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Most discussions of "Kubla Khan" are concerned either with one of two questions or with both: "What is the meaning of the poem?", and "What are the source-materials of the poem?". What is common to these two approaches is the preoccupation with a relationship between the text and something outside it. There is nothing wrong with such a preoccupation. However, most of these discussions dwell far more persistently on the external member of this relationship (the meaning or the putative source) than on the internal member (the text), or the relationship itself. One reason for this is, I guess, that it is easier to handle gross issues outside a poem than its complex structure, or the intricate relation between it and something outside it. In the preceding paper I have discussed and criticised at great length some of these works on "Kubla Khan". In the present paper I propose to focus attention on the text itself to a considerable degree, to point out various aspects in it, attempting to integrate them into a coherent reading of the poem and to foreground, by the same token, its unique texture.

for those who have felt it to be the quintessential romantic poem, something of a point remains, for it lies squarely upon a crossroads where two or three main romantic traditions meet (Schneider, 1975: 262).

Though I shall only occasionally allude (and I have, indeed, occasionally alluded in the preceding paper) to her treatment of some of these tradions, my approach to "Kubla Khan" may be characterized as regarding it, in many respects, as "the quintessential romantic poem". Thus, to Schneider's "three main romantic traditions" I wish to add a fourth one: to regard the first part of the poem as a descendent of the main line of romantic nature descriptions. The site chosen for the building of the stately pleasure-dome has many of the characteristics of rather familiar landscapes of realistic fullness, of human proportions, such as in "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion,/ Through wood and dale the sacred river ran", or in "And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,/ Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree". This, however, is inextricably interwoven with the immense forces of the infinite and the sublime, as incarnate in the "caverns measureless to man" (twice), the "deep romantic chasm", "lifeless ocean", or "sunless sea". We are here up against two kinds of estimation of magnitude, according to the Kantian conception of the sublime:

When we estimate magnitudes through numbers, that is, conceptually, the imagination selects a unit, which it can then repeat indefinitely. But there is a second kind of estimation of magnitudes, which Kant calls "aesthetic estimation", in which the imagination tries to comprehend or encompass the whole representation in one single intuition. There is an upper bound to its capacity. An object whose apparent or conceived size strains this capacity to the limit - threatens to exceed the imagination's power to take it all in at once - has, subjectively speaking, an absolute magnitude: it reaches the felt limit, and appears as if infinite (Beardsley, 1966: 218-219).

In "Kubla Khan" we have both kinds of estimation, the indefinitely repeatable unit selected ("miles"), and what is "measureless to man", exceeding the imagination's capacity to comprehend or encompass the whole in one single intuition. Psychologically speaking, Bodkin's (1963: 104) characterization of "the imagination, seeking something enormous, ultimate" seems to be relevant here, "as when standing on some precipice edge, amongst peaks and chasms, one feels their lines overpowering and terrible through the suggested anguish of falling. That horror overcome adds a kind of emotional exultation to the sight of actual mountain chasms" (as quoted in the preceding paper). This "emotional exultation" becomes a significant ingredient in the pervasive emotional qualities of the poem, and will be discussed later.

In order to appreciate Coleridge's poem, a further Kantian distinction must be made, "between the mathematical sublime, which is evoked by objects that strike us as maximally huge, and the dynamic sublime, which is evoked by objects that seem to have absolute power over us" (Beardsley, 1966: 218). In a very important sense, "Kubla Khan" proceeds from the former to the latter kind of sublime. It is this feature that infuses the natural landscape with tremendous energy: beginning with the maximally huge "caverns measureless to man", through the dynamic sublime in the holy, enchanted and haunted landscape, to the speaker's frenzy at the end of the poem, that seems to have absolute power over his audience. Under further scrutiny, this sublime energy undergoes a gradual transformation, from a vision of solid, stable objects of nature, to a gradually increasing gestalt-free and thing-free vision. The "caverns measureless to man" in the first stanza "strike us as maximally huge", and as such tremendously powerful. This power, however, is static and inseparable in our awareness from the stable physical thing itself. This may be usefully contrasted with what happens in the first five lines of the second stanza.

"The woman wailing for her demon-lover" has attracted much attention in criticism. Some critics assume that there is actually such a woman wailing in that place, some (e.g. Yarlott, 1967: 130) even guess that her wailing may reach the Khan's ears. Only few critics admit that the syntactic structure is ambiguous, suggesting that there may or may not be such a woman. In the latter case, the construction "as ADJECTIVE as ever VERB PHRASE" is to be construed as a superlative, suggesting a quality in an extreme form that cannot be surpassed. In the present case, it suggests an extreme instance of a certain kind of holy and enchanted quality. The underlying conception suggests one of Kenneth Burke's favourite ideas concerning "the principle whereby the scene is a fit 'container' for the act, expressing in fixed properties the same quality that the action expresses in terms of development" (Burke, 1962: 3). Assuming that there is no such a woman there, the landscape becomes "a fit 'container' for the act" and the actor that aren't there. In other words, the landscape expresses in fixed properties the same quality that the action would have expressed in terms of development, if there had been one. This is, in fact, what is explicitly said in the passage. In other words, there is, in the scene, a sense of an extremely powerful absence, indicating a supersensuous presence of a thing-free and gestalt-free quality characterized as holy, enchanted, demonic, mournful, and the like. Some of these features are reinforced by various meaning components of the specific items of the description. Demon suggests, in the first place, an in-dwelling spirit, reinforcing the thing-free and gestalt-free quality suggested by the superlative construction and Burke's principle of "fit container". The absence is, again, suggested, by the meaning component [loss] implied by wailing. The sense of loss and gloom is, again, reinforced by the waining moon. Demon, again, suggests great energy, as well as divine or evil nature; likewise, savage suggests great energy and, possibly, destructive power. Savage, as an epithet of place does not indicate actions, but potential violent actions, expressed in fixed properties of the scenery. The wailing for the loss of a lover, again infuses the scenery with enormous emotional force. In short, then, the description suggests an intense quality of intense, thing-free and supersensuous presence, loaded with immense emotional energy.²

On closer inspection, the construction "as ADJECTIVE as ever VERB PHRASE" is not ambiguous at all. Its apparent ambiguity is derived from the fact that it may occur both in sentences that refer to actual conditions and in sentences that refer to hypothetical or rejected conditions. But its main meaning components are [+emphatic + exceeding + in any possible case]; and unless the presence of the "woman wailing" is explicitly specified, as an antecedent to the construction, it remains merely potential (as opposed to actual). In fact, even in contexts where the actual presence is explicitly specified, the "superlative" is achieved by likening the actual case to some potential extreme case. Why do then so many critics, who are native speakers of English, and "well-nurtured in their mother-tongue", misunderstand the construction? The reasons for this seem to have little to do with the exact meaning of this idiomatic construction. In the preceding paper I have adduced several instances of "interpretations" (that had no such near-ambiguous constructions to rely on) where the only way to account for the "missing information" supplied by the critic seemed to be either his inability to assume an attitude toward the "merely possible", or his reluctance to contemplate absence as a significant attribute of the poem. Here the relatively long description of a scene haunted by a woman wailing, introduced by an idiomatic phrase that may or may not allude to a merely hypothetical situation, makes it easier to introduce "missing" information as facts. At any rate, critics who argue from the presence of the wailing woman for the incoherence of the first part of the poem, seem to be killing a straw-man of their own making. Thus, the gross misreading of the emphatic phrase may be a useful device for introducing e.g. the motive of female inspiration into the poem. On the other hand, the foregoing analysis of the passage establishes it as a remarkable piece of romantic nature description. ³

The ensuing description of the fountain and the river gave considerable trouble to the critics. It forcefully impresses the imagination, but gives little or no cue as for its "meaning". Thus we find such discussions as Watson arguing with himself: "The vast power of the river is allowed to rise, but only 'momently', and then sinks back into silence, 'a lifeless ocean'. This is surely not the River of Life. It is the river of the poetry of imagination" (Watson, 1973: 233). Though he seems to be quite confident in his preference of the river's meaning, one thing seems to be absolutely certain for Watson, that the river is The River of something.

