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Most discussions of "Kubla Khan" are concerned either with one of two questions or with both: "What is the meaning of the poem?", and "What are the source-materials of the poem?". What is common to these two approaches is the preoccupation with a relationship between the text and something outside it. There is nothing wrong with such a preoccupation. However, most of these discussions dwell far more persistently on the external member of this relationship (the meaning or the putative source) than on the internal member (the text), or the relationship itself. One reason for this is, I guess, that it is easier to handle gross issues outside a poem than its complex structure, or the intricate relation between it and something outside it. In the preceding paper I have discussed and criticised at great length some of these works on "Kubla Khan". In the present paper I propose to focus attention on the text itself to a considerable degree, to point out various aspects in it, attempting to integrate them into a coherent reading of the poem and to foreground, by the same token, its unique texture.
Romantic Nature Descriptionfor those who have felt it to be the quintessential romantic poem, something of a point remains, for it lies squarely upon a crossroads where two or three main romantic traditions meet (Schneider, 1975: 262).
Though I shall only occasionally allude (and I have,
indeed, occasionally alluded in the preceding paper)
to her treatment of some of these tradions, my approach
to "Kubla Khan" may be characterized as regarding
it, in many respects, as "the quintessential romantic
poem". Thus, to Schneider's "three main romantic
traditions" I wish to add a fourth one: to regard
the first part of the poem as a descendent of the main
line of romantic nature descriptions. The site chosen
for the building of the stately pleasure-dome has many
of the characteristics of rather familiar landscapes
of realistic fullness, of human proportions, such as
in "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion,/ Through
wood and dale the sacred river ran", or in "And
there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,/ Where
blossomed many an incense-bearing tree". This,
however, is inextricably interwoven with the immense
forces of the infinite and the sublime, as incarnate
in the "caverns measureless to man" (twice),
the "deep romantic chasm", "lifeless
ocean", or "sunless sea". We are here
up against two kinds of estimation of magnitude, according
to the Kantian conception of the sublime:
When we estimate magnitudes through numbers, that is, conceptually, the imagination selects a unit, which it can then repeat indefinitely. But there is a second kind of estimation of magnitudes, which Kant calls "aesthetic estimation", in which the imagination tries to comprehend or encompass the whole representation in one single intuition. There is an upper bound to its capacity. An object whose apparent or conceived size strains this capacity to the limit - threatens to exceed the imagination's power to take it all in at once - has, subjectively speaking, an absolute magnitude: it reaches the felt limit, and appears as if infinite (Beardsley, 1966: 218-219).
In "Kubla Khan" we have both kinds of estimation,
the indefinitely repeatable unit selected ("miles"),
and what is "measureless to man", exceeding
the imagination's capacity to comprehend or encompass
the whole in one single intuition. Psychologically
speaking, Bodkin's (1963: 104) characterization of
"the imagination, seeking something enormous,
ultimate" seems to be relevant here, "as
when standing on some precipice edge, amongst peaks
and chasms, one feels their lines overpowering and
terrible through the suggested anguish of falling.
That horror overcome adds a kind of emotional exultation
to the sight of actual mountain chasms" (as quoted
in the preceding paper). This "emotional exultation"
becomes a significant ingredient in the pervasive emotional
qualities of the poem, and will be discussed later.
In order to appreciate Coleridge's poem, a further Kantian
distinction must be made, "between the mathematical
sublime, which is evoked by objects that strike us
as maximally huge, and the dynamic sublime, which is
evoked by objects that seem to have absolute power
over us" (Beardsley, 1966: 218). In a very important
sense, "Kubla Khan" proceeds from the former
to the latter kind of sublime. It is this feature that
infuses the natural landscape with tremendous energy:
beginning with the maximally huge "caverns measureless
to man", through the dynamic sublime in the holy,
enchanted and haunted landscape, to the speaker's frenzy
at the end of the poem, that seems to have absolute
power over his audience. Under further scrutiny, this
sublime energy undergoes a gradual transformation,
from a vision of solid, stable objects of nature, to
a gradually increasing gestalt-free and thing-free
vision. The "caverns measureless to man"
in the first stanza "strike us as maximally huge",
and as such tremendously powerful. This power, however,
is static and inseparable in our awareness from the
stable physical thing itself. This may be usefully
contrasted with what happens in the first five lines
of the second stanza.
"The woman wailing for her demon-lover" has attracted much attention in criticism. Some critics assume that there is actually such a woman wailing in that place, some (e.g. Yarlott, 1967: 130) even guess that her wailing may reach the Khan's ears. Only few critics admit that the syntactic structure is ambiguous, suggesting that there may or may not be such a woman. In the latter case, the construction "as ADJECTIVE as ever VERB PHRASE" is to be construed as a superlative, suggesting a quality in an extreme form that cannot be surpassed. In the present case, it suggests an extreme instance of a certain kind of holy and enchanted quality. The underlying conception suggests one of Kenneth Burke's favourite ideas concerning "the principle whereby the scene is a fit 'container' for the act, expressing in fixed properties the same quality that the action expresses in terms of development" (Burke, 1962: 3). Assuming that there is no such a woman there, the landscape becomes "a fit 'container' for the act" and the actor that aren't there. In other words, the landscape expresses in fixed properties the same quality that the action would have expressed in terms of development, if there had been one. This is, in fact, what is explicitly said in the passage. In other words, there is, in the scene, a sense of an extremely powerful absence, indicating a supersensuous presence of a thing-free and gestalt-free quality characterized as holy, enchanted, demonic, mournful, and the like. Some of these features are reinforced by various meaning components of the specific items of the description. Demon suggests, in the first place, an in-dwelling spirit, reinforcing the thing-free and gestalt-free quality suggested by the superlative construction and Burke's principle of "fit container". The absence is, again, suggested, by the meaning component [loss] implied by wailing. The sense of loss and gloom is, again, reinforced by the waining moon. Demon, again, suggests great energy, as well as divine or evil nature; likewise, savage suggests great energy and, possibly, destructive power. Savage, as an epithet of place does not indicate actions, but potential violent actions, expressed in fixed properties of the scenery. The wailing for the loss of a lover, again infuses the scenery with enormous emotional force. In short, then, the description suggests an intense quality of intense, thing-free and supersensuous presence, loaded with immense emotional energy.2
On closer inspection, the construction "as ADJECTIVE as ever VERB PHRASE" is not ambiguous at all. Its apparent ambiguity is derived from the fact that it may occur both in sentences that refer to actual conditions and in sentences that refer to hypothetical or rejected conditions. But its main meaning components are [+emphatic + exceeding + in any possible case]; and unless the presence of the "woman wailing" is explicitly specified, as an antecedent to the construction, it remains merely potential (as opposed to actual). In fact, even in contexts where the actual presence is explicitly specified, the "superlative" is achieved by likening the actual case to some potential extreme case. Why do then so many critics, who are native speakers of English, and "well-nurtured in their mother-tongue", misunderstand the construction? The reasons for this seem to have little to do with the exact meaning of this idiomatic construction. In the preceding paper I have adduced several instances of "interpretations" (that had no such near-ambiguous constructions to rely on) where the only way to account for the "missing information" supplied by the critic seemed to be either his inability to assume an attitude toward the "merely possible", or his reluctance to contemplate absence as a significant attribute of the poem. Here the relatively long description of a scene haunted by a woman wailing, introduced by an idiomatic phrase that may or may not allude to a merely hypothetical situation, makes it easier to introduce "missing" information as facts. At any rate, critics who argue from the presence of the wailing woman for the incoherence of the first part of the poem, seem to be killing a straw-man of their own making. Thus, the gross misreading of the emphatic phrase may be a useful device for introducing e.g. the motive of female inspiration into the poem. On the other hand, the foregoing analysis of the passage establishes it as a remarkable piece of romantic nature description. 3
The ensuing description of the fountain and the river
gave considerable trouble to the critics. It forcefully
impresses the imagination, but gives little or no cue
as for its "meaning". Thus we find such discussions
as Watson arguing with himself: "The vast power
of the river is allowed to rise, but only 'momently',
and then sinks back into silence, 'a lifeless ocean'.
This is surely not the River of Life. It is the river
of the poetry of imagination" (Watson, 1973: 233).
