The Creative Process of Fancy and Imagination in S.T. Coleridge’s Poem “Kubla Khan”

The Creative Process of Fancy and Imagination in S.T. Coleridge’s Poem “Kubla Khan”

"Kubla Khan" is a poem about the creative process. According to the account given in the headnote published with "Kubla Khan" in 1816 should be regarded as a factual account of the poem's origin. Coleridge sensed that he composed a poem in simultaneous response to a vision seen during "a profound sleep.” Therefore, how the poem manifests the concept of poetic creativity of fancy and imagination becomes a researchable issue.

According to the headnote, the poem is exactly what Coleridge set about when he awoke. Having "a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, he instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved" (296). Had the act of transferring the "composition" from mind to paper been completed, it would have represented the final but all-important step in the creative process, for externalizing the artist's conception not only gives it a concrete embodiment, but also makes it accessible to others who can then respond to it as the artist responded. Unfortunately, this last step of the creative process was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock" who detained Coleridge "above an hour," after which he found "that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast.

Critics disagree on just how much of the published poem actually reflects the vision. Some maintain that it is only the first two stanzas, the third stanza having been added later as a postscript explaining why the poem could not be finished in its original form (Schneider 247-48). Still others think Coleridge wrote all fifty-four lines between his waking and the interruption (Stevenson 605). Another possibility, supported I think by the head note, is that the published poem incorporates in the first stanza, which corresponds closely with Purchas His Pilgrimage, the work Coleridge was reading when he fell asleep, the "eight or ten scattered lines and images" committed to paper between Coleridge's waking and the interruption by the man from Porlock.' The rest of the poem as published is most probably the result of later composition.

The landscape described in stanzas one and two of "Kubla Khan" is the usual starting point for any reading of the poem in terms of the creative process. Even if, as I believe, the first stanza basically reflects all that was transcribed of the grand poem conceived during the vision, it nevertheless stands in close relationship with the second stanza, the two forming a unit but differing in focus, as I shall explain later. The relational pattern established in the first two stanzas between the chasm, fountain, river, caverns, and underground sea does suggest the mind and its activities. As Irene Chayes argues, "the landscape with its descending levels would be the mind as structure, and the processes within it, summed up in the flowing of the river, 'meandering with a mazy motion,' the mind as activity" (7). It should be emphasized from the outset that the poem reads "In Xanadu" not "At Xanadu." Thus, everything described in the first two stanzas is "In Xanadu"-the fountain, chasm, river, caverns, sea, as well as Kubla Khan, his garden and his pleasure-dome. If the landscape reflects the mind and its activities, then Xanadu is the symbolic name for the mind.

The basic structural feature of Xanadu is its circularity, defined by the course of Alph, "the sacred river" (line 3). Rising out of the "deep romantic chasm" (1. 12) amid the turbulent but intermittent gushings of a "mighty fountain" (1. 19) which is its source in the upper or  visible region of Xanadu, the river flows "with a mazy motion / Through wood and dale" (11. 25-26) until it reaches "the caverns measureless to man" (1. 27). There it descends "in tumult" (1. 28) into what is called alternately a "sunless sea" (1. 5) or "lifeless ocean" (1. 28), that is, into the lower, hidden region of Xanadu. I call the visible and hidden regions of Xanadu correspond to the conscious and unconscious realms of the mind.

                        Warren Stevenson points out, "the river presumably returns to the fountain via the sunless sea, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth-the ancient symbol of eternity”(609). The structure of the Xanadu landscape is analogous in that it encompasses both light and dark, visible and hidden, conscious and unconscious aspects united through the circular course of the river. As the basic structural pattern of the Xanadu mind-landscape, circular motion allows depiction of the conscious and unconscious, the measured and measureless aspects co-existing in the mind's processes. The perpetual, circular course of the river reflects the unity of the diverse and seemingly opposed elements.