Yarlott speculates in greater detail upon the "meaning" of the description. In the first place, he observes that "the fountain's inexhaustible energy signifies the act of creativity" (Yarlott, 1967: 142). As for the position advocated here, the fountain's inexhaustible energy "signifies" nothing. It only may be (and in fact is) in some respects creative, and in some respects destructive.

After rising with difficulty it wanders 'mazily' through the pleasure-garden, then sinks into a lifeless ocean. It appears to seek at first to challenge and disrupt the ordered artificiality of the paradise, scattering fragments of rocks like hail or chaffy grain. But amid such inimical conditions nothing comes of the creative energy (Yarlott, 1967: 142).

While Yarlott attributes some specific purpose to every act of the fountain, the present paper regards the description of the fountain as being characterized by "purposefulness without purpose" (to use a Kantian phrase): these actions only present the fountain in its most sublime aspect. In this respect, it is Humphrey House who regards the outburst of the fountain as a uniquely powerful, unclassifiable event, and does not attempt to classify it, but speaks of "the sense of inexhaustible energy, now falling, now rising, but persisting through its own pulse".

The whole passage is full of life because the verse has both the needed energy and the needed control. The combination of energy and control in the rhythm and sound is so great, as in

                   at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.

that we are in danger of missing the force of imagery, as in "rebounding hail" and "dancing rocks". If we miss it, it is our fault, not Coleridge's; and it sometimes appears as if readers are blaming or underestimating him because they improperly allowed themselves, under the influence of the rhythm, to be blind to the "huge fragments" and "dancing rocks" which lay another kind of weight upon it, and to be blind to the construction of the thought, which holds together the continuity and the intermission (House, 1973: 204).

House's main object in this discussion seems to be to make sure that the imagery of the passage is not misconstrued so as to mitigate its power, to "domesticate" the sublime. I propose, then, to consider the details of the description of the fountain's outburst as meant to amplify the revelation of nature's "inexhaustible energies" at its most sublime on the one hand and, on the other, to add an "irrelevant concrete texture" so as to amplify the impression of "purposefulness without purpose". Any specific purpose attributed to the details, reduces the sublime or aesthetic quality of the description. Accordingly, while Yarlott credits the outburst of the fountain with such purpose as "to seek at first to challenge and disrupt the ordered artificiality of the paradise, scattering fragments of rocks like hail or chaffy grain", the present paper conceives of the same event as of a purposeless outburst, characterized as sublime in several respects. It shows nature's hidden forces at work, with a violence that seems to "exceed the imagination's power to take it all in at once" (in creating, so to speak, the fountain). At the same time, it seems to "regress" to a stage where the forces of chaos seem to be still active, toying around with huge "primordial" fragments of rocks.

I shall return to discuss the rhythmic character of this passage, and its interaction with the description of the event or process of flinging up the fountain, yielding immense energy and vigour. At present I wish to have a closer look at the ensuing description of the river:

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

Here, even the purposelessness of the "mazy motion" of the river may have some "moral" purpose, for some critics: "The river issues at last only to meander with purposeless 'mazy' motion, and 'mazy', likewise, was a characteristic Coleridgean term for describing moral and spiritual uncertainty" (Yarlott, 1967: 143). As for my conception of this description, one should attempt to abstract the "unique, unclassifiable" perceptual quality of the river running in a mazy motion, without translating it into a conceptual system of moral features and purposes. The purposeless, mazy motion has some relatively relaxed quality about it, especially after the highly tense and dramatic quality perceived in the "huge fragments vaulting like rebounding hail", and the "dancing rocks". This "relaxed" quality will be more apparent, if we compare the details of this description to those of the essentially identical one in the first stanza:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

In both descriptions we get essentially the same information about the river's "behaviour". But a detailed comparison points up the greater tension of the earlier passage, and the more "relaxed" quality of the later one. As for the contents of the description, it pays more attention to the details of the environment: "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion / Through wood and dale" occur only in the later description. This suggests, perhaps, a certain leisure in the describing consciousness. As for the syntactic structure, the earlier passage contains a single finite verb, whereas the later passage contains three finite verbs to indicate the same progression of the river: it "ran ... then reached ... and sank". This, again, may indicate some leisure in the observing consiousness, imputing a considerable degree of articulation to the description. If I may borrow a pair of descriptions from Auerbach (1962: 21) who, in turn, borrowed them from Goethe and Schiller, what the later and longer description gives us is "simply the quiet existence and operation of things in accordance with their natures", whereas the earlier description "robs us of our emotional freedom". These contrasting qualities are reinforced by the respective prosodic structures. The four lines of the later passage are organized in a stable, symmetrical structure by an a-b-b-a rhyme-scheme, whereas the three lines of the earlier passage are, as I hope to show later, part of a much more complex structure, one of whose typical effects is to upset any kind of focal stability. A further element of restlessness can be found in the peculiar correspondence (or rather lack of correspondence) of the syntactic structure with the prosodic unit in "Where Alph the sacred river, ran / Through caverns". As I have pointed out elsewhere (Tsur, 1972: 130), the nearer the syntactic break is to the end of a verse line, the greater our relief when the missing part is supplied. On the other hand, the nearer the beginning of a run-on syntactic unit is to the end of a verse-line, the greater the tension thus generated. Thus, the requiredness of ran is very high in this instance, and so is the "momentum" generated by the run-on sentence, underlining the speed-aspect of ran. In the later passage, by contrast, the phrase "with a mazy motion" begins exactly at the middle of the line, and so it is not perceived as a run-on line, but almost as an end-stopped one. Even the sequence "the sacred river ran", apparently identical letter by letter with the corresponding sequence in the other passage, differs from it in two important respects. First, ran in the earlier passage begins an enjambement, whereas in the later passage it serves as the closure of an end-stopped line. Second, punctuation enhances the break before the end of the line in the earlier passage, and by the same token heightens the impetus of the run-on sentence, whereas in the later passage the articulating commas are omitted, and the "requiredness" of ran is somewhat toned down. As for the length of lines, I have indicated in my 1972 paper as well as elsewhere (Tsur, 1977), that the iambic pentameter line has a peculiar kind of flexibility, owing to the fact that it cannot be divided into two symmetrical halves. This makes it more suitable than any other meter to the cadences of normal speech, whereas the iambic tetrameter line has a particular rigidity, owing to the fact that it can be divided into two exactly identical halves. Now, the two passages can be contrasted in this respect too: the later passage contains four iambic pentameter lines, the earlier one contains two iambic tetrameter lines and one trimeter. The tension in these two tetrameter lines is heightened by the fact that in both the caesura (after the fourth syllable) is overridden. Hence, again, the relative leisure of the later passage is corroborated.

Now the relative leisure that emerges from this comparison, and is intuitively perceived by the reader, is so meticulously established only to be suddenly destroyed, in the fourth line of the passage. We have seen that as part of the syntactic pattern of three finite verbs, sank reinforces rather than disrupts this leisurely quality. By the same token, however, the verb phrase sank in tumult introduces commotion into the "idyllic" description. It indicates the outburst of violent energy and noise, and the sudden disintegration of the linear (though meandering) shape of the river. In this context, "lifeless ocean" is to be regarded as the amplification of "sunless sea". Thus, the leisurely quality becomes functional in the poem, in its system of oppositions.

The river, then, cannot be regarded as the river of life, or the river of anything. It is a river brought into the focus of attention to such a degree that the reader tends to abstract from its description certain qualities that appear to have high emotional significance. If not the river of life, at any rate, water is regarded as the source of life; and running water is perceived as living water. In the description of the mazy motion of the meandering river a leisurely quality has been pointed out. It is foregrounded by a comparison to a nearly identical passage, and the contrast involves the level of described reality, as well as the syntactic and the prosodic levels.

It is in this context of "thing-destruction" that we should consider the next two lines:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prohesying war!

