1

Kubla Khan – a Freudian analysis

While formalist critics stated that the text is of sole importance and an objective criticism is
the right path when approaching literature, psychoanalytic critics were to develop the idea that
the text is not self-sufficient and it should be placed in a context, the author being the very first
reason why the particular text exists. When talking about the author and his biography, relevant
signs ought to be found since he/she, a human, namely an irrational being (according to Freud)
will find in literature (involuntarily) a substitutive way in which his/hers repressed desires
(especially sexual ones) can come to surface under another form.

Since the main assumption of psychoanalytic criticism is that literature is the expression of
turmoil in the unconscious of the author, the objectives would be: decoding the latent meaning in
the text, interpreting “the manifest”, finding the meaningfulness of the biography of the author.
Based on Freud’s ideas which appear in the “Contemporary Critical Theories. A Reader”
(Surdulescu, R. & B. Ștefănescu, p. 95-101), I am going to analyze the poem “Kubla Khan”
written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. My objective is to illustrate the relevant biographical
“struggles” of the author but also to uncover the actual meaning of the text by making use of the
specific critical means of psychoanalysis: Oedipus triangles, dream-like images and sexually
charged symbols.

To begin with, behind the brilliant genius that he was, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s life cannot
be defined as brilliant. Ever since he was a child, he struggled to win his mother’s attention but
he never succeeded. He sought to fill that empty hole (lack of maternal affection) but it would be
the cause of his problem with women and maybe even the cause of his disastrous marriage to
Sara Fricker, whom he could not love. His depression grew and he developed a complex of
inferiority which led to the end of his friendship with Southey and William Wordsworth. Also,
his rheumatic crisis “introduced” him to the most popular drug among the romantics, opium:

So Coleridge hailed it, and found therein a refuge from the turmoil of aspiration and disillusion at the
turn of the century. ( Abrams. The Milk of Paradise. 1971. p. 3-4)
 2

In the Preface (1816) he talks about the conditions in which he wrote Kubla Khan and provides
the reason why he named it : “A vision in a dream. A fragment”:

(…)in the summer of 1798, under influence of an “anodyne” now definitely known to have been
opium, he fell asleep while reading Purchas his Pilgrimage, and in that state composed a poem
“in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the
correspondent expressions without any sensation or consciousness of effort.” The recording of this
dream composition upon awakening was interrupted at the fifty-fourth line, and was never
completed.

Thus Coleridge’s verse caught up the evanescent images of an opium dream (…) (Abrams. The
Milk of Paradise, p 46)

The book he read seems to have served as material for the dream since several words from it
can be found in the poem and it may be that the opium caused him to hallucinate, but behind the
manifest meaning, there lies the latent meaning, waiting to be revealed.

In order to introduce my approach of analyzing the text and render it clearer, the similarity
between dreams and literature and the point in which this similarity ends must be explained.

Going back to the structure of the dream described by Freud, we remember that from the
unconscious desire to its representation there is a transformation going on, several processes that
take place, and this transformation was called by him “the dream work”. Without it , the
unconscious desire, which has to be satisfied in a way because it’s energy has to be released,
cannot accede to consciousness. This is why dreams appear incomprehensible and have a strange
aspect. The same can be said about literature, which carries and conceals the unconscious desire
but which is far more complex than dreams since what is produced can be rendered legible, “of a
nature that can be valued for itself”.( Silhol, Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an Archetype"). It
receives a specific autonomous function which is enough to justify its existence, a function of
communication/description/narration.

Taking a first look at the poem, it appears as if its structure has a lack of coherence, similar to
the strangeness of the dream (oneiric quality). The three “sections” follow a temporal structure,
although they seem to be disconnected. Recurrent words can be observed and these are viewed as
symbols; their repetition might point out the existence of several obsessions which are concealed:
 3

“water”, “cave”, “dome”, the suffix “less”, “pleasure”, “chasm”, “milk”, “honey-dew”,
“Paradise”.(most of them are sexually charged symbols)

In the first eleven lines of the poem the image of Paradise is created. The “pleasure-dome”, is
the central element and it is depicted as being “With walls and towers girdled round”: surrounded
and in a way protected from the outside world. Also, the accumulation of such words as: “fertile
ground”, “blossomed”, “incense bearing-tree” are direct “references to life”(S. , Robert ""Kubla
Khan": Genesis of an Archetype"). The round-shaped “Paradise” is the place of safety and of life:
the maternal womb as “the image of life before birth”(S., Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an
Archetype). This explains the presence of water under different forms and the recurrence of the
idea of a “closed” space where everything grows. The mother and the infant form a unity which
is represented in the musicality of the poem, realized by using alliteration: “dome decree”, “river
ran”, “sunless sea”. The insistence on –less in “measureless to man” and “sunless sea” conceals
the idea of a third presence, that of the father, who is not wanted since he constitutes a threat for
the infant’s desire of being alone with the mother. The very first line is a representation of the act
of conception and “Khan” can be considered the figure of the father. The presence of an Oedipal
triangle and its features begin to be anticipated.