Though he seems to be quite confident in his preference
of the river's meaning, one thing seems to be absolutely
certain for Watson, that the river is The River of
something.
Yarlott speculates in greater detail upon the "meaning"
of the description. In the first place, he observes
that "the fountain's inexhaustible energy signifies
the act of creativity" (Yarlott, 1967: 142). As
for the position advocated here, the fountain's inexhaustible
energy "signifies" nothing. It only may be
(and in fact is) in some respects creative, and in
some respects destructive.
After rising with difficulty it wanders 'mazily' through the pleasure-garden, then sinks into a lifeless ocean. It appears to seek at first to challenge and disrupt the ordered artificiality of the paradise, scattering fragments of rocks like hail or chaffy grain. But amid such inimical conditions nothing comes of the creative energy (Yarlott, 1967: 142).
While Yarlott attributes some specific purpose to every
act of the fountain, the present paper regards the
description of the fountain as being characterized
by "purposefulness without purpose" (to use
a Kantian phrase): these actions only present the fountain
in its most sublime aspect. In this respect, it is
Humphrey House who regards the outburst of the fountain
as a uniquely powerful, unclassifiable event, and does
not attempt to classify it, but speaks of "the
sense of inexhaustible energy, now falling, now rising,
but persisting through its own pulse".
The whole passage is full of life because the verse has both the needed energy and the needed control. The combination of energy and control in the rhythm and sound is so great, as in
                  at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
that we are in danger of missing the force of imagery, as in "rebounding hail" and "dancing rocks". If we miss it, it is our fault, not Coleridge's; and it sometimes appears as if readers are blaming or underestimating him because they improperly allowed themselves, under the influence of the rhythm, to be blind to the "huge fragments" and "dancing rocks" which lay another kind of weight upon it, and to be blind to the construction of the thought, which holds together the continuity and the intermission (House, 1973: 204).
House's main object in this discussion seems to be to
make sure that the imagery of the passage is not misconstrued
so as to mitigate its power, to "domesticate"
the sublime. I propose, then, to consider the details
of the description of the fountain's outburst as meant
to amplify the revelation of nature's "inexhaustible
energies" at its most sublime on the one hand
and, on the other, to add an "irrelevant concrete
texture" so as to amplify the impression of "purposefulness
without purpose". Any specific purpose attributed
to the details, reduces the sublime or aesthetic quality
of the description. Accordingly, while Yarlott credits
the outburst of the fountain with such purpose as "to
seek at first to challenge and disrupt the ordered
artificiality of the paradise, scattering fragments
of rocks like hail or chaffy grain", the present
paper conceives of the same event as of a purposeless
outburst, characterized as sublime in several respects.
It shows nature's hidden forces at work, with a violence
that seems to "exceed the imagination's power
to take it all in at once" (in creating, so to
speak, the fountain). At the same time, it seems to
"regress" to a stage where the forces of
chaos seem to be still active, toying around with huge
"primordial" fragments of rocks.
I shall return to discuss the rhythmic character of this passage, and its interaction with the description of the event or process of flinging up the fountain, yielding immense energy and vigour. At present I wish to have a closer look at the ensuing description of the river:
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
Here, even the purposelessness of the "mazy motion" of the river may have some "moral" purpose, for some critics: "The river issues at last only to meander with purposeless 'mazy' motion, and 'mazy', likewise, was a characteristic Coleridgean term for describing moral and spiritual uncertainty" (Yarlott, 1967: 143). As for my conception of this description, one should attempt to abstract the "unique, unclassifiable" perceptual quality of the river running in a mazy motion, without translating it into a conceptual system of moral features and purposes. The purposeless, mazy motion has some relatively relaxed quality about it, especially after the highly tense and dramatic quality perceived in the "huge fragments vaulting like rebounding hail", and the "dancing rocks". This "relaxed" quality will be more apparent, if we compare the details of this description to those of the essentially identical one in the first stanza:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
In both descriptions we get essentially the same information
about the river's "behaviour". But a detailed
comparison points up the greater tension of the earlier
passage, and the more "relaxed" quality of
the later one. As for the contents of the description,
it pays more attention to the details of the environment:
"Five miles meandering with a mazy motion / Through
wood and dale" occur only in the later description.
This suggests, perhaps, a certain leisure in the describing
consciousness. As for the syntactic structure, the
earlier passage contains a single finite verb, whereas
the later passage contains three finite verbs to indicate
the same progression of the river: it "ran ...
then reached ... and sank". This, again, may indicate
some leisure in the observing consiousness, imputing
a considerable degree of articulation to the description.
If I may borrow a pair of descriptions from Auerbach
(1962: 21) who, in turn, borrowed them from Goethe
and Schiller, what the later and longer description
gives us is "simply the quiet existence and operation
of things in accordance with their natures", whereas
the earlier description "robs us of our emotional
freedom". These contrasting qualities are reinforced
by the respective prosodic structures. The four lines
of the later passage are organized in a stable, symmetrical
structure by an a-b-b-a rhyme-scheme, whereas the three
lines of the earlier passage are, as I hope to show
later, part of a much more complex structure, one of
whose typical effects is to upset any kind of focal
stability. A further element of restlessness can be
found in the peculiar correspondence (or rather lack
of correspondence) of the syntactic structure with
the prosodic unit in "Where Alph the sacred river,
ran / Through caverns". As I have pointed out
elsewhere (Tsur, 1972: 130), the nearer the syntactic
break is to the end of a verse line, the greater our
relief when the missing part is supplied. On the other
hand, the nearer the beginning of a run-on syntactic
unit is to the end of a verse-line, the greater the
tension thus generated. Thus, the requiredness of ran
is very high in this instance, and so is the "momentum"
generated by the run-on sentence, underlining the speed-aspect
of ran. In the later passage, by contrast, the phrase
"with a mazy motion" begins exactly at the
middle of the line, and so it is not perceived as a
run-on line, but almost as an end-stopped one. Even
the sequence "the sacred river ran", apparently
identical letter by letter with the corresponding sequence
in the other passage, differs from it in two important
respects. First, ran in the earlier passage begins
an enjambement, whereas in the later passage it serves
as the closure of an end-stopped line. Second, punctuation
enhances the break before the end of the line in the
earlier passage, and by the same token heightens the
impetus of the run-on sentence, whereas in the later
passage the articulating commas are omitted, and the
"requiredness" of ran is somewhat toned down.
As for the length of lines, I have indicated in my
1972 paper as well as elsewhere (Tsur, 1977), that
the iambic pentameter line has a peculiar kind of flexibility,
owing to the fact that it cannot be divided into two
symmetrical halves. This makes it more suitable than
any other meter to the cadences of normal speech, whereas
the iambic tetrameter line has a particular rigidity,
owing to the fact that it can be divided into two exactly
identical halves. Now, the two passages can be contrasted
in this respect too: the later passage contains four
iambic pentameter lines, the earlier one contains two
iambic tetrameter lines and one trimeter. The tension
in these two tetrameter lines is heightened by the
fact that in both the caesura (after the fourth syllable)
is overridden. Hence, again, the relative leisure of
the later passage is corroborated.
Now the relative leisure that emerges from this comparison,
and is intuitively perceived by the reader, is so meticulously
established only to be suddenly destroyed, in the fourth
line of the passage. We have seen that as part of
the syntactic pattern of three finite verbs, sank reinforces
rather than disrupts this leisurely quality. By the
same token, however, the verb phrase sank in tumult
introduces commotion into the "idyllic" description.
It indicates the outburst of violent energy and noise,
and the sudden disintegration of the linear (though
meandering) shape of the river. In this context, "lifeless
ocean" is to be regarded as the amplification
of "sunless sea". Thus, the leisurely quality
becomes functional in the poem, in its system of oppositions.
The river, then, cannot be regarded as the river of life, or the river of anything. It is a river brought into the focus of attention to such a degree that the reader tends to abstract from its description certain qualities that appear to have high emotional significance. If not the river of life, at any rate, water is regarded as the source of life; and running water is perceived as living water. In the description of the mazy motion of the meandering river a leisurely quality has been pointed out. It is foregrounded by a comparison to a nearly identical passage, and the contrast involves the level of described reality, as well as the syntactic and the prosodic levels.
Things and Thing-Free QualitiesIt is in this context of "thing-destruction" that we should consider the next two lines:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prohesying war!