Wilson Knight comments on these two lines:

... and sinks with first more tumult (i.e. death agony), to a "lifeless ocean", that is, to eternal nothingness, death, the sea into which Timon's story closes. This tumult is aptly associated with war: the principle of those conflicting and destructive forces that drive man to his end. The "ancestral voices" suggest that dark compulsion that binds the race to its habitual conflicts and is related by some pschologists to unconscious ancestor-worship, to parental and pre-parental authority ( Knight, 1960: 165).

One may, I believe, accept such an interpretation of "Ancestral voices", with some modification or other. The irrational and primordial elements are conspicuous here. Our foregoing analysis, however, adds here an all-important, structural dimension. The perception of an irrational quality resides not only in the sublime force of the tumult, but also (or, perhaps, foremost) in the diffuse structure of the downpouring waters, closely ensuing after the linear run of the river. As I have indicated in the preceding paper, the opposition between linear and diffuse processes has a close structural resemblance to the opposition rational versus irrational mental processes or, rather, the information-output of the processing activities of the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. Visually, the downpouring waters and the "lifeless ocean" are perceived as gestalt-free entities; the former belongs to the "dynamic", the latter to the "mathematical" sublime. The "tumult" is inarticulate noise, that is, again, a gestalt-free and thing-free quality. These serve as the perceptual medium of the "ancestral voices", which, too, are thing-free qualities. This quality is reinforced by a grammatical manipulation: in such constructions as "the voices of ancestors" the ancestors, the stable things, still are lingering in the background; by transforming the semantic information into an adjective (ancestral), we have only the purely thing-free entity. It is this section, then, between the "birth" and "death" of the river, where we get, in the most concentrated way, the dissolution of solid things into thing-free and shape-free qualities: beginning with the disintegration of the solid earth into "huge fragments" vaulting from the depth of the earth, through the fluid river's losing its identity in the "lifeless ocean" and ending with the thing-free entities of "ancestral voices". In this sense, it is a pivotal passage.

The next few lines shift the focus of the visual image:

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure
   Floated midway on the waves;
   Where was heard the mingled measure
   From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome and caves of ice!

But in an important sense, this image carries on some perceptual processes that began in the preceding lines. I mean the "dissolution" of the solid world into thing-free or gestalt-free entities. First of all, we are confronted here, not with the solid dome of pleasure, but with its shadow, which, though it may have a clear-cut gestalt, can also be regarded as a most typical instance of thing-free entity. However, being buoyant on the surface of the waves, it is continuously modifying its stable shape, thus becoming a most typical image of an ever-changing, shifting physical reality, that has - in this way - a structural resemblance to emotional processes. The lightness of the visual percept is corroborated by the sudden metrical shift from the iambic pentameter to the trochaic tetrameter (with a light hypermetric syllable at the beginning of the first line). The shadow of the dome floated midway - midway between the fountain and the caves, I assume. This suggests a symmetrical disposition of the perceptual space, that "counts toward" a strong gestalt. At the same time, this is the spot where the inarticulate noises and tumult from the fountain and the caves (mentioned in the two preceding sections of the stanza) meet and mingle. Now, the relatively stable objects (the fountain and the caves) are far away, and only a thing-free and gestalt-free entity, the mingled sounds emitted by them is perceived. Upon this thing-free and gestalt-free entity a symmetrical orientation-scheme (suggested by "midway") is superimposed.⁴

Turning now to the last stanza of "Kubla Khan", the scene is radically changed. We are in an environment where no trace of Kubla's pleasure-dome is left. While the poem till now was almost exclusively devoted to a physical scene, the last stanza (the "second part") of the poem "takes place" somewhere detached from any physical background. We only know, that in certain circumstances "all" would react in a certain way to his behaviour. We know nothing who, or how many, or where, those "all" may be. We have even very little knowledge about who "I" may be.⁵ It is the mental event here that fills the entire present, although most of it is delivered in the conditional mode. All physical background has been removed. As for the emotional mood, the last stanza seems to reach the peak of an emotional experience, best described as an ecstasy. The flashing eyes and floating hair indicate, for some reason, some violent mental agitation, wild excitement or enthusiasm. Schneider (1975: 245-246) and several critics after her have pointed out that "The description derived a good deal from the accounts of persons possessed by the god in Dionysus worship and the Orphic cults - flashing eyes and streaming hair, as well as honey, milk, magic, holiness, and dread. [...] Plato's Ion gives what is probably the most famous passage" (I have discussed this issue in some detail in the preceding paper). But, I believe, even readers who know little about Plato or Dionysus worship, or Orphic cults, readily recognize here the peak of an emotional experience. Now, what appears to be of great importance here is, first, that the speaker (whoever he may be) arouses, when in the mental state described, "holy dread" in his audience, not unlike the numinous: "For man shall not see me and live" (Exodus, 33: 20). Second, this mental state is somehow related to his ability to revive within himself the symphony and song of an Abyssinian maid, and to rebuild with music loud and long the impressive sight described in detail in all the preceding stanzas. Now, what seems to be of even greater importance within the framework of the present discussion is that music is, by its very nature, a preeminent instance of thing-free quality. Thus, the peak of the emotional experience depicted in the poem occurs at a point where all physical background is removed, and there are only mental experiences and thing-free qualities; even Kubla's building is said to be rebuilt as a thing-free entity, of music (to this "peak-experience" I shall return later).

Professor Wilson Knight has ingeniously compared the form of Kubla Khan to that of an enlarged Petrarchan sonnet. Read thus, however, it can only be an imperfect "sonnet", for the requirement of that or any other two-part poetic form, that the sestet must throw some transforming light upon the octave, is not met in Coleridge's poem (Schneider, 1975: 249-250).

Here I again disagree with Schneider.⁶ First of all, in many "real" sonnets the transforming light thrown upon the octet by the sestet is rather slight. Second, and more important, I submit that the "sestet" of "Kubla Khan" does "throw some transforming light" upon its "octave", and in a way that is far from trivial, and is perhaps more significant than the way it happens even in some of the indisputably fine examples of sonnets. In order to demonstrate this, I propose to look briefly at Schneider's conception of the first part of the poem.

On the whole, not only do the first thirty-six lines refuse to sound as if they had been dreamed; they sound more than anything else like a fine opening for a romantic narrative poem of some magnitude. [...] The historical Cubla was an attractive subject for such a poem (Schneider, 1975: 250).

I shall not follow Schneider's brilliant discussion of this issue in its details (I have quoted more of it in the preceding chapter, though in a different context). What is important for us is that the first thirty-six lines of the poem contain something that is very much "like a fine opening for a romantic narrative poem of some magnitude" (although, "the texture is exceedingly rich and concentrated for the opening of a long poem"; ibid, 252). Whether we accept the "romantic narrative" theory or not, at any rate, "Kubla Khan has, throughout, a perfectly normal meaning, one that is logical and, as far as one can tell, as conscious as that of most deliberately composed poems" (Schneider, 1975: 241). The first part of the poem attempts to present something like a solid piece of "epic reality", what may be characterized as "realistic fullnes" and the result of first-hand observation. The first thirty-six lines of the poem "are factual, detailed, matter-of-fact" (Watson, 1973: 228). Or, at least, as he recalled in Chapter XIV of his Biographia Literaria, about his part in the plan for the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge's endeavours were here, too, directed "so as to transfer [...] a semblance of truth" to the description, whatever its "supernatural or romantic" aspects.

Now, whatever the reasons for the abrupt discontinuation of this description, the last stanza does "throw some transforming light" upon both the description and its discontinuation. This "transforming light" is manifest in three respects at least. First, Kubla's building enterprise is reinterpreted in the light of the last stanza, in a significant way. In the first part, in itself, we have a pleasure-dome decreed by an oriental despot, with no further implications. The second part changes this to a considerable extent. Many critics have commented that "Kubla Khan" is about poetry. As I have pointed out in the preceding chapter, this is not exact, and poetry is too concrete a term. Thus, for instance,

"Kubla Khan", then, is not just about poetry: it is about two kinds of poem. One of them is there in the first thirty-six lines of the poem; and though the other is nowhere to be found, we are told what it would do to the reader and what it would do to the poet (Watson, 1973: 227-228).