In the next section of the poem, the Paradise is disrupted by the breaking of the initial unity
which causes the infant to suffer from this dramatic split. At the same time, he is the incestuous
lover, a demon opposed to the father (God); the idea of such a shameful relation hides an
unconscious guilt:

A savage place! As holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! (Coleridge, T. Samuel. Kubla Khan)

“Chasm” is an evident reference to the woman body. The “sacred river” can represent those
forgotten memories which later reappear under a different form, carrying the energy from the Id.
The second occurrence of the sexually charged symbol “chasm” opens the second representation
of a sexual act -“ceaseless turmoil”, “half-intermitted burst”, “huge fragment” which vault “like
rebounding hail”, “dancing rocks.
 4

References to a liquid (“seething”), to respiration (“this earth in fast thick pants…breathing) and
the explicit “swift half-intermitted burst” form a vivid representation of the culminating
excitement in the sexual act.( S., Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an Archetype.)

The main desire of the infant is to return to the peaceful atmosphere, to that lost happiness . In
the last four lines of this section, the reiteration of the “caverns measureless to man” hides once
more the desire of excluding the father from the equation that has become even stronger and the
“war” may be interpreted as expressing the consequences of this “aggressive oedipal wish”:

And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

In the third section, the change of style is so abrupt that the differences between it and the
other two become indisputable. The use of the conditional mode creates and emphasizes the
distance between what used to be and what is now. The voice of the poet can be heard: “Could I
revive”, “I would build”. What had remained from the “pleasure-dome” is merely a “shadow”.
The “vision” is to be “a reconstruction of what has been lost”, a futile attempt to recapture that
“otherworldly experience, that prenatal paradise.” ( Silhol, Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an
Archetype") And this attempt is made with words, language, that along with the dream have the
power to represent. The unconscious wish of returning to the womb, a death instinct, appears here
and the satisfaction of it will be attained in the process of writing.

The “Abyssinian maid” appears as the representation of the forbidden object of sexual desire.
The word “pleasure” occurs in all three sections and according to Freud, the Id is ruled by the
pleasure principle, which again shows the supremacy of unconscious desires waiting to be
fulfilled.

The final lines bring about the image of the troubled man, condemned to leave as an outcast,
feared by the others. The “honey-dew” and “the milk of Paradise” may be seen as symbols of the
milk of the mother.

Arriving at the end of this analysis, the result is that a psychoanalytical approach to analyzing
“Kubla Khan” is a right one. Coleridge’s unconscious was troubled by all sorts of complexes and
internal conflicts (just as any human being) and his repressed desires made their way out
 5

unintentionally, not only in his dreams but also in his literary work. Consequently, the author
plays a very important part in deciphering the text. By a psychoanalytical interpretation of “Kubla
Khan”, these desires can be identified and they demonstrate their relevance to the meaning of the
poem. After all, “meaning is desire”( S., Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an Archetype.). It is
impressive how they, as fair architects, project such representations which lead to the birth of art
products in the true sense of the word.
 6

Bibliography:

1. Surdulescu, R. & B. Ștefănescu, Contemporary Critical Theories. A Reader, antologie de

uz intern, 1999,p. 95-101
2. Silhol, Robert ""Kubla Khan": Genesis of an Archetype. PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal
for the Psychological Study of the Arts. January 1, 2006, Available
psyartjournal.com/article/show/silhol-kubla_khan_genesis_of_an_archetype . Accessed
19.05.2018, 15:30
3. Moulin, Joanny. « Reflections on the Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge », Études
anglaises, vol. vol. 63, no. 1, 2010, pp. 34-48. Accessed 18.05.2018, 11:47
4. Abrams, M.H. The Milk of Paradise: The Effect of Opium Visions on the Works of
DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge. New York, Octagon Books ,1971
5. Coleridge, T. Samuel. Kubla Khan or, A vision in a dream. A Fragment. 1816
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan
7