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The Daemonic in Kubla Khan: Toward Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Charles I. Patterson Jr.
Charles I. Patterson Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Athens
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Abstract

Despite wide disagreement as to the meaning of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, several recent interpretations point toward what can be formulated by combining (1) Plato's conception of a realm of nonmalicious, daemonic creatures dwelling in unrestricted joy outside human limitations and (2) Plato's conception of the Dionysus-inspired “possessed” poet in a furor divinus as the agent who can in an incantation call up before men the enchanting, terrifying beauty of this daemon world. Suggesting the nature of daemonic beauty and its effects upon people may be a chief aim of the poem, as variant readings in the autograph text indicate. Kubla Khan seems to be a poem about daemonic poetry, a strain that reappears intermittently and thus the search for spiritual and philosophic meanings in the poem could be relinquished. From this point of view, Kubla Khan appears neither as a fragment nor as a poem about evil.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 5 , October 1974 , pp. 1033 - 1042
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 1040 E.g., Bernard R. Breyer, “Towards an Interpretation of Kubla Khan” English Studies in Honor of James Southall Wilson, Univ. of Virginia Studies, 4 (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1951), 277–90; Humphry House, Coleridge (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962), pp. 115–16; Marshall Suther, Visions of Xanadu (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), p. 222 et passim; S. K. Heninger, “A Jungian Reading of Kubla Khan,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 18 (1960), 358–67; John Shelton, “The Autograph Manuscript of Kubla Khan and an Interpretation,” Review of English Literature, 7 (Jan. 1966), 32–42. The manuscript was discovered in 1934 (Times Literary Supplement, 2 Aug. 1934, p. 541).

Note 2 in page 1040 Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1907), ii, 10. Edward E. Bostetter cogently discusses the biographical significance of the poem in The Romantic Ventriloquists (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1963), pp. 84–96.

Note 3 in page 1040 Interestingly enough, the Khan is said to have dreamed of his dome and then built it, just as Coleridge dreamed of a poem concerning it and then tried to construct the poem (Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions 1937–1952, trans. Ruth L. C. Simmons, Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1964, p. 16).

Note 4 in page 1040 This was Coleridge's original spelling of the word, as shown in the autograph manuscript (Shelton, p. 32), which indicates only two stanzas for the whole poem: 11. 1–36 and 37–54. Except where otherwise noted I shall use this manuscript text in the belief that it more readily reflects Coleridge's meaning when he first wrote the poem.

Note 5 in page 1040 From Coleridge's autograph text (11. 14–16); see n. 4.

Note 6 in page 1040 Beyer, pp. 287, 290. Werner W. Beyer labels the poem “daemonic” but does not work out the implications (The Enchanted Forest, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), p. 141. J. B. Beer discusses daemonic aspects of the poem at length; but he does not differentiate clearly between Christian and non-Christian concepts, seeing the daemonic too much as the opposite of the angelic, even though he traces elements of the poem to many older mythologies. Also, he presses too strongly for an ethical and philosophical interpretation, I think, thereby obscuring his insight into its daemonic nature (Coleridge the Visionary, New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962, pp. 106–290). Geoffrey Yarlott discerns the concentrated estheticism of the poem but presses for an ethical interpretation also (Coleridge and the Abyssinian Maid, London: Methuen, 1967, pp. 126–54).

Note 7 in page 1040 “The Symbolism of Kubla Khan,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 12 (1953), 62–65.

Note 8 in page 1040 Coleridge, Opium and Kubla Khan (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 245–46, 287–88. Schneider thinks that the poet in the poem is saying that he could write “poetry that would be truly immortal” (p. 242) if he could regain his inspiration. I disagree that it would be immortal in the sense of enduring and true, and believe that it would be what is more properly called supramortal, since it would impel listeners to feel an ecstasy beyond the mortal in its intensity and fearfulness but not in its permanence. Kubla's pleasure dome, which suggests the one that the poet wishes to build “of air” by incantation, is rapidly vanishing from the poem ; for it is built, then is merely reflected on the waves of the river, and then becomes only a conception to be built “of air” by incantation.

Note 9 in page 1040 Kathleen Coburn, ed., The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bollingen Series 50 (New York: Pantheon, 1957–62), i, nn. to item 191 ; henceforth cited as Notebooks.

Note 10 in page 1040 Phaedrus 265a, b. In 1578 Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) published in Paris an edition of Plato in 3 folio volumes with pages divided into 5 parts by letters ([a], b, c, d, e); this paging and lettering are given in the margins of most modern editions as a standard basis of reference, and I have used these numbers and letters for all citations (translations by Jowett).

Note 11 in page 1040 Ion 533e-34e. Schneider, pp. 245–46, quotes very nearly the same passage and points out Coleridge's possible debt to it; but she does not press home the significance for interpretation. Coleridge probably read the passage in the Greek, but he evidently knew Thomas Taylor's translations of Plato and his commentaries thereon, popular then. See Kathleen Raine, “Thomas Taylor, Plato and the English Romantic Movement,” Sewaiwe Renew, 76 (1968), 240, 253. Some of Taylor's commentaries summarize daemonic lore in Plato, e.g., n. 2 on “The First Alcibiades.”