As I have implied in the preceding paper, "Kubla Khan" is neither about one kind of poem, nor about two kinds of poem. The first part is about the building of a pleasure-dome, the second part is about something much more abstract then poems, such as creative inspiration, orvisionary frenzy. What the second part may do to the first part of the poem is to promote the relative weight of the possible inspiration related to the architectural or, more generally, to the artistic ingredient of the building enterprise.

Second, and far more important, the "factual, detailed, matter-of-fact" presentation of Kubla's earthly paradise, transferring the semblance of truth to it, is experienced in perspective of the second part as a kind of Paradise Lost. The earthly paradise with its realistic fullness and matter-of-fact details becomes a fleeting vision, very much like a pre-natal or other-wordly experience that the speaker is attempting in vain to recapture. It is turned into some inaccessible reality, referred to, but beyond, direct apprehension. "Kubla Khan" is one of the few poems, or perhaps the only one in the English language, that attempts to present a direct vision of ecstasy, that may be an overpowering emotion or exaltation, or the frenzy of poetic inspiration, or something like a mental transport or rapture from the contemplation of divine things. Such poems are so rare because ecstatic experiences are, as I have indicated at the beginning of the preceding paper, ineffable by their very nature.

What we have got here, then, is very much like a prototypical mystic situation. The mystic is yearning after the experiencing of some inaccessible reality which, some of the mystics seem to believe, they experienced in a different kind of existence. This reality, with its paradise-like attributes, is haunting them ever since, and mysticism is the supposed instrument to recapture it. In Coleridge's poem, the reader is intensely involved in the description of Kubla's world; but it is suddenly left off, leaving the reader with a sense of wondering or even frustration. I would even venture to say that he is left with a yearning to rediscover that world and go on experiencing it. Whatever the genetic reasons for interrupting the description at this point (Coleridge's being disturbed by some neighbour, or his inability to finish a large-scale epic opening of such an intensity), this feeling of wondering or frustration seems to be the aesthetic effect of the abrupt ending. In the last stanza the reader joins the speaker of the poem in his attempt to re-create this lost reality.

There seem to be three all-important ingredients in ecstatic experiences: overpowering emotion, insight into some inaccesible but highly significant reality, and some kind of the dissolution of the perceiving or contemplating consciousness. In "Kubla Khan" we have got the first two.⁷

Thus, far from failing to satisfy the requirement "that the sestet must throw some transforming light upon the octave", Kubla's world is transformed from a world perceived in a direct vision, into the object of "mystic" yearnings.

Third, and related to the second, what was presented in an "even daylight", becomes the first stage of what can be best termed an "emotive crescendo". One way to express immense emotional experience in such a non-representational art as music, is to use a fortissimo. However, when the listener gets used to the fortissimo, its overwhelming power gets devaluated, and is considered as "bombastic" rather than "powerful". One way to overcome this problem is to use a crescendo, as if the music said "This is so! ... This is more so ... This is even more so", and so forth, until reaching a peak, creating a shape of gradually increasing intensities. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, in verbal expression. A poem that uses many superlatives to express overpowering emotions tends to become bombastic rather than powerful. And the same kind of "emotive crescendo" is one of the preferred ways to overcome the problem. In Coleridge's poem, the "This is so! ... This is more so ... This is even more so" pattern is created by the gradual dissolution of the solid physical world into thing-free and gestalt-free qualities, as well as the increase of energy level. As I have indicated earlier, such a gradual dissolution may underlie the gradual increase of a poem's emotional force. This gradual pattern may be reinforced by additional elements on the semantic, thematic and metric levels. But one thing should be noted: when isolated, not all episodes, or stages, of the pattern are perceived as "more and more" emotional, in a way that the overall pattern could be inferred from them. There is, rather, a sketchy indication of the pattern, and when the reader reaches the "peak", he retro-relates it to the preceding stages and superimposes graduality upon them.⁸ Architecture is the most solid of the arts, whereas music is the thing-free art par excellence. In the Nitzschean dichotomy, architecture is the most Apollonian of arts, whereas music is the most Dionysian. "In music, the paroxysms of Dionysian ecstasy are subjected to the Apollonian order and measure" (Beardsley, 1966: 276). In this sense, the rebuilding of Kubla's building with music should be an extreme instance of "reconcilement of opposite elements", reinstating the paradox of imagination in one of its extreme manifestations. Such a conception of music (and it makes little difference that Coleridge preceded Nitzsche by a few decades) would explain, why the speaker needed the Dionysian intoxication of the exotic girl's music to achieve the trance required for the rebuilding of the dome. Unfortunately, however, that music too resides in a reality that is not accessible at will, and thus only amplifies the speaker's yearning and frustration.

As we have seen in the preceding paper, Schneider (1975: 245-246) traces the description of the last lines in the poem back to Plato's "comparison of poetic inspiration with the frenzy of the orgiastic cults", in the Ion. "This conception was old even in Plato's day, and practically every detail used by Coleridge was a commonplace in it" (245). I guess that even the reader unacquainted with Plato's account would recognize here the "flashing eyes" and "floating hair" as the body language of a certain kind of state of mind. The rest is indicated by the awe aroused in the audience. The "commonplace" nature of the description too seems to be quite significant here. The ecstatic effect is achieved not by the ingenuity of details, but by "common language heightened, to any degree heightened, but not an obsolete one".

At this point, it would appear desirable to relate the foregoing anlysis to Bodkin's discussion of the Death-and-Rebirth archetypal pattern, as I have extrapolated it to "Kubla Khan" in the preceding paper. So, I shall reproduce that discussion here with minor omissions.

Within the image-sequences examined the pattern appears of a movement, downward, or inward the earth's centre, or a cessation of movement - a physical change which, as we urge a metaphor closer to the impalpable forces of life and soul, appears also a transition toward severed relation with the outer world, and, it may be, toward disintegration and death. This element in the pattern is balanced by a movement upward and outward - an expansion or outburst of activity, a transition toward redintegration and life-renewal (Bodkin, 1963: 54).

One important distinction this passage makes is between archetypal contents and archetypal patterns ("emotional symbolism" on the one hand, and "capacity to enter into an emotional sequence" on the other). Oddly enough, Bodkin does not attempt to show, how this pattern applies in its details to the description of running waters in "Kubla Khan". The "movement, downward, or inward the earth's centre, or a cessation of movement" is clearly indicated in such passages as

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

or

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

The "movement upward and outward - an expansion or outburst of activity" is manifest in the passage

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.

The fact that this third passage occurs in the poem between the first and second quotations not only demonstrates the opposing movements, but also creates an indication of rhythmic alterations, which is one of the main ingredients in the Jungian conception of emotion underlying Bodkin's work. It should be remarked here that the ecstatic experience as discussed above is perhaps the most extreme instance of what Bodkin describes as "an expansion or outburst of activity". Thus we may assume that the ecstatic experience heightens the Death-and-Rebirth archetype to its extreme. The Death-and-Rebirth archetype, in Jungian theory, is an endless succession of rising and falling emotional sequences. The "emotive crescendo", then, may be regarded, in some instances, as a relatively small section of the Death-and-Rebirth archetypal pattern. Coleridge's poem appears to have a minor peak in midpoem, with the outburst of the "dancing rocks", and a major peak at its end.

