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An examination of the characters that Coleridge presents "Kubla Khan" and the situations in which they find themselves reveals interesting aspects of Coleridge’s own character that are both similar to and different from the characters named in the titles of these poems. In particular, an examination of these characters with an eye toward Coleridge’s conception of poetic inspiration and success can be fruitful. In "Kubla Khan," Coleridge depicts a powerful character who "did ... a stately pleasure dome decree" ("Kubla Khan" lines 1-2). The fact that Kubla Khan is able merely to decree a pleasure-dome and know that his orders will be executed implies that he is a character of both strong will and great creative power. This faith in himself is not misplaced. The Khan decrees that a pleasure-dome be built and his order is immediately executed: "So twice five miles of fertile ground/ With walls and towers were girdled round" (6-7). Some aspects of the landscape and the dome echo the hardness implied by the chieftain’s single-minded determination: the fountain "with ceaseless turmoil seething," the "dancing rocks" that are tossed into the air by the fountain, the "ancestral voices prophesying war," and the fact that the sacred river itself is "flung up momently" by the fountain (18, 23, 30, 24). As the Khan’s creation, the dome can reasonably be expected to contain clues to his character, and the characterization of the Khan harmonizes well with these clues about his character given by the pleasure dome: the image of a Mongol chief is one associated with danger, war, and a large amount of strength. All of the aspects of the dome’s landscape so far mentioned are located beneath the ground in the geography that the poem sets up. Above the ground, the Khan’s pleasure-dome is situated in a landscape which also includes "gardens bright with sinuous rills" and "many an incense-bearing tree" — both images which, along with the pleasure-dome, call to mind sensuality and languor (8, 9). That is, the lower landscape of primal force and dynamic action is covered and concealed by a surface landscape of beauty and permanence. This dichotomy suggests a psychological interpretation of the landscape as a whole: the sensual surface-covering may represent the conscious and rational mind, while the subterranean landscape may represent the unconscious, irrational mind of drives and instincts. The powerful Khan, then, can be seen as a figure who has a connection with both landscapes, and his creation, the dome, "floats midway on the waves" between the two worlds: it protrudes into the surface world of the conscious mind, but its roots extend deep beneath the surface; it is a "sunny pleasure-dome" that has caverns below it that extend so far underground that they becomes "caves of ice" (32, 36). In the end, the mariner is an idealized portrait of Coleridge as a poet, just as Kubla Khan is. As a storyteller, the mariner furnishes an example of the compelling nature of the perfect story. Although the wedding-guest wants to leave, and is so torn between hearing the story and attending his kinsman’s wedding that he beats his breast in anguish several times, he is unable to tear himself away from the mariner: "the mariner hath his will" of the guest (16). Just as the mariner experienced a series of terrible events on his voyage, Coleridge’s life was difficult. He struggled with addiction to opium, his marriage was sometimes difficult, and he certainly seems to have questioned the strength of his poetic gift. It is possible that, like the mariner, Coleridge experienced storytelling and creative urges in connection with feelings of guilt and failure and saw the creation of a poem as an act that is fundamentally cathartic and which expurgates guilt. In that case, the mariner and Kubla Khan do not present fundamentally different images of Coleridge’s ideal of poetic inspiration, but different aspects of the same image: Kubla Khan is an image of an essentially creative aspect of Coleridge’s poetic function, while the mariner is an image of a broken and essentially conciliatory force. When seen in these terms, it seems that the mariner may be the image with which Coleridge most closely identified himself, but both are symbols of his creative process. References Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Khan" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. H. J. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts" (1798 text) in Romanticism: An Anthology, Second Edition. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1998. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In Seven Parts" (1817 text) in Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. H. J. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
