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Rebecca Lyons


Dreams, nature and illusions

Coleridge

Ibsen
- KK – Coleridge forms a dream-like state through
- The ‘doll house’ is a perverse masculine dream,

poetic illusion of the dreamer, who suspends all
created by Torvald for his own pleasure
...
One of the primary dream-like elements
party, he wants Nora to dress as ‘a Neapolitan

of the poem its symbolic language, the allusive
peasant girl’; he moulds her into a vison of what he
nature of the language in KK forms a system of

wants her to be
...
The first four lines imitate the


illusory nature of the Helmer’s outwardlyrhythm of a swinging pendulum, or the ticking of a

harmonious home
...
– ‘In
can be translated as either ‘A Doll’s House’ or ‘A Doll

Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome
House’; both translations hold relevance, whilst in

decree/ Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/ Through
one the doll is possessive, the other is merely

caverns measureless to man
...

- KK – “The verses seem as if played to the ear upon


- Torvald’s declaration to Nora that ‘I will protect you
some unseen instrument
...
It
in its derivement from the Greek hupnotikos,

transpires that Torvald is a shallow, vain main,
meaning ‘narcotic, causing sleep
...

sleep
...
In his unison with Mrs Linde, Krogstad

they create an atmosphere of historical romance,
assumes a merciful generosity
...


characters and a single, unchanging scene
...
” – William Hazlitt, 1816


- KK – The poet tells of a ‘stately pleasure dome

decree[d]’ by Kubla Khan in the midst of a landscape

at once seen and unseen; allegorically, it is the

incarnation of a perfect and ideal vision standing

majestically in the landscape of the mind and all of

its known and unknown workings
...
The

landscape above the ground, ‘fertile’ and ‘bright’,

seems to have a visible perimeter in the form of the

‘wall and towers’ that ‘were girdled round’, but

though the walls encompass the garden on the sides,

below the ground the caverns stretch ‘measureless

to man/ Down to a sunless sea’, to profound depths

that are unknown and impossible to contain
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Rebecca Lyons



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KK - The river’s sacredness echoes beliefs of the
ancient Greeks, who recognised rivers as godly, and
worshipped them
...
In the first section
of the poem is the image of a smooth, flowing
‘sacred river’ that runs ‘Through caverns
measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea’
...
’ The imagery is representative of ‘A
might fountain’ of inspiration which bursts forth
from below; the sacred river flows from the cavern
like lava, down ‘Through wood and dale the sacred
river ran’ in all directions, ‘meandering with a mazy
motion’ it ‘sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean
...

KK - Kubla Khan is Coleridge’s recollection of a
dream, he recognised that the state of poetic faith in
which a dreamer places its viewer could be envied
by poets, and came to believe that the aim of the
poet is to create a state of illusion for the reader – ‘A
vision in a dream’ (first line)
KK - The rhythm of the poem flows smoothly, so as
not to disturb the reader from the waking dream in
which Coleridge wishes to place him
...

Romantics and nature are almost synonymous, the
quintessential Romantic lyrics suggest a mystical
relationship with nature; the poet has the ability to
transcend the everyday and connect with a divine
essence, allowing him to re-conceive of his life
...
This is an emphasis on how, in moments of
tranquillity, his mind and soul become empty
vehicles, or instruments for nature and its inspiration
to play upon: ‘That tremble into thought, as o’er
them sweeps/ Plastic and vast, one intellectual
breeze,/ At once the Soul of each, and God of All?’
...
’ Coleridge expresses a romantic hope in
nature’s redemptive spiritual power, even as it offers
a more melancholic view of how
2
that power may not be accessible
to all

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