In the preceding paper I criticised Fruman's (1972: 395-402) Freudian interpretation of the poem. What I found least acceptable in his discussion was his suggestion that the pleasure-dome suggested either female breast, or mons veneris (or both). I argued there that this introduces some foreign elements into the poem. By contrast, consider now the following line: "As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing". Some critics regard it as a metonymy for birth; some others as a metonymy for sexual intercourse. The latter interpretation could serve as an illuminating example of how the Freudian insistence on "finding sexual symbolism underlie almost all human action, thought, and dream" (Schneider, 1975: 9) can be utilized for a legitimate description and interpretation of a poem. Plutchik (1968) put forward a theory - very useful for literary critics - of emotion rooted in instinct. The following summarizes the basic prototypic dimensions: incorporation, rejection, destruction, protection, reproduction, deprivation, orientation, exploration. We are interested here in reproduction, which he characterizes as follows: "Apparently at almost all animal levels, sexual behavior is associated with some form of pulsatile or orgastic behavior. [...] Pleasure is presumably associated with all forms of sexual behavior" (Plutchik, 1968: 73-74). Plutchik presents a multidimensional structural model of the emotions. "It shows the eight prototypic dimensions arranged somewhat like the section of half an orange, with the emotion terms which designate each emotion at maximum intensity at the top" (ibid, 76). He asked experimental subjects to rate the emotional words in terms of their intensity that they represent, using a scale of 1 to 11. Though the unpleasant emotions had usually longer lists of differentiable terms, the longest list of all was, nevertheless, that of the reproduction dimension, including ecstasy (10.00), Joy (8.10), Happiness (7.10), Pleasure (5.70), Serenity (4.36), Calmness (3.30). The sexual behavior of the landscape is indicated by the imagery of the line quoted at the beginning of this paragraph; and "some form of pulsatile or orgastic behavior" associated with it is suggested and amplified by the obtrusive rhythms of the poem, enhancing the psycho-physiological echoes in the reader's response to the state of ecstasy.

The sequences of ws under the vowels signify the alternating weak and strong positions that constitute the iambic meter. This is the metric pattern. The accents above the vowels signify lexical stress. Lexical stress is assigned to the most strongly stressed syllable of lexical words, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives and nonclytic adverbs. In lines 2-3 all stressed syllables occur in strong positions, and only in strong positions (this may be taken as a sign for high regularity of meter: in the first 150 lines of Milton's Paradise Lost there are only two such lines). In lines 1 and 4 there is one s position in each occupied by an unstressed syllable. These are the least noticeable deviations, and they are the majority of deviations in this poem. Line 5 begins with a stress displaced to the left ("inverted foot"), one out of no more than four in this poem. There is only a negligible number of stressed syllables in w positions in this poem (which I shall mention in due course). Such deviations abound in English poetry, but in this poem are utterly scarce.⁹ Most readers feel that the rhythms of "Kubla Khan" have, definitely, to do with its ecstatic effect, and most critics spare one or two sentences for this issue. All the more surprising is the fact that there is little metrical analysis in the literature, or specific discussion of the rhythmic structure of this poem. One reason for this seems to be that where meter is so relentlessly regular, little is left for the prosodic analyst to say. At any rate, if regular meter can underly the ecstatic quality of "Kubla Khan", the rationalist and witty quality of Pope's "An Essay on Man", and the naive quality of nursery rhymes and some of Blake's "Song's of Innocence", what can be said about regular meter that can account for the ecstatic quality of a poem? However, precisely at the time of writing this paper, a paper was published that attempts to handle just such problems, and a relatively small section of it is devoted to this poem. Since it is a 14-years-old paper of mine (Tsur, 1985), I shall reproduce here the relevant sections with minor alterations, and expand it where necessary.

The effect of verse with a tendency for metric regularity is "double-edged". On the one hand, regular meter implies clear contrast between prominent and non-prominent syllables. In this sense, regular meter has a strong rational quality. It has good shape (strong gestalt), "it creates a psychological atmosphere of certainty, security, and patent purpose"; exhibits definite directions and organizes percepts into predictable orders. On the other hand, the vigorous impact of regular meter may be very much like the beat of a primitive drum, that may have the effect of heightening emotional responsiveness that underlies ecstatic ceremonies of tribesmen. In other words, regular meter shares some important properties with conscious control and the exercise of will; at the same time, it is similar to some fundamental involuntary physiological processes, many of which consist of regularly recurring events. Intense physical and emotional activities in humans and animals increasingly tend to possess regular rhythm and to transcend voluntary control. Consequently, one factor that differentiates between regular meter underlying a witty poem and that underlying an ecstatic poem is the energy level inherent in other layers of the poem.

Another factor we find at the root of this double-edged nature is the term security. As the research of E. Frenkel-Brunswick (1968) has shown, the intolerance of ambiguity may interfere with one's free emotional responses. J.C. Ransom has suggested that a fairly predictable meter may dispel anxiety in the presence of ambiguity - give "false security to the Platonic censor in us" (quoted by Chatman 1965: 212) - so that the reader may feel freed to attend to ambiguities in the other layers of the poem. The crucial question seems to be whether the psychological atmosphere generated by "good metric shape" is of genuine or false "certainty, security, patent purpose", etc. That is to say, if other layers of the poem too have a rational quality, the psychological atmosphere is one of genuine certainty, etc. If, however, some other layers of the poem induce some intense psychological atmosphere of uncertainty - as, for example, the "unreal" vision of "Kubla Khan" or "The Ancient Mariner" - regular meter will impart "false security", it will lull the vigilant "Platonic censor in us" and make it accept the emotional quality of the poem. By the same token, and at the same time, vigorous rhythms have a strong bodily appeal, amplifying whatever irrational qualities there may be.

It has been observed that the rhythm of some poems is more obtrusive than that of others; there is a small number of poems whose rhythm thrusts itself, so to speak, upon the reader or listener. It will be noticed, that at least two of Coleridge's masterpieces in which he caught a glimpse of the uncanny - "Kubla Khan" and "The Ancient Mariner" - are notorious for their strong prosodic shapes and convergent rhythms. This fact provides a remarkable illustration of rhythm that gives "false security to the Platonic censor in us", opening the way for imagination to roam on less firm grounds. Keats has some illuminating things to say about the "Platonic censor" in Coleridge in his famous passage on "Negative Capability":

I mean Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.

Keats himself wrote quite a few unique sonnets said to contain an ecstatic experience, with highly divergent meter, the intense peak of which is dominated by some thing-free and gestalt-free negative entity as "death", or "nothingness", or "the shadow of a magnitude". If Keats is right about Coleridge's lack of Negative Capability, we should not be surprised that his version of the uncanny or the ecstatic has very obtrusive rhythms to give "false security to the Platonic censor in us", and are of the few poems of this kind that give the imagination some positive entities to seize upon at the end.

Having given false security to the Platonic censor in us, the following passage from "Kubla Khan" appeals, at the same time, to the most primitive layers of our personality by realizing the drum-beating quality of meter. From the prosodic point of view, not only the stressed syllables converge here with strong positions to an unusual extent, but these prominent points are further emphasized by alliteration, sharpening the contrast between prominence and non-prominence. These alliterations have additional functions: they enhance the balance of the line (as in lines 18 & 22); or, occurring "intermittently" (as in line 19), they enhance the obtrusive feeling of regular alternation. As for the contents of the lines, they "depict" vehement physical motion. Thus, contents and meter mutually actualize each other's vigorous potentials, making a notable contribution to an ecstatic quality where other conditions are appropriate:

In the whole poem there are as few as two sequences of three consecutive stressed syllables. One of them happens to be "fást thíck pánts". It is hardly meant to "slow down" the rhythm of the poem; on the contrary. While the reader is inclined to maintain his "fast" tempo of reading, the neutralized contrasts add weight and energy. Thus, the stressed syllable thick squeezed in a w position is perhaps an iconic reinforcement of its meaning. A similar iconic squeezing may be the case in "Húge frágments". The underlying iambic cadence is, nevertheless, preserved in both instances, owing to the Nuclear Stress Rule. Another, unique, metric deviation is in

It is, so to speak, a metric icon of its contents; two of its aspects are vividly perceptual. Half in a w position loads the line with tension, entailing swift succession of the next too unstressed syllables. The "compensating" stress is phonologically subordinated to the "infirming" stress (according to the Compound Stress Rule). Considering the subordinated stress of -mit- in a strong position, metric regularity is, precisely, half-intermitted. Finally, after the rather long sequence of lighter syllables, meter is powerfully reinstated on burst, which is, at the same time, the headword of the syntactic group, to which all preceding stresses are subordinated.

