An Opium Dream Essay

An Opium Dream “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Coleridge begins with a description of Xanadu, the paradise built and destroyed hundreds of years prior by the poem’s namesake, Kublai Khan. Opium was increasingly important in both Britain’s medicine and its economy at the time of the poems writing (Ruston). Coleridge uses vivid and twisting descriptive imagery, as if recounting a dream. Kubla Khan is written from the point of view of an opium user, moving from an intoxicated dream of paradise back into the dysphoric reality of an addict.

Kubla Khan was published in 1816, a time when opium was gaining popularity in use and in trade in Britain (Ruston). This was also the time of Romanticism, Coleridge himself being considered a key defining author within the movement (“Romanticism”). During this time the use of opium is thought to have begun to creep into the recreational realm. Opium use was popular among authors and other artists as it was thought to bring about inspiration and creativity (Ruston). In Confessions of an English Opium Eater, published in 1821, Thomas de Quincey claimed to have “taken happiness, both in solid and liquid shape” (qtd. in Ruston bl.uk) referring to the narcotic and the euphoria it produced.

As a common prescription and additive in other drug preparations, the narcotic substance was widely available and its use, though not its abuse, was not frowned upon (Ruston). In the foreword to Kubla Khan, Coleridge specifically mentions “falling into an opium induced reverie”(59 note) while reading about Xanadu. Coleridge said he then fell asleep and dreamt a fantastic dream about the place. When he woke up, he began to write of his vision but was interrupted. Coleridge did return to his work after the interruption, but this was likely enough time for the opium to have faded. The sudden shift in the poems demeanor reflects the mood swings of a drug