Wilson Knight comments on these two lines:
... and sinks with first more tumult (i.e. death agony), to a "lifeless ocean", that is, to eternal nothingness, death, the sea into which Timon's story closes. This tumult is aptly associated with war: the principle of those conflicting and destructive forces that drive man to his end. The "ancestral voices" suggest that dark compulsion that binds the race to its habitual conflicts and is related by some pschologists to unconscious ancestor-worship, to parental and pre-parental authority ( Knight, 1960: 165).
One may, I believe, accept such an interpretation of
"Ancestral voices", with some modification
or other. The irrational and primordial elements are
conspicuous here. Our foregoing analysis, however,
adds here an all-important, structural dimension. The
perception of an irrational quality resides not only
in the sublime force of the tumult, but also (or, perhaps,
foremost) in the diffuse structure of the downpouring
waters, closely ensuing after the linear run of the
river. As I have indicated in the preceding paper,
the opposition between linear and diffuse processes
has a close structural resemblance to the opposition
rational versus irrational mental processes or, rather,
the information-output of the processing activities
of the left and the right hemispheres of the brain.
Visually, the downpouring waters and the "lifeless
ocean" are perceived as gestalt-free entities;
the former belongs to the "dynamic", the
latter to the "mathematical" sublime. The
"tumult" is inarticulate noise, that is,
again, a gestalt-free and thing-free quality. These
serve as the perceptual medium of the "ancestral
voices", which, too, are thing-free qualities.
This quality is reinforced by a grammatical manipulation:
in such constructions as "the voices of ancestors"
the ancestors, the stable things, still are lingering
in the background; by transforming the semantic information
into an adjective (ancestral), we have only the purely
thing-free entity. It is this section, then, between
the "birth" and "death" of the
river, where we get, in the most concentrated way,
the dissolution of solid things into thing-free and
shape-free qualities: beginning with the disintegration
of the solid earth into "huge fragments"
vaulting from the depth of the earth, through the fluid
river's losing its identity in the "lifeless ocean"
and ending with the thing-free entities of "ancestral
voices". In this sense, it is a pivotal passage.
The next few lines shift the focus of the visual image:
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome and caves of ice!
But in an important sense, this image carries on some perceptual processes that began in the preceding lines. I mean the "dissolution" of the solid world into thing-free or gestalt-free entities. First of all, we are confronted here, not with the solid dome of pleasure, but with its shadow, which, though it may have a clear-cut gestalt, can also be regarded as a most typical instance of thing-free entity. However, being buoyant on the surface of the waves, it is continuously modifying its stable shape, thus becoming a most typical image of an ever-changing, shifting physical reality, that has - in this way - a structural resemblance to emotional processes. The lightness of the visual percept is corroborated by the sudden metrical shift from the iambic pentameter to the trochaic tetrameter (with a light hypermetric syllable at the beginning of the first line). The shadow of the dome floated midway - midway between the fountain and the caves, I assume. This suggests a symmetrical disposition of the perceptual space, that "counts toward" a strong gestalt. At the same time, this is the spot where the inarticulate noises and tumult from the fountain and the caves (mentioned in the two preceding sections of the stanza) meet and mingle. Now, the relatively stable objects (the fountain and the caves) are far away, and only a thing-free and gestalt-free entity, the mingled sounds emitted by them is perceived. Upon this thing-free and gestalt-free entity a symmetrical orientation-scheme (suggested by "midway") is superimposed.4
Turning now to the last stanza of "Kubla Khan", the scene is radically changed. We are in an environment where no trace of Kubla's pleasure-dome is left. While the poem till now was almost exclusively devoted to a physical scene, the last stanza (the "second part") of the poem "takes place" somewhere detached from any physical background. We only know, that in certain circumstances "all" would react in a certain way to his behaviour. We know nothing who, or how many, or where, those "all" may be. We have even very little knowledge about who "I" may be.5 It is the mental event here that fills the entire present, although most of it is delivered in the conditional mode. All physical background has been removed. As for the emotional mood, the last stanza seems to reach the peak of an emotional experience, best described as an ecstasy. The flashing eyes and floating hair indicate, for some reason, some violent mental agitation, wild excitement or enthusiasm. Schneider (1975: 245-246) and several critics after her have pointed out that "The description derived a good deal from the accounts of persons possessed by the god in Dionysus worship and the Orphic cults - flashing eyes and streaming hair, as well as honey, milk, magic, holiness, and dread. [...] Plato's Ion gives what is probably the most famous passage" (I have discussed this issue in some detail in the preceding paper). But, I believe, even readers who know little about Plato or Dionysus worship, or Orphic cults, readily recognize here the peak of an emotional experience. Now, what appears to be of great importance here is, first, that the speaker (whoever he may be) arouses, when in the mental state described, "holy dread" in his audience, not unlike the numinous: "For man shall not see me and live" (Exodus, 33: 20). Second, this mental state is somehow related to his ability to revive within himself the symphony and song of an Abyssinian maid, and to rebuild with music loud and long the impressive sight described in detail in all the preceding stanzas. Now, what seems to be of even greater importance within the framework of the present discussion is that music is, by its very nature, a preeminent instance of thing-free quality. Thus, the peak of the emotional experience depicted in the poem occurs at a point where all physical background is removed, and there are only mental experiences and thing-free qualities; even Kubla's building is said to be rebuilt as a thing-free entity, of music (to this "peak-experience" I shall return later).
Ecstasy, Insight and the Rebirth Archetype
Professor Wilson Knight has ingeniously compared the form of Kubla Khan to that of an enlarged Petrarchan sonnet. Read thus, however, it can only be an imperfect "sonnet", for the requirement of that or any other two-part poetic form, that the sestet must throw some transforming light upon the octave, is not met in Coleridge's poem (Schneider, 1975: 249-250).
Here I again disagree with Schneider.6 First
of all, in many "real" sonnets the transforming
light thrown upon the octet by the sestet is rather
slight. Second, and more important, I submit that the
"sestet" of "Kubla Khan" does "throw
some transforming light" upon its "octave",
and in a way that is far from trivial, and is perhaps
more significant than the way it happens even in some
of the indisputably fine examples of sonnets. In order
to demonstrate this, I propose to look briefly at Schneider's
conception of the first part of the poem.
On the whole, not only do the first thirty-six lines refuse to sound as if they had been dreamed; they sound more than anything else like a fine opening for a romantic narrative poem of some magnitude. [...] The historical Cubla was an attractive subject for such a poem (Schneider, 1975: 250).
I shall not follow Schneider's brilliant discussion
of this issue in its details (I have quoted more of
it in the preceding chapter, though in a different
context). What is important for us is that the first
thirty-six lines of the poem contain something that
is very much "like a fine opening for a romantic
narrative poem of some magnitude" (although, "the
texture is exceedingly rich and concentrated for the
opening of a long poem"; ibid, 252). Whether we
accept the "romantic narrative" theory or
not, at any rate, "Kubla Khan has, throughout,
a perfectly normal meaning, one that is logical and,
as far as one can tell, as conscious as that of most
deliberately composed poems" (Schneider, 1975:
241). The first part of the poem attempts to present
something like a solid piece of "epic reality",
what may be characterized as "realistic fullnes"
and the result of first-hand observation. The first
thirty-six lines of the poem "are factual, detailed,
matter-of-fact" (Watson, 1973: 228). Or, at least,
as he recalled in Chapter XIV of his Biographia Literaria,
about his part in the plan for the Lyrical Ballads,
Coleridge's endeavours were here, too, directed "so
as to transfer [...] a semblance of truth" to
the description, whatever its "supernatural or
romantic" aspects.
Now, whatever the reasons for the abrupt discontinuation
of this description, the last stanza does "throw
some transforming light" upon both the description
and its discontinuation. This "transforming light"
is manifest in three respects at least. First, Kubla's
building enterprise is reinterpreted in the light of
the last stanza, in a significant way. In the first
part, in itself, we have a pleasure-dome decreed by
an oriental despot, with no further implications. The
second part changes this to a considerable extent.
Many critics have commented that "Kubla Khan"
is about poetry. As I have pointed out in the preceding
chapter, this is not exact, and poetry is too concrete
a term. Thus, for instance,
"Kubla Khan", then, is not just about poetry: it is about two kinds of poem. One of them is there in the first thirty-six lines of the poem; and though the other is nowhere to be found, we are told what it would do to the reader and what it would do to the poet (Watson, 1973: 227-228).