Though the rhythm of "Kubla Khan" is vigorous and regular, it cannot assume so strong a shape as, for instance, Tennyson's In Memoriam or Pope's An Essay on Man. In both these poems there is a strong metric shape, strong shape of lines and strong shape of stanza, all predictable to a large extent. In "Kubla Khan" neither the length, nor the grouping of lines is predictable. So, the psychological atmosphere of certainty associated with the underlying strong metric shape comes up against an atmosphere of uncertainty generated by the larger groups. The first five lines of the poem, for instance, approximate two symmetrical structures of quatrains. Suppose the poem began:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Down to a deep and sunless sea.

If the reader can sufficiently overcome his familiarity with Coleridge's actual rhythms, he will realize the following: First, the strong, symmetrical shape of this transcript is softened in the actual poem by shortening the last line. Secondly, the "interpolation" of a third a-rhyming line distorts this symmetry, prolonging the expectations for a b-rhyming line which, "gratifying" as it is, comes, at last, in a foreshortened form. The second strong shape which the opening lines approximate is precisely Tennyson's a-b-b-a quatrain. Imagine something like:

A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a deep and sunless sea.

Even so, a highly resistant enjambement beginning in the last position of line 2 (blurring the symmetrical division of the stanza into two halves that are mirror-images of each other) is hardly like In Memoriam. Thus, the odd line is not just another line in the group of lines; it makes the shape of the whole "hopelessly" ambiguous (the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of the five-lines-section beginning with "But oh!").

As for the eight-lines-section beginning with "And from this chasm" (quoted above), they are grouped according to two diverging grouping principles. In one respect, these lines are simple couplets, grouped by rhyme, accordingly. Syntactically, however, a second pattern is superimposed. The line "A mighty fountain momently was forced" (19) is grouped, rhyme-wise, with the next line. Syntactically, however, it is grouped with line 17. From the preposition from a verb is predicted; this prediction is fulfilled as late as the end of line 19, running on to the next couplet. Thus, the interpolated simile "As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing" not only adds the mythological dimension, but also weakens the perceptual shape of the whole passage, by delaying the fulfillment of syntactic predictions and by upsetting, for a considerable stretch of lines, the convergence of sentences and couplets. The next clause, two lines long, is "straddled", again, between two couplets. When it ends, in mid-couplet, another line is needed to complete it; consequently, an "extra" simile is introduced after the fulfillment of syntactic predictions. Only the last couplet of the passage - the "summary" of the description - entirely converges with the couplet. Therefore, perceptually, too, it has a "rounding-off" effect.

We find a similar structure of regularity and unpredictability on the level of alliterative patterns. In an illuminating paper comparing the metrical styles of Donne's Satyres and Pope's "reversification" of them, Chatman (1960) contrasts their uses of alliterative patterns in two respects. In one respect,

Donne has (proportionately) twice as many occurrences of alliteration of two syllables in immediate sequence as Pope, whereas Pope has almost four times as many occurrences of an intervening unstress. This means that Pope wants alliteration to cooperate with meter, not oppose it (Chatman, 1960: 156).

In another respect, Pope's

alliteration of epithet-noun combinations is characteristic and carefully done. [...] Donne, on the other hand, frequently alliterates words that have little structural connection (giving the illusion of mere chance collocation) (Chatman, 1960: 157).

Both poets created in different lines of wit. Now in "Kubla Khan", which is a highly emotional poem, and perhaps less witty than any other romantic poem, we may encounter both kinds of alliteration. Consider Kubla Khan, measureless to man, sunless sea, woman wailing, mingled measure; or in a more complex version, ceaseless turmoil seething. At the same time we have got such alliterations as Xanadu did, dome decree, etc. The sequence river ran is essentially of the first kind (though I am not sure that Chatman would agree with me). At the same time, it is preceded by sacred and, in the first occurrence of the sequence, the intervening comma and the beginning of the run-on construction render it as near to "mere chance collocation" as it can go. Mazy motion, again, belongs doubtless to the first type of alliteration; but in the same line we have two more tokens of m, miles meandering, that form an alliterative pattern of the second kind, and it also effects the character of the other pattern. Girdled round appears to be an alliteration of the second type; but it is also part of another kind of sound pattern. The first phoneme of Girdled + round form a "perfect" homonym with ground. This pattern further bifurcates to greenery.

While Schneider only intends to show how rich the alliterative network of sounds in the first stanza of "Kubla Khan" is, it also shows, how diffuse this network of sounds is, superimposing a weak, diffuse gestalt of alliterations upon the strong gestalts established by the "Pope-like" patterns of alliteration.

A word must be said about the structure of the last stanza:

As the graphic arrangement too may indicate, the stanza is made up of lines of unequal length, and I shall not enumerate here the various possibilities. Lines 42-47 contain a single compound sentence that stretches over lines of several structures. One possible reason for this structure may be to shake the reader's certainty, so as to render the certainty of regular meter in the ensuing lines utterly false. The phrases in line 47 display a fundamental uncertainty in their syntactic relationship to the preceding lines. Are they exclamations, or appositive phrases to "that dome in air"? A similar ambiguity is displayed in lines 49-50. The noun phrases in line 50 could be the direct objects of the repeated imperative verb in line 49 (as, for instance, in "Beware the ides of March"). However, the exclamation marks separate them from the phrases, turning them into some kind of ostensive exclamations, as if the onlookers pointed at the speaker and exclaimed with horror: "His flashing eyes, his floating hair!" Ostension is associated with the right (emotional) hemisphere of the brain:

The inactivation of the right hemisphere leads to a deficit in ostensive communication. In semiotic literature [...] this way of communication might be defined as "placing something at the disposal of the cognitive activity of a person". [...] Ostension merges with synecdoche: the voice of a patient's wife, which he hears without seeing her, is her pars pro toto (Jakobson, 1980: 27).

The speaker's flashing eyes and floating hair may be just such highly significant, emotionally loaded synecdoches; and the potentially fluent syntactic structure disintegrates to a series of just such ostensive warnings. In line 47, too, the appositive phrases are transformed into ostensive phrases. If Jakobson is right in relating ostension to the right hemisphere of the brain, these phrases ought to have a more than usually direct emotive appeal, reinforced by the emotionally loaded situation.

In the above quotation of the last stanza, in the column on the right I have indicated the rhyme-scheme. x indicates unrhymed lines, or perhaps off-off-rhymes. The discussions among the critics whether they can be regarded as rhymes or at least off-rhymes (cf. "I do not suppose Coleridge thought of dulcimer as even an off-rhyme to once I saw or Abora" - Schneider, 1975: 273) strongly suggests that they introduce into the poem an element of uncertainty. Even where the rhyme-scheme appears to organize the lines into a group of strong shapes, an element of uncertainty enters. Thus, for instance, in line 51 a new syntactic unit begins (metrically emphasized by the first w position being left unoccupied). The last four lines are grouped by an e-f-f-e rhyme-scheme into a symmetrical and closed quatrain. This clear-cut structure, however, is preceded by an e-rhyme in line 47, just enough to make the reader doubt his own perceptual organization. Likewise, lines 46, 48-50 end in d-rhymes. In this case, too much grouping becomes no grouping: there are four similar-ended lines, lumped together in a random order. Thus, at the peak of the emotional experience indicated by the poem, there is an intense web of rhymes that on a lower level amplify the principle of rhythmic recurrences so as to heighten emotional responsiveness; viewed from a higher point of view, they are characterized by a considerable degree of uncertainty. Thus, again the certainty given to the Platonic censor in us turns out to be rather doubtful.