The fountain is a necessary component for creativity in the poem. As the immediate source of the river in the visible or conscious region of  Xanadu, the fountain and the chasm from which it "momently" gushes represent the well-spring through which the unconscious becomes conscious. The fountain-chasm symbolizes the initiating point of conscious thought, depicted as a violent but potentially fertile springing forth from what has been "sunless" and "lifeless," dark and unformed. Because the passage from the unconscious to the conscious is shrouded in mystery, the place where that passage or birth occurs is appropriately "holy and enchanted" (14), like the originating stage of life itself. Irene Chayes claims that the river "corresponds to the secondary imagination" (10) is unconvincing.

Like the fountain, the river is also a necessary condition for creativity in that it presumably fertilizes the ground upon which creation takes place in the poem but the river itself is not a creative power any more than the fountain is. Nevertheless, even as the fountain is "holy and enchanted," the river is properly termed "sacred" because it represents the stream of thought; it is the life of the mind, the unifying first principle of all mental activity, signified by its name, Alph. As indicated earlier, the river flows through the conscious realm of Xanadu from a source ultimately rooted in the unconscious to a terminal point that returns it once again to that dark, mysterious region. In contrast to the fountain-chasm, the "caverns measureless to man" (4) represent the initiating point of the unfathomable unconscious, the "sunless" or "lifeless" underground sea. There, the river is seemingly lost as it becomes undifferentiated in the formless sea but only to well up again through the fountain-chasm, ever new yet ever the same.

            According to Coleridge, the imagination is the mind's "shaping or modifying power" (Biographia 160), the "true inward creatrix," that "instantly out of the chaos of elements or shattered fragments of memory, puts together some form to fit it" (107). In the poem, that function is best fulfilled by Kubla Khan himself, for it is he alone who creates in the mind landscape. Although he is neither a symbol of God nor of "Mankind", his role in the poem is all-important, a point reinforced by the very title of the poem. As the mind's creative power, Kubla Khan is a reflection of the divine in man, what Coleridge calls "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM" (Biographia 167). As the imagination, Kubla Khan resides in the mind "In Xanadu" and there he creates the visions that must then be embodied in art.

Kubla Khan's creation best justifies his identification as the imagination. Considered in its totality, his creation reflects a triple structure, and Coleridge would have known that three is the Pythagorean number signifying completion and the synthesis of opposing elements (Cirlot 222). At the center of Kubla's creation stands the pleasure-dome with its opposing elements of sun and ice unified into what is later called "a miracle of rare device" (1. 35). Surrounding the dome and forming the second of the three structural divisions are "gardens bright with sinuous rills" (1. 8) and "forests ancient as the hills" (1. 10). Like the sun and ice of the dome, the gardens and forests reflect opposing elements, the gardens suggesting the ordered, cultivated, and artificial and the forests the free, untamed, and natural.

Yet, despite their opposition, both seem to blend harmoniously in their "here" and "there" placement around the dome. They are further unified by the third structural division of Kubla's creation, for the gardens and forests are in turn "with walls and towers ... girdled round" (7). Even this third division reflects a union of opposites, the walls representing the horizontal and the towers the vertical or even perhaps the feminine and masculine respectively.6 Some have specu lated that the outer enclosure of walls and towers forms a square or rectangle (Suther 242; Woodring 362-63), but the words "girdled round" suggest that even this portion is circular in shape. Imagistically, Kubla's entire creation could be said to resemble a domed, three-tiered crown, the walls and towers forming the outer circlet. As such, the creation emblems Kubla's crowning achievement: his transmutation of opposing elements into a unified whole symbolizing perfection.

As described in the first stanza, the creation reflects the  shaping and modifying, the balancing and reconciling power of imagination, not, as Chayes argues, the mere "work of the arranging and ornamenting fancy" (8). The idea of achieved perfection is further implied by the "twice five miles" occupied by the total creation (a dimension I take as referring to the diameter of the whole circular structure), for ten is the Pythagorean number that raises all things to unity and is considered the number of perfection (Cirlot 223).  The act of building is unnecessary "In Xanadu" because the imagination is a "synthetic and magical power" which "instantly out of the chaos of elements ... puts together some form to fit it." Significantly, the only reference to building in the poem comes later in stanza three, and there it is the "I" who pro claims he "would build that dome in air" (46). The hiatus (break) between the "decree" of stanza one and the "build" of stanza three is crucial to an understanding of the poem as a metaphorical expression of the mind's creative process.