Note 12 in page 1041 Shortly before writing Kubla Khan, Coleridge ascribes the “fine frenzy” of a “possessed” poet to himself: “You would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a lyric fury and on my knee a Diaper pinned, to warm” (to John Thelwall, 6 Feb. 1797, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, Oxford: Clarendon, 1956, i, 308; henceforth cited as Collected Letters, cf. i, 267). In June 1797 Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Mary Hutchinson that Coleridge had the “poet's eye in fine frenzy rolling” (Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest De Selincourt, Oxford: Clarendon. 1935, p. 169). Evidently in 1807–08 he wrote in a notebook (partly reflecting Plato's Phaedrus 265a, b): “Two kinds of Madness —the Insania pseudopoetica, i.e., nonsense conveyed in strange and unusual Language . . . and this is Degenerate / the other the Furor divinus, in which the mind by infusion of a celestial Health supra hominis naturam erigitur et in Deum transit —and this is Surgeneration, which only the Regenerate can properly appreciate” (Notebooks, ii, item 3,216).

Note 13 in page 1041 The printed text for 1. 46 reads, “I would build that dome in air.”

Note 14 in page 1041 She may slightly resemble one of Plato's Bacchic maidens who “draw milk and honey,” mentioned above; but it should be remembered that in the revised text she was singing of “Mount Abora” (1. 41), the source of which has been long accepted as Milton's “Mount Amara,” one of the paradises other than Eden in his Paradise Lost iv.280–81, where Abyssinian kings keep their younger sons in continual sensual indulgences to divert them from attempting rebellion against the crown. The autograph manuscript of Kubla Khan (Shelton, pp. 32–33) shows that Coleridge originally wrote “Mount Amara” here. These facts make more meaningful Coleridge's “Abyssinian maid,” who was evidently the sister or servant of these princes in their non-spiritual, purely esthetic paradise. Coleridge's use of it as the source of the chanting poet's inspiration in the poem helps to suggest that it is a poem about supranormal esthetic experience, not a poem about something religious or ideal in the philosophic sense. This “Mount Amara-Abora” has long been accepted as referring to Xanadu (as Shelton says, p. 41). At least we can surmise that the maid was singing of an amoral paradise of pleasure alone, and hence singing of just such a pleasure palace as Xanadu—another strong link between the two main sections of Kubla Khan. However, both Coleridge and Milton could have borrowed Amara from Purchas —see John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y, Hughes (New York: Odyssey, 1957), p. 285, n. The river in Kubla Khan also resembles the river in Eden in Paradise Lost (iv.223–50).

Note 15 in page 1041 William Wordsworth, The Prelude xiv.246, mentions beauty that “hath terror in it.”

Note 16 in page 1041 “Lines Written in the Highlands after a Visit to the

Burns Country“ (1818), Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. W. Garrod, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), p. 388. The passage reads as follows:

Scanty the hour and few the steps beyond the bourn of care,

Beyond the sweet and bitter world.—beyond it unaware! Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way : ? horrible! . . . (11. 29–33)

Note 17 in page 1041 Extensive bibliography and discussion of various conceptions of the daemonic appear in Robert Hunter West, The Invisible World (Athens : Univ. of Georgia Press, 1939), and in James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: Scribners, 1925). See n. 11 above concerning Thomas Taylor's commentaries on Plato.

Note 18 in page 1041 Statesman 271 d, e; Laws IV 713c, d, e. Cf. Symposium 202e-03a, where love is called a daemon or spirit.

Note 19 in page 1041 The Road to Xanadu (Boston: Houghton, 1927), pp. 234–36.

Note 20 in page 1041 The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (London : Oxford Univ. Press, 1912), pp. 191, 200, 202; hereafter cited as Poems. Though added later the gloss and epigraph point up what Coleridge considered the matter of his poem.

Note 21 in page 1041 In lines that Coleridge omitted from the passage that he quoted, daemonum are listed as one group of the multifarious invisible creatures discussed in the epigraph (Notebooks, i, n. to item ?,????).

Note 22 in page 1041 Though the date is controversial, I believe with Earl Leslie Griggs and Wylie Sypher that Oct. 1797 is probably correct. See Collected Letters, I, 348–52 and n. for summary. See also ?. K. Chambers, Coleridge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1938), pp. 100–03.

Note 23 in page 1041 Notebooks, i, item 220, dated by Coburn 1797–98.

Note 24 in page 1041 Notebooks, II, item 2,546. James Gillman, in The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1838), i, 311, quoted this as Coleridge's note applicable to his Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni (1802), in which the domelike enormity of Mont Blanc is used to suggest the infinite and unbounded in a religious context.