There may be here, nevertheless, something of the kind described by Ehrenzweig as the secondary elaboration of a pattern superimposed upon the last stanza, "retro-related" from the last four lines. There appears to be here a pattern of gradually increasing order and distinct shapes, beginning with a stage where there is considerable uncertainty whether some lines are rhymed, of which a series of rhymed lines grow out in which the order is unpredictable and the rhyme-pattern (intense, though) is indistinct. From this there emerges a symmetrical, firmly closed quatrain, constituting a strong structural closure at the peak of the emotional experience. But even this strong closure is relative: it is weakened by an antecedent e-rhyme in line 47. That is why one may say that this last "quatrain" emerges from a jumble of randomly rhymed lines.¹⁰

Whether security is "genuine", as in nursery rhymes or witty poetry, or "false" as in ecstatic poetry, depends on whether in other layers of the poem certainty or uncertainty are engendered. [+/-CERTAINTY] may be engendered either on the rank of prosodic superordinates, or on the various semantic and thematic levels. On the prosodic level of "Kubla Khan" we have found these conflicting qualities both in metric patterns and in alliterative patterns. Whereas meter is highly regular and predictable throughout this poem, the length of lines and order of their rhymes is hardly predictable, rather errant. Sometimes no recognizable stanza shape emerges from the order of rhymes, sometimes they approximate two kinds of symmetrical stanza forms, but remain highly ambiguous. At the very end of the poem, at the peak of the suggested ecstatic experience, a symmetrical closed stanza emerges from a jumble of randomly rhyming lines, sealing the poem with an emphatic structural closure. I emphasize structural, because in the scene described there are no closural elements. Although it is hard to imagine where the gradually heightened spiritual activity could proceed to, there is nothing here to indicate a natural "cut-off" point, such as Herrnstein-Smith (1968) found in poetic closure. It is this continuously reverberating ecstatic quality at its peak that is forcefully reinforced by the closural quality of the final "quatrain". I have quoted Chatman who compared the metrical styles of Donne's Satyres and Pope's "reversification" of them. In the latter's style he found a majority of alliterative patterns that are focussed, and corroborate metrical regularity. In the former's style he found a majority of alliterative patterns that go, typically, against meter, and make an impression of diffusion and of chance collocation. In "Kubla Khan" the majority of alliterations is like Pope's; but there are also some of the other type. In the present framework of accounting for ecstatic quality, alliteration contributes both to the psychological atmosphere of (false) security and to that of (genuine) uncertainty. By the same token, and at the same time, the regularly recurring prosodic events heighten the emotional responsiveness of readers.

In the preceding paper I have discussed at some length Snyder's stimulating little book on hypnotic poetry. One of his generalizations was, "that in the early stages of a hypnotic poem a foreign word, and obscure phrase, or any slight difficulty that causes fatigue from strain on the part of the listener may actually promote the ultimate aesthetic effect at which the artist aims". This is, perhaps, to strain the analogy to hypnosis too far, and the "meaningless" words and phrases are only meant to achieve an "incantatory effect". Such an incantatory effect may be achieved in the first line of our poem, "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan", where only in and did are plain English words.

Among other passages, I have quoted there two relevant ones:

Some hypnotic poems stop here: the listener is lulled by patterns of sound, his attention is fixed without arousing of his mental faculty, and he falls into whatever mood the poet "suggests". It is interesting to see how many poets are thus content to stop without taking full advantage of the grip they get on the listener's emotions. Such skillful artists as Poe, Swinburne, the youthful Tennyson, and countless others persistently fail, or refuse to galvanize the sensitive reader to action, determination, or even thought (Snyder, 1930: 47).

Some hypnotic poems, however, do "carry the parallel to hypnotism still further by 'suggesting' an impulse to action, making a parallel to the specific post-hypnotic suggestions" (Snyder, 1930: 47-48). In such instances,

in a hypnotic poem the key sentence "suggesting" an idea comes near the end, or at least only after there has been a long preliminary soothing of the listener's senses by monotonous rhythmic "passes". So in hypnosis. Also this key sentence "suggesting" an idea carries conviction without argumentative support, or with only the simplest of obvious arguments to support it. In the non-hypnotic poem these conditions do not obtain (Snyder, 1930: 48).

It is, then, the monotonous rhythms that heighten the reader's emotional sensitivity that constitute, in a way, the raison d'être of "hypnotic" or ecstatic poems. They "fail, or refuse to galvanize the sensitive reader to action, determination, or even thought". Or, if they do suggest "an impulse to action", or contain near the end a key sentence "suggesting" an idea, "this key sentence 'suggesting' an idea carries conviction without argumentative support, or with only the simplest of obvious arguments to support it".¹² Thus, we should not be surprised if an ecstatic poem carried no "message" at all, or if the "message" it carried were a mere "simple idea". It is the intensity of experience rather than the "idea" that counts.

This brings us to the semantic and thematic aspects of the poem that may arouse uncertainties (so as to render the security given by meter to the Platonic censor false). On the one hand, we have discussed at length in the present paper the thing-free qualities, negative entities, and irrational visions that constitute this poem. All these enhance the psychological atmosphere of uncertainty. On the other hand, I have already mentioned above, how the direct pointing (ostension) at the speaker's "flashing eyes" and "floating hair" (synecdoches) may be particularly loaded with emotion. I have quoted Jakobson's semiotic definition of ostension: "placing something at the disposal of the cognitive activity of a person". In the preceding paper I have considered at some length the behaviour of some critics when encountering a piece of unevaluated poetic information. This too appears to be, in a somewhat different sense, the placing of something "at the disposal of the cognitive activity of a person", without suggesting "an impulse to action" or to an attitude. Some critics are reluctant to contemplate such unevaluated things. Thus, for instance, I have quoted Yarlott (1967: 134-135), who compares Coleridge's description of Kubla's garden to Purchas' description, Coleridge's source. Yarlott points out that Coleridge substituted the adjectives "bright/sinuous" for "pleasant/delightful" in Purchas' description. Yarlott rightly realizes that "Coleridge seems to have deliberately modified the attractiveness implicit in Purchas's original description". But, instead of realizing that Coleridge eliminated the evaluative ingredient of the adjectives retaining some of their descriptive contents, Yarlott claims that Coleridge produces some sinister associations. He is reluctant to accept the zero grade evaluation merely placed at the disposal of his cognitive activity. He wants to achieve a greater degree of certainty: he wants to know whether the thing placed at the disposal of his cognitive activity is beneficial or harmful. This short excursus on this essentially side issue brings into the foreground a more central issue: There is a fundamental uncertain quality about the description of the site of Kubla's building enterprise. What is missing here for a greater degree of certainty is the suggestion of "an impulse to action" or to an attitude or, at least, to some evaluation. This uncertainty is an additional ingredient that enhances the false security given to the Platonic censor by the exceptionally regular meter of this poem.

I have dwelt on "Kubla Khan" at considerable length and in considerable detail. Some readers may accuse me of "squeezing" the poem. At any rate, my reading was not longer than the majority of studies devoted to this poem. The main difference between it and them appears to be, in comparing the elements inside the poem to those outside it, the space devoted to the inside elements relative to the space devoted to the elements outside. The thing to account for seems to be, in many studies, whether explicitly stated or not, the peculiar emotional quality of the poem. Some critics seem to believe that if you can show that the poem does not mean what it means - that is, if you can show that the poem has got some symbolic meaning - you can account for this peculiar quality. Some other critics seem to believe that if you can relate the poem to a great number of myths and primeval lore, you can account for the peculiar quality of the poem. What appears to be common to these two approaches is that they both attempt to reduce the poem to something outside it. The present approach opposes these tendencies in two important respects. First, it attempts to account for as much as possible in terms of internal elements and their various aspects. It assumes that much of the external information loses precisely its emotional significance once torn out from its original context. Second, it attempts to account for the evasive emotional qualities of the poem not by reducing them to something, but rather by pointing at a complex interplay between a multiplicity of elements and aspects inside the poem. Hence, myth or any other external information can help to account for the emotional impact of a poem only if it helps to impute unity and coherence to a work otherwise puzzling or defective in this respect (cf. Margolis, 1962: 114).¹³ As a further step, it attempts to account for the peculiar emotional (ecstatic) quality of the poem by pointing at structural resemblances between the processes within the poem, and the particular kinds of emotional processes. This is why it cannot ignore Maud Bodkin's conception of this poem in terms of archetypal patterns.

