page_title: Kubla Khan
section_title: Modern criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Kubla Khan / Critical response / Modern criticism
caption_attribution_description: English: T. S. Eliot, photographed one Sunday afternoon in 1923 by Lady Ottoline Morrell
context_page_description: Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.
  The poem is vastly different in style from other poems written by Coleridge. The first stanza of the poem describes Khan's pleasure dome built alongside a sacred river fed by a powerful fountain. The second stanza of the poem is the narrator's response to the power and effects of an Abyssinian maid's song, which enraptures him but leaves him unable to act on her inspiration unless he could hear her once again.
context_section_description: The 1920s contained analysis of the poem that emphasised the poem's power. In Road to Xanadu (1927), a book length study of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and "Kubla Khan", John Livingston Lowes claimed that the poems were "two of the most remarkable poems in English". When turning to the background of the works, he argued, "Coleridge as Coleridge, be it said at once, is a secondary moment to our purpose; it is the significant process, not the man, which constitutes our theme. But the amazing modus operandi of his genius, in the fresh light which I hope I have to offer, becomes the very abstract and brief chronicle of the procedure of the creative faculty itself." After breaking down the various aspects of the poem, Lowes stated, "with a picture of unimpaired and thrilling vividness, the fragment ends. And with it ends, for all save Coleridge, the dream. 'The earth hath bubbles as the water has, and this is of them.' For 'Kubla Khan' is as near enchantment, I suppose, as we are like to come in this dull world. And over it is cast the glamour, enhanced beyond all reckoning in the dream, of the remote in time and space – that visionary presence of a vague and gorgeous and mysterious Past which brooded, as Coleridge read, above the inscrutable Nile, and domed pavilions in Cashmere, and the vanished stateliness of Xanadu." He continued by describing the power of the poem: "For none of the things which we have seen – dome, river, chasm, fountain, caves of ice, or floating hair – nor any combination of them holds the secret key to that sense of an incommunicable witchery which pervades the poem. That is something more impalpable by far, into which entered who can tell what tracelesss, shadowy recollections ... The poem is steeped in the wonder of all Coleridge's enchanted voyagings." Lowes then concluded about the two works: "Not even in the magical four and fifty lines of 'Kubla Khan' is sheer visualizing energy so intensely exercised as in 'The Ancient Mariner.' But every crystal-clear picture there, is an integral part of a preconceived and consciously elaborated whole ... In 'Kubla Khan' the linked and interweaving images irresponsibly and gloriously stream, like the pulsing, fluctuating banners of the North. And their pageant is as aimless as it is magnificent ... There is, then ... one glory of 'Kubla Khan' and another glory of 'The Ancient Mariner,' as one star differeth from another star in glory." George Watson, in 1966, claimed that Lowes's analysis of the poems "will stand as a permanent monument to historical criticism." Also in 1966, Kenneth Burke, declared, "Count me among those who would view this poem both as a marvel, and as 'in principle' finished."
  T. S. Eliot attacked the reputation of "Kubla Khan" and sparked a dispute within literary criticism with his analysis of the poem in his essay "Origin and Uses of Poetry" from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933): "The way in which poetry is written is not, so far as our knowledge of these obscure matters as yet extends, any clue to its value ... The faith in mystical inspiration is responsible for the exaggerated repute of "Kubla Khan". The imagery of that fragment, certainly, whatever its origins in Coleridge's reading, sank to the depths of Coleridge's feeling, was saturated, transformed there ... and brought up into daylight again." He goes on to explain, "But it is not used: the poem has not been written. A single verse is not poetry unless it is a one-verse poem; and even the finest line draws its life from its context. Organization is necessary as well as 'inspiration'. The re-creation of word and image which happens fitfully in the poetry of such a poet as Coleridge happens almost incessantly with Shakespeare." Geoffrey Yarlott, in 1967, responds to Eliot to claim, "Certainly, the enigmatic personages who appear in the poem ... and the vaguely incantatory proper names ... appear to adumbrate rather than crystalize the poet's intention. Yet, though generally speaking intentions in poetry are nothing save as 'realized', we are unable to ignore 
caption: T. S. Eliot, poet and literary critic
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