Note 25 in page 1041 Dichtung und Wahrheit (Vierter Teil, Swanzigstes Buch), ed. Georg Witkowski, in Goethes Werke, x (Leipzig: H. Fikentscher, [193?]), 317–19. The translation is essentially mine with some help from that of John Oxenford (New York: John D. Williams, 1882), ii, 321–23, and with helpful suggestions from my colleague Calvin Brown. The German text is as follows:

Er glaubte in der Natur, der belebten und unbelebten, der beseelten und unbeseelten, etwas zu entdecken, das sich nur in Widerspruchen manifestierte und deshalb unter keinen Begriff, noch viel weniger unter ein Wort gefasst werden kônnte. Es war nicht gottlich, denn es schien unvernunftig; nicht menschlich, denn es hatte keinen Verstand; nicht teuflisch, denn es war wohltàtig; nicht englisch, denn es liess oft Schadenfreude merken. Es glich dem Zufall, denn es bewiess kein Folge; es àhnelte der Forsehung, denn es deutete auf Zusammenhang. Allés, was uns begrenzt, schien fiir dasselbe durchdringbar : es schien mit den notwendigen Elementen unsres Daseins willkurlich zu schalten; es zog die Zeit zusammen und dehnte den Raum aus. Nur im Unmôglichen schien es sich zu gefallen und das Môgliche mit Verachtung von sich zu stossen.

Dieses Wesen, das zwischen allé iibrigen hineinzutreten, sie zu sondern, sie zu verbinden schien, nannte ich darnon-isch, nach dem Beispiel der Alten und derer, die etwas Ahnliches gewahrt hatten. Ich suchte mich vor diesem furchtbaren Wesen zu retten, indem ich mich nach meiner Gewohnheit hinter ein Bild fluchtete. . . .

Obgleich jenes Dàmonische sich in allem Kôrperlichen und Unkôrperlichen manifestieren kann, ja bei den Tieren sich aufs merkwurdigste auspricht, so steht es vorziiglich mit dem Menschen im wunderbarsten Zusammenhang und bildet eine der moralischen Weltordnung wo nicht ent-gegengesetzte, doch sie durchkreuzende Macht, so dass man die eine fur den Zettel, die andere fur den Einschlag konnte gelten lassen. . . .

Am furchtbarsten aber erscheint dieses Dàmonische, wenn es in irgend einem Menschen iiberwiegend hervortritt. Wahrend meines Lebensganges habe ich mehrere . . . beo-bachten konnen. Es sind nicht immer die vorziiglichsten Menschen, weder an Geist noch an Talenten . . . aber eine ungeheure Kraft geht von ihnen aus, und sie iiben eine unglaubliche Gewalt liber aile Geschôpfe, ja sogar uber die Elemente, und wer kann sagen, wie weit sich eine solche Wirkung erstrecken wird ? Aile vereinten sittlichen Kràfte vermôgen nichts gegen sie.

Note 26 in page 1042 See p. 2 of Breyer where he suggests that it may be evil. I disagree.

Note 27 in page 1042 Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson, xm (London : A. & C. Black, 1897), 335.

Note 28 in page 1042 Biographia Literaria n.12. See Yarlott, pp. 130–32.

Note 29 in page 1042 As stated in his preface to the poem when first published in 1816 (italics Coleridge's).

Note 30 in page 1042 Though Coleridge left unfinished many projects involving steady application, his imagination revealed a strong instinct for completing what was immediately before it. Once he wrote that late at night, seeing one of three logs in the fireplace totally consumed, he added another log to complete “this perishable architecture” even though he was going to bed at once and would have no further use for the fire; and he continued: “Hence I seem (for I write, not having yet gone to bed) to suspect, that this desire of totalizing, of perfecting, may be the bottom-impulse of many, many actions, in which it never is brought forward as an avowed, or even agnized (anerkennt) as a conscious motive” (Notebooks, ii, item 2,414; cf. item 2,471 ; cf. Anima Poetae, ed. ?. H. Coleridge, London: William Heinemann, 1895, pp. 116–17).

Note 31 in page 1042 Alois Brandi, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School, English ed. by Lady Eastlake (London: J. Murray, 1887), p. 186.

Note 32 in page 1042 Some help in grasping fully the import of the non-religious, nonspiritual aspects of Kubla Khan is afforded by the realization that at the center of the Khan's purely esthetic garden, which resembles Milton's Eden in Paradise Lost and Eden of scripture, stood the dominating palace of ultimate pleasure, while at the center of Eden (in medio parodist in the Vulgate Bible) stood the great Tree of Life and beside it the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil requiring the preeminence of man's moral striving rather than of pleasure seeking—a striking and pertinent contrast. See Paradise Lost iv.131–49, 194–96, 220–22; Genesis ii.9. In Act i of an unfinished play which Coleridge wrote in the autumn of 1800, entitled The Triumph of Loyalty, one of the characters exclaims, “Oh! there is Joy above the name of Pleasure. . . . / Ah! was that bliss / Fear'd as alien and too vast for man?” (Poems, pp. 559, n., 569). A portion including the above lines was published in Sibylline Leaves in 1816 with the title “The Night Piece: A Dramatic Fragment” (Poems, pp. 421–22), a fact that suggests that at the time of publishing Kubla Khan Coleridge was thinking of the nature and effects of pleasure beyond mortal limitations.