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Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' has been acclaimed by poets and critics as one of the greatest artistic achievements in all poetry. On the other hand its meaning has been pronounced obscure and its structure unorganized. I believe that we can treat this poem as we would a dream, trying to understand its significance in the context of the poet's personality, his life history, and his current situation, particularly the relationship of the poem to his addiction and to the psychology of addiction in general. In so doing perhaps we can also add to the awareness of the sources of the poem, both literary and personal. We are well aware that all critics and commentators reflect their own experience and bias, and this is true for this presentation also.
My interest in 'Kubla Khan' grew out of observations which I reported of 35 marijuana addicts in an Air Force Hospital in World War II (Marcovitz and Myers, 1944).
Some years later, I happened to re-read Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. I knew that he had been an opium addict and that he had said that the poem was dreamed during an opium sleep. That fact was thought to account for its beauty and for its lack of logical meaning. On re-reading the poem, it suddenly appeared to me as a dream epitomizing the psychology of addiction.
Then I came across The Road to Xanadu(Lowes, 1927). In a most exhaustive piece of research the author traced the words, phrases, and images of Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' to their literary sources in books that Coleridge had read. Lowes believed that elements from these sources were stored as memory traces and then like 'hooked atoms' combined in the creative process. Among the sources he felt important for 'Kubla Khan' were William Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina, published in Philadelphia in 1791, James Bruce's Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Purchas His Pilgrimage, Purchas His Pilgrims, Milton's Paradise Lost, Virgil's Aeneid, and others.
Schneider (19