A realistic interpretation of Kubla Khan
For too long confusion has festered with regards to this poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, bathed I too in it, but with years comes with wisdom — to the settled mind — the truth becomes clear: the paragon of the dream.
The first pseudo-stanza begins to describe that which Kubla Khan ordered be built and that in which he ordered it to be built. Upon such a location is the river Alph, which the author describes, which runs through the land — through insurmountable natural features and then to the sea.
The constancy of the river throughout the setting is significant given the nature of the author’s poem — a dream, less, a fragment of a dream. A river is a tool by which the vision is grounded in some reality despite its dreamy pedigree. So why then is the river there? Amongst the irrational images, why does the river remain so normal, so realistic, and so grounded?
The answer is simple, the river — Alph — is the flow of the author's dream state, it is the driver of his visions. The mind always conjures bizarre imagery and rationale in dreams, however, there are often durations of grounding, usually because of a significant grounding element. In the case of the poem — Kubla Khan — that grounding is from the river.
To appreciate a dream is to dream oneself.
Rather than approaching the interpretation of the poem from its many different images, we instead focus on what grounds it: the river, Alph, or any else. It provides the grounding and limits the ‘trippiness’ of the dream.
The ending of the poem, the recollection of memories from a recent dream, is dually noted in that first passage: the river Alph is described as flowing through the spectacular features of the land and then into the sea. This point is significant as it indicates the ending of the dream and all its imagery: the meeting of a river with a sea is the ending of the natural lands: the end of the dream: and the end of the poem.
So the answer to what the poem is depicting is simple: the imagery of the dream the author just experienced. It is not more profound or less profound than that. The river represents the enduring of the dream state, and its opening into the sea is the death of the dream. This is natural, something we’ve doubtless countless times experienced, we should not try to force a rock to bleed.
Any interpretation within such limits is to simply say that the poem beautifully depicts that imagery that remained in the memories of the dreamer shortly after waking due to its grounding in a known rationale: the river and its expected surroundings. The dream likely was even richer, yet it lacked the grounding to remain in the memories of the dreamer as described.
If a lesson — then — is to be drawn: we should note that what we remember is determined by that which we are familiar with. Further, we draw the most meaning also from that which we are familiar with. Throughout the dream that which remains with the author is that which he is at least remotely familiar with. The process by which we may think outside of the box is a continual and gradual process, even a dream is either meaningless or so familiar that it presents little breadth.
The poem is brilliant in its ability to mirror the essence not of a dream but of the nature of a dream. It allows us to dream of meaning with such breadth that it is as if we are in a real dream, except with grounding. Finding in a dream meaning is to ground it, to properly appreciate the poem is to lose oneself in one's visions which are created in order to understand that which the author describes. To appreciate a dream is to dream oneself.