As I have implied in the preceding paper, "Kubla
Khan" is neither about one kind of poem, nor about
two kinds of poem. The first part is about the building
of a pleasure-dome, the second part is about something
much more abstract then poems, such as creative inspiration,
orvisionary frenzy. What the second part may do to
the first part of the poem is to promote the relative
weight of the possible inspiration related to the architectural
or, more generally, to the artistic ingredient of the
building enterprise.
Second, and far more important, the "factual, detailed,
matter-of-fact" presentation of Kubla's earthly
paradise, transferring the semblance of truth to it,
is experienced in perspective of the second part as
a kind of Paradise Lost. The earthly paradise with
its realistic fullness and matter-of-fact details becomes
a fleeting vision, very much like a pre-natal or other-wordly
experience that the speaker is attempting in vain to
recapture. It is turned into some inaccessible reality,
referred to, but beyond, direct apprehension. "Kubla
Khan" is one of the few poems, or perhaps the
only one in the English language, that attempts to
present a direct vision of ecstasy, that may be an
overpowering emotion or exaltation, or the frenzy of
poetic inspiration, or something like a mental transport
or rapture from the contemplation of divine things.
Such poems are so rare because ecstatic experiences
are, as I have indicated at the beginning of the preceding
paper, ineffable by their very nature.
What we have got here, then, is very much like a prototypical
mystic situation. The mystic is yearning after the
experiencing of some inaccessible reality which, some
of the mystics seem to believe, they experienced in
a different kind of existence. This reality, with its
paradise-like attributes, is haunting them ever since,
and mysticism is the supposed instrument to recapture
it. In Coleridge's poem, the reader is intensely involved
in the description of Kubla's world; but it is suddenly
left off, leaving the reader with a sense of wondering
or even frustration. I would even venture to say that
he is left with a yearning to rediscover that world
and go on experiencing it. Whatever the genetic reasons
for interrupting the description at this point (Coleridge's
being disturbed by some neighbour, or his inability
to finish a large-scale epic opening of such an intensity),
this feeling of wondering or frustration seems to be
the aesthetic effect of the abrupt ending. In the last
stanza the reader joins the speaker of the poem in
his attempt to re-create this lost reality.
There seem to be three all-important ingredients in ecstatic experiences: overpowering emotion, insight into some inaccesible but highly significant reality, and some kind of the dissolution of the perceiving or contemplating consciousness. In "Kubla Khan" we have got the first two.7
Thus, far from failing to satisfy the requirement
"that the sestet must throw some transforming
light upon the octave", Kubla's world is transformed
from a world perceived in a direct vision, into the
object of "mystic" yearnings.
Third, and related to the second, what was presented
in an "even daylight", becomes the first
stage of what can be best termed an "emotive crescendo".
One way to express immense emotional experience in
such a non-representational art as music, is to use
a fortissimo. However, when the listener gets used
to the fortissimo, its overwhelming power gets devaluated,
and is considered as "bombastic" rather than
"powerful". One way to overcome this problem
is to use a crescendo, as if the music said "This
is so! ... This is more so ... This is even more so",
and so forth, until reaching a peak, creating a shape
of gradually increasing intensities. The same is true,
mutatis mutandis, in verbal expression. A poem that
uses many superlatives to express overpowering emotions
tends to become bombastic rather than powerful. And
the same kind of "emotive crescendo" is one
of the preferred ways to overcome the problem. In Coleridge's
poem, the "This is so! ... This is more so ...
This is even more so" pattern is created by the
gradual dissolution of the solid physical world into
thing-free and gestalt-free qualities, as well as the
increase of energy level. As I have indicated earlier,
such a gradual dissolution may underlie the gradual
increase of a poem's emotional force. This gradual
pattern may be reinforced by additional elements on
the semantic, thematic and metric levels. But one thing
should be noted: when isolated, not all episodes, or
stages, of the pattern are perceived as "more
and more" emotional, in a way that the overall
pattern could be inferred from them. There is, rather,
a sketchy indication of the pattern, and when the reader
reaches the "peak", he retro-relates it to
the preceding stages and superimposes graduality upon them.8 Architecture is the
most solid of the arts, whereas music is the thing-free
art par excellence. In the Nitzschean dichotomy, architecture
is the most Apollonian of arts, whereas music is the
most Dionysian. "In music, the paroxysms of Dionysian
ecstasy are subjected to the Apollonian order and measure"
(Beardsley, 1966: 276). In this sense, the rebuilding
of Kubla's building with music should be an extreme
instance of "reconcilement of opposite elements",
reinstating the paradox of imagination in one of its
extreme manifestations. Such a conception of music
(and it makes little difference that Coleridge preceded
Nitzsche by a few decades) would explain, why the speaker
needed the Dionysian intoxication of the exotic girl's
music to achieve the trance required for the rebuilding
of the dome. Unfortunately, however, that music too
resides in a reality that is not accessible at will,
and thus only amplifies the speaker's yearning and
frustration.
As we have seen in the preceding paper, Schneider (1975:
245-246) traces the description of the last lines in
the poem back to Plato's "comparison of poetic
inspiration with the frenzy of the orgiastic cults",
in the Ion. "This conception was old even in Plato's
day, and practically every detail used by Coleridge
was a commonplace in it" (245). I guess that even
the reader unacquainted with Plato's account would
recognize here the "flashing eyes" and "floating
hair" as the body language of a certain kind of
state of mind. The rest is indicated by the awe aroused
in the audience. The "commonplace" nature
of the description too seems to be quite significant
here. The ecstatic effect is achieved not by the ingenuity
of details, but by "common language heightened,
to any degree heightened, but not an obsolete one".
At this point, it would appear desirable to relate the
foregoing anlysis to Bodkin's discussion of the Death-and-Rebirth
archetypal pattern, as I have extrapolated it to "Kubla
Khan" in the preceding paper. So, I shall reproduce
that discussion here with minor omissions.
Within the image-sequences examined the pattern appears of a movement, downward, or inward the earth's centre, or a cessation of movement - a physical change which, as we urge a metaphor closer to the impalpable forces of life and soul, appears also a transition toward severed relation with the outer world, and, it may be, toward disintegration and death. This element in the pattern is balanced by a movement upward and outward - an expansion or outburst of activity, a transition toward redintegration and life-renewal (Bodkin, 1963: 54).
One important distinction this passage makes is between archetypal contents and archetypal patterns ("emotional symbolism" on the one hand, and "capacity to enter into an emotional sequence" on the other). Oddly enough, Bodkin does not attempt to show, how this pattern applies in its details to the description of running waters in "Kubla Khan". The "movement, downward, or inward the earth's centre, or a cessation of movement" is clearly indicated in such passages as
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
or
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
The "movement upward and outward - an expansion or outburst of activity" is manifest in the passage
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
The fact that this third passage occurs in the poem
between the first and second quotations not only demonstrates
the opposing movements, but also creates an indication
of rhythmic alterations, which is one of the main ingredients
in the Jungian conception of emotion underlying Bodkin's
work. It should be remarked here that the ecstatic
experience as discussed above is perhaps the most extreme
instance of what Bodkin describes as "an expansion
or outburst of activity". Thus we may assume
that the ecstatic experience heightens the Death-and-Rebirth
archetype to its extreme. The Death-and-Rebirth archetype,
in Jungian theory, is an endless succession of rising
and falling emotional sequences. The "emotive
crescendo", then, may be regarded, in some instances,
as a relatively small section of the Death-and-Rebirth
archetypal pattern. Coleridge's poem appears to have
a minor peak in midpoem, with the outburst of the "dancing
rocks", and a major peak at its end.