By this I do not wish to imply that all symbolic or external criticism is necessarily wrong or harmful, though I believe that much of it is not as illuminating as it could be, or ought to be. What I do strongly imply is that one cannot know what external meanings and sources are relevant to a poem, before one knows what is its internal structure, and how are the internal elements organized by it. Though I don't pretend that the above reading is the interpretation of this poem, it is, certainly, a rather plausible interpretation. The interpretation of metaphors, says Miller (1979: 241), "is not a search for a unique paraphrase of the implicit comparison, but rather a search for grounds that will constrain the basis of the comparison to a plausible set of alternatives" (my italics). This seems to be perfectly true, with the necessary changes, of the interpretation of whole poems as well. I claim that one cannot find grounds that will constrain the basis of symbolic or other external meanings to a plausible set of alternatives, before carrying out some thorough and close textual reading guided by some reasoned principles - of the kind performed in the course of the present paper. One could, though I shall not attempt here, carry this conception one step further. One might use the above reading, or some equivalent of it, as a filter (in Max Black's sense) to filter out irrelevant information from the mass of information amassed by scholars and critics as possible sources and meanings of "Kubla Khan", and see what remains of it. Some of the symbolic readings will still stay valid and be found illuminating; some others will certainly undergo considerable modifications. But very many will not be admitted. Let us adapt Black's filter-model of metaphor to the issue in our hand.

Suppose I look at the night sky through a piece of heavily smoked glass on which certain lines have been left clear. Then I shall see only the stars that can be made to lie on the lines previously prepared upon the screen, and the stars I do see will be seen as organized by the screen's structure (Black, 1962: 230).

We think of the internal structure of the poem as such a screen, and the system of crisscrossing small-scale and large-scale relationships between its elements as the network of lines upon the screen. But perhaps something quite unexpected may also happen then: when a critic has worked out an elaborate internal structure for a poem like "Kubla Khan", he may find that his eagerness to adduce external information has been drastically reduced.

1. Beyond such impressionistic chatter as

The rhythmical development of the stanza, too, though technically brilliant, evokes admiration rather than delight. [...] Except for lines 3-5, where beautiful cadences suggest the fall of the sacred river through the caverns, the insistent beat of the rhythm carries a hammer-like quality (especially in lines 1-2, 6-7) suggesting perhaps the forcefulness with which the oriental despot's decree is imposed upon its living materials. Mr. House remarked on stanza 3, "If this were a poem of frustration and failure, the movement would be slow and heavy", overlooking apparently that this description fitted exactly the deliberately ponderous movement of the opening stanza (Yarlott, 1967: 129).

2. Kipling commented on these lines:

In all the millions permitted there are no more five - five little lines - of which one can say "These are magic. These are the vision. The rest is only poetry."

The other two are Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale", ll. 69-70.

3. Such a mock-ambiguity may profitably be contrasted to such genuine instances of ambiguity as in the verse-line "I would build that dome in air" which can be explicated as though it meant that the poet

would, given the right inspiration, "build, but in air, that dome which Kubla had built in stone"; or that he would build what Kubla in fact built, "a dome in air" (assuming that the dome was not squat, but was itself raised high in air) (Yarlott, 1967: 150 n.).

"Stability, constancy, consistency, differentiation" are among the key-words for the effects of cognitive organization. In the visual mode, for instance, from a stream of undifferentiated stimuli we differentiate a stable, consistent world. [...] Whatever visual information can be organized into clear-cut shapes or well defined objects, are emphasized, promoted, organized as "figures" that stand out clearly against lowly differentiated "ground". All other visual information is relegated to the mass of lowly differentiated background. [...] Whenever we see a person from a different angle, or in a different lighting, we receive different visual information; were it not for perceptual constancy, we ought to perceive each time a different person (if we could perceive, at all, persons) (Tsur, 1963 a: 19-20).

We have bought perceptual constancy at a considerable price. The capability of responding to rich precategorical information is no less vital for suvival.

We do perceive some of the inconstant, precategorical, inarticulate information; the knowledge so gained is usually called intuitive. Intuitive knowledge so gained is indispensable for quick orientation, or for orientation in an ever-changing environment. In fact, as Bartlett indicated back in 1932, most of the complex cognitive activities, such as perceiving complex situations or remembering them, begin with the awareness of some such precategorical information. He calls this awareness "attitude", or "feeling", or "affect" (Tsur, 1983 a: 21).

This state of affairs may explain the function of the phenomena denoted by Ehrenzweig's terms in the artistic endeavour. In a work of art, where communication is based on hard and fast categories, attitudes, feelings, or affective and emotional qualities may be generated only by the partial destruction of categories, things and gestalts. The enormous emotional force perceived by some readers in "Kubla Khan" could not impress the readers of words (which, as we know, denote stable categories) unless some kind of thing-free and gestalt-free qualities were generated in the poem.

5. Lowes (1927), and some critics in his footsteps, speak - oddly enough - of a Tartar youth.

6. Although, in the context of the preceding paper, I cannot refrain, again from praising her general approach to literature. As I claimed more than once in the preceding paper, one of the crippling effects of the Quest for Certitude on critics is their inability to handle precisely this issue that the context "must throw some transforming light" upon the elements that have entered the poem. This is one more example when Schneider gives evidence of her Negative Capability even where her actual critical decision appears to be doubtful.

7. In fact, we seem to have in "Kubla Khan" the third ingredient as well; but here the process of dissolution does not affect the perceiving or contemplating consciousness, but rather the solid reality perceived or contemplated.

8. I have elsewhere discussed (Tsur, 1977: 213-214) the cognitive mechanisms underlying such "retro-relating" and "superimposition".

9. I have borrowed the terminology and the graphic signs from Halle and Keyser (1971), which I have utilized in a perception-oriented theory of meter (Tsur, 1977).

10. Schneider (1975: 273) suggests that Coleridge's "remark upon Milton's use of an unrhymed line at the beginning of a verse pragraph might equally well have referred to the first line of his own final paragraph, 'A damsel with a dulcimer'".

Discussing a not very important question, whether Milton intended the hill-rill couplet of lines 22-23 to close one paragraph in Lycidas or to open the next, Coleridge argued for the first choice on grounds that, he thought, must be "for a poet's ear convincing". The eighth line of the preceding paragraph ("And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd"), like the first ("Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well"), "is rhymeless, and was left so, because the concurring rhymes of the concluding distich were foreseen as the compensations". In other words, Coleridge was arguing that Milton had deliberately opened a paragraph with an unrhymed line but would not have closed it so (Schneider, 1975: 272).

I believe that Coleridge was suggesting in these words more than that. This idea of "compensation" implies a mutual dependence of a weakened beginning and a strong ending: The weaker the prosodic organization at the beginning, the stronger the ending appears. And conversely, the stronger the ending, the more justified, or functional, or acceptable, the weak beginning appears. In fact, Coleridge is arguing here for the gestalt principle that the shape of a part must be modified in order to make it dependent on the whole. If I am right, in "Kubla Khan" the answer may be the "superimposed pattern" offered above.

11.In my 1985 paper I have pointed out in Wordsworth's "Daffodils" (a poem frequently characterized as ecstatic) the co-presence and mutual foregrounding of three elements: more than usually regular meter, more than usually intense dancing movement, and the pattern of emotive crescendo.

12. I assume that one obvious case in point would be

Farewell, farewell, but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

13. "We know a 'myth' to be 'objective' for criticism, though it may not be so for science, when the habits of thought and perception and imagination of normal persons are educable in its terms and when their responses to appropriate stimuli are generally predictable" (Margolis, 1962: 113).

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