Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

“Kublah Kahn” 155himself—a desire that signals his own aspiration to achieve somethinggrand, inspiring, and transcendent (concepts especially suggested bythe word “symphony”).The poet explicitly desires to feel “deep delight,” which he hopesto express through “music loud and long” (ll. 44–45)—language thatonce more implies a desire to transcend anything that is merelyordinary, mundane, or trivial. He seeks a music that is heightened involume and lengthy in duration, and, in contemplating the possibilityof such power, he reminds us that he has already, in composing thepresent poem, actually achieved it: “I would build that dome in air, /That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!” (ll. 46–47). But, of course, thoseimposing structures have already been built in this very lyric; indeed,they exist in actuality nowhere else but in “Kubla Khan” itself. Thepoem has already achieved precisely the sublime effects it presentlyand explicitly longs for, and in the very intensity with which thoselongings are now expressed, the poem becomes even more sublime(even more heightened, even more lofty and transcendent in tone)than it has been already. As the poem closes, the speaker imaginesthat his hoped-for sublime powers will make him seem somewhatfrightening and intimidating (ll. 48–54) so that he will seem, in someways, far more imposing and impressive a figure than even the Khanhimself. Most readers, however, will also feel an enormous sense ofgratitude to a poet capable of writing in such an intensely sublimefashion and capable of communicating, so convincingly, that sense ofthe sublime to others. Ultimately, the creator of “Kubla Khan” seemsa far more imposing figure than the imagined Khan himself, preciselybecause the Khan and his splendid dominions are indeed the obviousproduct of the poet’s very own sublime imagination.WORKS CITED OR CONSULTEDAshfield, Andrew and Peter de Bolla, eds. The Sublime: A Reader in BritishEighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996.Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Complete Poems. Ed. William Keach. New York:Penguin, 1997.. The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Henry NelsonColeridge. 4 vols. London: W. Pickering, 1836–1839.Grant, Allan. A Preface to Coleridge. London: Longman, 1972.