In the preceding paper I criticised Fruman's (1972: 395-402) Freudian interpretation of the poem. What I found least acceptable in his discussion was his suggestion that the pleasure-dome suggested either female breast, or mons veneris (or both). I argued there that this introduces some foreign elements into the poem. By contrast, consider now the following line: "As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing". Some critics regard it as a metonymy for birth; some others as a metonymy for sexual intercourse. The latter interpretation could serve as an illuminating example of how the Freudian insistence on "finding sexual symbolism underlie almost all human action, thought, and dream" (Schneider, 1975: 9) can be utilized for a legitimate description and interpretation of a poem. Plutchik (1968) put forward a theory - very useful for literary critics - of emotion rooted in instinct. The following summarizes the basic prototypic dimensions: incorporation, rejection, destruction, protection, reproduction, deprivation, orientation, exploration. We are interested here in reproduction, which he characterizes as follows: "Apparently at almost all animal levels, sexual behavior is associated with some form of pulsatile or orgastic behavior. [...] Pleasure is presumably associated with all forms of sexual behavior" (Plutchik, 1968: 73-74). Plutchik presents a multidimensional structural model of the emotions. "It shows the eight prototypic dimensions arranged somewhat like the section of half an orange, with the emotion terms which designate each emotion at maximum intensity at the top" (ibid, 76). He asked experimental subjects to rate the emotional words in terms of their intensity that they represent, using a scale of 1 to 11. Though the unpleasant emotions had usually longer lists of differentiable terms, the longest list of all was, nevertheless, that of the reproduction dimension, including ecstasy (10.00), Joy (8.10), Happiness (7.10), Pleasure (5.70), Serenity (4.36), Calmness (3.30). The sexual behavior of the landscape is indicated by the imagery of the line quoted at the beginning of this paragraph; and "some form of pulsatile or orgastic behavior" associated with it is suggested and amplified by the obtrusive rhythms of the poem, enhancing the psycho-physiological echoes in the reader's response to the state of ecstasy.
Prosodic Structure
The sequences of ws under the vowels signify the alternating
weak and strong positions that constitute the iambic
meter. This is the metric pattern. The accents above
the vowels signify lexical stress. Lexical stress is
assigned to the most strongly stressed syllable of
lexical words, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives and nonclytic
adverbs. In lines 2-3 all stressed syllables occur
in strong positions, and only in strong positions (this
may be taken as a sign for high regularity of meter:
in the first 150 lines of Milton's Paradise Lost there
are only two such lines). In lines 1 and 4 there is
one s position in each occupied by an unstressed syllable.
These are the least noticeable deviations, and they
are the majority of deviations in this poem. Line
5 begins with a stress displaced to the left ("inverted
foot"), one out of no more than four in this poem.
There is only a negligible number of stressed syllables
in w positions in this poem (which I shall mention
in due course). Such deviations abound in English poetry,
but in this poem are utterly scarce.9
Most readers feel that the rhythms of "Kubla Khan"
have, definitely, to do with its ecstatic effect, and
most critics spare one or two sentences for this issue.
All the more surprising is the fact that there is
little metrical analysis in the literature, or specific
discussion of the rhythmic structure of this poem.
One reason for this seems to be that where meter is
so relentlessly regular, little is left for the prosodic
analyst to say. At any rate, if regular meter can underly
the ecstatic quality of "Kubla Khan", the
rationalist and witty quality of Pope's "An Essay
on Man", and the naive quality of nursery rhymes
and some of Blake's "Song's of Innocence",
what can be said about regular meter that can account
for the ecstatic quality of a poem? However, precisely
at the time of writing this paper, a paper was published
that attempts to handle just such problems, and a relatively
small section of it is devoted to this poem. Since
it is a 14-years-old paper of mine (Tsur, 1985), I
shall reproduce here the relevant sections with minor
alterations, and expand it where necessary.
The effect of verse with a tendency for metric regularity
is "double-edged". On the one hand, regular
meter implies clear contrast between prominent and
non-prominent syllables. In this sense, regular meter
has a strong rational quality. It has good shape (strong
gestalt), "it creates a psychological atmosphere
of certainty, security, and patent purpose"; exhibits
definite directions and organizes percepts into predictable
orders. On the other hand, the vigorous impact of regular
meter may be very much like the beat of a primitive
drum, that may have the effect of heightening emotional
responsiveness that underlies ecstatic ceremonies of
tribesmen. In other words, regular meter shares some
important properties with conscious control and the
exercise of will; at the same time, it is similar to
some fundamental involuntary physiological processes,
many of which consist of regularly recurring events.
Intense physical and emotional activities in humans
and animals increasingly tend to possess regular rhythm
and to transcend voluntary control. Consequently, one
factor that differentiates between regular meter underlying
a witty poem and that underlying an ecstatic poem is
the energy level inherent in other layers of the poem.
Another factor we find at the root of this double-edged
nature is the term security. As the research of E.
Frenkel-Brunswick (1968) has shown, the intolerance
of ambiguity may interfere with one's free emotional
responses. J.C. Ransom has suggested that a fairly
predictable meter may dispel anxiety in the presence
of ambiguity - give "false security to the Platonic
censor in us" (quoted by Chatman 1965: 212) -
so that the reader may feel freed to attend to ambiguities
in the other layers of the poem. The crucial question
seems to be whether the psychological atmosphere generated
by "good metric shape" is of genuine or false
"certainty, security, patent purpose", etc.
That is to say, if other layers of the poem too have
a rational quality, the psychological atmosphere is
one of genuine certainty, etc. If, however, some other
layers of the poem induce some intense psychological
atmosphere of uncertainty - as, for example, the "unreal"
vision of "Kubla Khan" or "The Ancient
Mariner" - regular meter will impart "false
security", it will lull the vigilant "Platonic
censor in us" and make it accept the emotional
quality of the poem. By the same token, and at the
same time, vigorous rhythms have a strong bodily appeal,
amplifying whatever irrational qualities there may
be.
It has been observed that the rhythm of some poems is
more obtrusive than that of others; there is a small
number of poems whose rhythm thrusts itself, so to
speak, upon the reader or listener. It will be noticed,
that at least two of Coleridge's masterpieces in which
he caught a glimpse of the uncanny - "Kubla Khan"
and "The Ancient Mariner" - are notorious
for their strong prosodic shapes and convergent rhythms.
This fact provides a remarkable illustration of rhythm
that gives "false security to the Platonic censor
in us", opening the way for imagination to roam
on less firm grounds. Keats has some illuminating things
to say about the "Platonic censor" in Coleridge
in his famous passage on "Negative Capability":
I mean Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.
Keats himself wrote quite a few unique sonnets said
to contain an ecstatic experience, with highly divergent
meter, the intense peak of which is dominated by some
thing-free and gestalt-free negative entity as "death",
or "nothingness", or "the shadow of
a magnitude". If Keats is right about Coleridge's
lack of Negative Capability, we should not be surprised
that his version of the uncanny or the ecstatic has
very obtrusive rhythms to give "false security
to the Platonic censor in us", and are of the
few poems of this kind that give the imagination some
positive entities to seize upon at the end.
Having given false security to the Platonic censor in us, the following passage from "Kubla Khan" appeals, at the same time, to the most primitive layers of our personality by realizing the drum-beating quality of meter. From the prosodic point of view, not only the stressed syllables converge here with strong positions to an unusual extent, but these prominent points are further emphasized by alliteration, sharpening the contrast between prominence and non-prominence. These alliterations have additional functions: they enhance the balance of the line (as in lines 18 & 22); or, occurring "intermittently" (as in line 19), they enhance the obtrusive feeling of regular alternation. As for the contents of the lines, they "depict" vehement physical motion. Thus, contents and meter mutually actualize each other's vigorous potentials, making a notable contribution to an ecstatic quality where other conditions are appropriate:
In the whole poem there are as few as two sequences of three consecutive stressed syllables. One of them happens to be "fást thíck pánts". It is hardly meant to "slow down" the rhythm of the poem; on the contrary. While the reader is inclined to maintain his "fast" tempo of reading, the neutralized contrasts add weight and energy. Thus, the stressed syllable thick squeezed in a w position is perhaps an iconic reinforcement of its meaning. A similar iconic squeezing may be the case in "Húge frágments". The underlying iambic cadence is, nevertheless, preserved in both instances, owing to the Nuclear Stress Rule. Another, unique, metric deviation is in
It is, so to speak, a metric icon of its contents; two
of its aspects are vividly perceptual. Half in a w
position loads the line with tension, entailing swift
succession of the next too unstressed syllables. The
"compensating" stress is phonologically subordinated
to the "infirming" stress (according to the
Compound Stress Rule). Considering the subordinated
stress of -mit- in a strong position, metric regularity
is, precisely, half-intermitted. Finally, after the
rather long sequence of lighter syllables, meter is
powerfully reinstated on burst, which is, at the same
time, the headword of the syntactic group, to which
all preceding stresses are subordinated.
