Page "Kubla Khan" Paragraph 129

During the 1940s and 1950s, critics focused on the technique of the poem and how it relates to the meaning.

In 1941, G. W. Knight claimed that Kubla Khan " needs no defence.

It has a barbaric and oriental magnificence that asserts itself with a happy power and authenticity too often absent from visionary poems set within the Christian tradition.

" Humphrey House, in 1953, praised the poem and said of beginning of the poem: " 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 " and that Coleridge's words " convey so fully the sense of inexhaustible energy, now falling now rising, but persisting through its own pulse ".

Also in 1953, Elisabeth Schneider dedicated her book to analysing the various aspects of the poem, including the various sound techniques.

When discussing the quality of the poem, she wrote, " I sometimes think we overwork Coleridge's idea of ' the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities.

' I have to come back to it here, however, for the particular flavor of Kubla Khan, with its air of mystery, is describable in part through that convenient phrase.

Yet, the ' reconciliation ' does not quite occur either.

It is in fact avoided.

What we have instead is the very spirit of ' oscillation ' itself.

" Continuing, she claimed, " The poem is the soul of ambivalence, oscillation's very self ; and that is probably its deepest meaning.

In creating this effect, form and matter are intricately woven.

The irregular and inexact rhymes and varied lengths of the lines play some part.

More important is the musical effect in which a smooth, rather swift forward movement is emphasized by the relation of grammatical structure to line and rhyme, yet is impeded and thrown back upon itself even from the beginning ".

She then concluded: " Here in these interwoven oscillations dwells the magic, the ' dream ,' and the air of mysterious meaning of Kubla Khan.

I question whether this effect was all deliberately out by Coleridge, though it might have been.

It is possibly half-inherent in his subject ....

What remains is the spirit of ' oscillation ,' perfectly poeticized, and possibly ironically commemorative of the author.

" Following in 1959, John Beer described the complex nature of the poem: " Kubla Khan the poem is not a meaningless reverie, but a poem so packed with meaning as to render detailed elucidation extremely difficult.

" In responding to House, Beer claimed, " That there is an image of energy in the fountain may be accepted: but I cannot agree that it is creative energy of the highest type.