NCERT Solutions Class 12, English, Kaliedoscope, Poerty, Chapter- 4, Kubla Khan Or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment
Understanding the Poem
Find out where the river Alph is.
Solution:
The river Alph, located in an ice-free region at the west of the Koettliz Glacier, initiates from Trough Lake and flows through Walcott Lake, Howchin Lake, and the Alph Lake. However, in the context of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, the river Alph is introduced to focus on the vigor of the water body and to depict the contrasting images of the calmness and serenity of the natural surrounding and the noisy, active insurgency of the river Alph.
1. Does the poem have a real geographical location? How does the poet mix up the real and the imaginary to give a sense of the surreal?
Solution:
The genesis of this poem is a vision seen by Coleridge in a trance-like state of mind. He tried to capture its essence, but an interruption caused an irreparable break in his poetic flow.
Coleridge’s poem adopts the character of Kubla Khan, the grandson of the legendary Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan took the initiative to build a summer palace in Xanadu, located in Mongolia.
In Kubla Khan, the poet talks about how Kubla sought to build a dome undisturbed by natural forces. He was against the natural forces of decay and degeneration and wanted to create a private world deprived of evolution. In contrast, the poet wants to build a dome in the air out of the natural forces, a creative cocoon that would make the poet feel happy. The poet doesn’t wish to go against the natural world. Instead, he wants to build something out of the natural forces that would easily mix with the world’s natural motions.
The introduction of the River Alph is another instance of how the poet combines the real and the imaginary. There is undoubtedly no river with that name though some scholars claim this to connect with the river Alpheus in Greece. The poet Coleridge continually shifts away from the real world by choosing specific figures and connecting them with imaginary concepts to provide a surrealistic effect.
2. Pick out
(i) contrasting images that are juxtaposed throughout the poem.
Solution:
The poem consists of contradictory images. Here are a few instances from the poem:
- The noisy and active river Alph contrasts with a calm and peaceful garden.
- The gloomy and dim ocean is in contrast to the warm, lively forest.
- The caves are freezing, icy and cold, contrasting them with domes that are warmer and gigantic.
- The ‘wailing woman’ image contrasts with her lover, whom the poet Coleridge considers a ‘demon’.
(ii) images that strike the eye and images that strike the ear, both positive and negative.
Solution:
In Kubla Khan, we have images that strike the eyes.
- Firstly, the name “Kubla Khan” imposes the trance-like effect on the reader the poet has been looking for.
- The juxtaposition of the words’ waning’ and ‘wailing woman’ imparts a wailing sound.
- In the line “Five miles meandering with a mazy motion”, there is alliteration in the “m” sound, creating a kind of motion sound as it describes.
- The halting assonance in “As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing” provides a sense of breathing.
(iii) the words used to describe the movement of water.
Solution:
The poet Coleridge uses different words to showcase various emotions and sounds. For instance, the poet attempts to visualize the river gushing down the hillside “momently” like a “fountain”: “A mighty fountain momently was forced.” The poet wants the reader to imagine the river as something that is recreated at every moment.
In the lines, “And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever. It flung up momently the sacred river”- the poet tries to make the readers visualize the river bouncing off the rocks.
Through the words- “Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns measureless to man, and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean”, the poet visualizes the river as it rushes down a deep canyon and cuts into a wooded hillside. The river then turns into a good, running river.
3. What is the discordant note heard at the end of the third stanza? Can we relate this to the grandeur and turmoil that are a part of an emperor’s life?
Solution:
In the third stanza, the speaker calls up Xanadu with a strange voice. The speaker is surprised by the images, imagines the image to be real, and cries out, “beware, beware”! describing the creature possessing “flashing eyes” and “floating hair”. The description of the animal indicates that something bad is going to happen soon. Many critics argue that the vision was the effect of opium intake, while others have denied this and tried to explain it as a final vision of Kubla Khan, which turned into a mysterious and strange ghost. Thus, the third stanza creates an ambiguous and peculiar kind of atmosphere.
4. Which are the lines that refer to magical elements?
Solution:
The lines that refer to magical elements are:
- “Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea.” Again, the lines, “Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree”, create an intense magical world. These lines transform the everyday world into happiness.
- “But oh! That deep romantic chasm which/ slanted” depicts the world’s image is some charm or spell cast by some unknown power.
- The dome is innately beautiful and captivates the reader with its magnificent charm, which describes most beautifully “It was a miracle of rare device, / A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice.”
5. What is poetic ecstasy likened to?
Solution:
Poetic ecstasy is the style of turning into alive passion through voicing intricate feelings and experiences. The ecstatic energy, the rejuvenating euphoria, that lingers in the mind and body are clubbed together to define a strange force that shakes us from within. The magic engulfing the artist through such fragmentary moments takes him off into a poetic ecstasy.
6. The poem is a fragment. What do you think has made it a lasting literary piece?
Solution:
Kubla Khan is considered as one of the greatest masterpieces of the romantic era as it happened “in a sort of Reverie”, under the impact of opium. The poem dwells in binaries. The dark, gloomy, violent river is juxtaposed with the calm, serene surrounding and we get to hear the wailing of the damsel for her “demon lover”. Critics have deconstructed the poem a modern arena where darkness and corruption coexist with apparent innocence and simplicity.
The poem also combines Christian, Hinduism, and Islamic traits in its symbolic descriptions. The cross positioned on the palace of Xanadu is a reference to Jesus’ cross and the entire poem is based on the hopes of Kubla Khan, who is again from an Islamic background. The romantics believed in the Hindu view of Pantheism rather than Monotheism, and the poem hints at the presence of such facts as well. Thus, this poem has emerged as a universal piece of poetry by drawing on broad, universal, and all-encompassing themes.
TASK
Write short descriptions of five other rare musical instruments that are used by folk cultures.
Solution:
Some other rare musical instruments used by folk cultures can be enumerated as -
- Ligawka is one of the oldest Polish instruments. It is a wind instrument that is more than two cubits long and used to be employed by herdsmen to call their cattle.
- Hurdy Gurdy produces a haunting sound and was usually used by the vagabond sisters performing handouts.
- Suka, seldom seen in Polish folk recordings, is an unusual stringed instrument whose strings cannot be altered by the usual technique of pressing the strings with one’s fingers.
- Vessel Flute, resembling a whistle, is crafted in the shape of an ocarina. It is filled with water before playing.
- Cart Rattle is a unique instrument that had to be rolled like a rattle for playing the music. A cog attached to certain planks catches the music as the instrument is rolled and enables it to rattle. Thus, music is produced.