Though the rhythm of "Kubla Khan" is vigorous and regular, it cannot assume so strong a shape as, for instance, Tennyson's In Memoriam or Pope's An Essay on Man. In both these poems there is a strong metric shape, strong shape of lines and strong shape of stanza, all predictable to a large extent. In "Kubla Khan" neither the length, nor the grouping of lines is predictable. So, the psychological atmosphere of certainty associated with the underlying strong metric shape comes up against an atmosphere of uncertainty generated by the larger groups. The first five lines of the poem, for instance, approximate two symmetrical structures of quatrains. Suppose the poem began:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Down to a deep and sunless sea.
If the reader can sufficiently overcome his familiarity with Coleridge's actual rhythms, he will realize the following: First, the strong, symmetrical shape of this transcript is softened in the actual poem by shortening the last line. Secondly, the "interpolation" of a third a-rhyming line distorts this symmetry, prolonging the expectations for a b-rhyming line which, "gratifying" as it is, comes, at last, in a foreshortened form. The second strong shape which the opening lines approximate is precisely Tennyson's a-b-b-a quatrain. Imagine something like:
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a deep and sunless sea.
Even so, a highly resistant enjambement beginning in
the last position of line 2 (blurring the symmetrical
division of the stanza into two halves that are mirror-images
of each other) is hardly like In Memoriam. Thus, the
odd line is not just another line in the group of lines;
it makes the shape of the whole "hopelessly"
ambiguous (the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of
the five-lines-section beginning with "But oh!").
As for the eight-lines-section beginning with "And
from this chasm" (quoted above), they are grouped
according to two diverging grouping principles. In
one respect, these lines are simple couplets, grouped
by rhyme, accordingly. Syntactically, however, a second
pattern is superimposed. The line "A mighty fountain
momently was forced" (19) is grouped, rhyme-wise,
with the next line. Syntactically, however, it is
grouped with line 17. From the preposition from a verb
is predicted; this prediction is fulfilled as late
as the end of line 19, running on to the next couplet.
Thus, the interpolated simile "As if this earth
in fast thick pants were breathing" not only adds
the mythological dimension, but also weakens the perceptual
shape of the whole passage, by delaying the fulfillment
of syntactic predictions and by upsetting, for a considerable
stretch of lines, the convergence of sentences and
couplets. The next clause, two lines long, is "straddled",
again, between two couplets. When it ends, in mid-couplet,
another line is needed to complete it; consequently,
an "extra" simile is introduced after the
fulfillment of syntactic predictions. Only the last
couplet of the passage - the "summary" of
the description - entirely converges with the couplet.
Therefore, perceptually, too, it has a "rounding-off"
effect.
We find a similar structure of regularity and unpredictability
on the level of alliterative patterns. In an illuminating
paper comparing the metrical styles of Donne's Satyres
and Pope's "reversification" of them, Chatman
(1960) contrasts their uses of alliterative patterns
in two respects. In one respect,
Donne has (proportionately) twice as many occurrences of alliteration of two syllables in immediate sequence as Pope, whereas Pope has almost four times as many occurrences of an intervening unstress. This means that Pope wants alliteration to cooperate with meter, not oppose it (Chatman, 1960: 156).
In another respect, Pope's
alliteration of epithet-noun combinations is characteristic and carefully done. [...] Donne, on the other hand, frequently alliterates words that have little structural connection (giving the illusion of mere chance collocation) (Chatman, 1960: 157).
Both poets created in different lines of wit. Now in
"Kubla Khan", which is a highly emotional
poem, and perhaps less witty than any other romantic
poem, we may encounter both kinds of alliteration.
Consider Kubla Khan, measureless to man, sunless sea,
woman wailing, mingled measure; or in a more complex
version, ceaseless turmoil seething. At the same time
we have got such alliterations as Xanadu did, dome
decree, etc. The sequence river ran is essentially
of the first kind (though I am not sure that Chatman
would agree with me). At the same time, it is preceded
by sacred and, in the first occurrence of the sequence,
the intervening comma and the beginning of the run-on
construction render it as near to "mere chance
collocation" as it can go. Mazy motion, again,
belongs doubtless to the first type of alliteration;
but in the same line we have two more tokens of m,
miles meandering, that form an alliterative pattern
of the second kind, and it also effects the character
of the other pattern. Girdled round appears to be an
alliteration of the second type; but it is also part
of another kind of sound pattern. The first phoneme
of Girdled + round form a "perfect" homonym
with ground. This pattern further bifurcates to greenery.
While Schneider only intends to show how rich the alliterative
network of sounds in the first stanza of "Kubla
Khan" is, it also shows, how diffuse this network
of sounds is, superimposing a weak, diffuse gestalt
of alliterations upon the strong gestalts established
by the "Pope-like" patterns of alliteration.
A word must be said about the structure of the last stanza:
As the graphic arrangement too may indicate, the stanza
is made up of lines of unequal length, and I shall
not enumerate here the various possibilities. Lines
42-47 contain a single compound sentence that stretches
over lines of several structures. One possible reason
for this structure may be to shake the reader's certainty,
so as to render the certainty of regular meter in the
ensuing lines utterly false. The phrases in line 47
display a fundamental uncertainty in their syntactic
relationship to the preceding lines. Are they exclamations,
or appositive phrases to "that dome in air"?
A similar ambiguity is displayed in lines 49-50. The
noun phrases in line 50 could be the direct objects
of the repeated imperative verb in line 49 (as, for
instance, in "Beware the ides of March").
However, the exclamation marks separate them from the
phrases, turning them into some kind of ostensive exclamations,
as if the onlookers pointed at the speaker and exclaimed
with horror: "His flashing eyes, his floating
hair!" Ostension is associated with the right
(emotional) hemisphere of the brain:
The inactivation of the right hemisphere leads to a deficit in ostensive communication. In semiotic literature [...] this way of communication might be defined as "placing something at the disposal of the cognitive activity of a person". [...] Ostension merges with synecdoche: the voice of a patient's wife, which he hears without seeing her, is her pars pro toto (Jakobson, 1980: 27).
The speaker's flashing eyes and floating hair may be
just such highly significant, emotionally loaded synecdoches;
and the potentially fluent syntactic structure disintegrates
to a series of just such ostensive warnings. In line
47, too, the appositive phrases are transformed into
ostensive phrases. If Jakobson is right in relating
ostension to the right hemisphere of the brain, these
phrases ought to have a more than usually direct emotive
appeal, reinforced by the emotionally loaded situation.
In the above quotation of the last stanza, in the column
on the right I have indicated the rhyme-scheme. x indicates
unrhymed lines, or perhaps off-off-rhymes. The discussions
among the critics whether they can be regarded as rhymes
or at least off-rhymes (cf. "I do not suppose
Coleridge thought of dulcimer as even an off-rhyme
to once I saw or Abora" - Schneider, 1975: 273)
strongly suggests that they introduce into the poem
an element of uncertainty. Even where the rhyme-scheme
appears to organize the lines into a group of strong
shapes, an element of uncertainty enters. Thus, for
instance, in line 51 a new syntactic unit begins (metrically
emphasized by the first w position being left unoccupied).
The last four lines are grouped by an e-f-f-e rhyme-scheme
into a symmetrical and closed quatrain. This clear-cut
structure, however, is preceded by an e-rhyme in line
47, just enough to make the reader doubt his own perceptual
organization. Likewise, lines 46, 48-50 end in d-rhymes.
In this case, too much grouping becomes no grouping:
there are four similar-ended lines, lumped together
in a random order. Thus, at the peak of the emotional
experience indicated by the poem, there is an intense
web of rhymes that on a lower level amplify the principle
of rhythmic recurrences so as to heighten emotional
responsiveness; viewed from a higher point of view,
they are characterized by a considerable degree of
uncertainty. Thus, again the certainty given to the
Platonic censor in us turns out to be rather doubtful.
