Kubla Khan and Orientalism

Reaching back to Tuesday's discussion, we dissected the stoner driven poem Kubla Khan. I feel as though we were cut short on the intrinsic value buried within this piece, and this work in particular can aid our understanding of the Oriental aesthetic. But, in order to adequately analyze this work by Coleridge, we must first establish the context by which the author created the piece, and understand the significance of his creative process. Coleridge was widely known for having an "addiction" to opium. Yes, he spent much of his time floating in the clouds, however his "addiction" is not to be confused with the way in which we use the term today. I believe in motivations, purpose, and reason. Applying these terms to Coleridge, in regards to his drug usage, delivers a much different picture than your average junkie. For Coleridge; the motivations, purposes, and reasons behind the opium was to create writing, but not just biographies of the mundane; rather, spontaneous and outrageous, unworldly creations that expand our cognitive ability past planar limitations. In a way, opium was his pen. An idea not medieval in any sense, actually this type of exploration was highly popular amongst American authors of the 1960's. A group called the Merry Pranksters paved a rainbow road in the world of literature. The most celebrated of the group was Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The government actually funded the experimentation of these psychedelic drugs, offering them up to a selected bunch of volunteers, mainly graduates of esteemed universities such as Stanford. It wasn't illegal until they found the highly addictive qualities of the drugs, but was otherwise deemed as a mind-altering substance among alcohol and tobacco. How does this tie in to Kubla Khan and Coleridge? This piece was actually the product of one of Coleridge's opium episodes. He fell asleep while under the influence, entering a very vivid and extravagant dream/vision while simultaneously recording a few hundred lines of poetry as images that just popped in to his head. WOAH! When he awoke, he began to write his dream down on paper. Coleridge had written three stanzas before he was interrupted by "a man on business from Porlock." An hour later, after the man had left, Coleridge was unable to access the rest of the vision or the poetry he had composed while sleeping. Mysterious? I think so. This is why the poem seems to be disjointed, broken in to two segments; the first three stanzas, followed by a final stanza that appears disconnected. I will not delve in to the analysis of specific lines, we can debate over that later. I want to focus on the creation process. Coleridge, Kesey, among many other writers use these types of substances for writing. I believe the motivation behind their usage was to let the mind do the writing, not the writer. This differs vastly from the motivation of using drugs to get high and feel high. Sure, being high may feel great, but the focal point of the drug was to inspire writing, that is the nail I'm trying to drive home here. It is because of these fantasies and augmentation of the imagination that we are allowed to depict the Oriental realm. The gap between western and eastern culture is bridged by our ability to imagine them separately, as two distant worlds.