ABSTRACT
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fragmentary dream vision “Kubla Khan,” a picture is painted of an emperor who erects a “pleasure dome” among “enfolding spots of greenery” through which runs a “sacred river” down to underground caverns (1816/1993, p. 615). The place would be a paradise garden were it not for an eruption, which causes the sacred river to sink “in tumult to a lifeless ocean” (line 29). As my student Michelle Burus wrote, Kubla Khan believes that by building a walled-in garden he can master his emotions. “However,” she continues, “the emperor cannot prevent the sacred river from turning tumultuous, just as humans cannot prevent their emotions from turning tumultuous.” When that happens, “unrest begins to invade the human spirit.” In other words, read psychologically, when the river of life within us becomes too controlled or repressed, our connection to the greater ocean of cosmic consciousness turns against us and our spirit becomes, in Coleridge’s image, a cave of ice.