There may be here, nevertheless, something of the kind described by Ehrenzweig as the secondary elaboration of a pattern superimposed upon the last stanza, "retro-related" from the last four lines. There appears to be here a pattern of gradually increasing order and distinct shapes, beginning with a stage where there is considerable uncertainty whether some lines are rhymed, of which a series of rhymed lines grow out in which the order is unpredictable and the rhyme-pattern (intense, though) is indistinct. From this there emerges a symmetrical, firmly closed quatrain, constituting a strong structural closure at the peak of the emotional experience. But even this strong closure is relative: it is weakened by an antecedent e-rhyme in line 47. That is why one may say that this last "quatrain" emerges from a jumble of randomly rhymed lines.10
Whether security is "genuine", as in nursery
rhymes or witty poetry, or "false" as in
ecstatic poetry, depends on whether in other layers
of the poem certainty or uncertainty are engendered.
[+/-CERTAINTY] may be engendered either on the rank
of prosodic superordinates, or on the various semantic
and thematic levels. On the prosodic level of "Kubla
Khan" we have found these conflicting qualities
both in metric patterns and in alliterative patterns.
Whereas meter is highly regular and predictable throughout
this poem, the length of lines and order of their rhymes
is hardly predictable, rather errant. Sometimes no
recognizable stanza shape emerges from the order of
rhymes, sometimes they approximate two kinds of symmetrical
stanza forms, but remain highly ambiguous. At the very
end of the poem, at the peak of the suggested ecstatic
experience, a symmetrical closed stanza emerges from
a jumble of randomly rhyming lines, sealing the poem
with an emphatic structural closure. I emphasize structural,
because in the scene described there are no closural
elements. Although it is hard to imagine where the
gradually heightened spiritual activity could proceed
to, there is nothing here to indicate a natural "cut-off"
point, such as Herrnstein-Smith (1968) found in poetic
closure. It is this continuously reverberating ecstatic
quality at its peak that is forcefully reinforced
by the closural quality of the final "quatrain".
I have quoted Chatman who compared the metrical styles
of Donne's Satyres and Pope's "reversification"
of them. In the latter's style he found a majority
of alliterative patterns that are focussed, and corroborate
metrical regularity. In the former's style he found
a majority of alliterative patterns that go, typically,
against meter, and make an impression of diffusion
and of chance collocation. In "Kubla Khan"
the majority of alliterations is like Pope's; but there
are also some of the other type. In the present framework
of accounting for ecstatic quality, alliteration contributes
both to the psychological atmosphere of (false) security
and to that of (genuine) uncertainty. By the same token,
and at the same time, the regularly recurring prosodic
events heighten the emotional responsiveness of readers.
In the preceding paper I have discussed at some length
Snyder's stimulating little book on hypnotic poetry.
One of his generalizations was, "that in the early
stages of a hypnotic poem a foreign word, and obscure
phrase, or any slight difficulty that causes fatigue
from strain on the part of the listener may actually
promote the ultimate aesthetic effect at which the
artist aims". This is, perhaps, to strain the
analogy to hypnosis too far, and the "meaningless"
words and phrases are only meant to achieve an "incantatory
effect". Such an incantatory effect may be achieved
in the first line of our poem, "In Xanadu did
Kubla Khan", where only in and did are plain
English words.
Among other passages, I have quoted there two relevant
ones:
Some hypnotic poems stop here: the listener is lulled by patterns of sound, his attention is fixed without arousing of his mental faculty, and he falls into whatever mood the poet "suggests". It is interesting to see how many poets are thus content to stop without taking full advantage of the grip they get on the listener's emotions. Such skillful artists as Poe, Swinburne, the youthful Tennyson, and countless others persistently fail, or refuse to galvanize the sensitive reader to action, determination, or even thought (Snyder, 1930: 47).
Some hypnotic poems, however, do "carry the parallel
to hypnotism still further by 'suggesting' an impulse
to action, making a parallel to the specific post-hypnotic
suggestions" (Snyder, 1930: 47-48). In such instances,
in a hypnotic poem the key sentence "suggesting" an idea comes near the end, or at least only after there has been a long preliminary soothing of the listener's senses by monotonous rhythmic "passes". So in hypnosis. Also this key sentence "suggesting" an idea carries conviction without argumentative support, or with only the simplest of obvious arguments to support it. In the non-hypnotic poem these conditions do not obtain (Snyder, 1930: 48).
It is, then, the monotonous rhythms that heighten the
reader's emotional sensitivity that constitute, in
a way, the raison d'être of "hypnotic"
or ecstatic poems. They "fail, or refuse to galvanize
the sensitive reader to action, determination, or even
thought". Or, if they do suggest "an impulse
to action", or contain near the end a key sentence
"suggesting" an idea, "this key sentence
'suggesting' an idea carries conviction without argumentative
support, or with only the simplest of obvious arguments
to support it".12
Thus, we should not be surprised
if an ecstatic poem carried no "message"
at all, or if the "message" it carried were
a mere "simple idea". It is the intensity
of experience rather than the "idea" that
counts.
This brings us to the semantic and thematic aspects
of the poem that may arouse uncertainties (so as to
render the security given by meter to the Platonic
censor false). On the one hand, we have discussed at
length in the present paper the thing-free qualities,
negative entities, and irrational visions that constitute
this poem. All these enhance the psychological atmosphere
of uncertainty. On the other hand, I have already mentioned
above, how the direct pointing (ostension) at the speaker's
"flashing eyes" and "floating hair"
(synecdoches) may be particularly loaded with emotion.
I have quoted Jakobson's semiotic definition of ostension:
"placing something at the disposal of the cognitive
activity of a person". In the preceding paper
I have considered at some length the behaviour of some
critics when encountering a piece of unevaluated poetic
information. This too appears to be, in a somewhat
different sense, the placing of something "at
the disposal of the cognitive activity of a person",
without suggesting "an impulse to action"
or to an attitude. Some critics are reluctant to contemplate
such unevaluated things. Thus, for instance, I have
quoted Yarlott (1967: 134-135), who compares Coleridge's
description of Kubla's garden to Purchas' description,
Coleridge's source. Yarlott points out that Coleridge
substituted the adjectives "bright/sinuous"
for "pleasant/delightful" in Purchas' description.
Yarlott rightly realizes that "Coleridge seems
to have deliberately modified the attractiveness implicit
in Purchas's original description". But, instead
of realizing that Coleridge eliminated the evaluative
ingredient of the adjectives retaining some of their
descriptive contents, Yarlott claims that Coleridge
produces some sinister associations. He is reluctant
to accept the zero grade evaluation merely placed
at the disposal of his cognitive activity. He wants
to achieve a greater degree of certainty: he wants
to know whether the thing placed at the disposal of
his cognitive activity is beneficial or harmful. This
short excursus on this essentially side issue brings
into the foreground a more central issue: There is
a fundamental uncertain quality about the description
of the site of Kubla's building enterprise. What is
missing here for a greater degree of certainty is the
suggestion of "an impulse to action" or
to an attitude or, at least, to some evaluation. This
uncertainty is an additional ingredient that enhances
the false security given to the Platonic censor by
the exceptionally regular meter of this poem.
I have dwelt on "Kubla Khan" at considerable
length and in considerable detail. Some readers may
accuse me of "squeezing" the poem. At any
rate, my reading was not longer than the majority of
studies devoted to this poem. The main difference between
it and them appears to be, in comparing the elements
inside the poem to those outside it, the space devoted
to the inside elements relative to the space devoted
to the elements outside. The thing to account for seems
to be, in many studies, whether explicitly stated or
not, the peculiar emotional quality of the poem. Some
critics seem to believe that if you can show that
the poem does not mean what it means - that is, if
you can show that the poem has got some symbolic meaning
- you can account for this peculiar quality. Some other
critics seem to believe that if you can relate the
poem to a great number of myths and primeval lore,
you can account for the peculiar quality of the poem.
What appears to be common to these two approaches is
that they both attempt to reduce the poem to something
outside it. The present approach opposes these tendencies
in two important respects. First, it attempts to account
for as much as possible in terms of internal elements
and their various aspects. It assumes that much of
the external information loses precisely its emotional
significance once torn out from its original context.
Second, it attempts to account for the evasive emotional
qualities of the poem not by reducing them to something,
but rather by pointing at a complex interplay between
a multiplicity of elements and aspects inside the poem.
Hence, myth or any other external information can help
to account for the emotional impact of a poem only
if it helps to impute unity and coherence to a work
otherwise puzzling or defective in this respect (cf.
