Supernatural elements in Kubla Khan (CC

Supernatural elements in Kubla Khan

Q. Discuss the psychological realism behind Coleridge’s use of the supernatural with reference to Kubla Khan

Answer: Kubla Khan is a dream vision, a poem of pure magic. It exemplifies Coleridge’s mastery over supernatural poetry.

Coleridge creates an environment of mystery in Kubla Khan mainly by describing the ‘pleasure- dome’ and therefore the surroundings in which it stood. It is a beautiful place where the river Alph flows “through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” The immeasurable caverns and the sunless sea, perhaps some dark subterranean lake, evoke in our mind a sense of mystery and awe.

There is the deep romantic chasm which lay across forest of cedar trees. From this gorge is momentously forced a mighty fountain, the source of river Alph. The manner, in which the water is described as intermittently thereby forcing its way out from the spring and throwing up huge pieces of rock, fascinates the reader.

The atmosphere is mostly mystery and awe. There is the deep romantic chasm which lay across forest of cedar trees. From this gorge is momentously forced a mighty fountain, the source of river Alph. The manner is which the water is described as intermittently forcing its way out from the spring, throwing up huge pieces of rock, fascinates the reader. The atmosphere of mystery and awe is emphasized when another reference is formed to the sunless sea or the lifeless ocean into which the waters of Alph fell with a loud roar.

Suggestiveness is the basic feature of Coleridge’s supernaturalism. It is true that a vivid and graphic description of the environment of the pleasure- dome is conceding the poem but the supernatural element is suggestive. Coleridge is a superb artist for intermingling the natural and the supernatural so that the probable and the improbable interfuse. Here are lines which for sheer suggestiveness and mystery are perhaps unsurpassed:

A savage place! As hole and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon –lover.

A complete store of love’s tragedy is hidden in these lines. It is a story comparable to Keat’s La Belle Dame sans merci. And then the following two lines;

And’ mid this tumult Kubla heard from for

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The mystery and awe of these lines are striking. What war and why it is left to our imagination.

Then we come to the closing lines which contain a picture of poetic frenzy. Here too we have an outstanding blending of the natural and supernatural. A poet’s inspiration is a well-known and natural fact of human experience, but there is something supernatural about the way in which this poetic inspiration and the creative powers of a poet are shown:

And’ all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with thrice,

For he on honey- dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of paradise

But despite the mystery and awe evoked in the poem, the whole description is psychologically accurate because when the poet is in a state of frenzy, he is really like a magician. Out of this creative madness, come the game of truth and beauty. Touches of realism are added, even to the description of the chasm and the mighty fountain.

Coleridge uses the similes rebounding hail and chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail which are familiar to our lives are most natural. If Kubla Khan hears prophesies of war altogether the tumultuous noise, it is not unrealistic. It is true to human experience. After all he is a brave warrior.

Coleridge never forgets that his real purpose is to make the supernatural natural and to bring about the “willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith”. Whether Kubla Khan is seen as a poem about poetic creativity or about life, it is a convincing work.

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