Kubla Khan in Perelandra

I wrote this in 2006 and posted it to my old blog. Since I've been consumed with work as of late and haven't had time to write much, I thought it might be nice to post this old article here.

CS Lewis was extremely fond of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and often made mention in particular of his poem, Kubla Khan. In the afterward to the 3rd edition of The Pilgrim's Regress Lewis talks about mystical longing: "...that unnamable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire... the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan... or the noise of falling waves."

That "unnamable something" is of course what draws all the mystically curious to the writings of CS Lewis as well as to poems like Kubla Khan. I think (sadly) that few people take part at that table where sounds are felt, and curious smells produce imagery from the fringe—the borders of consciousness—where just on the other side of the wall lies the source of that unnamable object of desire that tries to sing out to us of its existence all of our lives. How very few listen for it at all.

Kubla Khan presents us with the imagery of forbidden lands from the other side of that wall. We find both the paradise of the pleasure dome and the deep mysterious icy cavern, "A savage place! as holy and enchanted". Holy in this case meaning just what it was intended to mean—set apart by the divine, apart from our present material existence and, for us, forbidden realms. But now and then there seem to be some people who are allowed a momentary glimpse into these realms. The poetry of Kubla Khan provides for us such a glimpse; Perelandra builds from it. But lets read Kubla Kahn before we venture any further here. It's a short poem:

Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge-1798

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
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.
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:
And `mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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 with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight `twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Xanadu, originally known as Shangdu, was a real place, a sort of miniature city that housed the summer palace of Mongolian Emperor—Kubla Khan (sometimes written as Kublai Khan). It was only about 5 1/2 miles around, but Marko Polo described it as quite beautiful with palaces carved from marble and covered with gold. Other than the fact that the city existed and was quite exquisite the rest of the poem would seem to rest on poetic license. There are no caves or caverns nor rivers running through Xanadu. The river, Alph, mentioned in the poem is likely a variation on the Alpheus River of Greek mythology. So let us bear in mind that Coleridge probably made use of several old tales in fashioning his poem.

Lewis, it would seem, drew deeply from Coleridge's poem for the final four chapters in his novel—Perelandra. There are some striking similarities between the descriptions of the two worlds.

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

This one is obvious enough. In chapter 14 of Perelandra, Ransom is fighting at night in the ocean with the Unman and finds that he's being dragged way down deep until he's sure he can hold his breath no longer and will die. But just then he finds that they are on a beach. After managing to subdue his adversary, Ransom waits for what seems like an eternity for daylight to appear. It never does. Eventually his suspicions are roused. He stands up and walks along the sandy shoreline feeling upward with his hands until he touches rock. The realization sinks in that, during the struggle, he must have come up into a cavern of some sort from under the ocean. This underground shoreline is certainly "a sunless sea" for him. There is total darkness here. After following along the cavern wall, he meets up with a trickle of water which he hopes may come to a stream if he follows it, as he desperately trying to find his way to the outside world again. He gropes in the darkness for what must be days. The cavern opens up into a vast array of underground vaults which seem endless, "caverns measureless to man". Eventually he comes to a red glow that leads to a very hot area in the cavern, very deep, and it becomes evident that this leads down to something like a river of lava and a huge pit. It's hot, but at least now he can see a little. Ransom descries some strange things including beings that he can only see shadows of far off but which appear humanlike. He's in a chamber now that seems manmade, something like a cathedral with two huge thrones and chairs on either side of them that are much too big for any earth man. Ransom has said on a couple of occasions already in the story that he wonders, "Were all the things which appeared as mythology on earth scattered through other worlds as realities?" But he doesn't pretend to know if these are some sort of gods. A short time later he slips and falls into the rushing water, and soon he's cast out into a pool with the sun shining overhead. He's free. Looking back at the entrance to the subterranean world, he sees, "...a river pouring from the mouth of a cave, a cave that seemed indeed to be made of ice." Actually Lewis decides to make a change here and Ransom finds that it's not really ice after all, but rather, a transparent substance of some kind. However, it is interesting that Coleridge's Xanadu is described as, "A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!"

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

It flung up momently the sacred 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:

Now compare the above with Ransom coming from the cave, and, taking in his surroundings, he sees the river going down a long, steep slope, "in a series of cataracts... It went down a long way and ended in a winding and wooded valley which curled out of sight...", and likely back to the ocean from which he came. In his description, he also talks of huge mountains and hills, "of almost Himalayan height." An interesting choice of words. Not that Xanadu was in the Himalayas, but it was in China at any rate.