Margolis, 1962: 114).13
As a further step, it attempts to account for the peculiar
emotional (ecstatic) quality of the poem by pointing
at structural resemblances between the processes within
the poem, and the particular kinds of emotional processes.
This is why it cannot ignore Maud Bodkin's conception
of this poem in terms of archetypal patterns.
By this I do not wish to imply that all symbolic or
external criticism is necessarily wrong or harmful,
though I believe that much of it is not as illuminating
as it could be, or ought to be. What I do strongly
imply is that one cannot know what external meanings
and sources are relevant to a poem, before one knows
what is its internal structure, and how are the internal
elements organized by it. Though I don't pretend that
the above reading is the interpretation of this poem,
it is, certainly, a rather plausible interpretation.
The interpretation of metaphors, says Miller (1979:
241), "is not a search for a unique paraphrase
of the implicit comparison, but rather a search for
grounds that will constrain the basis of the comparison
to a plausible set of alternatives" (my italics).
This seems to be perfectly true, with the necessary
changes, of the interpretation of whole poems as well.
I claim that one cannot find grounds that will constrain
the basis of symbolic or other external meanings to
a plausible set of alternatives, before carrying out
some thorough and close textual reading guided by some
reasoned principles - of the kind performed in the
course of the present paper. One could, though I shall
not attempt here, carry this conception one step further.
One might use the above reading, or some equivalent
of it, as a filter (in Max Black's sense) to filter
out irrelevant information from the mass of information
amassed by scholars and critics as possible sources
and meanings of "Kubla Khan", and see what
remains of it. Some of the symbolic readings will still
stay valid and be found illuminating; some others will
certainly undergo considerable modifications. But very
many will not be admitted. Let us adapt Black's filter-model
of metaphor to the issue in our hand.
Suppose I look at the night sky through a piece of heavily smoked glass on which certain lines have been left clear. Then I shall see only the stars that can be made to lie on the lines previously prepared upon the screen, and the stars I do see will be seen as organized by the screen's structure (Black, 1962: 230).
We think of the internal structure of the poem as such a screen, and the system of crisscrossing small-scale and large-scale relationships between its elements as the network of lines upon the screen. But perhaps something quite unexpected may also happen then: when a critic has worked out an elaborate internal structure for a poem like "Kubla Khan", he may find that his eagerness to adduce external information has been drastically reduced.
Footnotes
1. Beyond such impressionistic chatter as
The rhythmical development of the stanza, too, though technically brilliant, evokes admiration rather than delight. [...] Except for lines 3-5, where beautiful cadences suggest the fall of the sacred river through the caverns, the insistent beat of the rhythm carries a hammer-like quality (especially in lines 1-2, 6-7) suggesting perhaps the forcefulness with which the oriental despot's decree is imposed upon its living materials. Mr. House remarked on stanza 3, "If this were a poem of frustration and failure, the movement would be slow and heavy", overlooking apparently that this description fitted exactly the deliberately ponderous movement of the opening stanza (Yarlott, 1967: 129).
2. Kipling commented on these lines:
In all the millions permitted there are no more five - five little lines - of which one can say "These are magic. These are the vision. The rest is only poetry."
The other two are Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale",
ll. 69-70.
3. Such a mock-ambiguity may profitably be contrasted
to such genuine instances of ambiguity as in the verse-line
"I would build that dome in air" which can
be explicated as though it meant that the poet
would, given the right inspiration, "build, but in air, that dome which Kubla had built in stone"; or that he would build what Kubla in fact built, "a dome in air" (assuming that the dome was not squat, but was itself raised high in air) (Yarlott, 1967: 150 n.).4. I have adapted to literary criticism the terms thing-free, gestalt-free, thing-destruction, superimposition from Ehrenzweig (1965), who applies them to music and the visual arts.
"Stability, constancy, consistency, differentiation" are among the key-words for the effects of cognitive organization. In the visual mode, for instance, from a stream of undifferentiated stimuli we differentiate a stable, consistent world. [...] Whatever visual information can be organized into clear-cut shapes or well defined objects, are emphasized, promoted, organized as "figures" that stand out clearly against lowly differentiated "ground". All other visual information is relegated to the mass of lowly differentiated background. [...] Whenever we see a person from a different angle, or in a different lighting, we receive different visual information; were it not for perceptual constancy, we ought to perceive each time a different person (if we could perceive, at all, persons) (Tsur, 1963 a: 19-20).
We have bought perceptual constancy at a considerable
price. The capability of responding to rich precategorical
information is no less vital for suvival.
We do perceive some of the inconstant, precategorical, inarticulate information; the knowledge so gained is usually called intuitive. Intuitive knowledge so gained is indispensable for quick orientation, or for orientation in an ever-changing environment. In fact, as Bartlett indicated back in 1932, most of the complex cognitive activities, such as perceiving complex situations or remembering them, begin with the awareness of some such precategorical information. He calls this awareness "attitude", or "feeling", or "affect" (Tsur, 1983 a: 21).
This state of affairs may explain the function of the
phenomena denoted by Ehrenzweig's terms in the artistic
endeavour. In a work of art, where communication is
based on hard and fast categories, attitudes, feelings,
or affective and emotional qualities may be generated
only by the partial destruction of categories, things
and gestalts. The enormous emotional force perceived
by some readers in "Kubla Khan" could not
impress the readers of words (which, as we know, denote
stable categories) unless some kind of thing-free and
gestalt-free qualities were generated in the poem.
5. Lowes (1927), and some critics in his footsteps, speak - oddly enough - of a Tartar youth.
6. Although, in the context of the preceding paper, I cannot refrain, again from praising her general approach to literature. As I claimed more than once in the preceding paper, one of the crippling effects of the Quest for Certitude on critics is their inability to handle precisely this issue that the context "must throw some transforming light" upon the elements that have entered the poem. This is one more example when Schneider gives evidence of her Negative Capability even where her actual critical decision appears to be doubtful.
7. In fact, we seem to have in "Kubla Khan" the third ingredient as well; but here the process of dissolution does not affect the perceiving or contemplating consciousness, but rather the solid reality perceived or contemplated.
8. I have elsewhere discussed (Tsur, 1977: 213-214) the cognitive mechanisms underlying such "retro-relating" and "superimposition".
9. I have borrowed
the terminology and the graphic signs from Halle and
Keyser (1971), which I have utilized in a perception-oriented
theory of meter (Tsur, 1977).
10.
Schneider (1975: 273) suggests that Coleridge's "remark
upon Milton's use of an unrhymed line at the beginning
of a verse pragraph might equally well have referred
to the first line of his own final paragraph, 'A damsel
with a dulcimer'".
Discussing a not very important question, whether Milton intended the hill-rill couplet of lines 22-23 to close one paragraph in Lycidas or to open the next, Coleridge argued for the first choice on grounds that, he thought, must be "for a poet's ear convincing". The eighth line of the preceding paragraph ("And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd"), like the first ("Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well"), "is rhymeless, and was left so, because the concurring rhymes of the concluding distich were foreseen as the compensations". In other words, Coleridge was arguing that Milton had deliberately opened a paragraph with an unrhymed line but would not have closed it so (Schneider, 1975: 272).
I believe that Coleridge was suggesting in these words more than that. This idea of "compensation" implies a mutual dependence of a weakened beginning and a strong ending: The weaker the prosodic organization at the beginning, the stronger the ending appears. And conversely, the stronger the ending, the more justified, or functional, or acceptable, the weak beginning appears. In fact, Coleridge is arguing here for the gestalt principle that the shape of a part must be modified in order to make it dependent on the whole. If I am right, in "Kubla Khan" the answer may be the "superimposed pattern" offered above.
11.In my 1985 paper I have pointed out in Wordsworth's "Daffodils" (a poem frequently characterized as ecstatic) the co-presence and mutual foregrounding of three elements: more than usually regular meter, more than usually intense dancing movement, and the pattern of emotive crescendo.
12. I assume that one obvious case in point would be
Farewell, farewell, but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
13. "We know a 'myth' to be 'objective' for criticism, though it may not be so for science, when the habits of thought and perception and imagination of normal persons are educable in its terms and when their responses to appropriate stimuli are generally predictable" (Margolis, 1962: 113).
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