Whereas the first stanza focuses on Kubla's creation itself, the second stanza focuses on that creation in relation to the surrounding landscape, particularly the river. n. The instant Kubla's creation came into existence, it would be reflected on the river, and that is how it is seen in the second stanza. Because its reflection is projected midway on the waves between the "ceaseless turmoil" of the fountain and the "tumult" of the caverns leading to the "lifeless ocean," Kubla's creation has an uncertain reality in relation to the river:

 The shadow of the dome of pleasure

 Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves. (31-34)

Although it presumably fertilized the ground where Kubla's creation came to be, the river merely allows the "shadow" of that creation to be reflected back on itself. The stream of thought supplies imagination with the "fertile ground" upon which to exercise its "synthetic and magical power," and it simultaneously serves as the mirror upon which the imagination projects or reflects its creation. If stanza one begins with creation, stanza two ends with impending destruction. The creation of stanza one is a floating shadow in stanza two, and both have been lost in the passage of time.

The only counter against the implied loss is missing from the first two stanzas, but it is recognized and celebrated in stanza three, an integral part of the poem's metaphor.. As Chayes argues, stanza three is a corrective stanza, but it does not reflect a "new creative process" (17) at work in the poem. . The picture must be painted, the statue sculpted, the poem written to be considered finally as fully realized works of art. In other words, the artist must act on the conception; there must be "consciousness of effort," reflecting what Coleridge calls imagination "co existing with the conscious will" (Biographia 167). Through an effort of will, the artist can, as it were, rescue the conception and give it an external form through art. That finalizing step is the subject of stanza three.

The vision of the damsel with the dulcimer singing of Mt. Abora symbolizes the artist in the act of executing what has been conceived or created. Because this vision is also from the past, it may reflect Coleridge's own past achievements, but more likely it represents those of artists in general that serve as models or examples for the "I" of stanza three. e. As depicted, the damsel gives outward expression to her own inner vision or imaginative conception in "symphony and song." In so doing, she transmits her conception and awakens in those who hear a responding sense of pleasure or delight. Together her "sym phony and song" is analogous to the written poem, the symphony or underlying melody corresponding to the poem's rhythm or meter and the song to its words or images, both combined as a unified expression that embodies and externalizes the inner conception.

The "I" of stanza three is the poet recognizing the need to bridge  the gap between conception and execution, between the decree and the building. To that end, he would follow the damsel's example:

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

 That sunny dome! those caves of ice! (42-47)

The union of symphony and song, meter and word, form and content would allow the poet to execute Kubla's decree by building the "dome in air.” The final emphasis in the poem falls on the effects that would be produced on those who hear the poet's own music/poem.

Thus, the original poem begun but never finished becomes finally a poem about the creative process, symbolically depicting the unexpressed fragility of the original conception while at the same time affirming the powerful effect of that conception when built or ex pressed through the efforts of the poet's conscious will working in tandem with imagination. r." The published poem is a finished work about a fragment. The three stanzas of the published poem reflect in their own "symphony and song" the lost tripartite creation once decreed by Kubla Khan in the Xanadu of the poet's mind.

Works Cited

Chayes, Irene H. "'Kubla Khan' and the Creative Process." Studies in Romanticism 6 (1966): 1-21.

Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. Jack Sage. New York: Philosophical Library, 1963.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Anima Poetae.” Ed. E. H. Coleridge. Boston, 1895.

Biographia Literaria. Ed. George Watson. New York: Dent, 1956.

The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. E. L. Griggs. 4 vols.

Schneider, Elisabeth. Coleridge, Opium, and Kubla Khan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953.

Suther, Marshall. Visions of Xanadu. New York: Columbia UP, 1965.

Woodring, Carl R. "Coleridge and the Khan." Essays in Criticism 9 (1959): 361-68.