Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Poem Summary, Analysis, Review

Welcome to the CodeX Cantina where our mission is to get more people talking about books! Was there a theme or meaning you wanted us to talk about further? Let us know in the comments below! Let's talk about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Kubla Khan.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Playlist: • Kubla Kahn by Samuel T...
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[@randyshields9800]

It's a virtuoso performance of rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, consonance, etc. -- it doesn't have to make any sense, any more than a rose has to make sense. It's based on an opium-fueled dream. In dreams anything can and does happen. It grips you, you willingly suspend disbelief. I love it. Read Kubla Khan to a 5 year old or read some TS Eliot and see which work will capture the child's attention. "Understanding" adds a lot to art but it's not mandatory.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Yep, 100% agreed

[@randyshields9800]

@@TheCodeXCantina I just discovered your channel. You're doing great work. I read Araby once in high school (1972) and never forgot the last sentence. The power of words...

[@BookishTexan]

Rush’s song Xanadu is an homage of sorts to this poem. I have always considered it an allegory for opium addiction.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

I've heard that

[@sm0k3.blunt-007]

A recent analysis I've read suggested that the juxtapositions you guys mentioned were meant to be jarring in a sense, to highlight the chaos, beauty, and violence (such as the geysers) of "pleasure" as a whole. But i also like your analysis on it being a cry for man's desire to conquer nature.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Thanks for sharing

[@novelideea]

I think Romantics really put great importance on imagination and creativity. I don’t think it honestly matters what the original source material was because, as in all dreams, we mash together experiences and knowledge of all tributaries of our lives. People who have no inkling of one another in my day to day life quite possibly may meet up for coffee in my dreams. Romantics didn’t place validation on the real. Honestly I think it’s the opposite of what Krypto said about taming nature, because he is lamenting the fact that he can’t sing like the Abyssinian (which is when he sees Xanadu floating by in this incredible bison within an already active dream) to create The Pleasure Dome for others to see and experience his rapture present in that moment. He can’t tame it in reality, but in his visions it’s tamed/created however he pleases. I think Una, the thought that he couldn’t create perfection has a lot to do with, as you stated, why it’s not finished. I would flip it though and say he couldn’t sing with enough beauty to make people see it and so he left them with a translucent/ ethereal idea to chase after -to sing into existence for themselves.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Great! Thanks for sharing!

[@josephhewitt1867]

I really like how Douglas Adams, of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame, used the poem perfectly in his other series, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" Described as, "the first ever fully realized ghost-horror-detective-whodunit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic." I wish had I had been more familiar with the poem the first time I read the story, because I didn't know the poem hadn't been completed and it was only after my friend made a comment on the line, "The voice continued, reading the second, and altogether stranger, part of the poem..." did that piece fall into place. I won't say more so as not to spoil my all-time favorite book, but the story does give a wonderful and complete explanation, albeit fictional, account of everything about the poem, how it came to be, what it actually is, and how it came to be incomplete.

[@PageTurnersWithKatja]

Wow. I really need to read this. I like the idea of the impossibilities you highlighted!

[@vinayaklohani9632]

Brilliant. From India.

[@sanjidasart9073]

Hi ..can you do analysis of The white lilies by Louise Gluck? My xm is in a few days and I can't find anything anywhere.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Good luck. Can’t do one that fast. We’ve got our Patreon picks to do first l. Hope you do well