, ran “through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea”.
The very third line of first stanza gives supernatural touches; “ran through caverns measureless to man” and the last line gives feelings of mystery and fear, “sunless sea”.
The third stanza also gives the glimpses of supernatural elements. In this stanza he gives this element in the lines like;”
“As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
In these lines also he gives the touch of supernatural element. These lines are suggestiveness of some mysterious elements; like “woman wailing for the demon-lover!”
In the same stanza there is another some lines like;
“As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:”
Regrettably, the story of the poem’s composition, while thematically rich in and of itself, often overshadows the poem proper, which is one of Coleridge’s most haunting and beautiful. The first three stanzas are products of pure imagination: The pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan is not a useful metaphor for anything in particular (though in the context of the poem’s history, it becomes a metaphor for the unbuilt monument of imagination); however, it is a fantastically prodigious descriptive act. The poem becomes especially evocative when, after the second stanza, the meter suddenly tightens; the resulting lines are terse and solid, almost beating out the sound of the war drums
“The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves...”
The fourth stanza states the theme of the poem as a whole though “Kubla Khan” is almost impossible to consider as a unified whole, as its parts are so sharply divided. The speaker says that he once had a vision of the damsel singing of Mount Abora; this vision becomes a metaphor for Coleridge’s vision of the 300-hundred-line masterpiece he never completed. The speaker insists that if he could only “revive” within him “her symphony and song,” he would recreate the pleasure-dome out of music and words, and take on the persona of the magician or visionary. His hearers would recognize the dangerous power of the vision, which would manifest itself in his “flashing eyes” and “floating hair.” But, awestruck, they would nonetheless dutifully take part in the ritual, recognizing that “he on honey-dew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.”