He goes on in his description of the mountains, woods, and valleys: "At his side rose a cliff mantled with streamers of bright vegetation, but gleaming like glass... at each pace his contact with soil and bush appeared to wake new odours that darted into his brain and there begot wild and enormous pleasures."

In Xanadu we find:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

And we also find aural sensations of a mystical nature in both worlds. In Perelandra, Ransom says that there were three lasting impressions on him of his journey beyond the cave and that one of them was, "the song... it floated through his sleep and was the first sound at every waking. It was formless as the song of a bird, yet it was not a bird's voice... rich and golden-brown: passionate too, but not with the passions of men." Ultimately, we learn that it's the song of a large dog-like creature as big as an elephant, a creature who's very existence was owed to its song. When Ransom hears the eldila (angels) speaking, he takes great pains to remind us that they are not creatures of flesh and blood, and as such, have no lips and vocal chords; their voices are of an entirely different nature, "like a chime of remote bells... It is by art, not nature, that they effect human ear-drums and their words owe nothing to lungs or lips." He also mentions the songlike sound of the streamer-trees.

In Kubla Khan sounds also play a big role:

And `mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

And also Kubla Khan presents us with the singing Abyssinian maid:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight `twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

Perhaps this would be a good place to take a closer look at the structure of the poem and Coleridge's opening comments on it. Coleridge says of himself:

In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!

"Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as were, given to him. [I shall sing a sweeter song today]: but the tomorrow is yet to come. As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease."

So it appears that the last fragment he refers to are the lines beginning with: "A damsel with a dulcimer", and we can probably assume he means that the rest of the poem was exactly as he remembered writing it during his dream-state. Incidentally, the "slight indisposition" he speaks of was actually a fairly severe case of rheumatism, and the "anodyne" prescribed was opium. This was really just about the only effective drug known to ease pain in those days. Some critics are of the assumption that his opium induced trance states shouldn't be taken seriously by the modern student of the metaphysical. I differ in opinion with those critics, and I believe Lewis did too. Coleridge meant no harm in taking the drug, and I find it's best not to limit the powers of the Divine by claiming that drugs effectively keep them at bay. If God be God, he can certainly do as he wishes during a man's drug induced state just as he can in his normal dream life. This is probably subject to the reasons for taking a drug. Coleridge probably didn't like taking it. It was simply something he had to do if he was to live at least a somewhat normal life.

In the final two lines of the last stanza Coleridge writes:

"For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

In Perelandra when Ransom first emerges from the cavern weak and hungry, he finds that within arm's reach are clusters of something like grapes. He lays beside the pool eating and sleeping for quite some time until he recovers from his injuries and fatigue. It may have been as long as three weeks he tells us. Lewis also says, "Indeed it was a second infancy: in which he was breast-fed by the planet Venus herself...." And of course Perelandra was a new Paradisiacal Garden of Eden. Honeydew by the way is a sticky material found on certain plants and was often referred to as the food of fairies. Lewis also writes, "Much that his fingers touched was gummy...".

Coleridge mentions reading, "Purchas's Pilgrimage". He's referring to the book, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Besides Marko Polo, Purchas also mentions seeing Xanadu. It is Purchas who mentions "streams" and "springs" within its walls. When Coleridge writes of an "Abyssinian maid... Singing of Mount Abora" he is probably making reference to a hill in Ethiopia called Amara. (Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia). Purchas also wrote of this sacred hill:

"Heauen and Earth, Nature and Industrie, have all been corriuals to it, all presenting their best presents, to make it of this so louely presence, some taking this for the place of our Forefathers Paradise." The sides of the hill are of overhanging rock, "bearing out like mushromes, so that it is impossible to ascend it" except by a passageway "cut out within the Rocke, not with staires, but ascending little by little," and closed above and below with gates guarded by soldiers. "Toward the South" of the level top "is a rising hill ... yeelding ... a pleasant spring which passeth through all that Plaine ... and making a Lake, whence issueth a River, which having from these tops espied Nilus, never leaves seeking to find him, whom he cannot leave both to seeke and to finde.... There are no Cities on the top, but palaces, standing by themselves ... spacious, sumptuous, and beautifull, where the Princes of the Royall blood have their abode with their families." [Quote taken from Frederick H. Sykes]

It's likely that Lewis also read of Purchas' journeys and got some of his ideas directly from it as well as from other old tales about lost regions of paradise (especially the realm of Prester John of which much has been written; it held a particular fascination for his friend Charles Williams).

One could easily write a book twice the size of Perelandra in trying to describe all the small details Lewis encompassed in the making of the novel. Having no wish to do so, this is where I will end.