Question:
Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan help?
Selena
2009-04-20 19:58:29 UTC
Can someone explain to me how water and ice images are used in the poem. What ideas or feelings are expressed by the poet with this imagery please?
Thank you,

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. . . . .





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.
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 :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war ! . . . .







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 with caves of ice !
Four answers:
Nuri Beauharnais
2009-04-21 01:01:33 UTC
Ok, this is one of my favourite poems ever, but it's also very difficult and complex, so whatever I manage to analyse is just small fragment of the whole.



Ok, a little background info to this poem: Coleridge wrote this after he dreamt a most bizarre dream. He had been reading "Purcha's Pilgrimage" (about Kubla Khan) and had taken some anodyne. Then he fell asleep and dreamt about Kubla, and the poem is based on the little images he remembered of the dream. The poem is also about how he is tormented by the fact that he cannot remember all of the dream, that he unable to create- he cannot "revive within me her symphony and song".



So one of the main themes of KK is that of creation- the physical act of biological creation as well as artistic creation of the writer/poet, etc. Water/ice is an important motif for this.



Ok, I'm sure you know that water is a symbol of life and creation. The image of "Alph" the sacred river is thus a symbol of creation as well- life and fertility. "Alph" also brings to mind "Alpha", meaning the beginning, the start (as you know, Alpha is the first letter of the Greek Alphabet).



In the second stanza, the act of reproduction and hence, biological creation is shown symbolically. The second stanze talks about the origin of the river ("it flung up momently the sacred river"), and if you really read carefully, you'll find very obvious metaphors for human sexual reproduction. ("from this chasm"....."burst huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail"). I won't go into any more detail, for the sake of propriety, :)



Water and ice are also symbols of the subconscious mind. The whole structure of the poem, and the structure of the landscape imagery shown in the poem, comprises the three levels of the human mind- the conscious, the preconscious and the subconscious. Water and ice symbolise the underground level of the landscape, and also the underground level of the mind. In the second stanza, Coleridge describes how the river is thrust from underground to above ground, in an act of creation. In the final stanza, he expresses his desire to create artistically, to channelise the waters of his thought from his subconscious to his conscious (from underground to above ground) so that he can remember his dream.



Something like that! It's a very complicated, complex poem of several different levels. You can analyse it forever (I wrote 8.5 pages on it in an answer once, when most answers average 3 in my class). Hopefully what I wrote will help you a little bit.



Good luck.
gay
2016-11-16 12:41:52 UTC
Poem Kubla Khan
anonymous
2016-04-04 03:42:09 UTC
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That would be alliteration, which is just consonance at the beginning of the words. Use your dictionary.
anonymous
2016-03-16 14:55:27 UTC
FUCKKKKK GENG 236


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